Veena Malik Becomes a Web Celebrity

Veena Malik

When I say Veena Malik, the first thing that would pop into most of our minds would be Big Boss. Her actions in the Indian reality show “Big Boss” have been dissected and discussed by millions of Pakistanis and has remained the major topic of conversation for countless TV shows, baithaks, hang outs and what not.
Admit it or not, all this talk surrounding her has made her somewhat of a celebrity. She was actually in the top ten twitter trends worldwide after the Express News interview she gave and as ProPakistani first reported, she’s the first Pakistani woman to ever achieve this feat.
Her controversy sold and she became the most talked about woman in Pakistan, seemingly overnight.
Well that’s not it. The real news is that Veena Malik has become a world wide celebrity. In fact, these days, a video of verbal spat between her and a religious scholar on the Express News interview she gave (on her return from Big Boss) is circling around the web, including Digg, Huffington and various other notable places.

Veena Malik

Entitled, “This woman is AWESOME. Pakistani Actress Defies Mullah Accusing Her of Immorality”, the video has English subtitles as well, providing this issue an international audience.
Just to add to your knowledge, this video has been viewed more than a half million times in just less than one month.
Now this is an interesting scenario for a multitude of reasons. First of all, this is one of those rare stories to surface on Digg (and get popular too) from Pakistan . It’s a personal experience that stories from Pakistan don’t usually pop on Digg, regardless of how interesting or pop-worthy they are (Power diggers will concur here).

Veena Malik

For those of you who think that I’m being too much of a conspiracy theorist, have a look and see how many positive stories about our country were Digg’d the most:

Personally I feel the way this issue had the whole nation gripped, is disturbing to say the very least. It’s not like enough doesn’t happen in our country that we elevate a person, whose very work is to get talked about no matter how that may be achieved, to an internet celebrity status.
Another point to ponder here is why do these types of stories make headlines in western media that show Pakistan in a negative light? Are these stories the best Pakistan can do? Or is good stuff so hard to come out of Pakistan these days?
All stuff like this does, makes us “the laughing stock” for countless people. Things could have gone differently in this case if Veena Malik had refused to go to the show. Having gone there, she could have portrayed our culture and the situation lot better.
Even after having done all that stuff, she could have at least accepted that she was at fault instead of denying and blowing this issue out of proportion.
On the other side, the host of that show could have thought of Pakistan before setting up an incendiary encounter he knew would have gone the road it did. As for us, why was this issue more important than the life and death issues this country faces everyday?

Veena Malik

I think it’s a call for us to have a soul search. Instead of discussing whether an entertainer was scantily clothed or not, we should focus our attentions on matters more critical. It’s not like we’ve run out of them.
It’s time to think for a better image of Pakistan not for Veena Malik, instead of increasing our personal ratings, advantages, profits and individual interests.