Facebook tells me that many who like Coke Studio…

…are conformist sheep, really. You know how Facebook has this magnificent suggestions thing going whereby it runs its super-smart algorithm to tell you what your friends like, with the hope that you’ll like it to? Well, I decided to play along and see what is this all about after getting annoyed by a constant barrage of suggestions along the lines of “Many of your friends who like Coke Studio also like…” (Yes, I like Coke Studio on Facebook. In my defence, Ali Hamzah is irresistibly cute and my current man-crush.)

Ali Hamzah = *drool*

As it turns out, people who like Coke Studio, amongst my friends, also tend to like things as diverse as Pervez Musharraf, Zaid Hamid, Junaid Jamshed, 3 Idiots (the movie, not the previous three personalities, who are obviously not idiots. Duh.), Imran Khan (do you know Sony Entertainment Television recently ran a “Become the 4^th idiot” contest?), Ufone, Top Pops (!), gol gappay (! x 2), Nestle Fruita Vitals (?), and a delightfully named Facebook page, “Oye, extra pen hai?”

In this piece, I will try to analyze why Coke Studio fans are partial towards some of the entities mentioned above. Let me begin with Pervez Musharraf:

Pervez Musharraf is the reason Coke Studio exists. Had he not toppled Nawaz Sharif’s fumbling, tumbling Humpty-Dumpty-sat-on-a-wall government, pop and rock stars in Pakistan will still be writing boring, meaningful, mildly-catchy songs about accountability (eh?) and consequently getting banned on television. By setting free the powerful forces of enlightened moderation to guide us towards gleaming progress, he set in motion the wheels that eventually led to Meesha Shafi singing on national television clad in, of all things, jeans. Coke Studio, obviously, is the progeny of Musharraf sahab’s visionary thinking, thereby explaining why they have many fans in common.

Beauty & The Beast(s)

Zaid Hamid’s case is even simpler. Coke Studio is Pakistan’s answer to A.R. Rehman. And as we know well by now, nothing pleases Zaid’s hilariously passionate supporters more than us one-upping India. That too an India made famous by a treacherous, traitor Muslim like Rehman, whose forefathers were probably too lazy (more likely poor or indifferent) to migrate to the pure-land back at the time of the Big Bang. Never mind, Zaid bhai, when (y)our dream comes true, Radio Pakistan New Delhi will be blaring Arieb Azhar 24/7 to torture Rehman and his compatriots into eventual and glorious submission.

On the other hand, I honestly cannot for the life of me understand what is in common between Junaid Jamshed and Coke Studio besides a) Rohail Hyatt being the sugar daddy for both; and b) only rich kids able to afford his kurtas to wear at Eids and their cousins’ Mehndi celebrations are actually into Coke Studio.

I am similarly confounded by the seemingly disparate nature of gol gappay and Nestle Fruita Vitals. I am inclined to hypothesize the following: while the Coke Studio-savvy crowd has obviously become health and brand conscious, and thus relies on premium-priced fruit juice to quench its thirst and replenish its vitamins after a grueling gym session, it still appreciates the quaint, sarak chhaap charm of the occasional plate of gol goppas to feel connected to the pure-land’s delights on offer. However, I am certain the irony of paying Rs.100 for a sanitized, upscale version of such traditional delicacies at places like Chatkharay is lost on us.

Generic logo image to add visually to this blog post

Finally, “Oye, extra pen hai?” Sigh. Well, there is no clearer signal regarding the dominance of the ballpoint revolution than this. All school- and college-going kids now use Picasso pens. Disposable, cheap, pathetic pens carried by the dozens by every student. A few years ago, back when I was growing up, you wouldn’t be caught dead without an ink pen. Students now sneer at such anachronisms and rely instead on the ease and convenience of Picasso. I guess legible and pretty handwriting just went down the drain.

I wrote this as a piece for the Sunday magazine of the Express Tribune. It appeared on Aug 1, 2010 (minus the funky images, of course).