Who Are We Supposed to Root For?

In having watched every episode of this show so far my question above stands - who exactly are we supposed to root for? Anupama who is so mahaan that at every step she continues to throw her spine out of her back for it to be stepped on by everyone else? Anupama who has continued to place her self-respect at the back burner for everyone else to continue to place decisions on her? Anupama who has time and time again shown us that a woman can take one step forward, but her family will pull her twenty steps back?

I didn't have high hopes for this show, nor any expectations. But the depravity at which the writers of this show seem to be writing all the women in this show is just mind-boggling to me. Do the writers really hate women that much? Have they met ANY women irl like the ones they have written in this show? And why, oh why, is ITV so obsessed with watching the female lead suffer? Why are we constantly flocking to shows that put the female lead through emotionally abusive trials and tribulations, why is the audience so excited to see her life fall literally apart at the seams? What is the appeal in a woman's suffering?

Besides possibly Anupama's best friend on the show, literally, every other main female character has been a letdown. Every single one. The way that every woman in Vanraj's life ran to cover up/make excuses for his affair or just EXPECT Anupama to deal with the fact that he's allowed to come willy nilly into her legal home is insane to me. Insane. His sister, his mother and his daughter have placed the expectation to pretend everything is okay on Anupama who has lost everything.

Yahan tak, when Anupama's mother rightfully tells her to leave the responsibility of the family to Vanraj who has done s*** all the entire 25 years of marriage, Anupama's ridiculous response is to say that she came to this house in her doli and would leave only via death. What kind of garbage are we as the audience supposed to assume from this? That Anupama is just so loyal and sanskaari that only uski arthi iss ghar se jayegi? At a certain point, I couldn't even fault Anupama for her reactions because before her separation she was an emotionally abused housewife who was berated and insulted by her husband, kids and MIL on the daily. But now after her own mother had the guts to speak up to her abusive MIL, Anupama can't hold her own ground?

Yes the house hers so she need not go anywhere. Yes those are her children. But no none of this needs to be taking place in a house where her MIL still continues to berate her.

We teach our daughters and our sisters to be small, to not speak too much, to not put forth our opinions so much. We teach the women in our lives to be rehabilitation centres for the men around them, be that our fathers, brothers or husbands. Anupama is just that character. She is supposed to be strong because she apparently can take all the baisti and verbal abuse and continues to put up with it. But she isn't strong to me, instead she reads as a misguided, uninformed abused woman. The narrative continues to try and tell the audience that Anupama's quietness and kindness is her strength, when all it comes off as is her biggest point of contention and suffering. Her kindness has come across as stupidity on several occasions but namely telling her mother she would die before leaving her sasural was the height of it.

The tragedy of it all is that Anupama is a character that has been verbally, emotionally and mentally abused by her husband and by her MIL. Following in their gaslighting steps, her kids at times have not been any better. Anupama has been gaslit, degraded, and put through the ringer on screen. And in the end this show wants us to believe that her choosing to actively stay in a continued abusive situation is what shows just how strong she is?! When to me it just reads as a battered woman so conditioned over 25 years to believe she cannot amount to more than this house and family. That living alone isn't even an option because woh maa hai.

Her longing to be independent ie driving, was so that she can learn to do so in case of emergency befalling a family member and not her own yearning to be able to get to places safe and sound on her own. Her pursuit of a job is not because she has the passion to be a working woman or wants something of her own, again it is to run the thankless household that she should be fighting alimony for in court. None of this is nayi soch. None of these motivations have been Anupama pursuing something for her own, they have all been major plot points to cater to her family.

And now with the disaster of Vanraj's accident and his coming home, she will take all these resources she's built up, and cater to him as well. None of us should aspire to be any person on this show, because frankly none of these people are likeable. None of these people, except Anu's bestie and perhaps Samar, exist irl. This show is such a farce on the tag line of nayi soch. What a pity.