LAHORE: A generation of Pakistani children knew her as Anqa, the witch of PTV’s Ainak Wala Jin. Today Abida Baig, 65, lives in a rented house, depends on a handful of well-wishers, and is asking for two things include the home she lost and a chance to work again.
In a long interview with to a local TV channel, aired last week, the veteran stage actress looked back on 35 years in theatre. She spoke without bitterness about the stage itself. Her complaint was against the people she shared it with.
On stage with fourteen stitches
Her account of how she worked is hard to hear. After an operation for appendicitis she had 14 stitches, she said, and on the third day she was performing in Multan.
The harder story is about her husband, the theatre director and writer Mirza Rasheed Akhtar. When he died, she went back to the show straight after the Qul prayers. “I had nothing,” she said. “I thought, who is going to look after these children?”
The producer still cut her pay for the three days of mourning, she said. What hurt more was the cast. Many of them had been trained by her husband and had started out from her own house. Not one of them told her to go home and promised to collect her payment for her.
She remembered one man who did stand up for her. When someone grabbed her from behind in the wings, the late comedian Sardar Kamal slapped him and told him to have some shame. “I fought this battle the way men do,” she said.
The witch children still remember
Asked what the stage gave her, she did not hesitate. It gave her fame and a name known around the world. Her television serial ran for about two and a half years, and she said that in those days she could not walk through a bazaar without being recognised.
The interviewer asked her to recite Anqa’s spell once more. She did, in the same deep voice. That voice is a gift of nature, she said, and it will stay with her to her last breath.
Did the stage take anything from her? “Nothing,” she said. “The stage is not to blame. It was my own colleagues who hurt my soul.”
A home lost after thirty years
Her deepest grievance is about a house. She said she lived there for three decades and spent heavily on it. The land belonged to the Auqaf department. It was cleared, by her account, to make room for groups of visitors arriving from other cities, and residents were paid between Rs2.5 million and Rs3 million to leave. She says a large plaza is now going up on the site.
“When I pass that house, my heart breaks,” she said.
After her earlier interviews were aired, Punjab Information and Culture Minister Azma Bokhari called her in. Abida Baig said the minister stood up to greet her, treated her with respect and affection, and gave her financial help. But when she asked for the house, she was told it could not be done. “I am not asking for a new one,” she said she replied. “Just give me back the same house.”
She now pays rent and utility bills that she says neither she nor her children can easily afford.
Hardly anyone from the industry asks after her, she said. The exceptions are two or three women from the field, whom she would not name because they have asked her not to, and two men living abroad who treat her as family. They have told her they will pay for her medical treatment whatever it costs.
Her message to the stars
Her appeal to successful performers was the same one she made last month, when comedian Abid Charlie lay in hospital. Those who have died are gone, she said. Look after the ones who are alive, and stay in touch with them.
She was careful to say she was not asking the stars to pay out of their own pockets. They have a standing that others do not, she said, and they should use it with the government. She wants free education for the children of artists, help with their marriages and support for household costs, arranged at government level so that no family has to beg.
The point has weight. Abid Charlie’s family had to appeal in public before help came, and theatre figure Arshad Chaudhry said he would oversee the comedian’s treatment. The argument over who should care for sick performers went on to split Lahore’s stage world. Another stage comedian, Asif Iqbal, known as Pheena, died in September at 60. Punjab’s stage industry still has no permanent welfare body.
“I am coming”
Abida Baig is not asking only for help. She wants to work. She plans to put on a production of her own and has asked every big name to do one play with her to get her back on her feet. She is sure of her audience. When her picture goes up outside a theatre again, she said, the public will give her a great deal of love. Near the end of the interview she said it twice that, “I am coming.”
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