Faseeh Bari Khan says that the drama in Pakistan was ruined by Digest writers who had zero understanding of characters' psychology and how they should evolve.
- People hesitate while saying this but let me spell it out,
- our drama was ruined by the digest writers
- The drama writers we used to have,
- including NusratJaved, YounasJaved, Anwar Sajjad, BanoQudsia,
- and there are several others, including AsgharNadeem Syed who
- used to work on characters
- One big name among them is Munnu Bhai
- Now the digest writers who are writing these dramas,
- sorry to say, they have no exposure whatsoever
- They don’t know what a character’s psychology is,
- or what its depth is
- So when they write, their characters remain static,
- whether good or bad; we don’t see anything unpredictable
- The kind of character development we used to see in dramas,
- in the characters of Munnu Bhai, Ashfaq Ahmad, Anwar Sajjad,
- those characters are gone
- Now we are forced to watch this colourless drama
- which is only being run only to bring ratings
- And ratings only come through cheap tactics
- I really feel sorry about this
- Why does a writer have to be a clerk?
- Why don’t they care about their dignity and self-respect?
- When we ask writers, they say ‘we did it because we were asked to’
- You have my example
- I haven’t written any drama in three years
- But whenever I wrote, I wrote what I wanted to
- I wrote on subjects which people though couldn’t be aired,
- even in PTV’s best era
- But I wrote it even in this era when there are so many restrictions
- So you should know how to say what you want to
- If you have this skill, you can go forward
- If not, you better leave the field honourably