Dear whomsoever-this-may-concern,
I no longer watch your show. Why, you ask? Because I can't stand hypocrisy any longer. You tell me I'm wasting my time trying to talk to the likes of you - I am. But I am also the same girl who spent three hours talking to Balaji and Star representatives only to be told that Raman was right in his actions to go ahead with a procedure without his wife's consent.
Consent is beautiful - it is. Whether it comes to sex, personal opinion, physical proximity, emotional gain, daily interactions - consent is beautiful as are the golden words of peace, sorry, and thank you. But who am I to tell people who lack humanity.
Do you even know how many people you hurt, how many women you mocked at, how many men you put down and how many children you made feel pitiful for their parents who went through the same? It was never about surrogacy, or the need for progression of the plot, butchering of the show or any of the reasons you replied to the in the emails in varied condescending tones. IT WAS ABOUT CONSENT. The beautiful seven letter that varies rape from love making, abuse from care, unrequited feelings to a relationship - consent. It's about agreement that makes a relationship work. It is something out society is fighting for - consent. In a patriarchal society, it is important and needed, for us to feel the same.
I won't bother to tell you that your show is dead, that it may bring you TRPs in the coming months but is only matter of months before it ends. I won't tell you of the image your portray of this nation. I won't tell how disgusted it makes me feel to stand on the same level as my parents and trash you channel and it's variants as garbage. I won't tell you that if your channel lasts as long as I hope it wouldn't and if my children have the misfortune to have it as a viewing option; that I too will follow my parents footsteps and forbid them from subjecting themselves to such trash. I won't tell you that I no longer respect the people who watch your shows because it makes me feel sorry for them and at the same time pitiful that they subject themselves to such trash. I won't tell you that I no longer see see you a viewing option - because I do.
I don't blame you either - as a urban born and bred child whose parents knew better than to subject their child to such vindictive viewing, I wasn't aware of the content of your shows. As an online viewer of your show Yeh Hai Mohabattein, I knew not of the heartbreak my dedication to fictional characters would cause me. Of the breakup that would further depress me - push me into this pit where I crave for better. I don't blame you because when I did scroll across various channels, I was subjected to other sorts of abuse.
We expected too much, it was our fault, truly. YHM has given me and a lot of others various reasons to follow it - but blind love/lust for it's actors or the characters has never been one of them for me. Thank you for a wonderful experience while it lasted and best of luck on pushing a very capable show down the drain.
And just to clarify - please don't ever misunderstand that those who took time and hours to call you'll up and talk only to be bullied by you'll (the makers, creative, people receiving calls) that we ever were against the concept of surrogacy. We were against the the lack of consent. But when you have a masochistic channel craving to promote a highly patriarchal society till it disgusts everyone in view - we clearly expected too much.
May you be subjected to the same level of hurt you put on the families who followed your show under the false lure of making things right, of being a non-TRP show meant purely to voice reason and promote awareness. May you subjected to the same level of abuse you put put via your content in portraying the disrespect you show. And you are lucky to be operating a channel in a nation where no one cares of the content you produce rather than a bunch of us who dare to voice our opinions only to be abused by the people managing your content (your CV's, direction team, writers, representatives).
And don't you ever say that it was about storytelling or any narrative - it wasn't. It was about your made crave to overuse and butcher something that was clearly doing well on it's own. And if you're someone who's been paid for replying to content you'd rather trash - please do that. Please spare me your rude, sarcastic, condescending reply to a clearly professional email.
(I had to rewrite the second half of the email. Sorry. Can someone please mail this for me?)