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Ali Salem switches seamlessly between realms: the performer and the person, speaking both Urdu and English, naïve and worldly-wise, a man one moment, a woman the next. It is a breathless, non-stop performance in his room at The Park in New Delhi where we're having a very, very late lunch, writes Kishore Singh. I wasn't supposed to split my pizza with him but with his chat show alter ego, the drag queen 'Begum Nawazish Ali'. But alas, he's been unwell, throwing up on this leg of his India trip and has decided to ditch the rest of his schedule for a flight back home to Pakistan. He insists we still do lunch though, sans the photographer, which is why the picture you're looking at is very different from the person I meet: despite the shaped eyebrows, the styled nails, the pierced nose, the waxed body (this, he tells me), there's stubble on his chin, and he has been too sick to wear makeup or drape a saree. | |||
But ill or not, Ali Salem talks endlessly, often unprompted, simultaneously host and guest, pronouncing the two-nation theory illegitimate one moment, flirting shamelessly the next. We've ordered clear chicken soups and a pepperoni pizza from room service, and he tells me he's regretting not dressing up as "a diva" so he could wear his Begum persona, someone he admits is "provocative, powerful, opinionated", before gushing about his growing up years in army cantonments while praying he would turn magically into a girl, the darling of his school teachers because of his ability to impersonate other people, and then lashing out immediately after about India's media hyping up "the arrogant" General Pervez Musharraf's India visit for the Agra summit. "How could India entertain a dictator, jaani?" he pouts.
But before there was Musharraf, Pakistan had Zia-ul-Haq who, when news came in of his plane crash, caused the young Ali to go out screaming "Zia mar gaya, Zia mar gaya."And then, "suddenly there was this gorgeous woman with flawless skin and crimson lipstick" on television. Benazir Bhutto became prime minister and Ali Salem fell in love with her, often impersonating her before friends and their parents, who formed the Pakistani elite, till word reached Benazir and he was summoned to perform before "a woman without any sense of humour." Scared though he was, he managed to pull it off "mimicking Narasimha Rao" ("She says I made her laugh, darling") at a point in his own life when he was suicidal after his parents' divorce. He was already doing theatre by then, when an orthopaedic surgeon in Lahore somewhat presciently told him he imagined Ali in glamorous sarees, with flowers in his hair. "Mashallah," Ali bats his eyes shamelessly, "he was saying what I had always wanted subconsciously to hear."
Around this time, Pakistan's television boom had just started. "I was obsessed with being a woman, fantasising that I would be prime minister, that the partition of India would be undone, and had begun to follow my dreams without any khauff," Ali paces the room restlessly, elegant in his black kurta and white shalwar. That's when he developed the concept for his small screen alter ego, but Begum Nawazish Ali would have to wait a year-and-a-half before he would break the contract with one channel to move to another, and immediately, a diva and a show were born.
'Begum Nawazish Ali' was completely over the top, outrageous, unstoppable, unattainable, a rich widow who entertained men of power and floozies, the "maulvi and the tawaif," Ali Salem giggles coquettishly. In a society of hardliners, he admits he wondered how he would react to "badtameezi", but the Begum, it seemed, "had balls" and won admirers. Guests might have got off air to pronounce the show "anti-Islamic", but the breaking down of taboos and stereotypes "in a hassi-mazaak manner" exposed chinks in Pakistan's "hypocritical society". But the presence of intellectual and political heavyweights on the show " Jamaat Islami Party member Naimatullah Khan and Supreme Court lawyer Aitzaz Ehsan, among others " established its bonafide credentials. "The people of Pakistan hide behind veils, masks, facades," he says. Suddenly, a popular, late night chat show was pointing it out " and getting away with it.
"The Begum's intelligence was useful," points out Ali Salem. "Because she is not a real person, she is not intimidated by authority, she is much larger than life." Women may have made it a point to note her blouses and hair styles, but there was no escaping the political nature of her views either. "I flirt shamelessly with men in an Islamic republic," gloats Ali Salem, "the show is packed with sexual innuendoes." (I catch a few episodes on YouTube, and though they're outrageous, they're hardly gripping.) But in Pakistan, it is a "suddenly very popular" show, so much so that it had "sitting ministers in government" somewhat masochistically "ringing up and wanting to be invited on the Begum's show."
But the Begum too is elitist, so dressed in drag, Ali Salem would occasionally air her persona at fundraisers and receptions "of a certain stature " she's not a Rakhi Sawant," he says dismissively, "or a Meera", of the Pakistani actress who failed to make it in Bollywood. "The Begum is a powerbroker, jaani," Ali Salem says, "women get insecure when she attends parties." Designers from Pakistan's BeGe to India's Manish Malhotra have designed for her.
The soup has been perfect, the pizzas, expectedly, paper thin, and we're having tea to wash it all down, when Ali Salem allows a glimpse into the loneliness and frustration that he first encountered as a child, and which he has never been able to completely shrug off in spite of the adulation he now enjoys as a star ("though I'm a very grounded person," he insists). "In these clothes," he gestures towards himself, "with this stubble, I'm Ali." Some 90 shows behind him, "I'm taking a break. That's the reason the show went off air in July, though it's re-starting now. I wanted to take the opportunity to get in touch with myself."
And yet, that's not entirely true either. He's launched a reality bride hunt show on Pakistani TV, starring as himself " though how he'll pull that off should be interesting to see. Meanwhile, he's been contracted to write a book by a Delhi-based publisher, and will be bringing the Begum Nawazish Ali show to a Mumbai-based channel for an Indian airing. Is that important to him? "Main mujra karne waali tawaif hoon, jaani," he chortles. "I want more," pointing to the much larger audience here than in Pakistan.
Chameleon-like, he changes nuances. "India," he says, "has so many heroes, so many stars, but Pakistan has had no heroes after the Qaid-e-Azam." And in another twist, laments the way "drugs, cocaine, heroin" are rampant in Pakistan, the result he says of a society paralysed by "bomb blasts, dictatorships, all very destructive, very negative, so they are your only escape."
It is these unexpected twists that give the Begum her aura of unpredictability, and Ali Salem is flirting again, almost reluctant at having to leave for the airport. "If I had my makeup on and was in my saree," he looks up all liquid eyes, "there is no way you would let me leave, darling. Then you'd call the pundit, make me walk around the fire, you'd buy me a gorgeous diamond necklace," he sighs. Thankfully though, that's one perk Business Standard won't be explaining to the auditors any time soon.