It’s time we talked about our entertainment industry using Ahmed Shah as a prop

You might be living under a rock if you are not aware of the cute, naughty social media child-star, Ahmed Shah, whose claim to fame was a viral video in which he was up in arms with his teacher who apparently wasn’t returning his school bag back to him. The 4-year-old became an instant hit because of his frivolous and amusingly uninhibited personality and before anyone knew, started getting invited as a guest in various morning shows, the first being Good Morning Pakistan by Nida Yasir. Unfortunately, the host gave toys and doughnuts to the cute Ahmed and then took them back in order to provoke the same angry reaction in him as in the original video that made him a social media star. 

Now, this all happened in the latter half of the last year. Let’s talk about what he’s up to now.

Currently, the little guy can be seen in the live transmission on the ARY show, Jeeto Pakistan, hosted by Fahad Mustafa and Shan-e-Ramzan, by Waseem Badami and Iqrar-ul-Hassan. The good part is that no one is no longer (for the most part) instigating him to get angry or annoyed, but there are still various negative aspects of this entire scenario (apart from hosts and guests making fun of his accent now and then). Let’s delve right into them:

Why it is not okay to use Ahmed Shah as a prop

One cannot deny how cute Ahmed is. With his Harry Potter glasses and chubby cheeks, the “Angry Pathan Kid” is bound to make you go “Awww” for a long time. But let’s focus on how bizarre this whole situation is. Where every child of this age is going to school or playing freely, Ahmed has a proper job which requires him to shoot for long hours. He is used as a prop in the show where he’s clad in different attires, such as Mughal rulers, pirates, cowboy, etc.

https://twitter.com/Neelammuneer__K/status/1129891149961998336

He, then, brings “treasure boxes” on his cart. To sum it up, the poor boy is used for TRPs by TV shows ravenous for ratings. 

There have been reports of him dozing off on the sets of the said shows as he works relentlessly, especially during Ramazan and honestly what else would you even expect from a kid, his age? Inviting him to a show or two is okay, yes! For the kid does have a larger than life personality and who minds a slight dose of cuteness on their television screens but employing him for ratings and forced cuteness, at the expense of his innocence and childhood is just not in good taste and we are not even delving into what the psychological effects of this saga can be, on him for that’s a separate story altogether.

Thanks to his teachers for posting his video online without his family’s consent (who obviously didn’t mind), the boy is now sought-after wherever he goes. He is deprived of the normal life of a child and is unable to go anywhere without being the center of attention. Moreover, the tik-tok video of Hareem Shah that went viral some time back showed her kissing the child inappropriately, hence exploiting his cuteness to achieve fame. And these are only some examples of how the child is being used.

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It is about time that we pay heed to how our entertainment industry is using this little kid for their own gains, rather blatantly while he should be living his childhood like normal kids, without being paraded on our television screens with no specific purpose other than high TRPs. Here’s hoping this madness stops soon for our kids deserve better. 

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