Oh My My Mahira! Mahira Khan may not be the lead of the super star-studded Bol but she proves her mettle in her acting debut whenever she appears on screen and manages to keep up with the veteran actors of the film By Maliha Rehman Every time I meet Mahira Khan I feel a tiny, inadvertent twinge of envy. “I’ve gained weight, haven’t I?” she asks me and I tell her she hasn’t at all. Svelte, long-haired, fair skinned and naturally stylish, Mahira looks the same as she did in her VJ-ing days even as her little baby son totters about her. We sit down to talk in her living room, amidst happy family pictures and numerous toddler toys, with occasional interruptions as she stops to talk to her mother-in-law, keeps an eye on her son and plans out a shopping trip with a visiting cousin. Lucky in life, lucky with work … yes, if Mahira weren’t so nice she’d have quite a few females turning unhealthy shades of green. As it is, there’s something about Mahira that makes you want to like her. Gregarious and always smiling, this is what made her a successful VJ. Today, though, Mahira’s enthusiasm is no longer for on-air callers but for her fledgling acting career instead. She has been fortunate enough to foray into acting with a launching pad that is every debutante’s dream – Bol, Shoaib Mansoor’s hard-hitting, thought-provoking latest directorial venture. Her role in the movie, of the younger daughter of the oppressive Hakeem Shafaatullah, may not have been extremely pivotal, but Mahira still considers it a “dream come true”. She is caste opposite singer Atif Aslam, also in his first ever acting role, and has been featured in two of the movie’s most popular songs. “People tell me that it’s great that I am featured in two songs in the movie but I wouldn’t have minded having maybe one song less and more meaty dialogues,” she muses. “Still, I enjoyed being part of Bol’s songs, especially the concert song, where Atif and I perform in front of a large crowd.” A few days after Bol’s release, Mahira’s second ever acting project, a drama directed by Mehreen Jabbar, also began airing on TV. From rare guest appearances post her VJ-ing days, Mahira is suddenly everywhere again, in cinemas, on TV and in Bol’s umpteen promotional teasers. “For quite some time, I constantly refused acting offers,” she explains. “I was waiting for Bol to release because I wanted it to be my acting debut. I knew that a role in a movie by Shoaib Mansoor would leave a greater mark than anything else.” Still, though she may now be enjoying the acclaim and fanfare surrounding Bol, shooting for the movie itself wasn’t always as agreeable. Her baby son was just a month old when she was offered the movie and like any working mother who just couldn’t let such an opportunity pass her by, she organized, delegated and slogged hard to make her acting dreams come true. Was it worth it? “Of course it was,” she enthuses. “Extremely exhausting but totally worth it.” The trials and tribulations of Bol “When Shoaib Mansoor called me, I didn’t pick up the phone because I didn’t recognize his phone number,” she says. “He texted me and introduced himself and when we eventually got to talk, he offered me my role. It was just so unexpected. Here I was at home with a newborn baby and this incredible opportunity just fell into my lap. He didn’t even want me to audition for him. I took two days to agree to the role, not because I didn’t know whether or not to take it up – I had known instantly that I wouldn’t let this chance pass me by – but because I needed the time to digest that this was actually happening! I told Shoaib Mansoor that I was married with a little son but he said that we would work things out, as long as I accepted the role!” Bol was shot in Lahore’s androon shehr, mostly in the winters. Mahira flew in with her parents and son in tow, rushing back and forth in shooting breaks in order to tend to her baby. “It was often very tough,” she admits. “Often, I’d be on a caffeine overdose just in order to cope with my routine. I couldn’t have possibly managed without my parents.” But even as she muddled through her haywire schedule, there was time enough for her to enjoy working with a motley crew of talented actors, in a project as ambitious as Bol. “In between shots we would often climb to the very top of the old androon Lahore school building where we were filming. Late at night in the crisp Lahori winter, we would be able to see the tops of the Badshahi mosque and the Sikh gurdwara. It was beautiful,” she recalls. Acting for Shoaib Mansoor, she says, was easy enough. “He isn’t usually a tough taskmaster, except when he doesn’t get the kind of result he is looking for,” she says. “There was this one scene where my character had to scream at her brother, played by Amr Kashmiri, and slap him. Humaima, who is a seasoned actress, managed to enact the scene with ease while I just couldn’t manage. Finally, Shoaib Mansoor came up to me, slapped himself hard on the cheek and asked me, ‘I didn’t die, did I?’ In the next take, I slapped with such force that I left a mark on Amr Kashmiri’s cheek,” she laughs. There were other times when the veteran director was irked by his young cast. Once, they were enacting a family dinner scene late in the night and the actors finished off the daal chawal before the filming had been completed. The movie’s crew was then sent on a wild goose chase to hunt out daal chawal in androon shehr, at 1 a.m. in the night! On another occasion, Mahira ate all the kheer she was supposed to be eating in a scene, much to her director’s consternation! “We were, of course, very serious about our roles but off-camera, we’d just be fooling around,” she reminisces. “Atif and I would be singing and laughing constantly.” And did she ever witness the infamous Atif Aslam arrogance, I ask her. “Not at all,” she replies. “Fans would cluster around Atif wherever we went but on the sets, he was just a first-time actor, revising his lines. People say Atif Aslam is arrogant but I think it is necessary for him to be a bit stand-offish in an industry like this. He works very hard, has his feet firmly on the ground and only acts distant because he doesn’t want people to take advantage of him.” I tell her that perhaps she should also put on similar airs and graces, now that she has achieved countrywide fame. “Maybe, just so that people don’t get rude,” she considers. “I also need to be more alert about my appearance when I go out in public. I just leave home in my most casual clothes and then get self-conscious when people take photographs.” With Bol making waves all over the country, what does she want to do next? Years ago, she had met up with Indian director Sanjay Leela Bhansali and considered acting across the border. Did she want to try her luck in Bollywood now? “With the kind of Indian movies being released these days, I’d rather not!” she opines. “I’d much rather do quality work in my own country. It has to be something that excites me and that my family is comfortable with. For instance, my husband feels that I shouldn’t take up work which involves extended traveling and staying away from my son for long periods.” Family ties While many women may balk at having their husbands dictate their career choices, for Mahira, her husband Ali Askari is her best friend. “Ali never doubts me and while he may have reservations at first, he is usually able to eventually see my point of view. I am married and a mother and yet, I am following my dreams, traveling and doing whatever I please. I don’t think if I had married anybody else, he would have understood me as well.” The couple’s mutual understanding may have something to do with the years of history they have behind them. Mahira and Ali have known each other since their teens, friends first, growing apart over time and then finally reunited with marriage. Forget Bol and the various drama serials she is planning to act in, Mahira Khan is part of a real-life love story that is straight out of a bona fide, mushy, gushy Mills and Boon romance (but not in a lurid way!). Here’s how it goes: Mahira and Ali bumped into each other at two student events and a dholki, all within a week. Fate, in true romance novel style, as you may say. Anyway, the two became friends and eventually, their parents also became friendly. “We would go out for family dinners and meet up on Eid. I could go over to Ali’s house whenever I pleased and just hang out with his mother,” she says. However, when Ali moved to the U.S.A. to study, they lost touch. “I also went to study in L.A. and for two years, we were completely apart.” Then, fate stepped in once again and the two ended up on the same flight to L.A. “That flight made us realize that we were meant to be together.” The couple returned to Pakistan and they got married when she was just 22 and he was 24. “But hardly anybody thought that we were too young to get married,” she says. “It was inevitable and most of our family members just reacted with a pointed ‘Finally!’” After marriage, Mahira continued on with VJ-ing but with her son’s birth, her career came to a temporary halt. She wrapped up her VJ-ing and rejected an offer to act in a drama serial by Mehreen Jabbar. “I was sad at the time but now I realize that everything happens for a reason,” she surmises. “Bol came along soon enough and I also got to work with Mehreen, after all!” Presently, she is acting in another drama serial, opposite actor Fawad Khan. “The shooting schedules sometimes go on till late in the night but at least the filming’s taking place in Karachi and I can go home at night,” she reasons. And while she may make it all sound easy, it really isn’t. During the course of our conversation, she runs around, cajoling her son to eat his lunch. Her family may be supportive of her career but she has to make sure that she wins them over before she agrees to any acting project. Then again, as she tells me many times while we talk, it’s worth it. With a Shoaib Mansoor movie to her credit at the very onset of her career, her youthful looks, a young fan following that has remained loyal to her from her VJ-ing days on and acting offers galore, it probably really is.