Harshad & Preetika...Take a Bow! What makes ZaYa's chemistry reach out of the screen & hit you hard? What makes it more than just "oohs" & "ahss" & "eeps"? For me, a major reason is the way these two amazing actors express entire stories with their eyes. Dialogues ki zarurat hi kya hai? Be it the engagement of Aliya & Zeeshan, the isharebazi during Ayat & Riz's dance during the sangeet or that last eyelock just before Zain left...ZaYa just ooze so much chemistry without ANY dialogues. You two are simply amazing. I never thought I would feel & see SO MUCH INTENSITY from actors with a duppatta & a sehra covering their faces. The eyes were enough <3
I in particular actually wanted to touch upon the dressing scene! So many feels in a span of merely 5 freaking minutes! It began with Zain dressing up for the wedding. His hands slipped when trying to button his outfit, in such a daze that he couldn't fathom or register anything around him. His eyes were lowered, unable to look at himself in the mirror, wearing the clothes of a groom. Only arise they did, when his dad entered, & the question spread across his face..."Why?"And even Usman could not meet his son's dejected eyes at that moment.
Cut to Aliya. Yes, she disliked Zain. But so what? She had made a promise to him. And she had broken it. The fact that the situations around her had left her with no other way seemed to have little effect on the guilt weighing her down. She was Aliya Ghulam Haider after all, holding her morals high in her life. And she yet...she broken her vaada.
Vaada...it echoed in his mind how she had promised to sort out her life & turned back on it at the last moment. The betrayal shone clear on Zain's face when he remembered it, the moment he had been told of Aliya's lie by Ghulam. The moment his last hope had shattered & he had turned into this puppet, doing what he was steered to do, emotionless, unfeeling.
Cut again to Aliya as her mom put her keela tikka & kissed her forehead as she kept her emotions in check & swallowed her pain & helplessness against her father's life, against fate's decision.
And so they waited. Waited to become forever entwined with a person whom they hated.