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Absolutely! You make perfect sense. In Dev's ideal world, Sona would simply exist in the ecosystem, as the same person she was before marriage: bright, independent, and sympathetic to all of his grievances. He doesn't really see the need for her to forge relationships with his family members because in his eyes, they formed automatically when she married him. That's precisely where the hook of the show lies for me: Dev learning to appreciate that relationships (not just with Sona but his entire family) involve more than immediate presence and problem-to-solution logic. They require honest communcation (even if the immediate effects are not pleasing), careful consideration before action, and yes, empathy. In his struggle with these concepts I see the show saying not what marriage should be, but what marriage still is for so many couples.
No matter how accomplished and independent the wife is, she is at a disadvantage as a stranger to her new home, when they live in a joint family. The groom only gains a new relationship that is supposed to fit seamlessly into his status quo; it is the bride who loses her status quo, and the daily security of her natal home. Men are simply not taught to understand the work that goes into relationships, so they labour under the delusion that these things just happen on their own, while we teach women to undermine their own struggle by inculcating the expectation of this hardship from a young age. Even the most progressive voices in the show's universe, Bijoy and Asha, declaimed that it was known from birth that a girl would have to leave her maika and go to sasural, which, as a modern woman, caused me more pause for concern in me than anything Sona and Dev have done so far. Is that as far as progressiveness goes in the creators' minds?
I guess the point I am trying to make is that Dev has never made difficult decisions because Dev is a man who lives in a society that makes it very easy for him not to. And that, to me, is the reality the show is holding up to the light, which is what I so appreciate. It's showing how a man can be totally appreciative of a woman's independence, and respectful of her struggle and STILL fail to understand how the system disadvantages her. This message has been clear from the very beginning: the women on the show are so much more attune to complexity than the men. Bijoy holds his children up to an arbitrary standard, without much consideration for their individual gifts and weaknesse; Asha is the one who is in tune with their emotional needs, especially in Saurabh's case. Ranveer painted Neha as a mercenary for being averse to poverty, while his mother and sister totally understood her needs. Mamaji has never shown more than a cursory involvement, usually stemming from shame, in his wife and child while Ishwari treats them both with love in the hopes that their bitterness will be soothed.
There is a certain candidness here about the fact that society still doesn't socialise men and women equally. But we have a ray of hope in Sona who is dragging a patriarchal, joint-family, kicking and screaming, a little closer to the ideal, equal marriage. She is starting to protest the assumption that she should merely exist (instead of trying to be the best exister there ever was, as she did in the first few weeks), and exercising her will. Every time she does this, all the forces that are scared or losing their security, or scared of losing the power they have in the current system will rise up against her, and Dev won't quite understand the depth of what is happening, because he has been deliberately blocked from that reality all his life.
But the catch is that he doesn't just need Sona's presence, he needs her happy, strong, and self-sufficient presence because it allows him to take a breather from being the all-powerful, infallible male (the perks of feminism for men!). In order for her to be the Sona that he needs, Dev is being forced to evolve gradually. As Shaavi mentioned in her (his? not sure!) post, when he thought about how Sona must feel when he called her mother aunty, he thought about someone else's perspective for the first time in the trajectory of the show. That was a huge step for him, and the first of many which I hope to see, however gradually and with as much resistance as the rest of the family can throw at them. It makes me think about, and accept the fight ahead for equal rights in its many manifestations.
Sorry this got so long again. 😛 I hope I wasn't too repetitive!
I am a she...😃
