Baji Bombastic mocks Pakistan's obsession with English

Social media sensation Baji Bombastic who recently went viral due to her hilarious videos isn’t just your daily dose of entertainment. There’s much more to her character which in reality takes a dig at Pakistan’s obsession with English.

The character of an innocent girl who is fond of speaking English is portrayed by Sheherzade Peerzada, a university student.

Peerzada shared on ARY News’ show Bakhabar Savera  that she started doing this at the age of nine infront of her friends and family who really liked it. She has always been interested in acting.

Commenting on Baji’s unusual accent she said that “Her voice was initially deep but I later changed it to a nasal high pitch voice.”

Baji is a social commentary on our society’s obsession with English. “The complex of speaking ‘English’ needs to be addressed. If you notice Baji’s character, she is aware of what is the correct pronunciation of different words such as ‘cappuccino’ but she chooses to pronounce it in a different way because it is not her first language,” she said.

https://www.facebook.com/bakhabarsavera/videos/480468029365915/

The idea behind the character is it doesn’t matter whether you speak perfect English and there’s nothing to be ashamed of. Peerzada explained “Urdu is our mother tongue and other regional languages are spoken in Pakistan, we should take pride in speaking it.”

She urged people to make peace with who they are. “Be what you want to be and whatever way you want to be.”

The youngster plans to take Baji to restaurants, beauty parlours and other public spaces to explore them from a different perspective through the eyes of the character.

On the use of selfie-cam for her videos, she said that “I used selfie cam for the character because it is the era of selfies but in future if I plan to venture into vlogging, my brother will professionally shoot it.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/ByJ-QqAAvla/

Interestingly, she uses unusual angles while shooting the videos, something which girls wouldn’t do but Peerzada wants people to be ‘Who they are’ instead of using flattering angles to look perfect on camera.

On whether it was a well-thought out plan when she decided to make her character public, she said that it wasn’t. But now, she wants to introduce Baji properly to the audience and share some basic facts about her personality which she didn’t initially when she started putting up videos on Instagram.

Baji has also received a lot of backlash from social media users who thought that she was mocking a certain class and the way they speak English. But, Peerzada refutes these claims. “Baji has more power as a character because of the class she belongs to as she is not afraid to raise her voice.”

In the age of social media and Youtube, many budding comedians have come forward in recent times to highlight serious issues in an interesting manner and Baji Bombastic’s character also aims to do the same.

The videos can be found on her Facebook page called Baji Bombastic ,Hello everyone its BAJI and her Instagram account.