I watched Shukk, but being the impatient kind, I first read through the story on wiki and read through many reviews and comments on various sites and blogs. It did not look promising, but since I already knew that I didn't watch with much expectations. So was pleasantly surprised to have liked and enjoyed this show and maybe it's the way I went about watching it, but I really enjoyed it.
The story was intriguing and I always prefer stories that revolve around relationships and their dynamics and Shukk was exactly that. We had 4 main characters and 2 couples ( or rather 3, if we take into account that midway through the show Sania and ehtesham became a couple) and all of them had their dynamics with one another that were different and a lot to do with the kind of person each of them were.
Coming to Ehtesham, we have this very supportive and indulgent husband who is madly in love with his wife even after 7 years of marriage and has kept the romance alive in their lives with his thoughtful gestures. He knows that his wife yearns for a child and she is impulsive and child like, but good at heart and that's why he indulges her.
Sherish is a fun loving, easy going, friendly, light on responsibility kind of person with a good heart. She has a perfect life and marriage, except for missing out on one of the biggest aspects in her life/ marriage, or at least that's how she sees it and dat's motherhood. So whenever she's around a child, she can't help but get attached and shower her love that she has and isn't shy to display in abundance. She has a supportive husband and an uber cool and supportive mother-in-law. Her life is rosy.
Ali is the typical husband who believes that a husband's duty is to provide for the family and the wife's to look after the family and house. He has a mother who tends to be overly and overtly critical and cantankerous and hence he believes in keeping his wife on a tight leash, though he may not always want that. Also he has a very prosaic outlook towards marriage and to show that he has the upper hand in marriage he tends to be harsh towards his wife, but also does end up appreciating her for being a good wife and daughter-in-law. But when he discovers that his meek docile wife is much more educated than him and is capable of making a good earning, his ego gets easily bruised and from then onwards his insecurities are always on the surface and he feels cheated too. Also when his wife gets accused of committing adultery he instantly decides to divorce her, and I feel that's not because he believes it to be true, but coz he does not want ppl to think that he's weak and dependent on his wife to accept her after such accusations.
Now coming to Sania. IMO amongst all the 4 main characters, hers is the most complex one. She is a good wife, devoted and loving mother and dutiful daughter-in-law who takes all the difficulties in her stride and almost robotically goes about her daily routine in life. She seems to have accepted her fate and stoically faces life without much complain. She has a certain calmness and stillness in her. But then beneath this Sania is another Sania lurking whose glimpse we get once in a while. The fiercely protective Sania who can stand up against anyone for her son's sake, the strong-willed and assertive Sania who refuses to part with her jewellery, in spite of the emotional and mental pressure her husband puts her through. The angry and bitter Sania who still holds the grudge of rejection even years after her broken engagement and hence can't talk politely to the person who is responsible for it. The fun loving Sania who can aim well and bring down imlis from the tree. This is the type of person she must have been when young and before her engagement broke and life as it is now happened. And finally the highly accomplished and efficient Sania that no one is aware about and that Sania herself has forgotten about it seems.
The story and relationships.
Ehtesham and Sherish have an idyllic marriage. Ehtesham is a caring, supportive and indulgent husband and Sherish is a loving , fun loving and fondly spoilt wife. The only dark spot in their otherwise idyllic life is that they are childless and though both must feel the absence of a child, it is Sherish who is more affected and hence her tendency to shower love to children coz she longs for one and also loves them. Her immature and too frank behavior puts Ehtesham in embarrassing situations, but though he reprimands her, he knows that this trait of hers is what makes her who she is and that is a person he loves. But her this very immature behavior, when it becomes the reason for them losing their child, Ehtesham can't seem to overlook it anymore and can't seem to forgive her. And then her getting brainwashed and starting to have Shukk on her husband for having an affair with Sania, just makes the rift all the more wider. Yes Ehtesham should have told her that Sania was his ex-fiancee and that he had left her to marry Sherish coz he loved her. But knowing Sherish Ehtesham knew dat she would blow the whole thing out of proportion and that's why he felt that it's best that she doesn't know. But she does come to know and his hiding this from her makes her all the more convinced that der is something going on between him and Sania. And it becomes inevitable that their relationship reaches a point of no return.
Ali and Sania's marriage is a lopsided one, where it is Sania who is putting in most of the effort in their relationship. Ali takes her for granted and even when her returns from South Africa he makes it clear to her that he has returned not coz of her and their son, but because of his mother and that too coz his mother said that Sania does not take care of her properly. And as I mentioned earlier once he comes to know that Sania is more educated and qualified than him, he has a hard time accepting this and IMO he took the easy way out when Sania gets accused of adultery and without really making an effort to find out the truth he divorces her. Also as I hv said it wouldn't have mattered to him even if he knew what Sania was innocent, coz it became an ego issue for him to have people talk about his wife.
Now coming to Sania- Ehtesham relationship. Initially Sania holds a lot of resentment towards Ehtesham as he had rejected her after getting engaged to her, so she is rude and angry with him. Also she feels jealous coz she sees the idyllic life of Ehtesham and Sherish and maybe deep down she feels it was she who could have had that life with Ehtesham. Ehtesham after the initial shock of seeing her again, is pretty much indifferent towards her and is quite taken aback by her rudeness. He later on gets annoyed with her for what he sees as her unreasonable behavior and especially he does not like it when she's rude to Sherish and also that shersih is so persistent in being friends with her. He probably views her as a dull, boring person as opposed to sherish who is so full of life. But when he starts getting to know her better he is surprised to find out that there is much more to her than her cranky nature towards him. He is suitably impressed by her qualifications and her job abilities. Her handling of the toughest situations and her dignified and quite way of going about her life even in the wosre of situations. Again I suppose one can't help but see the contrast in the 2 women and their diametrically opposite reactions to handling tough times . Also he feels responsible for her predicament and sympathizes with her and she is der for him as a pillar of support when he's going though a bad phrase, just as he is there for her and all this makes his falling for her inevitable. That one dialogue that sherish tells ehtesham that what do u see in her (Sania), she's so ordinary and he tells her that no she isn't ordinary but very special sums up the way ehtesham seems Sania. As for Sania Ehtesham has been most supportive and his caring and being there for her, when there was never anyone for her makes her fall for him too.
Also I feel the end could not have been any other way, except that they shouldn't have tried to make Sania-Ehtesham the guilty party and their marriage as something they did wrong, coz they both went through a lot and that too without them being at fault and they genuinely fell for each other and cared about each other and they so deserved to be a family along with Rumi.
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