Remember Mr Shamim from ‘Guest House’? here is what he is doing these days

1991 play “Guest House” is considered one of the finest plays ever produced by Pakistan Television as the drama was not only a huge hit but almost all of its characters became household names.

Be it Jan Rambo (Afzal Khan), Murad (late Tariq Malik) or Bao Naveed (Nasir Iqbal) or Mr and Mrs Shamim (played by veteran actors Khalid Hafeez and Sarwat Atiq), everyone received fame from the play which also saw new actors making their mark as guests in the long series.

Many of the actors who played pivotal roles in the play later stayed connected to the showbiz industry but Mr Shamim, the man who “owned Guest House” in the play seldom appeared in any project after the play ended.

So Jan Rambo, the man whose career jumpstarted with the play, met Mr Shamim (Khalid Hafeez) at his residence and interviewed him wherein Khalid Hafeez revealed some interesting details about his life and of course how memorable was ‘Guest House’ for him.

Khalid Hafeez, who lives in Islamabad, told Rambo that he started off as a singer but on the insistence of a PTV play director started working in plays and his first drama was “Neend Muhabbat Mausam” which was written by top Urdu literary figure Intezar Hussain.

He was of the view that he then acted in a number of plays but the fame and recognition that he received after play Shamim in “Guest House” was unprecedented.

Revealing an interesting detail about the play, Khalid Hafeez said that no one was ready to play the character of the janitor Jan Rambo-the sweeper who loves Sylvester Stallone and wants to become a movie star- but Afzal Khan himself asked to play the role and then rose to such fame that only “Nadeem Baig and Muhammad Ali received”.

Khalid Hafeez maintained that he didn’t work much after Guest House for he thinks such directors, scripts and plays are rare these days.