How Coke Studio happened for Seemab Saqib Khan

A childhood that made her self-contained

The episode opens with Muzamil introducing Seemab Saqib Khan as someone he has known for close to a decade — he first noticed her work when she was seventeen or eighteen, after she submitted a photograph to a small Facebook page he was running. What struck him was how conceptual it was for someone that young. That early impression frames the conversation that follows: a person who has always worked from the inside out.

Seemab begins by describing a childhood that was, in her words, “silent.” Her father was diagnosed with lung cancer when she was seven. “That was the last time I saw my mother crying for the next three years,” she says. Her father passed away when she was ten. Her mother — previously a housewife — walked into Akbari Mandi, a wholesale market in Lahore where, as Seemab puts it, no woman had gone before, and ran her late husband’s business for two years before winding it down. “I cannot imagine going to a place where there are only men,” Seemab says. “And she had never worked before.”

The effect on Seemab was a kind of enforced self-sufficiency. With her mother managing the business and four daughters to raise, there was no space to complain. “Whatever I was, it was just inside me,” she says. “I became very in a shell.” Muzamil notes that while other children were having ordinary adolescent experiences, Seemab was processing something entirely real and adult.

Repeating a grade, and the friend who stayed

Seemab repeats eighth grade. She describes standing outside her new classroom, unable to go in. “For a young child, it is very soul-crushing,” she says. “You have to repeat, and on top of that, in a school where people are very opinionated.” Her best friend, who was in a different grade, used to bunk her own classes during Seemab’s break period for an entire month just to be with her. It is one of the warmest moments in the conversation — a small, specific act of loyalty that Seemab still holds onto.

She transfers to LGS Defence for A-levels, partly because her previous school focused on debates rather than photography competitions, and she wanted better opportunities. She throws herself into every competition and wins. When the student council is announced, everyone expects her to be president of the media society. She is made deputy. The girl named president, she later finds out, had a father who knew the principal. Seemab refuses to accept the sash. “I asked the coordinator: if you think she deserves it more than I do, then I’ll accept it. She did not have an answer. So I could not take it.” Muzamil observes that she understood early that life does not reward effort cleanly.

NCA and the decision to study communication design

Seemab always knew she wanted to go to the National College of Arts. Part of it was the people she had met who came from there. “They were very real,” she says. “Not pretending. Whatever they were, they were.” She chose communication design because it was the closest available path to filmmaking — it touched photography, layout, direction. “The closest I could get to filmmaking is communication design,” she says. “So why not?”

She started earning from photography during A-levels. Her first paid job brought in five thousand rupees. “At that time, five thousand rupees felt like, yaar, I’ve made it,” she laughs. The financial independence came naturally, she says, because the emotional independence had already been built in.

How Coke Studio actually happened

Later in the discussion, Muzamil asks the question the episode title promises: how did Coke Studio happen? The answer surprises.

Most people assumed the connection came through Nescafe Basement, where Seemab had worked for one season after a senior colleague at the agency Giraffe brought her in. But that is not the thread that led to Coke Studio.

“I knew everyone in fashion but I knew no one in film,” Seemab explains. “It was a completely zero start for me.” A senior posted that she needed an AD for her film. Seemab applied. “I said, I’ll do anything on that set. I just need to be there.” The film was called Happy Marriage, made for a festival run by a media house. She gave it everything. The producer of that film recommended her for Coke Studio.

Her role was creative associate for the entire season — not just on set, but for six months before shooting began. “We were making mood boards for directors, discussing how things would move forward, which stylists to consider, which makeup options we had,” she says. “It was full coordination.” Three or four directors worked across the season — among them Kamal Khan, who directed the song in which Seemab herself appears on screen. She also served as production head for the season’s promo. “I got a very diverse experience from this project,” she says.

Pakistan’s film problem is a writing problem

The conversation shifts to the state of Pakistani film and television. Seemab says things are changing — creative freedom has opened up in the last two years — but she is clear about where the gap is. Muzamil raises the point that cinematographers and DOPs are being produced in abundance. Seemab agrees immediately.

“The two areas I see missing,” Muzamil says, “are sound design and actual, honest-to-god writing.”

Seemab agrees. “I think a full year, two years should go into writing. Writing is the most important work.” She points to the fact that the most celebrated films and television shows are often adapted from books — because a book writer spent years building something real before anyone adapted it. Pakistani dramas, she argues, are built around sensation rather than story. She references a drama whose entire premise was whether a character could lose weight. “The world has moved on,” she says, “and here we are.”

Muzamil pushes further: the indie community in Lahore — filmmakers coming out of art schools, self-taught directors — is sitting and waiting for funding rather than making something. He cites digital creators who built a YouTube audience over years and then made a full series called Clickbait with almost no production budget, generating millions of views per episode. “The filmmaker is a bit too arrogant, forgiving the word,” he says. “They say: I won’t try until I’m perfect.”

Seemab does not disagree. She acknowledges the funding problem is real — actors, cameras, art direction all cost money. But she also says that on her own behalf, she has no excuse not to try.

The Saqeban Foundation and working through media

Beyond photography and film, Seemab runs the Saqeban Foundation, named after her father. She says she wanted to start an NGO from the time she was a child. COVID gave her the moment. People reached out to her online, and she and others put something together. The foundation has done work at a small scale so far, and she is honest that it has not grown as fast as she wants. Her current approach is to use media as the vehicle — she is now working with SOS, making content for them. “I want to help through the camera,” she says.

Women in media, and the question of respect

Muzamil asks about the culture for women working in Pakistan’s media industry. Seemab says it has changed significantly since she started. She recalls one early incident at an event in Islamabad where a male photographer made her feel unwelcome — a power dynamic she describes as: “Why has this girl come here? We are the big professionals.” But she also says female photographers learned to take up space. “They said: I’m going to fight back and make sure my work continues.”

She mentions that a brand did not pay her for six months early in her career, while she was still in college. She names it plainly and moves on. She notes that a friend recently spoke out publicly about the same brand not paying models. “She is the nicest girl in the world,” Seemab says. “She would never speak out unless it had completely crossed a line.”

Pakistan in 2050

By the end of the conversation, Muzamil asks Seemab — who is twenty-seven — how she sees Pakistan thirty years from now, when the country will be a hundred years old. It is a question he asks all his guests.

Her answer is the most distinctive one he says he has received. She does not speculate about the country’s trajectory. “I don’t know what Pakistan will do or where it will go,” she says. “But I know that I will be doing something to make it better. Whether that is organising a protest, or using any means available to me — I will be trying to make things better for people who cannot speak out.”

Muzamil notes that it is the most inward-focused answer he has heard to that question. Not a prediction about institutions or politics, but a commitment to personal agency. “You’re essentially saying: I don’t care what’s outside. I am focused on what I can put in.” Seemab nods. That, it turns out, is the through-line of the whole conversation.