The all-women troupe of comedians brought laughter, puns and roasted patriarchy and rishta aunties on stage.
They say there is something incredibly beautiful about people who are witty, hilarious and unapologetic about being themselves. Interestingly, these traits were visible in all the performers at the Auratnaak Islamabad show on Friday evening.
The funny all-women troupe performed in front of a packed audience and shattered a lot of stereotypes along the way. The line-up included Nadine, Humay, Orooj, Mehrbano, Anusheh, Anya, Sehar, Maha, Sabah, Hajira and Zara.
The evening began with Orooj-e-Zafar opening the show with a musical performance that made everyone giggle as she effortlessly sang and played the guitar, setting everyone’s mood for what followed.
The comedy show commenced with Nadine Murtaza, an educationist by profession; her hilarious jibs at her own experiences of people treating her like a kid, convincing them of her real age, her family’s interesting stories and a lot more left everyone in stitches. She stood out just as much as her carefully curated choice of plain white kurta featuring some funky geese on it.
The next performance by Humay Waseem revolved around every young girl’s greatest horror – the ‘rishta’ process. She then moved on to speak about feminism and how every man on the face of this earth is a self-proclaimed expert on the topic. Talking about feminism, one can’t ignore Imran Khan’s recent statement about how feminism makes bad mothers. Humay made sure to question Khan sahib’s knowledge on parenting considering he’s not an active parent himself.
Orooj’s comical performance began by speaking about embracing dark color and how that makes women good Muslims – because no men are interested in them so they stay away from sin. She also shed light on how long relationships give everyone the right to invade people’s privacy and question when they are going to have kids.
Another performer, Anusheh, hit the nail on the head when it came to the question of ‘when are you going to have kids’ that is asked far too often in our society. She narrated her personal experience of coming back from her honeymoon only to find aunties questioning her whether there is ‘good news’. What was most hilarious was that her grandmother expected her to get pregnant and lose weight at the same time. Anusheh also went on to tell how she went to New York City for grad school thinking NYC is her ticket to being socially accepted everywhere. Except that it left her being too western liberal for her old friends and still too middle class for her ideal demographic. It seemed like this resonated with a major chunk of the audience considering the applause she received for it.
Mehrbano spoke about the opposite of living abroad. She shared her experience of moving to Islamabad and learning the ways of the city. She cracked jokes at the quintessential Islamabadi experiences that we are all so proud of – like wearing a plain white kurta, picking up an on the go coffee from Mocca and heading straight to the press club to protest about inequality or loving Islamabad because of its diversity (foreigners who make us forget we are in Pakistan). The audience thoroughly enjoyed her set.
Sehar Tariq, a performer at the show, started her set by narrating her own rare condition in Pakistan – being an only child.
“It’s not a good rare condition – it’s not like rainbows and butterflies. It’s a bad rare like a natural calamity like an earthquake or a Tsunami,” she explained. She spoke about how her mother had prepared lines to use when people would show their disappointment, which translated into ‘don’t f*** up with anything ever’. This weight on her shoulders made her excel at pretty much everything in life and made her really competitive. What followed were Sehar’s stories of competing for things she didn’t even want to compete for like trying to score the top position with a rishta auntie. Her set had the audience laughing in delight.
Sabah, a fashion journalist (not a blogger) touched upon some really serious topics like body shaming and being comfortable in your own skin by narrating her own experiences of trying to date in Pakistan, being called fat and running into fitness trainers at random parties. Her set was hilarious but what stood out even more was her confidence that was inspiring.
Zara’s performance at the end was just as impressive as her predecessors.
“My friends would tell me that being born a dark skinned girl in this country is a curse. But as a fair skinned girl, let me tell you that being born here is a curse,” she began. From there she moved on to tell stories of her birth and how the first thing the nurse told her mom was that she’s fair skinned, stories of her growing up and finding out she’s not allowed to wear shorts anymore and so on!
It is a little unfair to review the Auratnaak Islamabad show with eleven hilarious comedians in such a short space. All these women deserve great appreciation for putting up an amazing show and highlighting some issues that we, as a society, really need to speak about. We hope to see frequent Auratnaak shows in Islamabad as the capital needs more of this. The hills could do with some laughter therapy every now and then.
