The moment desi internet decided it was over AI-generated vegetable dramas, AI mushaira animals showed up to take the slop-cake.
Those lucky enough to be unaware, picture a cat dressed in a richly embroidered sharara, gracefully adjusting her dupatta as she introduces the performer. The host is called Shagufta Ghurghuri, a pun on the purring sound cats make. Perhaps some human creativity did go into the slop.
“Pesh hai, apne mahalle ki sabse hakgo aur bebaak shaiyara… Rita Bhonkni (presenting the most truth-speaking and fearless poet of our neighbourhood, Rita Bhonkni),” Shagufta announces.
Out sashays the main event: a dog in a black suit, payal, bangles, and a necklace heavy enough to anchor a ship.
“Jo dekhti hoon, wahi bolne ki aadi hoon; main apne shehar ki sabse badi fasaadi hoon (I’m habituated to saying whatever I see; I’m the biggest troublemaker of my city),” Bhonkni delivers in a slow pace like a true shayari veteran. Her eyes are more soulful than some singers’ entire anthologies.
The comments, naturally, waah-waah-ed in response. Some users learned something new.
“I learnt a new Urdu word from the one and only Rita Bhonkni Ma’am — ‘fasaadi,'” one comment read.
Another resonated with Bhonkni’s AI-generated anguish. “Rita bhonkni ka dukh to real hai (Rita Bhonkni’s pain is real).”
The lore runs deep in the Viral Spiral of AI mushaira. Did you know that Rita has a legendary rival?
Nagina Dasni—a snake in a beautiful green lehenga, with an attitude only she can muster—gets her own dramatic entrance.
“Sabki purzor farmaish par aaj phir wahi shaira tashreef la rahi hain jinke alfaaz mein mithas nahi zehar hai (On everyone’s strong demand, the same poet is gracing us with her presence again today, whose words carry not sweetness, but poison),” announces Shagufta.
Dasni delivers her couplet with matching venom.
“Hum apni ana ka sauda umr bhar nahi karte, kisi ke chhod jaane par nigahein tar nahi karte, (I don’t bargain my self-respect for an eternity; I don’t let my eyes moisten when someone leaves me).”
The audience has already picked sides.
“You can never be Rita Bhonkni,” wrote a Nagina hater.
The rivalry got more heated when news broke that Rita Bhonkni had died — “Rita Bhonkni ka inteqaal ho gaya” — followed immediately by fans grieving.
But then Bhonkni came out to announce she was very much alive.
Counter-posts then claimed the death news was fake propaganda, planted by Nagina. In her signature venomous fashion, Nagina refuted all such claims.
“Sasti afwahen udana meri fitrat hi nahi (Running cheap rumours has never been my nature),” she announced.
The episode spiralled into soap-opera chaos: fake death updates, a news channel-style debate, Rita vs Nagina polls, and the commenters demanding a proper mushaira-style face-off.
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Instagram is obsessed
There’s a whole league behind these two legends—Naznin Jugalan the camel, Mahtab Kharpoori the porcupine, Shabnam Kudni the frog—each reciting shayari supposedly true to their species’ “nature”. But none of them has cracked the fandom Rita and Nagina have. The comments don’t want range. They’ve decided their favourite, and it’s undisputedly Bhonkni.
The mushaira rivalry has birthed a chain reaction of influencer enactment, commentary, and real-time debates.
“If you don’t know who Rita Bhonkni and Nagina Dasni are, I’m sorry, we can’t be friends,” Instagram creator Nehal Pasha declared, adding that it’s okay to not know basic math, but if you don’t know the lore, you’re cancelled.
“Don’t talk poetry with me if you don’t know who Rita Bhonkni is,” someone else wrote on X. Hear that sound? Yeah, Ghalib just turned in his grave.
Personally, I want the number of their stylists. I would go to war for Shagufta’s white sharara.
Three hours of reels later, I still fail to understand what collective hallucination has convinced an entire platform that this is the funniest meme of our times. Banger fashion aside, it is still AI slop, no matter how much tehzeeb and Urdu shayari you wrap it in. People are far, far too invested in a cat hosting a poetry battle between a dog and a snake, using the same wretched technology that will eventually come for their clean water. Doomsday cannot come soon enough.
Views are personal.
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)