In 1983, BR Ishara (arguably the first director in Indian cinema to shock middle class sensibilities with films like Chetana and Zaroorat that treated supposedly ‘wanton’ women with sympathy) made a film called Log Kya Kahenge. The film starring Shabana Azmi, Navin Nischol, Shatrughan Sinha and Sanjeev Kumar had some startlingly honest dialogues about a woman trapped in a loveless, arranged marriage. She equates her socially sanctioned violation with marital rape and then has an affair with the man she is in love with. On being caught by her step son and threatened with exposure, she not only kills him but frames her lover for the murder. It is only in the end that she realises that the root of her tragedy is a lack of courage. The fear of , “Log Kya Kahenge,” that not only held her back from living a life of emotional integrity but made her spiral into deceit and eventually murder.
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Surprisingly, she was not slut shamed in the film but given the space to articulate her angst and helplessness in a society that undermines a woman’s sexuality and forces her into stifling marital arrangements. It is only when she realises that she cannot live with the guilt of taking a life and causing the imprisonment of her lover that she confesses to her “crime”. But not once does she apologise for adultery and the only point the film makes without judging her is that the most tragic of people are those who cannot live within or without the confines of tradition. Who want freedom but cannot do without respectability. That, I suppose, was the biggest flaw of Ajai Sinha’s latest creation Jassi (played by Sonali Nikam) in the recently concluded Zee Zindagi series Aadhe Adhure.
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The premise of a relationship between a woman and her brother-in-law was also central to Rajinder Singh Bedi’s Ek Chaadar Maili Si though the context there was how in a patriarchal society, a woman supposedly needs a “chaadar,” a male protector. And so when the elder brother dies, the younger brother in the novel steps in to play the provider and the spouse. The older brother in Aadhe Adhure is the primary provider too and stays in Sharjah to make lots of money because of which the family unit of an old mother, a wife and an unmarried younger brother is thriving. And yes, there is a stealthy relationship between his beloved wife and his younger brother. We will come to the rest of the story and its treatment later but the biggest trap the series falls into just like most Hindi and Pakistani (with a few exceptions) TV shows do is by sticking to the cliche that in the quest of happiness, what women must battle is not patriarchy, gender bias, suppression and loss of volition but other women.
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Be it Saathiya or Piya Rangrezz or even the rather refined Kuch Rang Pyar Ke Aise Bhi, no matter how and where the story begins, in the end it becomes about women who are fighting over a man. In Pakistani soaps like Qaid-e Tanhai, Hamsafar, Shehr-e-Zaat, Na Kaho Tum Mere Nahi, Shehr-e-Ajnabi, Yahan Pyar Nahin Hai, Maat, Meri Zindagi Hai Tu, Sitamgar, Mere Humdam Mere Dost and so many more, the enemy is always the woman. The mother-in-law or the sister or the other woman. Because she robs the heroine of her rightful place in man’s life. The man can ofcourse get married again, cheat, even emotionally abuse a woman but will never pay for it. And the wronged woman always gets compensated in the end when the mother in law, or the sister or the other woman either loses her mind or her life. The point being that the biggest prize a woman can win is a man who will in the end choose her over other women.
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Sexism is rampant in Indian and Pakistani story telling but it is even more insidious when it comes wrapped in the garb of a feminist perspective that somehow in the end turns out to be self-defeating because it is not about emancipation from convention but negotiating with it, manipulating it and most disturbingly using other women for the sake of a man. In Aadhe Adhure, the man Jassi eventually loses her life over is not even worth a sleepless night, leave alone, a tragedy. Virender has no perspective on love or life and walks around the narrative with wide, uncomprehending eyes, like a child who has strayed into a highway full of speeding vehicles while his bhabhi and his wife race each other to pack his lunch box and hand him his towel. His most notable characteristic seems to be his inability to stand his ground whether he is being manipulated into a marriage by his sister-in-law against his will or the many times he decides to once and for all, stay faithful to his wife, but fails. He is a witless boy who perhaps enjoys at some level the moral laxity of having physical and emotional access to two adoring women.
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And Jassi’s addiction to this uninteresting, spineless boy is not just self-destructive but also demeaning to other women. A disturbing dialogue she uses again and again is, “Woh hamare rishte ka parda banegi, ” as she dehumanises a real woman worthy of undivided loyalty and reduces her to just a convenient ploy, a flesh and blood veil whose utility will lie in unwittingly facilitating Jassi and Virender’s affair. This is not a love borne out of true passion but as Jassi calls it, “Zaroorat,” a need that can lie, scheme, plot and destroy trust and relationships to get its way.
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When Virender’s first engagement breaks off because he was seen taking a woman (Jassi with her face covered) to an abortion clinic, she instantly facilitates a marriage between him and her unsuspecting cousin and on the night, he is supposed to be by himself after his marriage, she is in his room, candles lit, waiting for the affair to continue. Everytime he resists her, she says, “Woh toh hamare rishte ka parda thi..usse deewar mat bana.”
On his part, the only argument Virender ever offers her against the affair is, “Main dar gaya hoon.” After the abortion, he was afraid of being caught again for another indiscretion. After his marriage, he is afraid of hurting his wife Channi. And everytime he fidgets, Jassi reassures him, “Hamare beech kuch nahin badla..bas tu badal gaya hai.” Ofcourse what she does not see is that he has not changed. He was always weak and self-seeking and will always remain so.
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In the end, the writing is so confused and repetitive that it lets down Jassi, Channi and Virender too. Again and again and again, Jassi talks about her “akeli raatein” to justify her affair and the fact that the foundation of the happy family is built on her sacrifices. She never mentions the sacrifices and “akeli raatein” of her husband who is living by himself too. Though she tells her mother-in-law in the big confrontation scene that she does not want to be a great woman..just a woman, she is not willing to pay the price that a fearlessly free, feminist selfhood demands.
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Jassi unlike the Saavi of Hasratein, is not willing to risk public calumny for her right to assert her sexuality. She does not want the parda to lift, the illusion of a happy family where she runs everyone’s life, to break. She wants the privilege of being perceived as a perfect wife, daughter-in-law and sister and also the freedom to be flawed and the only time her stubborn refusal to see the destructive aspect of this affair, cracks a little is when someone threatens to expose her to her husband. Aah, the husband.
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Jassi says, she loves him but her need for Virender is far more urgent than her need for her husband. She worries for him but there is something asexual in this affection and that is a question the one note writing never answers. Is her long-distance marriage also unfulfilling in other ways? None of the things Jassi does to continue and hide her affair have brave feminism written on them but none of the things she does compare to what is done to her in the end. The biggest confrontation scenes in Aadhe adhure, as is the case in all TV dramas, happen between the women. The tragedies around a staircase leading to Virender’s room, are symbolic of the price of deception and only the women pay it in the story. In the first confrontation scene, it is the mother-in- law who falls after having discovered the affair. In the second scene, it is Jassi who falls and is not even accorded a cursory glance by her own cousin who has caused this death.
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Virender ofcourse for whom the women were waging this war, is conveniently not on the scene. And what could have been a story about a woman’s right to assert her sexuality in a courageous way becomes a murky tale straight out of Crime Patrol and Savdhan India where a woman’s desire is a thing to be feared and loathed because it can seduce men, break families and cause murders! It becomes a story not about one woman’s dawn of awareness that the man she has risked so much for is not worth it but about two sisters who want a man so much that they cause each other great harm, with one of them causing the abrupt death of another in the end. There are also refrains of Maili Chaadar swirling around Jassi’s dead body…signifying how the desires of the flesh blemish the soul. So yes, everyone was baying for Jassi’s blood on social media but by killing her in the end in an almost dismissive way, the makers reiterated what the narrative was saying all along.
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That this story was never a breakthrough idea. It was not a feminist soul cry for fulfilment. It was just another story where the trusting matriarch, the straying daughter-in-law and the young bride are locked in a game of wits that only ends when two women die terrible deaths. One becomes a cold-blooded killer. While the man at the core of this horror remains as unevolved and witless as he was in the beginning. Ultimately, Aadhe Adhure was even more disappointing than an Ekta Kapoor serial because here the misogyny was veiled and not obvious and displayed not by men but by women. And by those who wrote and narrated this story.
Reema Moudgil is the editor and co-founder of Unboxed Writers, 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 RJ and an artist who has exhibited her work in India and the US and is now retailing some of her art at http://paintcollar.com/reema. 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. She hopes to travel more and to grow more dimensions as a person. And to be restful, and alive in equal measure.