Latest news with #Chhipa
Express Tribune
3 days ago
- Health
- Express Tribune
Soaring ambulance costs drive patients to cheaper transport
Patients are ferried to hospitals in loader rickshaws as ambulance services become a luxury beyond the reach of many. PHOTO: EXPRESS A patient from Defence Bhutta Chowk, suffering from a broken leg, was taken from hospital to home on a bed placed inside a loader rickshaw. The patient, a daily wage labourer and the sole breadwinner for his family, said he had been bedridden for 20 days. When he needed to travel to the hospital, he contacted private ambulance services, who quoted Rs6,500 for a one-way trip. Unable to afford the fare, he asked his brotherwho drives a loader rickshawto take him instead. Despite his brother's warning that the journey would be uncomfortable, the patient said he preferred to endure the pain rather than pay the high ambulance cost. After the hospital visit, he inquired about fares from Edhi, Chhipa and private ambulances for the return trip. They quoted around Rs3,500, while the loader rickshaw journey cost less than Rs1,000 in fuel. He estimated the round trip was about 20 kilometres and said using an ambulance would have cost him nearly Rs10,000 - an amount far beyond his means. The case highlights a broader issue: both private and welfare ambulance services such as Edhi and Chhipa charge per kilometre, which makes them unaffordable for low-income patients despite being funded by public donations. Comparisons have been drawn with ride-hailing services like Careem, Uber, and inDrive, which provide similar-distance trips for a few hundred rupees, sometimes with promotional discounts, while still paying drivers and earning profits. Public criticism has also been directed at the government's Rescue 1122 ambulance service. Officials state they only transport patients from accident scenes or in emergencies to hospitals, and not from homes for non-emergency situations. Citizens have alleged that the service often fails to meet its stated 7.5-minute response time. Health rights advocates say the government should ensure the provision of free or low-cost ambulance services for underprivileged patients, given that public funds through taxes pay for state operations.
Express Tribune
23-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
From ambulance to algorithms
When a video of veteran humanitarian Ramzan Chhipa went viral this July, the internet didn't know whether to laugh, cringe, or applaud. In the now-famous clip, Chhipa surprises a young boy with a birthday cake at a shop. With a film director's precision and an unmistakable performative flair, he instructs the shopkeeper: "Write on the cake that it's from Chhipa Sahab but don't tell them I arranged it." The contradiction was so stark, so meme-worthy, that social media couldn't resist. It spread like wildfire. Viewers initially gasped, then shared: "Is he serious?" "Wow, did he really just do that?" Amid the jokes, more genuine reactions followed – comments applauding his dedication, discussions on the importance of visible kindness, and appreciation for getting youth to pay attention to philanthropy. Conversation spiked not just around the cake clip, but about the Chhipa Welfare Trust itself – leading to surges in search interest and social chatter. On the surface, these series of latest Chhipa videos seem simple, an act of generosity caught on camera. But the execution was so theatrical, so drenched in awkward sincerity, that it sparked a polarising debate: is this the future of public service communication, or the death of dignity in philanthropy? Whether we like it or not, cringe is the new cool. What once would have been dismissed as awkward or embarrassing now functions as a content strategy. It's shareable, relatable, and ironically engaging. Chhipa's video embodies what some digital theorists call affective friction: the tension between sincerity and discomfort that compels viewers to watch, react, and reshare. In an online world oversaturated with hyper-produced, algorithm-optimised content, it's the unfiltered, offbeat clips that break through. And that's where Chhipa succeeds, intentionally or not. The jarring sincerity of his monologue, and the earnest absurdity of "write my name but don't tell them it's from me" offers the perfect mix of emotional confusion and feel-good purpose. This is exactly why it worked. Audiences – especially younger, Gen Z viewers – respond not to polish but to rawness. Chhipa's video got them talking about ambulance services, emergency response, and underfunded welfare. Not through a policy paper or a donation appeal, but through a birthday cake and a viral contradiction. Virality over substance Yet the same elements that made the video successful also raise red flags. Critics, including model and TV personality Nadia Hussain, slammed it as "cringe content and pathetic," igniting further debate. Some social media users pointed out the inherent contradiction in announcing a secret gift. Others questioned whether such theatrics diminish the gravity of humanitarian work, turning service into spectacle. And they have a point. When philanthropic gestures become viral content, there's a risk that the work itself gets diluted. The metrics shift from lives saved to likes gained. Empathy becomes episodic. Worse, it sets a precedent where humanitarian credibility is measured by media visibility, not long-term impact. What happens, then, to the millions of essential acts that go unseen? What happens to dignity when charity becomes entertainment? The valorisation of "cringe" content as an engagement tactic is often misread as democratising in a way that it invites Gen-Z attention, dismantles hierarchies, and embraces imperfection. But this is an ignorant reading. Cringe is not neutral. It is coded by class, taste, and digital capital. When elite platforms endorse awkward philanthropy, they re-inscribe who gets to be taken seriously while trivialising the very labour they purport to promote. Critics might argue that this style trivialises serious work, accusing it of "TikTok?ifying" charity and reducing complex social care into bite-sized, memeable chunks. Purists might say such tactics demean philanthropic gravity. Yet supporters counter: if a simple cake-sharing video redirects even a fraction more youth attention to ambulance services or food drives, hasn't impact been expanded? However, such celebratory readings, explained better by academic concepts such as "cringe as currency" or "affective friction" risk mistaking spectacle for substance. They flatten the deeply political and ethical terrain of public service into digestible tropes, ultimately legitimising a troubling trend: the commodification of altruism under the guise of accessibility. By reducing philanthropic gestures to shareable moments, we enter the territory of performative neoliberalism where visibility becomes a substitute for structural change. What does it mean when a welfare organisation's impact is measured not in lives improved but in meme traction and algorithmic reach? Digital credibility tightrope Still, to dismiss Chhipa's video outright is to misunderstand the evolving logic of communication in the digital age. This is not about abandoning seriousness – it's about recognising that seriousness alone no longer moves audiences. Visibility is a gateway to impact. What matters is how that visibility is used. The Chhipa Welfare Foundation has a decades-long legacy of ambulance services, body retrievals, and public service. That reputation gives Chhipa the moral capital to experiment with format. His video worked not just because it was "cringe," but because it came from a person with deep-rooted credibility. Cringe alone doesn't translate; cringe backed by character does. But virality is a double-edged sword – it can build as swiftly as it destroys. The same platforms that elevate can also erode. Consider the case of JDC (Jafaria Disaster Cell), once hailed for its wide-reaching emergency relief and disaster response initiatives. As the organisation leaned into mediatising content ranging from dramatic food drives to high-production social media campaigns, it saw a surge in popularity and public engagement. But it also found itself at the centre of controversy. A particularly symbolic moment came when videos of Sehri meals made with ostrich eggs surfaced during Ramzan. Intended as a gesture of generosity or perhaps novelty, the footage was instantly polarising: some praised the organisation for bringing dignity and abundance to marginalised communities, while others derided it as performative and wasteful. The spectacle of ostrich eggs for the poor became more meme than mission, diluting the seriousness of JDC's work in the eyes of many. Overnight, its legitimacy was no longer anchored in logistics or impact, but optics. What followed was a wave of public questioning, digital backlash, and a noticeable shift in how people viewed the institution – not as a relief organisation, but as an internet personality. This illustrates the broader dilemma: when philanthropic credibility becomes tethered to virality, organisations are forced to operate in a perpetual visibility loop, where each act must be bigger, stranger, or more emotionally charged than the last. Ramazan Chhipa's video clearly doesn't offer a new playbook but it does reveal the fragility of public discourse around service. If cringe is the price of attention, then we must ask: who pays for the joke? Until such strategies are grounded in transparency, systemic critique, and a commitment to dignity beyond virality, they will remain aesthetic distractions; seductive, yes, but ultimately hollow.
Express Tribune
22-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
From ambulances to algorithms: Chhipa's leap into meme culture
When a video of veteran humanitarian Ramzan Chhipa went viral this July, the internet didn't know whether to laugh, cringe, or applaud. In the now-famous clip, Chhipa surprises a young boy with a birthday cake at a shop. With a film director's precision and an unmistakable performative flair, he instructs the shopkeeper: 'Write on the cake that it's from Chhipa Sahab… but don't tell them I arranged it.' The contradiction was so stark, so meme-worthy, that social media couldn't resist. It spread like wildfire. Viewers initially gasped, then shared: "Is he serious?" "Wow, did he really just do that?" Amid the jokes, more genuine reactions followed – comments applauding his dedication, discussions on the importance of visible kindness, and appreciation for getting youth to pay attention to philanthropy. Conversation spiked not just around the cake clip, but about the Chhipa Welfare Trust itself – leading to surges in search interest and social chatter. On the surface, these series of latest Chhipa videos seem simple, an act of generosity caught on camera. But the execution was so theatrical, so drenched in awkward sincerity, that it sparked a polarising debate: is this the future of public service communication, or the death of dignity in philanthropy? Whether we like it or not, cringe is the new cool. What once would have been dismissed as awkward or embarrassing now functions as a content strategy. It's shareable, relatable, and ironically engaging. Chhipa's video embodies what some digital theorists call affective friction: the tension between sincerity and discomfort that compels viewers to watch, react, and reshare. In an online world oversaturated with hyper-produced, algorithm-optimised content, it's the unfiltered, offbeat clips that break through. And that's where Chhipa succeeds, intentionally or not. The jarring sincerity of his monologue, and the earnest absurdity of 'write my name but don't tell them it's from me' offers the perfect mix of emotional confusion and feel-good purpose. This is exactly why it worked. Audiences – especially younger, Gen Z viewers – respond not to polish but to rawness. Chhipa's video got them talking about ambulance services, emergency response, and underfunded welfare. Not through a policy paper or a donation appeal, but through a birthday cake and a viral contradiction. When virality undermines substance Yet the same elements that made the video successful also raise red flags. Critics, including model and TV personality Nadia Hussain, slammed it as 'cringe content and pathetic,' igniting further debate. Some social media users pointed out the inherent contradiction in announcing a secret gift. Others questioned whether such theatrics diminish the gravity of humanitarian work, turning service into spectacle. And they have a point. When philanthropic gestures become viral content, there's a risk that the work itself gets diluted. The metrics shift from lives saved to likes gained. Empathy becomes episodic. Worse, it sets a precedent where humanitarian credibility is measured by media visibility, not long-term impact. What happens, then, to the millions of essential acts that go unseen? What happens to dignity when charity becomes entertainment? The valorisation of 'cringe' content as an engagement tactic is often misread as democratising in a way that it invites Gen-Z attention, dismantles hierarchies, and embraces imperfection. But this is an ignorant reading. Cringe is not neutral. It is coded by class, taste, and digital capital. When elite platforms endorse awkward philanthropy, they re-inscribe who gets to be taken seriously while trivialising the very labour they purport to promote. Critics might argue that this style trivialises serious work, accusing it of 'TikTok‑ifying' charity and reducing complex social care into bite-sized, memeable chunks. Purists might say such tactics demean philanthropic gravity. Yet supporters counter: if a simple cake-sharing video redirects even a fraction more youth attention to ambulance services or food drives, hasn't impact been expanded? However, such celebratory readings, explained better by academic concepts such as 'cringe as currency' or 'affective friction' risk mistaking spectacle for substance. They flatten the deeply political and ethical terrain of public service into digestible tropes, ultimately legitimising a troubling trend: the commodification of altruism under the guise of accessibility. By reducing philanthropic gestures to shareable moments, we enter the territory of performative neoliberalism where visibility becomes a substitute for structural change. What does it mean when a welfare organisation's impact is measured not in lives improved but in meme traction and algorithmic reach? The tightrope of digital credibility: Lessons from JDC and beyond Still, to dismiss Chhipa's video outright is to misunderstand the evolving logic of communication in the digital age. This is not about abandoning seriousness – it's about recognising that seriousness alone no longer moves audiences. Visibility is a gateway to impact. What matters is how that visibility is used. The Chhipa Welfare Foundation has a decades-long legacy of ambulance services, body retrievals, and public service. That reputation gives Chhipa the moral capital to experiment with format. His video worked not just because it was 'cringe,' but because it came from a person with deep-rooted credibility. Cringe alone doesn't translate; cringe backed by character does. But virality is a double-edged sword – it can build as swiftly as it destroys. The same platforms that elevate can also erode. Consider the case of JDC (Jafaria Disaster Cell), once hailed for its wide-reaching emergency relief and disaster response initiatives. As the organisation leaned into mediatising content ranging from dramatic food drives to high-production social media campaigns, it saw a surge in popularity and public engagement. But it also found itself at the centre of controversy. A particularly symbolic moment came when videos of Sehri meals made with ostrich eggs surfaced during Ramzan. Intended as a gesture of generosity or perhaps novelty, the footage was instantly polarising: some praised the organisation for bringing dignity and abundance to marginalised communities, while others derided it as performative and wasteful. The spectacle of ostrich eggs for the poor became more meme than mission, diluting the seriousness of JDC's work in the eyes of many. Overnight, its legitimacy was no longer anchored in logistics or impact, but optics. What followed was a wave of public questioning, digital backlash, and a noticeable shift in how people viewed the institution – not as a relief organisation, but as an internet personality. This illustrates the broader dilemma: when philanthropic credibility becomes tethered to virality, organisations are forced to operate in a perpetual visibility loop, where each act must be bigger, stranger, or more emotionally charged than the last. Ramazan Chhipa's video clearly doesn't offer a new playbook but it does reveal the fragility of public discourse around service. If cringe is the price of attention, then we must ask: who pays for the joke? Until such strategies are grounded in transparency, systemic critique, and a commitment to dignity beyond virality, they will remain aesthetic distractions; seductive, yes, but ultimately hollow. Have something to add to the story? Share it in the comments below.
Scroll.in
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Scroll.in
A new book brings short histories of Phad, Kalighat, and other iconic Indian folk art styles
Phad Born in Shahpura, Rajasthan, Phad is a scroll art form originally practised by members of the Chhipa caste. These paintings served as visual aids for the bhopas and bhopis, priest-singers of the Rabari tribe who narrated tales through song and dance. Travelling from village to village, they performed at night, illuminating sections of phad scrolls to ensure continuity and maintain the audience's focus. The name phad means 'to unroll' in the local dialect. Ranging anywhere between five to thirty feet in length, preparing a phad scroll is a massive undertaking. Coarse cotton or khadi is soaked in water overnight and then primed with a mixture of flour and gum to strengthen its fibres. The prepared fabric is polished with stone, which further ensures the longevity of the artwork. Naturally occurring pigments are combined with kheriya gond, a local gum, to produce rich and long-lasting shades of orange and yellow, blue and green. The illustrations – densely packed and boldly coloured – are outlined with black ink, kala or siyahi, as a final touch. Phad scrolls traditionally depicted the exploits of local heroes, chief among them being the folk deities Pabuji (Pabuji Ki Phad) and Devnarayan (Devnarayan Ki Phad). Over time, the form has adapted to include episodes from Rajasthani history and Hindu scriptures. When a phad painting begins decomposing, it is ritually immersed in Pushkar Lake. The decline of bhopa ballads, along with financial and time constraints, led to a reduced appetite for phad. In response, modern-day artisans have adopted innovations such painting episodes rather than entire stories on smaller canvases. Shahpura's Joshi family, who have practised phad for generations, have been at the forefront of efforts to preserve it. Padma Shri Shree Lal Joshi established the Joshi Kala Kendra in 1960, where artists could study phad regardless of their background. Today, the institute is thriving under the name Chitrashala and phad artwork decorates the Indian prime minister's office. Kalighat Kalighat painting originated in the 19th-century Calcutta, West Bengal. The history of this art form is closely tied to the Kalighat Temple, located on the banks of the Hooghly River. Hordes of locals, pilgrims and curious European visitors were drawn to this tourist location, giving migrant artisans and craftsmen from across the country a lucrative opportunity to sell souvenirs. These included patuas, members of an artisan community from West Bengal, who began to use cheap materials to maximise their output and cater to the growing demands of pilgrims and tourists visiting the temple. The patuas traditionally painted long narrative stories, better classified as Kalighat Patachitra, which often ran over 20 feet in length. However, given the need to work quickly and stand out amidst other competing artisans near the temple, they abandoned their elaborate narrative style to create standalone pictures with only one or two figures. They gained immense popularity for their simplicity, portability and affordability, especially among the voyaging European tourists who were on the lookout for 'exotic' artwork to take home to friends and family with ease. The artists used inexpensive materials, such as mill paper, and watercolours – either made from natural materials or brought in readymade from Britain – to paint the elements in the foreground while the background remained plain. For drawing the outlines, brushes made from squirrel or goat hair were used. Initially, the motifs used were predominantly religious, depicting the chief temple deity, Goddess Kali, along with other mythological figures. Over time, however, colonial influence in urban Calcutta led to a shift in themes represented by Kalighat painters. They began using their medium for satirical commentary on societal changes, ridiculing the lifestyle of Englishmen, and for depicting their own everyday experiences – complete with evolving technologies and lifestyles. The Kalighat movement was transient and the artworks notoriously hard to preserve, owing to the low-quality materials that were used to create them. The practice began to die out during the early twentieth century after cheaper, commercially produced images gained favour over hand-painted ones, pushing the patuas back into the rural districts, bereft of employment.
Express Tribune
13-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
Humaira Asghar and the case for posthumous dignity
When I was writing my Master's dissertation, a friend pursuing his PhD introduced me to Nicola Wright's work on the Digital Afterlife – a body of research that examines what happens when rituals, practices and cultural legacies are transplanted from the physical world into the digital realm. Wright's insights helped me think more critically about the posthumous releases of musicians, the fate of digital estates, and the eerie ways algorithms can keep a star alive online long after they've died in the flesh. For someone who only experienced a public figure through the Internet, the star doesn't pass away – they simply become part of the feed, resurfacing perpetually, like a living ghost in the machine. These are not just esoteric musings about stardom or virtual memory. They are philosophical and political inquiries into what it means to live and die in an age when platforms preserve, remix and monetise both presence and absence. And, crucially, they help us understand how Freddie Mercury's question – 'who wants to live forever?' – has become the default setting for celebrity remembrance. But the last few days on the Pakistani Internet forced me to revisit these ideas from an entirely different angle. Not from the curated legacies of global icons, but from the silence around those who die unknown and unclaimed – until, suddenly, they aren't. The last few days online – not in the real world, where countless bodies are buried quietly by Edhi and Chhipa — have been shaped by someone the general audience had never heard of before: Humaira Asghar. Her death didn't merely go viral – it gave the Pakistani Internet a new subject to mourn, a spectacle to perform, and a cause to rally around. Here was someone the industry didn't even classify as a 'C-list' talent – an invisible woman, surviving on the margins of a hyper-competitive fashion and television world. And yet, in death, she commanded the attention of Sindh Governor Kamran Tessori, the Sindh Culture Department, A-list actors, and ACT (the officially registered trade association for Pakistani actors), to name a few. That an otherwise forgotten figure could achieve such posthumous visibility reveals a strange truth: in the digital age, death can be a launchpad for fame. It underscores a deep absurdity of Internet culture – how obscurity in life can be undone by the grotesque spectacle of death. What couldn't be accomplished through PR agents or talent managers was suddenly delivered by the sheer virality of bodily decay and social neglect. That is, perhaps, the most sobering irony: that visibility is no longer proof of value, but of narrative utility. And Humaira, in death, became a story that fit. But what exactly are we mourning when we share her photo, write our heartbreak, or blame the industry in Instagram captions or a journalistic analysis similar to what you are reading? Is it her death or is it the discomfort it brings us? The tragedy of Humaira's lonely end forces us to interrogate what our online mourning rituals say about our capacity for care, and whether we've become better at performing grief than preventing it. Social media profiles of the deceased now function as digital mausoleums. Humaira's photos and interviews, once uploaded for visibility and relevance, now serve as a mosaic of her absence. In death she became hyper-visible, an ironic fate for someone abandoned in life. This shift from personal profile to an online shrine is not neutral – it reshapes our relationship with both the deceased and ourselves. When mourning is mediated through a feed, it displaces traditional rituals with algorithmic aftershocks: a 'memory' notification, a resurfaced post or a recommended video featuring a now-silenced voice. These algorithmic echoes of Humaira Asghar don't just preserve her; they curate her, often stripped of nuance and context. What we are left with is a fragmented, crowd-sourced version of her identity, no longer anchored in real relationships but floating in the collective imagination of strangers and spectators. This is the double bind of the digital afterlife. In Digital Anthropology and Internet Studies jargon we'll say, it democratises memory while destabilising the personhood it seeks to honour. A recent trend in digital humanities is the study of 'posthumous personhood.' This refers to the way identities continue to circulate and be reconstructed after death, particularly online. Humaira Asghar's persona is now mediated more by those who knew of her than those who truly knew her. In this way, her identity is no longer her own – it belongs to the digital commons, subject to reinterpretation and exploitation. Our South Asian methods of mourning – the duas, the funerals, and the acts of charity – are meant to provide dignity and closure. Yet in Humaira's case, the janazah became an afterthought to the narrative. Volunteers scrambled to secure a final resting place for her after her family declined to claim her, but this too was uploaded, documented, and debated, and eventually her brother showed up to prove all the speculations wrong. Humaira's case exposes how digital spaces do not merely preserve legacies; they produce them, often posthumously and without the subject's control. Her identity is now refracted through the lenses of grief, voyeurism and social commentary. A clip from a past interview, such as Ahmed Ali Butt's Podcast becomes evidence of her yearning for a lover; a glamorous photo becomes proof of loneliness, a sad, sentimental caption is reason to believe she was depressed. This retrospective storytelling, often tinged with projection and moralising, obscures more than it reveals. And yet, it is also the only form of remembrance many will ever engage in, a paradox that reveals the uneven terrain of online mourning. Who gets to be remembered, and in what form, is increasingly decided not by family or faith or sect, but by digital participation and platform governance. Thus, the moral hazard is not only about management. It's also about presence and representation. When the living fail to protect the dignity of the dead in their lifetime, do they have the moral authority to construct their afterlives? When Humaira's social media became a digital shrine, it wasn't built by those closest to her, but by an anonymous digital public that claimed her only after her silence. In this context, Humaira's digital afterlife becomes a case study in what scholars call posthumous subjectivity – a state in which the dead continue to be constructed as social agents, but without agency. We see how the dead are rendered symbolically active while materially silent. Their identity becomes a canvas upon which collective anxieties, moral judgments, and unresolved guilt are projected. In Humaira's case, her death has been mobilised to critique the entertainment industry by people like me, highlight mental health neglect, and lament the breakdown of familial and social bonds. Yet, paradoxically, these narratives often do more to serve the needs of the living than to honour the person who has passed. Similar to how a family you must have known waits for the patriarch to die in order to lay claim to his supposed wealth only to find out it never existed or was entrusted to someone else. The dead person then loses all 'value' and is only being mourned by the successors because the world expects them to mourn. What the practice leads to on the Internet is a form of grief capitalism, where digital mourning becomes both emotionally and socially transactional. The more viral the grief, the more 'value' it holds. Humaira's story gained traction not necessarily because many remembered her fondly, but because her lonely death – and the synaptic horror of it – fit a tragic archetype palatable to digital outrage and sentimentality. Her posthumous visibility, then, did not emerge from remembered love but from a renewed usefulness to a content-hungry system. The question of what is owed to the dead becomes muddied in this terrain: Is visibility a form of justice, or a second, more subtle form of exploitation? Ultimately, Humaira's fate invites us to confront how digital spaces both preserve and pervert memory. Her digital afterlife, shaped by strangers more than loved ones, raises difficult but necessary questions: Whose grief is being performed? Whose narrative is being amplified? And at what cost does visibility come for someone who, in life, was largely unseen? When actor Osman Khalid Butt spoke out in the wake of Humaira Asghar's death, his words carried the clarity and restraint that the moment demanded: 'I don't even know what to say anymore. Feels like we're walking in circles. I get it: engagement is currency. Contrarian opinions aimed to provoke, framing grief and rage for clicks are the new economy. But can we please pause for a second and bring back basic empathy.' His statement wasn't simply a defense of Humaira's dignity – it was a rebuke of the culture that has made mourning a monetisable performance. In an age where tragedy travels faster than truth, Butt's call serves as a warning: we are blurring the line between remembrance and relevance, between solidarity and spectacle. What he described was the rise of grief farming – a digital behavior where grief is harvested for attention, engagement, and social capital, often at the expense of the dead. This is not merely a moral failing; it is a cultural shift rooted in the architecture of social media. In the attention economy, visibility is currency, and loss – especially one as horrifying to our senses as Humaira's – is immediately co-opted into a cycle of virality. The problem is not that people grieve online, but that they perform grief for an audience, flattening complex lives into emotionally potent thumbnails and teary-eyed reaction reels. What gets lost in this process is not just nuance, but humanity. Grief becomes a genre, complete with its own aesthetic tropes and emotional rhythms. And as with any genre, its currency depends on recognisability and repetition. But grief in real life is messy, slow and nonlinear. It is also private and often invisible. What happens, then, when our experience of loss is shaped more by algorithmic rhythm than emotional reality? What does it mean for the bereaved to see their loved one's death become a trend, their final moments debated in comments and dissected by strangers? These are the questions that Humaira's death forces us to ask. Her case is not unique in its tragedy, but in its digital afterlife. The public nature of her death, the discovery of her decaying body, the familial confusion, the volunteer janazah offers, the social media uproar was swiftly turned into content. A woman who died forgotten became unforgettable only because her anonymity became grotesque. She did not trend because she was beloved, but because her end fit the aesthetic of tragedy that performs well online. This cycle is what scholars increasingly identify as grief capitalism – where the emotional labour of mourning is extracted, packaged, and redistributed for consumption. It is a system that privileges content over context, spectacle over care. The problem is not remembrance, but who gets to remember, how, and for whom. Digital afterlives can be comforting. They allow for asynchronous grieving, collective memory, and archival presence. But they also introduce a moral hazard: who manages these legacies, and with what consent? Who speaks for the dead when the only voices left are followers, fans, and critics?
