Brave face against fanaticism

A lawyer standing up for a just cause, getting the justice to a rape victim from the weaker section, who is group raped by the son of the powerful local politician and his friends, suffers character assassination and death in the process. He leaves behind his new bride of a few months, who is pregnant.

The new bride is exhorted upon by her parents to go in for medical termination of pregnancy and start life afresh but she chooses to stay back with her in laws and go ahead with delivery. She is like a daughter to her in laws, who also care wonderfully well for her.

There’s a girl from a conservative family who falls for the wicked charms of her paramour, who tries to ravage her modesty. She escapes unscathed but now has this stigma attached to her by a conservative society. Of course, she’s supported by her reformed father ( another story track) who admits her to medical college. She’s ill treated by her brother’s wife post her father’s death, but she fights it all for a happy ending for herself.

In between, the widow, who now has a 5 years old son, is encouraged to attempt starting life afresh as the young boy needs a father more than a grandpa or uncle. She finds an able suitor who promises to treat her son as her own.

There’s a doctor couple, who abdicate cozy environs of US to return to their native and start a state of they art hospital at a backward hill district. Apart from bringing world class treatment closer to these people, they regularly arrange camps to vaccinate and educate poor and illiterate villagers against devastating diseases.

There are standard parallel tracks around victory of good over evil that we see all the time in our movies too.

If you are guessing the above to be an extract out of a new Hollywood or Bollywood movie, you are quite off the mark! The above in fact is the theme of a Pakistani drama that we accidentally bumped into while searching a programme on YouTube. And once we started watching it, we ended up finishing 28 episodes of over 35 minutes each in under 3 days.

While there’s no dearth of entertaining content ( on OTT, YouTube, channels etc) and one can see any programme or event and therefore, I am not recommending this Pakistani drama for its entertainment value, the moot point here is the progressive thought coming out of a country from where we generally get news of regressive values. Equal treatment of sons and daughters, rehabilitation of widow daughter in law, giving the highest education to a daughter to make her independent are all the issues that are as much relevant on this side of the border as these are on that side. While there are fanatics with regressive thoughts, there is a section there that’s trying to put up a defiant face and that could be worth emulation.