A short guide to the awesomeness that is Taher Shah

Courtesy Hindustan Times

If you’ve heard Pakistani viral sensation Taher Shah’s new single Angel, you must know that it is like that creepy video from The Ring: you can never, ever unsee its horrors. So your only option is to share it, ruining the lives of other people. On the other hand, if you have NEVER seen or heard of Shah or even of his massively popular debut single Eye to Eye, you must tell me where you live – because I would like to move there permanently.

In both cases, here are seven pointers which will help you fully appreciate Taher Shah, his art and his chest hair:

1. He is a singer-actor-model-lyricist-director-producer-businessman. And you struggle to hold down one job.
2. You cannot faze him with your #WhenYouAngelButDressLikeABrinjal comments. His other daring sartorial choices include: tiaras and angel wings, a turquoise burqa he clearly stole from some Middle-eastern lady aspiring to fashion, and getting his chorus to dress up in bathrobes they nicked from hotels.
3. He beats Fawad Khan as the best thing to come out of Pakistan in recent times. Please go look at an entire gallery of Shah’s curly-haired close-up images on his website and tell me you disagree.
4. In these troubled times, he is singing of peace: “In my song the highlighted message is the same that all human beings should exchange “Angel” like love and emotions while being “Angel” like humans.”
5. No kids were harmed in the making of his video. Unless you count years of therapy required to get over being made to wear a bathrobe and a blonde wig.
6. Unlike Eye to Eye, where Shah lovingly looked into his own alter ego’s eyes *awkward*, he has an angelic lady love in this video. Unless that’s Shah in a blonde wig, in which case, I’ll join chubby little mini-Taher Shah in his therapy sessions!
7. It’s spreading like a virus: Eye to Eye received four million YouTube hits, while Angel had crossed the one million mark within days of uploading. #TaherShah has been trending on Twitter non-stop. We’ve heard two people humming “I am like an Angel…Mankind’s Angel…La la lala…”.