I don’t watch soaps and television shows much primarily because I don’t have much time to spare for such stuff. Whatever time I have is for my son, husband, mother and siblings and lots and lots of work. However, sometimes when I do come across a nice drama, I do watch it but not when it is being aired. I stream it whenever I am in the mood to relax and want to have a nice, cozy meal with some television.
Recently, I happened to come across one such drama that caught my interest on many levels. The drama has quite an interesting story and the acting by all the actors is amazing especially the lead protagonists. While the storyline is great and I am enjoying the drama since it hasn’t ended yet (Pakistani dramas are mostly 30 to 40 episodes long maximum and don’t have recurring seasons like American television shows), it made me question a lot of things that are currently being practiced in the society. The one thing that troubled me the most and one that was the biggest highlight for me was why do we have to make our life so difficult. Our life isn’t complex really. It is we who infuse complication and problems in it. A lot of it happens because we fail to live in the moment, acknowledge it and make the right use of it and because we force others to live according to how we want.
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I’d like to share my views on the drama and the many lessons it taught me, but first I’ll quickly brief you on the story so you better understand my points and ideology.
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The drama ‘Teri Raza’ (Your Will) showcases the lives of Suhana, a young girl and Rameez, her class mate of almost the same age. Both of them like each other and their friendship soon turns into romance. Suhana belongs to a family where every big or small decision is taken after seeking Allah’s (God of Muslims) consent. The process through which that is done is Istakhara and is a religious process that we Muslims believe helps us take the right decisions for us.
Suhana and Rameez love each other, but since Rameez does not have a job, Suhana asks her to find a well-paying one first and then send his proposal to her parent. Suhana belongs to quite a rich and wealthy family. While Rameez’s father is financially stable too, he isn’t as rich as that of Suhana. This isn’t much of a problem at this point.
Suhana has a relative Imtiaz who is about 10 years older than him. Imtiaz’s mother is looking for a wife for him for she wishes her son to marry and get more settled in life with a family of his own. Imtiaz’s mother is a close relative of Suhana’s mother and father, and is like a daughter to Suhana’s grandmother. She requests Suhana’s grandma and mom to look for a nice girl for her son. Suhana volunteers to find a bride for her cousin. Suhana and Imtiaz have a few meetings and get along well. During these meetings, Imtiaz realizes he has feelings for Suhana and asks his mother to send his proposal for her. She happily agrees to do so and talks to Suhana’s grandmother about it.
While Suhana’s grandmother is elated to receive the proposal, she tells her she cannot proceed without doing Istakhara and seeking the consent of her God. So she perform the practice and the result comes out to be positive. This makes her feel that Imtiaz would be a good match for Suhana so Suhana’s parents seriously start to consider this proposal for her.
When Suhana finds out about this news, she is devastated. She talks to her mother and confronts to her about her feelings for Rameez. Her mother asks her to talk to Rameez so he sends his parents with his proposal to Suhana’s house. Some glitches happen and Rameez isn’t able to receive Suhana’s messages on time since he is out of country when all of this is happening. (I missed out on a few episodes in between and didn’t feel like watching them online because that would consume too much of my internet data which is limited to 50GB usage ). Anyhow, to cut the long story short, when Suhana does not receive a warm response from Rameez or his family, she is forced by her mother to agree to the proposal. She unwillingly does that under the pressure of her family.
Imtiaz meets Suhana after she consents to marry him and gets the impression that she isn’t too excited about marrying him so he openly asks her if she isn’t happy with the proposal and if she isn’t, he can take the blame on himself and end it right away. She conceals her true feelings and tells her there is nothing for him to worry about. The two tie the knot and soon Imtiaz finds out that Suhana isn’t 100% into the marriage and isn’t truly happy about it. However, since he loves her, he does all he can to make her feel comfortable and happy. He does not sleep with her in the same room, does not force her to do anything she isn’t comfortable doing, sets her a business for her when she expresses her desire to run a clothing store, does not let the family chide her when she spreads a rumor about her pregnancy, stays calm whenever she throws a tantrum, supports her in everything she does and even agrees to divorce her when finally when he finds out she is still in love with Rameez and the two have been meeting each other behind his back.
He tells Suhana that she should think for herself and if she isn’t happy with him and wants to marry the love of her life, he won’t hold her back anymore. He understands that bad episodes happen and humans are bound to make mistakes so it is alright if she made the mistake of marrying him. Although he is deeply hurt, he does not hold her back and divorces her.
Suhana is now free and wants to marry Rameez. Both Suhana’s and Rameez;s family do not like one another because of certain fallouts that took place earlier. When the find out about Suhana’s and Rameez’s intentions to marry one another, they oppose it. However, the two finally get married even when Suhana’s grandmother tells her that the Istakhara decision did not come in her favor.
Even though Suhana marries Rameez and is seemingly happy with him, she keeps thinking about Imtiaz and why he got engaged to someone else. (Imtiaz’s mother forces her to get engaged to a girl she likes a lot for him and after protesting against her, he finally succumbs to her demands and gets engaged with a heavy heart.) Time and again, Suhana talks to Imtiaz whenever she has a fight with Rameez or for any sort of help. Imtiaz gets engaged to that girl a little before Suhana marries Rameez and Suhana is more concerned about why he moved on especially since he claimed to love her only.
Also, Rameez still does not have a good job and it is Suhana that is supporting him financially. Since the two live with Rameez’s parents, they don’t have to worry much about house rent or grocery.
However, one day Suhana falls sick and cannot work. To manage her medical expenses, Suhana’s parents offer Rameez a handsome amount of money and he accepts it even though he knows Suhana’s father does not approve of him. When Suhana finds out about that, she has a big fight with him. The ending is probably going to be this: Suhana ends her relationship with Rameez on realizing he isn’t honest and cannot support himself ever and will keep regretting why she ended her marriage with Imtiaz who was indeed a much better life partner than Rameez. That’s the story so far and the drama’s last episode will air this week most probably.
I know the story is a bit long, but I didn’t want to miss out on an important point that I’d later would elaborate on. I have quite a lot of issues with the story. I am not saying I don’t like the story. This is what is happening around us and a lot of the issues highlighted in the story are genuine ones. However, my problem is mainly with the issues themselves so let’s get straight to them.
Not Giving the Children the Right to Marry
This is less prevalent in the Western world and is slowly improving in the Eastern world too, but it is still widespread here. Children aren’t mostly given the right to marry according to their wishes and if a child does show his/ her interest in marrying someone, his/ her parents are likely to come up with every possible antic to make him budge from his stance if they do not agree with his/ her choice.
The same happened with Suhana. Just because her grandmother found out through Istakhara that Imtiaz is the better option for her granddaughter, her family felt she should not think otherwise and happily accept that decision even though she did not take it. I believe in performing Istakhara and I believe my God knows what’s best for me, but I also firmly believe that it takes a great deal of blind faith to accept that and to bow down to God’s will and not all of us have nurtured that faith so far.
Many of us become rebellious when we are told to act a certain way and when someone opposes us. So if someone tells us what we desire is not what God wants for us, we are likely to oppose God too. Also, faith is not something you can enforce upon someone. It is built and nurtured. If you believe in something, you cannot expect the other to do the same. Suhana’s grandmother and family members believed in the power of Istakhara, but she did not yet they enforced that decision upon her and it did not do her much good. She wasn’t someone who would budge from her stance soon so she did not give up and kept loving the love of her life. Yes, she will probably realize her mistake in the end but it is okay, all of us make our own mistakes and should be given the right to learn from them.
I do believe that our parents and as parents of our kids, we have the duty to guide them, but that’s where our duty ends. We do not own them and this is clearly stated in my holy book Quran. Parents do not own their kids and when you do not own something, you cannot force that person/thing to behave a certain way. Parents should discuss issues with their kids and suggest and even encourage them to live a certain way, but not force them. Once they have had that talk with their kids, parents need to leave them alone to make their decision peacefully.
Divorcing Someone because You Don’t Love Him/ Her isn’t a Crime
Another issue that I feel needs to be discussed more is divorce and the reason behind it. If a woman wants divorce from her husband because he abuses her in any way, that’s alright and he is the bad guy. However, when she wants the same because she feel she cannot love him the way he deserves to be loved, she becomes the bad guy. I am not saying it’s the guy’s fault. Obviously, he is the one suffering but if his wife does think of ending the relationship because it is only bringing the two lots of pain then why is it so wrong for her to think that way.
In the drama I talked about, Suhana does not plan on divorcing her husband but when her husband finds out she isn’t sincere with her, she finds it only right to end the relationship so she can freely live her life on her terms. Why is that bad? I think it is okay if you realize you are not meant to be in a relationship and it is okay to want to walk out of it. Yes, it would have been a hell lot better if you had realized this before so you did not hurt the other person, but when do things go just as planned- hardly ever.
If you do feel you aren’t meant to be in a certain relationship, just walk out of it instead of making your life more miserable and difficult than it has to be. In my opinion, Suhana should have been brave enough to make that call for herself. If she was courageous enough to cheat on her husband, she should have that audacity to actually speak for her rights openly too. Luckily for her, her husband turned out to be her messiah. However, not every woman unhappy with her marriage finds a messiah in her marriage and in that case, she needs to be her own messiah.
If a woman ever gathers enough courage to speak for her rights and desires, she is labeled as slut or rebellious. Sadly, in Pakistan, it is the society that decides the fate of women and they aren’t deemed intelligent enough to think for their own good. Aaahh.. hoping for this to change for the better soon.
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Why Cannot We Let Others Live?
Yes, it is natural for you to think about why someone who loved you moved on or why he isn’t dying like he said he would when you leave him, but if you do have that thought, you need to do away with it. If you took a certain decision for your own well-being because you want yourself to be happy then why cannot you let others do the same. In Suhana’s case, she is constantly worried about why Imtiaz got engaged and why he is trying to move back to life without taking his feelings into account. He has the one gone through a huge heartache so if he is trying to move on through any measure he feels is right, Suhana should only be supportive of her.
I have been only 2 intimate relationships so far- one with my husband and one before that. I broke that guy’s heart I dated for around 4 years when I told him I didn’t really love him and moved on. When he tried moving on, I did feel weird but thankfully, I did not question that neither did I try to attract him towards me again. I was happy for him and slowly severed my ties with him because I know he wouldn’t move on if he kept talking to me.
Why Do We Keep Thinking about the Past or Future?
When something bad happens, what most of us do is ruminate on it for as long as possible instead of living in the moment and doing what is important now. For instance, when Suhana and Rameez have a fight after their marriage on a petty issue, she keeps thinking about why she left Imtiaz instead of moving on and thinking about how to pacify the situation and resolve the problem.
Whenever we find ourselves in a fix or something undesirable happens to us, we associate it with our past issues and future concerns instead of just acknowledging the moment and making the best use of it.
I feel all the issues that I discussed above make life more complicated than it actually is and if we really focused on the moment and stopped thinking too much about what people would think, we would live better lives. Yes, we will make mistakes but we will learn to take accountability of them and learn from them which is extremely important to build a good life.
Share your thoughts on this one and thank you for your patience.
Love and light,
Sharoon.
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