Where in the rest of the world the morning shows or the talk shows are dedicated to educate the viewers who watch them by having a purpose or a message that needs to be conveyed, sadly, in our country Pakistan, the morning shows are only being used & have been dedicated to the purpose of getting the already married couples married, making the dusky beauties conscious of their complexion, showing how the Pakistani ladies can beat goras by using different products/machines & to the certain mindless activities that the celebrities are forced to attempt in order to grab ratings.
Well, all the points mentioned above are not a secret anymore & everyone is well aware of the fact as to where do our morning shows stand when it comes to intelligence, purpose & message. I do however agree that the hosts of these morning shows end up facing the brunt for something which is usually a team effort & has been designed & complied by the entire team but at certain times, these hosts do prove a point of how they are not suitable to be seated in the host’s seat as with that seat comes a greater responsibility.
On May 20th, 2016, Good Morning Pakistan; a morning show hosted by Nida Yasir was dedicated to the celebration of 400 episodes of Bulbulay. Having followed Bulbulay on & off sparked an interest & I gave this episode of Good Morning Pakistan a go because I wanted to hear the stories that the cast might have to share regarding their journey. The rest of the episode was good but what shocked & left me in disbelief were the first few minutes of this episode which were dedicated to the Engineering Students of National University of Science & Technology (NUST) & their amazing project.
Abdul Aleem & Mohammad Shariq Waqar; the students of NUST were invited to Good Morning Pakistan to talk about the very first “Electric Formula Racing Car” that they along with other 17 group members have created, which also happens to be the very first Electric F1 Car that has ever been made in Pakistan. These students will not only be representing Pakistan in FSAE Competition that is going to be held in Lincoln, NE, USA this year in June, they also happen to be the one & only team participating & representing the continent of Asia as well. *hats off*
Where I do believe that the entire show should’ve been dedicated to these students for such a huge achievement, they were clearly treated as an afterthought because guess what, the 400 episode mark of Bulbulay is more important & bigger than the very first Electric Formula Racing Car of Pakistan, right? Well, coming to my point, where I was ecstatic to see the students talk about their amazing creation, I was left speechless when I saw the way Nida Yasir conducted their interview, in which she left no stone unturned to make it evident that she had no idea what a Formula Racing Car is, what she was asking & what the students were talking about. During their introduction, which was written on a cue card, which again shows how she wasn’t prepared for this at all, she ended up saying that they were taking a ‘formula’ of the racing car to the competition, followed by a series of questions that made it clear that she actually didn’t know what a thing named ‘Formula’ Racing Car is. That wasn’t the only mistake that Nida Yasir made, she also ended up asking how many people could be seated in the car to which the students clearly responded that just because it was a ‘Formula’ Racing Car, only 1 person could operate it, to which her response was that oh may be because it was their first ‘car’, they made a small one as a tester. Yep!
Even after the students gave a clear idea of what their creation was, Nida Yasir kept on making one blunder after another which clearly suggested that she was clueless about what a Formula Racing Car is & she thought that the students basically had a ‘Formula’ – a design plan in theory which they will take & propose to the committee hosting that competition. Not only that, she also confused this competition with the Car Conventions that take place all over the world, by asking if it was because of competition like these, the people around the world get to know which car model is the latest. A moment of silence please!
Have a look at the video to confirm your fears.
https://youtu.be/WqbwFj_Iee4
Well, I am ready to give a benefit of the doubt to any regular person who has nothing to do with technology or cars or anything because these topics do not interest quite a lot of people at times, including me, but thankfully despite my lack of interest in the subject, I know what a Formula Racing Car is, but here, in this case, I fail to give Nida Yasir a leeway because she is not a random girl, sitting in her TV lounge, asking these questions to get to know for the first time what a Formula Racing Car is. She is sitting on a host’s seat with may be a 100 people in her team who do the research, compile the content & then handover the fully-baked show to her to conduct & for the entire Pakistan to follow, but I am shockingly amazed & amused that with Google being accessible to each & every person in the world, she had no idea what the students had created & what they were invited to her show for because she herself was clueless about the subject, which shows her level of unprofessionalism & unintelligence.
I am shocked & disgusted that where our students are achieving so much, they never get enough coverage & encouragement from the media & sadly when they do, this is how they are treated & clearly become an afterthought. I hope Nida Yasir had realized that she has a huge viewership & for that matter, she had done some research on her own & had shown a little interest on her part, in order to be able to talk to her guests properly in stead of making such blunders which is also an insult to her guests. I will commend the students for what they have achieved but before that, I will definitely commend them for not laughing at the host’s face because of how (sorry for the word) ‘stupid’ she sounded while asking those questions.
Students like Abdul Aleem & Mohammad Shariq Waqar are our pride & joy & I am glad that they have a power of a social media in their hands to channel out their creativity & intelligence & let the world know what Pakistani students are made of, because when it comes to Pakistani Media & hosts like Nida Yasir, students like them don’t really have a chance because our hosts hardly recover from the shadi hangovers & they are more interested in lightening the skin color of the entire Pakistan. What good does a representation of Pakistan on an international level do & what is so great about making the first ever Electric Formula Racing Car of Pakistan, eh, it’s peanuts for Nida Yasir I believe!
I actually watched that segment thrice to make sure I was not mistaken & if Nida actually was talking properly but in the end I am so glad that she proved me right that I wasn’t overestimating her intelligence. I so wish our hosts, before gracing the hosting seats understand & realize how important it is for them to be educated, how important it is for them to be knowledgeable & how important it is for them to have a know-how of the topics that they might have to speak about at times because not every single show is going to be about make-up, shadi & skin whitening injections & there will be some fraction of seconds where they will have to talk about something meaningful, important & educational.
Anyways, I congratulate Abdul Aleem, Mohammad Shariq Waqar, their entire team & the institution of NUST for their creation & I wish them all the best for their future endeavors. I am actually proud of the fact that our students are representing Pakistan on an international level. It gives me joy & it gives me hope. I commend & salute you guys.
Zahra Mirza.