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So back in november i was studying a module in uni called social exclusion. One of the lectures was on mental illness and stigma, and how people with mental health conditions are socially excluded in society. That module really was my favourite, especially this specific lecture. It made me realise how the media portrays a negative image of people with mental illnesses. This show to me also falls under this category of stereotyping and conforming to the negative image of mental illness just for entertainment and drama quotient.
I know that not everybody will agree to this point of mine, but maya's character and the way it has been written annoyingly conforms to this category. Basically part of the lecture was showing us newspaper article titles that sensationalised news related to mental illness by connecting it with crime. Some examples that i remembered were one called something like "Bonkers pilot crashes plane killing all aboard" where the pilot was suffering from depression and another was a woman suffering from post-natal depression killed her sleeping baby. The titles and news articles that the media write in relation to people with mental illness is one that projects them as being 'dangerous', 'out-of-control', 'unpredictable', 'selfish' and most importantly, unable to participate in society on the same levels of 'normal people' or whatever normal means in their books.
The point is why do the writers feel the need to make maya, a girl who has had a traumatic childhood and experienced profound grief, appear manipulative, unpredictable, someone whose nature cannot be trusted or selfish?
Why for once can't a tv show or movie make people with mental health conditions seem realistic? Maya's distrust for people and behavior of keeping people at bay for everything that happened to her is the only realistic thing i see about her apart from her possessiveness and fears of losing people she loves. Apart from that her overtly calculative actions, her actions of doing something nice for someone bordering on a facade and for her selfish motive of keeping arjun closer to her, as well as her intentions of playing smartly in order to put herself in the good books of arjun and his family are all giving the impression that because she has poor mental health, she isn't capable of thinking or being good to someone without having a purpose and can't forge genuine relationships with people without putting on a pretense to a certain extent. It gives the impression that having a mental health issue justifies someone acting selfish and only thinking about themselves so that's what people do.
Why can't she be shown being and acting like the real maya. I don't like the idea of her giving a job to saanjh, not because she truly wants to give her the job, but she sees that arjun is possessive about saanjh and is hurting to see saanjh away from him, so she decides to kill two birds with one stone by giving a job to saanjh in her office so saanjh will be by arjun's side and and he will no longer run away from maya just to run to saanjh all the time and at the same time, to once again get herself in arjun's good books. Why couldn't she have been shown actually doing it for arjun or out of respect for the fact that saanjh is arjun's best friend so she wanted to do it for him, rather than doing all this to further cement her good image in arjun's eyes?
If i was to re-write her character i would have kept her possessive side, but without all the mind-games of showing fake goodness in front of arjun and genuinely attempting to make good relationships with people, but at the same time her past trauma's acting as somewhat as a barrier to all those. Her initial no-nonsense attitude was really great, and so would have kept that the same and her being distrustful, as well as making her a girl who displays resilience and a bit more of a fighter attitude, as tough life experiences can often make people that way rather than always fearful, but i would have definitely left out the whole bull**** of her overthinking when trying to impress arjun and his family. Maya needs to be shown as genuinely wanting to change herself for arjun and his family and get out of her past, but being shown to still be possessive and insecure of losing them, so this making thinks more difficult for her, instead of pretending to be someone she isn't and doing things she genuinely doesn't want to do but just doing it because it will improve her image and make those people more closer to her. Make maya real and approachable.
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