Kafi R-Rated Scene Hai – An Exclusive with the Naked Tyrants

A special thanks to Iqra Sajid and Tayaba Iftikhar for making this feature possible.

How did you guys, coming from such diverse fields, find a common point?
We didn’t plan on doing videos. Everything was pretty much unintended and happened spontaneously. A couple of us friends would hang out; we were bored from life and the continuous bouts of load-shedding. So we decided to make a music video, and filmed it in one of our friend’s homes, and people apparently enjoyed that.

Did any of your ideas get copied?
Abdul: We haven’t really had our ideas and concepts copied, but yes, a guy from Canada copied   some lines from the video “Goshi and Shahrukh”.
Akber: If someone does that, I will beat the crap out of him.

What is your personal favorite video and why?
Abdul: We enjoy shooting random videos but my favorite would be “Goshi and Shahrukh”.
Akber: Mine would be “Green Plate Goliath”.

At the time you started this; did you guys have any idea that you would be this famous?
No, we never expected that we would make it this big. We started out when there was no YouTube comedy, and no culture of making v-logs. People didn’t know us but I think we managed to get something going, and saw a lot of youth starting to use social networking constructively.
Abdul: A guy recognized me in a boat on River Thames.
Akber: A complete stranger came up to me at a bus station in Gloucester, England. It’s really flattering to know people like, and appreciate what we put in our work.

You must be getting hate mails, don’t you? What do you do of them?
Abdul: With all our stuff on YouTube and Facebook, we don’t really get hate mails. But we’ve had some people jabbering about Sawab-kit like ”Islam ka mazaq mat uraya kero”. Pakistanis don’t have the ability to laugh at themselves! We realized this when we made Sawab-kit, which doesn’t even begin to criticize anyone’s belief, just a solemn few who misrepresent it. It’s pretty disappointing that nobody saw that.
Akber: There was this guy in Lahore, and we had a hard fight on Facebook. So he in-boxed a lot of spam mails but since Gmail combines all the spam in one single mail, I didn’t actually get spammed, he was an idiot.

What’s your craziest fan story?
Akber: There were two girls close to having a seizure when they saw me at Hotspot where I was discussing the Sprite video, I signed them an autograph. This was my first time doing that.
Also another time, there was a fan girl who was literally obsessed with me. We occasionally get diehard fans trying to do what we’re doing and have this sense of entitlement, like we owe them something. If we don’t do what they want, they often react quite negatively. We had a situation like this with this group of LSE guys who kept spamming our page with their stuff thinking that it was okay, this issue grew into them actually wanting to have a ‘phada‘.

Soon afterwards we made “Goshi & Shahrukh”.

Do you plan to go on local television?
No, our content is not suitable for local television. Honestly, we create stuff that we enjoy making and editing, and we don’t intend on making any material appropriate enough to be aired on local television.

Songs in your videos are very catchy and hit right on spot. Mastermind behind them?
Abdul: One thing I’m personally very proud of is our editing. Akber is the man behind it. We’re really into music so our videos generally do have motley of tunes, and sounds.
Akber: Diversity is the key word here. We’ve got music that we hadn’t even heard before. Almost all of our friends are musicians so luckily, we’ve been exposed to all genre of music.

Have you had your family/relatives tell you “ye kis qisam ke kaam kerty ho?”
Abdul: My family has been really laid back and jovial about it. My sister is a huge NTP fan. I didn’t have to face any issues regarding the substance in the videos.
Akber: In the start, my people were not very supportive; however, eventually everyone started laughing at our videos. But even now, ‘Totaquest’ is one video I definitely wouldn’t want my parents to see.

Who gets the most female attention?
Abdul: Obviously Akber does. He’s the front man in all the videos. There’s no rocket science behind it.

Has anyone ever accused you of being gay?
Abdul: A lot. Once I stayed at my friend’s room in UCLA and after I left, he told me that all the girls were asking if your friend was gay. It’s not because of the videos, but because of my appearance.
Akber: Not ever. But Abdul is my Christopher Nolan.

‘The Pharmacist’ has gone major viral. What was your inspiration to it?
Pharmacist wasn’t planned or even scripted. It’s like the ‘tharki comedy’ generally popular in Pakistan. The concept wasn’t new or whipped up as an original. We were working on ‘Teleshop Parody’ when we made ‘Pharmacist’ on the side. A friend of ours went to buy condoms and the pharmacist acted really weird and strange. So the idea just popped up.

Any crazy shoot stories?
Most of our videos are shot indoors so there isn’t much tomfoolery involved. Although, my parents had to see me a couple of times as a fat woman with makeup on my face.

“Goshi and Shahrukh” was the most fun video. It was shot outdoors, and we remained in character for long. We went to ‘Jaidi Pan Shop’ while portraying the same characters, and people thought we were actually like that in real life.

You don’t have any blooper videos online. Why is that?
We only have one blooper video. People make bloopers that are longer than the actual video itself, but our videos are unplanned and not scripted, essentially everything you see is pretty much the footage we have, save a few laughs at the end. We can’t have blooper videos.

Do you ever have disagreements?
No, we don’t have major disagreements. We do minor reasoning, the one with the stronger argument obviously wins. That’s how guys work – no grudges.

Do you plan to stop making videos in the future?
We don’t aim on stopping, like we didn’t plan on starting and producing v-logs. NTP is one whole group – we are consistent when everybody is present. Only this summer, it was just Abdul and me, and we did the ‘McDonald’s Guy’ video.

What does being a Pakistani mean to you?
Abdul: I’ve been living in England for 10 years; I really can’t answer this question.
Akber: I’ve been there my whole life. I came to England, a year ago. Being a Pakistani means a lot to me but it’s sad to see that there is no platform for people who want to venture forth and do something different. We started when there was absolutely nothing, and YouTube and facebook videos were dedicated to young women fighting outside pancake lounge, or teenagers doing stunts on their CD70’s, which is fine, but doesn’t contribute to any kind of growth. We strongly believe that we pioneered something, though it’s a bit sad that it’s gone unnoticed for this long. I don’t mean, our videos have gone unnoticed, but what we truly accomplished is …motivating the youth.