‘Oh, don’t stop…..you have a nice voice.
Like a bulbul.’
‘In a china-china-shop,’
From A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
Ah, the human voice lifted in song! What splendid, transcendent feelings it inspires! It truly transports listeners from one place to another.
But it also transports the singers themselves. No, not just talking about the creative, wajd-like space that pure singers enter, but talking about being transported from your own house to the Sindh Governor House, as happened with Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader Imran Ismail.
Sure, it wasn’t just the song (“Tabdeeli aae rae!”) that he brought to the table, but also….okay, so we don’t really recall what, exactly, he brought to the table, because he lost his seat in the NA-256 by-polls in 2015. But what about the PTI’s success in Karachi in 2018? Well, if the party credits that to him, then our ruling party has truly lost it.
In any case, nothing succeeds like success, and the party chairman’s spokesperson, slapper and glass-thrower-in-chief Naeemul-Haq would like to take a crack at singing himself now.
After all, he has been all but sidelined in the chairman’s spoils system. Sure, he’s been made a “Special Assistant for Political Affairs” but that doesn’t quite make the cut, does it? That’s not even one of the five advisors-with-minister-status that the PM is allowed!
Naeemul-Haq has decided he needs to up his game. And the best way to KhanSaab’s heart is through…no, let’s just stick to singing.
Take a listen to the new Nightingale of Pakistan and let us know if he has clawed his way into your hearts as well.
I sang these lines of a revolutionary song . pic.twitter.com/HlnrQsobgl
— Naeem ul Haque (@naeemul_haque) September 13, 2018
Post-script: At least Ismail went to some once-D-list-singers and got a song produced. Naeemul-Haq, on the other hand, seems to have seen half of a 15-minute YouTube video on “How to make music on your Android, iOS, Windows phone!”