In conversation with Sarmad Khoosat

There is no question that when it comes to acting and direction, Sarmad Sultan Khoosat is one of the finest – working across various mediums. He is masterful and moving in ways you can’t comprehend unless you watch one of his works, as director or actor.

From his performance and direction in and as Manto in the Pakistani feature film to his 24-hour-long live act, No Time To Sleep to his direction of Humsafar (that may have been flawed but did create the country’s biggest onscreen couple, Fawad Khan and Mahira Khan) it seems Sarmad Khoosat is a man who understands both forms and has the courage to take on things others simply wouldn’t.

In between all this, Sarmad Khoosat has also directed music videos, which means ‘Chandni Raat’ is not his first music video for Ali Sethi. The singer-songwriter and musician also featured on the soundtrack of Manto and that’s just off the top of my head.

However, ‘Chandni Raat’ is easily Ali Sethi’s finest, since it’s (a) beautiful and (b) unlike his previous works, even as certain hints do exist. But while we will speak about the single at a later date, it has to be said that the music video qualifies as one of the strongest music videos to emerge, not just in 2019, but one of the strongest in all-time.

While the music, production and lyrical credits belong to a bevy of people, beginning with Ali Sethi and by Noah Georgeson – who produced the title track of the hit TV series Narcos – the music video is co-directed by Sarmad Khoosat and music videos, for reasons past understanding, evoke different ideas in different people. Upon first viewing it, I assumed that it has to do with the pain of migration and a sense of longing. It brought to mind the refugees that are without home, suffering from separation but also how humanity exists even as people are strangers. It is diverse because it contains various ethnicities but it fits in the narrative of the video and doesn’t feel forced – as can be the case, particularly in Pakistan where social messages lack nuance.

Instep got a hold of Sarmad Sultan Khoosat to ask him about his newest music video and what it’s really about…

Instep: Everybody has their own interpretation of music. I thought it was about the pain of migration and refugees, humanity and diversity but very nuanced. Maybe I’m right, or wrong…

Sarmad Sultan Khoosat (SSK): There is no right or wrong interpretation.

Instep: You’ve worked with Ali on the music video of ‘Kithay Nain Na Jorin’ a couple of years back. He was featured on the soundtrack of Manto…

SSK: This was before that. Collaboration-wise, yes, it’s my third time working with Ali. Somewhere in the middle, we have worked on OSTs; in one I was an actor, and there was a play I did and Ali and Zeb sang for it. But that’s not the same.

Instep: What can you tell us about ‘Chandni Raat’?

SSK: It’s very seldom that one gets an opportunity to indulge and only if there wasn’t this fear of sounding too self-important, it’s art. It inclines more towards following art than following what mainstream norms are. That’s why I call it artistic. I’m not calling myself artistic so perhaps the art element was kept supreme.

Instep: Can you explain what you mean by ‘art’ element?

SSK: With art, I feel it should be as open as fluid to interpretation as many people have access to it. Definitively, there has been some thought-process and a thin narrative in our head(s) which drove the full thing but I don’t want to explain it or impart meaning to it and I would much rather whatever and whichever people read it and look at it. It’s very interesting because you said partition and refugees because as I said the place is vague, we don’t know the geography of it, we don’t even know what time it is. That kind of ambiguity, I felt, was important, for us and as you said they look like an ensemble of milieu of people gathered here by chance. The other day, somebody said it looks like afterlife. For me, the refugee situation is much more tragic and extreme but isn’t that how airports are? Flights get delayed and it’s a bunch of strangers. I’ve had the experience several times when somebody would get up and crack a joke, people chatting to the person sitting next to them. There are three distinct acts to the whole video if you look at it. The first is the set-up where you do feel that they are strangers, there’s some kind of estrangement or a lack of connection. Then there is a connection and then some unification. And again, vaguely speaking, that’s what it is if you read it. Now, where we are, what’s the context, we can read it whichever way. It could be a dystopian time in the future or a part of our history. Certainly, the presence of brown people does give it a South Asian context but we have Sikhs living here, even Chinese people, so I’m just saying that the diversity you see needed to be organic and as a music video it could not be melodramatic. The ghazal is very delicate and the music is very delicate. The idea was to retain the delicacy of the whole thing.