Islamabad – Our Cultural Correspondent: As per the latest edition of the Pakistan Pretentiousness Index (PPI), hating popular music programme Coke Studio has emerged to be the most pretentious thing to do in the country. Publicly disliking the programme has replaced the previous top-slot holder: being enthusiastic about Swedish art cinema.
“We have been charting the rise of CSPA (Coke Studio’s Public Aversion) ever since the first season of the programme,” said Muzaffar Ali Khattak, lead PPI statistician at the Federal Bureau of Statistics. “And the more popular one got, the higher the other went on our list.”
“This is not to be confused with generic ‘X has ruined a classic’ statements, all of which have been lumped together as one single entry, which is currently 6th on the PPI,” continued Khattak. “CSPA is for all such statements for Coke Studio and beyond.”
There are, of course, others on the long list published in the annual PPI report. These include: a declared insistence on delaying reading Marquez till when one has learnt the original Spanish (87th); espousing loudly one’s views on what “the real walled city” is whenever an acquaintance talks about going to Lahore’s Food Street (9th); insistence on being able to tell Coke from Pepsi (7th) etc.
“You might think these are all westernised traits, but you are mistaken because there is a lot of very indigenous stuff as well” said Khattak. “For instance, telling a Lakshmi Chowk restaurant that they didn’t make the karahi quite the way they do in Gujranwala and making a scene about it, is quite a local, time-tested pretentious thing to do. It is 4th on our list.”
