Of Cricket, Careers, and Causes!

One of my earliest memories is of the 1999 Cricket World Cup Final. Pakistan and Australia were playing against each other to take the cup home.

My three older brothers and mother were crowded around the T.V to watch the outcome of the Pakistani team’s longstanding unpredictable playing. I, having no interest in the match wandered off to look for our cat, Marina. Upon close inspection of every room in the house, I finally found her fast asleep on my father, who himself was fast asleep, oblivious to the frustrated cries of my brothers from the living room. Even now, I believe that it is one of the best sights I have ever seen in my entire life. However, the lack of enthusiasm I was met with when I returned to alert everyone else really annoyed my 5 year-old self.

That is my earliest memory of wishing that I was in a position to broadcast to the world something that deeply mattered to me.

Belonging to a developing country does not come with many perks. There are a lot of things one has to learn to accept as privileges rather than the basic utilities of living.

Back in Pakistan, I had the privilege of being from a group of society that had exposure to media from the rest of the world. I grew up watching popular TV shows such as The Wire, Seinfeld, and Friends, etc. However, one thing that resonated with me all my childhood while watching this content was the lack of representation I felt. While the situations and issues faced by the characters seemed very realistic since they are usually based on the human conditions, it felt odd that there weren’t any characters that looked like me. What seemed stranger was that if and when these characters referred to my country or culture, it would be with preconceived notions or outdated stereotypes, almost as if they did not get the memo that what they were referring to, was not a norm anymore.

Even though I was raised to be a doctor because my eldest brother was one, I decided in high school that I did not want to pursue medicine as a career path. After successfully obtaining a bachelor’s degree in Media Science and gaining professional experiences in media fields such as advertising, film/theatre production, blog writing and event management, I am now geared towards creating visual content.

Since coming to New York for my Master’s degree at The New School and witnessing the social and political change in the country in terms of diversity, I have felt the need for diverse narratives from across the world from various communities to be brought to audiences across the board.

I strongly believe that a harmonized sociosphere can only be created when content pertaining to various demographics are given fair, accurate and authentic representation. Me and my partner, who hails from India, want to start a production house that collaborates with local content creators from our respective regions and create visual content in the form of web series and short films that highlight issues such as water shortage, famine etc. from the rural areas of our regions. This goal is aimed at fulfilling two functions; bringing to screen organic narratives from a culturally diverse part of the world and highlight issues without simply documenting them. As of now, issues from our respective regions have been highlighted only in the form of either documentaries or short documenting videos on YouTube. Most of these executions feature the issues with a filter of pity or sympathy. We strongly believe that diverse content cannot be created merely by viewing subject matter from a superficial lens.

I want to emphasize that even though our content is going to feature these issues, the narratives of our content are going to be organic and deal with the living situations, day-to-day life of the characters facing these issues. This will enable viewers to empathize with the characters and understand their plight on a more personal level, which is something we feel documentaries lack. Through these narratives, we aim to not just entertain and inform, we also want to attract the pertaining organizations that we feel will be able to help the rural communities facing these issues. Additionally, a major portion of the revenues generated from our project is going to go towards solving the issues of these communities.