I haven’t seen Pakistani director Mehreen Jabbar’s acclaimed film Ramchand Pakistani but her television work has been an utter revelation. It is the kind of story telling that flows like life, lingers on window sills like sunlight, feels like the warmth of a coffee cup between your hands on a chilly morning and is like a conversation that changes lives even without seeming to. Nothing in her stories is a show and tell spectacle. Nothing is overstated. Nothing screams out for attention and still when just like life, a twist comes, your heart twists with it, wrenches you from your equanimity and makes you reach out deep to confront moments you thought you had buried out of sight. Her shows like Jackson Heights, Malaal, Mataye Jaan Hai Tu have been engaging and moving on many levels and brought forth the humanity of her characters effortlessly. So Imran Bhatti’s (Noman Ejaz) generosity in Jackson Heights is established early when he says, ”Bhatti hoke main donut ke paise loonga aapse?”
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The love between him and Salma (Aamina Sheikh ) is conveyed through a threading session in her salon where Bhatti endures each tug and pull in anticipation of what their impossible situation will subject him to. He knows he will have to endure a lot and by sitting through the pain, he shows her he won’t bail out. You also see in the final episode of the same series how a heart-broken Michelle (Marina Khan) is able to confront the man who pretended to be in love with her and tells him, ” kabhi kabhi hamein apne khwab itne acche lagte hai ki unke kho jaane ke dar se hum apni ankhen band kar lete hai. Par khwabon ki tameer band ankhon se nahin milti (Sometimes, we love our dreams so much that we shut our eyes but a dream can be realised only with the eyes open).”
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Or Malaal where Zinia (Deepti Gupta), a woman who has cared for a man selflessly for over 10 years keeps her poise through heartbreak only to lash out at a stranger without provocation, ”Do you think every single, independent woman is waiting for a man to show up at her doorstep? Or do you think that she is good entertainment or someone to draw comfort from till you find a conventional woman to love and marry?”
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Or Mataye Jaan Hai Tu where loss teaches a young woman that love really is forever.
But it was her 2010 show Daam, recently shown on Zee Zindagi that unsparingly took me back to a mohalla full of lacks and blotchy homes and families struggling hard to survive daily hardships. It conjured affluent relatives who walked all over your sense of dignity because they could as they boasted about their cars, electronic gadgets, who expected docility without offering any respect in return.
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The two daughters in Daam trying hard to change their lives against all odds and the situations they face in heir journey towards selfhood can be found in many homes in the sub-continent where girls strain against tradition and poverty and cruel affronts to stand on their feet. Watch how the rich uncle talks down to his nieces and how it is of utmost importance to him and his meddling wife that the poor relatives constantly take advice, show up to appreciate the glitter of lavish functions, stay mum when insulted and keep showing their obeisance and keep him informed of every decision, big and small.
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How he and his joy-sucking toxic wife show disbelief and cynicism when the family they have derided all their life, begins to walk out of gloom, into self-respect and sunlight. How insecure they are that they ineffectually and pointlessly keep talking about their affluence and generosity before nieces who are now all grown up and are self-dependent and have earned the right to turn their back on poverty, pain and disrespect.
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And the beautiful writing! As when Zaara (played with great restraint and dignity by Sanam Baloch) takes out the sim card from a phone because she wants to disconnect from the man she loves and is asked by her younger sister, ”Baaji..yeh kya hai?” And Zaara says in a stoic voice,”Maazi (past).” The girl asks again, “Woh kya hota hai?” And Zaara says, “Woh kuch nahin hota (It is …nothing) And then the girl shows the golden little card to her parrot and says, ”Dekho Mithhu, Baaji ka maazi.’
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But the biggest insight Daam offers is into friendship and its meaning. It traces the downside of trusting someone enough to take help from them, not knowing that one day they could throw it all back at your face or deny you something just because they cannot tolerate that someone they considered to be a lesser being can attract something or someone on their own. Especially if that someone is a man they are possessive about. Outside the context of the serial, that man could be a brother or a friend or someone a person has always considered to be too good for a friend they have spent their life patronising. Or the bone of contention could be a job or a successful career breakthrough.
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And when a woman who they have subliminally considered to be beneath them excels or is on the verge of finding a lifetime’s happiness with someone, they cannot stand it. Because, in their head she must never become an equal. Aamina Sheikh, as she always does, plays Maleeha with great subtlety and layered finesse. She is the generous friend who with one cruel sentence, negates all the trust and love she has shared with Zaara for over seven years by toying with her life because she feels entitled to do it. Even in real life, when we do something for someone, is it because we want to help someone or because we want some amount of control over their sense of volition? Do we expect gratitude and are hurt when the person we were supposedly guiding and nurturing begins to run towards a glorious future all by themselves? Do we feel let down? Betrayed in a twisted way?
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Watch how Maleeha begins to attack and belittle Zaara in obvious and passive aggressive ways when she finds out that her brother Junaid is falling in love with her. Years later when life has humbled her and shown her the devastation she brought upon herself and upon Junaid and Zaara by playing a mindless game, she cannot understand why she did it because all the vestiges of power she took so much for granted are gone. She is hopelessly trapped in a bad marriage as is Junaid. Zaara has suffered seven years of unrelieved pain over a loss she cannot even discuss with her own family and has nothing to offer Maleeha, not even forgiveness when they meet again.
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When asked for forgiveness repeatedly, she tells Maleeha, ”Tum mere liye Farishta thi..tumhe insaan nahin banna chahiye tha (You were an angel..you should not have become human).”
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Like many serials that we watch on Indian and Pakistani television, this story is not about portraying women as scheming, jealous beings incapable of getting along with their own kind. Nor is it about treating an eligible man as the ultimate prize they have to win in order to be happy though the desperation to get a daughter settled that we see in the story, is the reality of every third household even today. Zaara does get a second chance with Junaid but she does not want him anymore. She has evolved beyond her pain, her maazi and now wants to build her life with someone who recognises her as a whole being and has no connection with either Maleeha or her history. Maleeha is not a congenitally negative person like her sister-in-law who finds fault with everything and everyone to empower her own worth. She is a decent human-being who allows her own ego to get in the way of emotional clarity and can never repair what she has broken. Trust. Friendship. Her own self-esteem.
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The story also shows how self-destructive and toxic behaviour, as in the case of the family Maleeha has married into, always brings damaging self-fulfilling prophecies to life. The story reminded me also of how some of the most well-meaning people sometimes sabotage others and try to undermine them. Of how sometimes people attract negativity not because they are negative but because there is a certain innocence and light in them that threatens others who are not very sure of their own worth as human-beings. And that evil is not always about shedding blood and inflicting physical violence on someone. It is also about dehumanising others with words and gestures and that it sometimes comes wearing the beautiful face of someone we love.
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The story was disturbing to me at many levels but also cathartic and that a TV show can do that to me at a stage when I have supposedly become immune to the inane narratives we see on our screens, big and small, made me wish more Indian directors were like Mehreen. And that they too like her, were telling us stories that forced us to confront the visceral , raw stuff that makes up all of life, in a way that is beguilingly normal and gentle even as it punches us in the gut.
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Reema Moudgil is the author of Perfect Eight, the editor of Chicken Soup for the Soul-Indian Women, a translator who recently interpreted Dominican poet Josefina Baez’s book Comrade Bliss Ain’t Playing in Hindi, an artist, an RJ and a mother. She won an award for her writing/book from the Public Relations Council of India in association with Bangalore University, has written for a host of national and international magazines since 1994 on cinema, theatre, music, art, architecture and more, has exhibited her art in India and the US…and hopes to travel more and to grow more dimensions as a person.And to be restful, and alive in equal measure.