Opinion The eyes have it
A handsome chaiwallah has broken the internet just by looking at it.
Pakistani photographer Jiah Ali started a chain reaction when he uploaded a portrait of a dashing young chaiwallah named Arshad in Islamabad, which he had shot earlier this year on a photo-walk. Admirers of Arshad’s intense blue eyes soon reached critical mass on social media, whose users pleaded that it would be villainous to bomb a nation which produces such criminally handsome chaiwallahs. There were also suggestions that he should be weaponised for surgical strikes on the heart of Indian womanhood.
Pakistani fashion portal Fitin.pk, which launches in November, has picked up Arshad for its publicity campaign, and the site has him intensely modelling a Game of Thrones T-shirt. In the fitness of things, there’s a Superman tee, too. “Chaiwallah is no more chaiwallah, now he is fashionwallah,” the site exults, and the world exults with it. The appreciation for Arshad’s elevation has drawn derision, too — reverse snobs are out there. In the collective wisdom of the chosen, they sneer, the poor are supposed to be dumpy and doleful of aspect, reflecting lives which are presumed to be nasty, brutish and short on meaning.
In the class-ridden society of the subcontinent, this is somewhat true. But equally, huge sections of this population are chafing for change. In that perspective, the elevation of a chaiwallah to fashion icon is no longer a transgression. It is the result of a force of nature. Call it social antigravity — a force to be reckoned with in all countries of our region in the years ahead. Do the math, and you will realise that those blue eyes boring into the internet point to the impending tectonic change. And if you kept count as you read this editorial, you would have come to the inescapable conclusion that a picture is worth precisely 300 words.
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