Pakistani star Ali Rehman celebrates birthday in lockdown

On May 5, actor Ali Rehman celebrated his birthday — in quarantine. But it wasn’t one of those star birthdays which we are now seeing a lot of and which are mostly about posing alongside multi-tier creamy delights, for social media feeds.

Rehman had a loftier purpose in mind. The ‘Parchi’ star, who is also the goodwill ambassador for The Citizen’s Foundation (TCF), a not-for-profit organisation working for the education of the underprivileged children, took the occasion to promote the NGO’s COVID-19 response appeal.

However, trust Rehman not to let any event become dull or morose. The next we knew, the actor got his friends from the industry — chiefly, Hareem Farooq, Adnan Siddiqui, Marina Khan, Faisal Kapadia, Anoushey Ashraf, Ayesha Omar, Khalid Malik and Nomi Ansari — to partake in the virtual celebration via Zoom video conferencing and, at the same time, to help spread TCF’s message.

The live session, which went late into the night, was filled with interesting banter between the stars who discussed everything from their work to their lockdown routines.

Rehman then steered the conversation to TCF’s efforts in regards to helping the poor children who can’t attend schools during lockdown and don’t have access to internet as well as computers. He especially mentioned the organisation’s ‘Ilm Ka Aangan’, a show which is aired on PTV Teleschool. Later, he answered a few questions from the audience also.

Strings’ lead vocalist Kapadia singing the birthday wish to Ali, as the latter cut the cake, was the highlight of the evening.5278322b-c3bd-4fb8-a7a7-65938b7d8863