Music has a greater influence than cricket, when it comes to improving Indo-Pak relations, believes Faisal Kapadia, lead vocalist of Pakistani band Strings. “In cricket one team wins and the other loses, while in the exchange of music concerts, it’s the audience that wins ultimately,” says he. Faisal alongwith Bilal, the lead guitarist, make up the band. Many a time they have performed live in India.

What’s the band’s take on the controversies of lip syncing, of late doing the rounds in India recently? “Often we are asked to do so by organisers, specially for shows on TV channels,” says Bilal. But he feels it is a crime to lip sync in a live concert. “Given a choice nobody would want to fool the audience,” he says.

Actors bring to mind a degenerate breed, who can do anything that shock you. Because everything about their lifestyle is meant to be shocking, so you kind of get blasé and immunized about it all. But meeting Adnan Siddiqui is like a collapse of all these illusions and preconceived notions about actors as hangin-loose dudes all about wine and women. I was completely thrown off-guard when Adnan took off on a completely different tangent from what actors were supposed to (in my limited knowledge) and revealed his true side to me.

Who is Adnan Siddiqui?

Indus Music (IM) will hold the first pop music awards ceremony in Pakistan at the Alhamra Arts Centre on July 24.

The channel has also signed an agreement with MTV whereby IM will broadcast old English songs in a show called ‘MTV Classics’, presented and produced in Pakistan.daily Times reported.

The IM music awards focus exclusively on the popular music scene in Pakistan. The awards target two specific areas of Pakistani music: the history of pop music in Pakistan and the new groups and singers that have performed on IM and new albums that have been released.