Posted:
Let me give you a quick summary of the couples in this show and how the CVs are playing with fire here with Indian cultural hypocrisies. I think the CVs will not be able to solve this one with one independent woman as many soaps have tried and failed before them.
Here's the ideal couple:
Meet Pushkar, "mummy da sona puttar," who lives off Daddy and Uncle to get to law school and then bows to Uncle and Bhaiyya until they take pity and give him a lawyer's career. Otherwise, "sona munda" would get nothing just working like a donkey because hard work does not pay in our world. Nepotism however, does, so good thing he has a powerful uncle and a cunning mummy to get him stuff. That's your "ideal Indian son" looking for a sweet Human Doormat Girl who "says sorry even when it is my fault." Ideal Indian son finds Human Doormat Girl by opening an achar jar and eventually thinks HE'S the one compromising cause he has no ego. Afterall, how could he know? Human Doormat Girl agrees with everything he says (cause he's A MAN) and says sorry all the time. He knows he's great cause no one says to him he's an entitled spawn of nepotism and indulgence. PUSHKAR ki jai ko, he could not talk to a girl before and now he has managed a home run by finding his smiling equivalent...
Coming to Human Doormat Girl who lives off her Daddy, takes nail art classes and expects to be congratulated for completing it. Learning Chinese only for cutesy purposes, she likes to smile ALL the time and makes sure her doormat quietness keeps everyone undisturbed, i.e. "happy." Any brain she has is for good-bride decorative qualities, desi families like an educated daughter-in-law that stays home, cooks and makes babies (boys, mostly) - wasting her degree and career "for family." Mrs. Degree hardly makes any noise when walking and takes care to hardly ever exert herself, happy to rely on her hardworking cousin to do all the heavy lifting for the family INCLUDING PAYING FOR HER WEDDING!!! Why? Kya toop mar liya Preeti ne pyaar karke? Did she pay to raise the cousin? Nope, but her Dada did, so she can reap the benefits. She has handed over the responsibilities to Sumo (because of love and trust, of course!). She's done the only thing expected of her, the hard work of falling in love by eating, drinking coffee and applying perfume on Sona Munda's salary for a little while, she has bagged herself "the uche khandan ke ladka." Her defense? She's simple! Simply brain-dead and happy to pass on her load from her Daddy to her Hubby for the rest of her life by agreeing to everything HUBBY says (as opposed to mummy and daddy now) and saying sorry even when she knows he's wrong. Meet PREETI - the sweet, cute desi girl and Shravan's Daddy's perfect bahu. Also, she's perfectly poor and therefore weaker than Vandy who can throw a tantrum and bring down the house by calling on her rich Daddy to weigh in. Poor bahu has strict instructions from her mummy, don't let any of the uche in-laws have any problems with you. EVER! Become a Human Pinyata and leave that house on your death bed - unlike Nirmala!
Sona munda and Human Doormat Girl make the perfect young couple in regressive Indian thinking - after all, they are traditional, they do everything as they are told (except dating) and they stay with the family to keep them "happy" while living off the family like parasites. That is the ugly side of this cute couple. When you actually look at them for what they are, it is not so pretty. Same goes for Kamini's dumb older son. This is what is wrong with our Desi thinking and that is why the likes of the next two are seen as disappointing sons and daughters in our society.
Moving on to the conflicted, confused Desi Trouble Couple now...the ones lost between self-made/self-respect, between family responsibility and villainy for having backbones/opinions...
Starring in the role of HERO, Oxford-educated and contradictingly misogynist (female-hating) thanks to the brainwashing of his dad...we have actual sona munda, SHRAVAN. Mommy left him and he got himself parceled off to London and still somehow finds the Indian ideals of a submissive wife very appealing because Daddy says so. He has temporarily forgotten that he admires the exact opposite, his mommy's parchai - Sumo. Interestingly, Daddy was not saying this stuff to him during the formative years of his life when his mother was in his life or when he was raised in a Western country with surrounded by independent women (BLOOPER, CVs!). No, he came back home and comfortably settled into Daddy's backward thinking for the time-being because it is comfy. He has turned against the very woman who he has spent his life worshiping and doing everything for! He will go as far as letting her cut him (twice) and taking all her whims and doing her bidding selflessly, but wonders suddenly, why is she so willful!? You made putting up with her whims an art-form Shravan and now you have a problem with it just because Daddy says so? This is who you love. As-is. You KNEW it, you KNOW it. Deal with it. Shravan is self-made as a lawyer and is expected to give it up for Daddy because who wants a successful son anyway, right? He can join the family business and have success here, he can find himself a doormat pinyata (wife) of his own and live happily ever after as far as Daddy is concerned. - Or better yet, Daddy can isolate him from his mom and love and keep him in a glass jar all to himself to love, but that's beside the point.
Now, the only hope of this show to come out its regressive thinking - the entrepreneur with no Daddy to provide for her. Yet, to appease the audience, she has the very domestic art of cooking as her talent because why would a famous judge's granddaughter be studying law, right!? Noo...she will study cooking, because she's a GIRL. I have nothing against chefs, just saying that this soap would not work with the Indian audience if she was in the non-domestic role of Sharvan while Shravan was a chef. She's the only one who feels the guilt of living off others when she is the only one who has not actually lived off Daddy (unlike Pushkar, Preeti and Shravan). She actually barely had any costs and made her own business at a young age to fight off the humiliation of living off others. She pays for her family and her shameless uncles and aunts love to mooch off her with the comforting thought that they took her in and provided for her when, in reality, they all live off Tiwariji and he's the only one providing for Sumo. Sumo can think for herself to the degree that she can manipulate the boy who is hopelessly in love with her. As Shravan says, "sab janti thi, sab janti ho." He's the only one she feels enough claim on to demand things of because he and Nanu are the only ones who really love her. That's why she demands things of them, but also returns the favor with care, concern, love and money. She has not done enough for Shravan as yet, but she is trying to bring back his mom to him. Sumo always pays her dues. And this is the disappointment of a daughter who is the BAD one despite everything she is doing for her family and useless cousin. Apparently, she managed to make everyone "unhappy," says brainwashed Shravan. She's "selfish" for having opinions while working like a dog to provide for a family that big. She is giving the $$$$, but it doesn't show because she looks busy and unsmiling while Preeti "takes care" of family by keeping them happy with her smiles. Preeti is a human puppet stuffed with uselessness, but at least she smiles and is quiet and submissively subservient. If Shravan and his checks were not enough, along comes Aditya to show her how to make a Power Point. Good that she put them both in their places and if that makes the girl bad, BAD it is!!! OWN it, Sumo. Reject them both until Shravan fixes his ways. She rocks bad, even if her outfits suck (designer kisike niece hai kya?).
Sumo is not the bete of the family, she's the Beti with a capital B. I don't want to insult her work by saying she's doing what her useless, absent guy cousin should be doing. It is good she has taken on the responsibility as a girl. I like that, but to show a girl in a bad light for being stubborn and independent is insulting, CVs. I know what you are trying to do by educating the audience, but there are parts of your audience who will not get that this is a bad thing. They will think Sumo is not the ideal Doormat girl needed for their sons and brothers. Everyone wants a Preeti in their family, a Sumo is offensive!!! But most Indian, educated girls these days are not only Sumos, they are also Shravans (top lawyers) and that is why they stay or chose to stay unmarried and are then shamed for it by society. They are so educated and together that they make regressive guys and their families insecure, but they defend their thinking by saying the girl has guts and therefore she's wrong. Precious few of these determined go-getters get their equals in husbands who think well of them. If you want to play this game of pulling people out of regressive thinking CVs, do a better job of the writing. You need to keep one character steadily believing in Sumo.
You need a feminist hero. Not to validate her, she can do on her own, but to show how she should be viewed by society as an incredible woman, not a stubborn one.
VENT OVER! Seriously put off by recent episodes. Don't brainwash the freaking hero! He's supposed to believe in her, hold her up while she rules the world.
Book Talk
Anupamaa
