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He arrived onto the scene at a time when Pakistan, like the rest of the
world, too was about to enter a period in the 1960s when urban
youth had begun toquestion the materialism and conservative politics of
their parents and were demanding more breathing space to practice their
new artistic and political ideas.
Moin Akhtar’s rise was not rapid. His fame grew through word-of-mouth,
especially on his home turf in Karachi.
He had been impersonating his teachers and famous Pakistani film actors
in school when all of a sudden he was called up by the organisers of a
Pakistan Day event at a club in Karachi in 1966. He was just 16 years
old.
When his turn came to perform on stage, he did what he was already doing
in school. But this time, he added a new act to his impersonation
repertoire – that of the famous Pakistani film actor, Mohammad Ali.
Ali had been popular for his loud emotional scenes and a booming voice,
and when Moin Akhtar impersonated and mimicked all this to perfection
(also adding his own twists and bits), the crowd at the event is said to
have erupted in laughter. They had never seen or heard anything like
this.
Word about Moin Akhtar’s antics spread and he soon became a popular draw
at ‘variety shows’ at universities, colleges and parties.
It is also interesting to note that even though Pakistan’s campuses in
the late 1960s had begun to vibrate with fiery uprisings against the
Ayub Khan dictatorship, Moin Akhtar mostly kept his act apolitical,
concentrating on mimicking and revolving his skits around famous film
personalities.
Although he managed to make a modest living doing such shows, his first
big break came when in 1970, a 20-year-old Moin Akhtar was invited to
perform at the time’s most popular primetime stage show on Pakistan
Television (PTV).
Called the ‘Zia Mohyeddin Show’ and hosted by the now famous
intellectual Zia Mohyeddin, Moin Akhtar left the audience in stitches
when he mimicked the voices of those who had presented PTV’s special
transmission during the country’s first democratic elections in 1970.
This was also one of the first few occasions he had come face-to-face
with Anwar Maqsood.
Anwar Maqsood had been working as a scriptwriter for the show, but would
go on to became a famous satirist and struck a celebrated abiding
partnership with the comic genius.
But all this would shape up a decade later. After his successful stint
on the ‘Zia Mohyeddin Show,’ Moin Akhtar became a permanent fixture on
PTV, even going on to host his own show called ‘Monday Kay Monday.’
Surprisingly, not many acting offers came his way from either TV or
film. He continued working as a mimic and impersonator but got a career
boost when in 1973, he pulled off a hugely successful show at Karachi’s
famous Beach Luxury Hotel where apart from exhibiting his highly
improvised impersonation of the time’s famous film stars, he also began
impersonating the cultural idiosyncrasies of the many different
ethnicities that resided in Pakistan.
It is said that he was one of the first Pakistani comics to do so, an
act that would successfully be carried forward by the likes of famous
PTV comics, Majid Jehangir, Ismail Tara, Umar Sharif and Liaquat
Soldier.
As Moin Akhtar maintained his presence in the public eye as a young
comic through various shows on PTV, his main income came from doing
private shows for multinationals and colleges.
However, though still ignored by PTV for his acting potential, in 1975
Moin Akhtar finally got an offer to work in a film.
By the mid-1970s the Pakistan film industry had begun to hit a peak,
producing an average of 200 films a year (mostly in Urdu, but also in
Punjabi, Gujrati, Sindhi and Pashtu).
The film that Moin Akhtar appeared in was called ‘Tajdar,’ and his role
of a typical Lollywood maskhara (jester), could not save the film from
being a flop. But the failure didn’t stop Moin Akhtar’s ascendancy to
stardom.
During the lack of acting offers from TV and film, Moin Akhtar continued
to brush up and fatten his mimicry and hosting skills, and he continued
to be a popular draw at private events and club shows, also doing his
bit on various PTV shows.
He had also been working in commercial theatre. This form of theatre,
over which men like Umar Sharif would rule, was still in its infancy.
Luck seemed to have bypassed him again when in 1978 young director
Shoaib Mansoor (who would go on to become a prominent TV and film
director), began casting actors for a comedy skit show on PTV.
Moin Akhtar should have been an automatic choice, but Mansoor and the
show’s scriptwriter, Anwar Maqsood, instead went for relatively unknown
stage actors from Karachi, such as Majid Jehangir, Ismail Tara and Zeba
Shahnaz. Some like Sakhi Kamal were studying at the University of
Karachi and were also politically active there.
Nevertheless, the show, ‘Fifty-Fifty’ was an instant hit. Inspired by
the more sophisticated satire show, Shoaib Hashmi’s ‘Such Gup’ (1973-76)
– that had been banned by the new military dictatorship in 1977 –
‘Fifty-Fifty’ mixed sophisticated wit with populist humour, parodying
the bureaucracy, ethnic idiosyncrasies, the declining standards of the
film industry and PTV itself. It ran from 1978 until 1984.
It succeeded in swimming through even the most repressive censorship
laws imposed by the Zia dictatorship.
Moin Akhtar’s destiny could have turned out to be quite different had
Anwar Maqsood not quit the ‘Fifty-Fifty’ team after experiencing a
fall-out with its director and actors in 1981.
As Ismail Tara and Majid Jehangir took over the writing duties of
‘Fifty-Fifty,’ Anwar Maqsood went on to script and appeared on a series
of his own shows (also on PTV) such as ‘Show Time,’ ‘Shoshah,’ ‘Silver
Jubilee,’ etc.
For these he chose two central comedians, Moin Akhtar and Bushra Ansari.
It was during these shows that Moin Akhtar really blossomed into a
diversified comic.
The duo played a number of fictitious characters, mouthing witty scripts
jotted down by Anwar Maqsood, who too became famous for successfully
dodging the censors with tongue-in-cheek remarks that were actually
taunts aimed at the Zia regime and its overbearing moralities.
This was also the first time Moin Akhtar saw himself doing
socio-political scripts. Slowly but surely, he was finally emerging from
his status as a cult favorite and onto the mainstream as a versatile
comic.
The 1980s had been rather fruitful. Moin Akhtar had risen from being a
cult star and master mimic to becoming a regular skit actor on various
successful Anwar Maqsood projects.
And even though he still did not manage to get regular work as an actor,
he had begun to venture into the lucrative comedy theatre scene that had
begun to grow in Karachi and Lahore.
Nevertheless, after the demise of the Ziaul Haq dictatorship and the
return of democracy in Pakistan in 1988, three performances by Moin
Akhtar (between 1988 and 1993) finally handed him the stardom his
talents had always promised and deserved.
First, it was his role in a wonderfully done comedy play on PTV called,
‘Eid Train.’ Aired on the night of the first day of Eid in 1989, it
captured Moin Akhtar playing his now trademark character of a
loudmouthed, straight-talking (but skinny) Karachiite. The play was a
huge hit.
Then there was his laudable performance as an aged writer in a long-play
(for PTV), penned by Anwar Maqsood called ‘Half-Plate,’ in which Moin
Akhtar plays an old writer who is suffering from a financial crises but
refuses to take up his ancestral profession of a kabaabchi (cook).
Starring alongside Moin Akhtar in the play was the great actress, late
Khalida Riyasat and the fidgety late Jamshed Ansari. Incidentally, the
fourth main actor of the play, the versatile Latif Kapadia, too is no
more in this world.
But perhaps the most well-known acting performance from Moin Akhtar was
a 1993 play on PTV called ‘Rozy.’
Moin Akhtar was now dishing out a series of great acting performances,
as if making up for the all those times his acting skills were ignored.
His performance in ‘Rozy’ in this respect saw him hit a peak.
Written by playwright and journalist Imran Aslam, ‘Rozy’ was an
ambitious adaptation of Dustin Hoffman’s famous Hollywood hit,
‘Tootsie.’
‘Tootsie’ shows a struggling actor dressing up as a woman to get a part
in a soap opera.
Aslam took the plot of ‘Tootsie’ and wittily turned it into a statement
against the kind of harassment women face in the workplace.
Moin Akhtar intensely played the role of the struggling
angry-young-actor who dons make-up and women’s attire to land a part in
a TV serial.
Moin Akthar had finally mushroomed into a star performer. The only other
Pakistani comic that dared to be compared to his caliber was Umar Sharif,
who too had broken out from his cult status and gained mainstream
popularity, mainly through commercial theatre.
But Umar’s comedy was more populist, rapidly using Karachi’s street
lingo and imagery, whereas Moin Akhtar still kept a middle-class
sensibility about his acts.
Nevertheless, when Umar directed, scripted and acted in his own film in
the early 1990s, Moin Akhtar followed suit.
Umar’s film became a box-office hit, and Moin Akhtar, fresh from his
successful acting exploits on TV, invested heavily in his own film
called ‘Mr.K2.’
Unfortunately the film turned out to be a financial and critical
disaster. Friends suggest that this colossal failure took a heavy toll
on the comic genius who was also a heavy-smoker and loved to stay up
nights with friends and colleagues.
A reckless and unhealthy lifestyle coupled by his workaholic nature and
the failure of his film venture led him to suffer a heart attack. He got
a by-pass done in 1997 but returned to regain what he had lost.
He began hosting celebrity shows, but it was Anwar Maqsood’s satirical
talk-show, ‘Loose Talk,’ that brought him back into the limelight.
A parody of BBC’s ‘Hard Talk,’ Anwar Maqsood would play Pakistan’s
version of Tim Sebastian week after week, talking to all sorts of
fictional characters, from politicians and maulvis, to heroin addicts
and businessmen – all of them played with ingenious insight and hilarity
by Moin Akhtar.
It is said Moin Akhtar had played more than 200 different characters on
the hit show!
Alas, this mind-boggling exhibition of versatility was to be this comic
genius’ last great hurrah before his death from a heart-attack at the
age of 60.
Nadeem F. Paracha is a cultural critic and senior columnist for Dawn
Newspaper and Dawn.com
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