How Momina Duraid became a leading storyteller in Pakistani television

Khaleej Times

24-02-2025

Momina Duraid had no plans to become one of the most coveted storytellers in Pakistan. Luck and circumstance turned her life around when she ended up at the forefront of Hum TV Network and began a journey she now believes is all heart.
A professional banker, she married Duraid Siddiqui, the son of Sultana Siddiqui, a veteran TV producer. At the time, Sultana made private productions, and Momina was on a year-long break from her banking career. "I was always interested in social entrepreneurship, and my mother-in-law was working on a project that was along the same lines. Fair and Lovely Qismat Ke Sitaray was a project focused on stories of real women's lives, and Mummy (Sultana) asked me to pitch the project. My pitch got approved, and I was heavily involved in the production. I was pretty young, so I didn't have many inhibitions either. I remember having comments and pointers about it for Noor ul Huda Shah's script without realising what an established writer she was. After our meeting, Noor Aapa said to Mummy about me, 'Keep her involved with you; she will help you.'"
As Duraid was involved in the business and commercial side of establishing Hum TV, Sultana tackled the marketing forefront as well as research. When it came to programming, Momina stepped in. "I kept telling them I'm only doing this for a short while," she remembers fondly. "But then Dastaan changed everything for me."
A series based on Razia Butt's novel Bano, Dastaan became a raging phenomenon. It starred Fawad Khan and Sanam Baloch and was based on the story of partition. Momina looked back at how she would sit with Samira Fazal (the writer who adapted the novel for screen) and talk for hours. "Script development to me is very intimate. Different people may have different processes, but to me, that's how the best stories come forward. I also remember sitting in The Lighthouse (a market in Karachi) looking for the perfect fabrics and laces for costumes in Dastaan. That's how much I like to be involved in my projects and it shows how much love and sweat and work goes into what we do," she says.
Momina recalls the various emails she got from all over the world after Dastaan. "I realised the true power of storytelling then."
Hum TV tells very female-centric stories and Momina explains how that works. "The man running the show, Duraid," she says, "is someone who naturally empowers women. He gave us the space that we needed. We have also been fortunate enough in that we have never had to sell our projects to anyone, so we have never stepped into the commercialism gambit. We made what we wanted, what struck our hearts. We've never gone through a formula."
Hum TV produces over 700 hours of programming per year, and while Momina has set up a very professional editorial team that oversees content, she is also personally involved in various projects. "I have been a lot less involved in the past two years, but what I try to do, at least once a year, is have a project that I can tell my grandchildren about."
Momina has also made sure that she imbibes the same values to her team as she got from her mother-in-law, who has produced classics like Umar Maarvi and Zindagi Gulzar Hai." Parizaad went to a lot of channels who rejected it, and my script department brought it to me," Momina says, referring to a blockbuster that told the story of a man who was rejected by society due to his dark skin. "My team knew it would click with me."
Tan Man Neel o Neel, currently a show starring Sehar Khan and Shuja Asad, is part of a trilogy produced by Sultana. The trilogy tackles yet another subject most producers wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole: mob violence. Momina executive produced the show, and the thought process was entirely Sultana's, Momina tells Khaleej Times.
Momina believes it is the responsibility of the more prominent and more successful writers and producers when it comes to telling daring stories. "Don't find a shortcut," she adds. "It's very easy to make formulaic shows. It's more difficult to make a message-oriented, something that is socially responsible. Very few people can handle such a project as well. We have very few Farhats and Mustafas and Hashim Nadeems who will take time on it and will keep improving it," Momina says, appreciating Farhat Ishtiaq (Humsafar), Mustafa Afridi (Sang e Mar Mar) and Hashim Nadeem (Parizaad).
Momina also referred to Jafaa and how it tackled domestic violence. The show became a huge talking point when it came to how educated women also face violence at home and are often gaslighted. "We were mindful that we didn't show the slaps or the hits. And that's not easy; these provocative images can get ratings on television, and those ratings are directly related to financial gain. It is tough to say, 'no I'm not going to do that, let me find another way to say this.' It was also easy to turn Mohib's character into a stereotypical character. But making his character one that people could understand was difficult, and it took time and effort to build such a story."
Momina says there is a balance you have to strike when it comes to eyeballs. 'There's a fixed point chart you need to create; you build traffic and then you talk about what you really need to. There's such a concept called 'transmedia' where you embed important messages in a wholly entertaining package. At Hum TV, what we try to do is that even in entertaining shows we try to give it as much honesty and conscientiousness as possible. Yes mistakes also happen, but we try our best.'
Netflix approached Momina around five years ago to produce a show and Jo Bachay Hain Sang Samait Lo, a novel written by Farhat Ishtiaq, was approved. "It is our very own drama on a platter to the world," Momina says. "I wanted it to be a true picture of who we are and what we do best." When would the audience be able to see it? "The camera has closed on it," she answers, "and it's in the post process."