Two sisters-one unmarried and the other divorced, spend most of their time goofing around, are fiercely independent (they even live alone! Without a grown male chaperone!) and refuse to settle down because ‘log kya kahenge’ isn’t something that bothers their mind. Has such a thing existed in current Pakistani dramas today? While we acknowledge the fact that our dramas have progressed over the years and there have been some great shows like ‘Kuch Ankahi’, ‘Noor Jahan’ or ‘Hum Tum’, but no one has been able to follow the Haseena Moin route yet: focusing on the independent lives of women who live alone and do whatever they want.
Looking back at Moin’s legendary drama ‘Parosi’, one would have thought it was today when drama writers would be okay with showing two women living on their own, with men as their neighbours and no one batting an eye about how this could create scandal, rather than 1990. Roshan Ara (played by Marina Khan) and Jahan Ara (played by Khalida Riyasat) are two sisters who move from Murree to Islamabad into a flat owned by a Agha Jani, a strict man who prefers to do things at an orderly time and place. JahanAra is the single mother to a five year old boy, but she’s free spirited and incredibly clumsy and damages walls or flower pots every time she tries to drive. While Roshan Ara is the younger sister who is more composed, and works as a documentary filmmaker.
Jahan Ara and Roshan Ara would probably go down as the most progressive female leads the Pakistani entertainment industry has ever witnessed because of their headstrong nature and how they refuse to bow down to the adults in their life. Jahan Ara was divorced by her politician husband who bribed her with money and a house in order to remain silent about his second marriage to a much younger woman, but she refused to do so and takes full custody of her son so she could raise him alone. Roshan Ara is badgered by her elder sister to marry a rich man, but she bluntly shuts down the proposal and lets her family know that she’ll marry on her own choice.
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Today, do we see shows centered around unmarried women doing what ever they please to do so, and also living alone? A Pakistani drama today featuring such an in-depth take into the family court system and how single mothers are pressured to give up their children, would have definitely been censored and called behaya. A woman like Jahan Ara, who isn’t depressed because of her divorce, doesn’t need a male guardian in her life to do what she wants, wouldn’t have been hailed as a progressive icon today, even though dramas are attempting to get rid of the sexist stereotypes they have long adhered to, but this would have been called ‘too much’. We just hope that drama writers today take some inspiration from Moin, and give us some more shows where women don’t rely on male guardians or family members but live alone and are happy doing so.
