Buried within four walls

KARACHI:

Trigger warning and spoilers ahead.

As someone who grew up close to her cousins, I tuned into Parwarish to see how well the drama captured the dynamics of blood-bonded friendships. And I can't lie, the serial's main appeal still lies in its petty squabbles and joint-family chaos. But what truly keeps me on edge every week is the development of Aina Asif's character Maya, a studious girl who is slowly crushed under the iron fist of patriarchy.

It's a character trajectory that everyone is familiar with - domestic pressures clipping the wings of a young woman who dreams to fly high. But that fact doesn't make Maya's story any less compelling. In fact, it's a brutal reflection of what actually happens around us - in the news, out in the open, within the intimacy of four walls - until another girl or woman becomes a statistic and a hashtag, and drowns in a pool of victims whose lives are cut short by honour killing, vengeful murder, or abuse.

Don't you have it all?

The thing that makes you feel for Maya is that she has no ambitious prospects beyond the bare minimum. She wants to complete her degree and become a doctor, a dream that she entertained only because she was led to believe that it would be achievable. However, before she can even get into university, a ring is forced into her finger.

But oh, what's the problem? The man is financially well-settled and will look after her for the rest of her life, age gap and loss of individuality be damned. What's the problem when the future man of the house is allowing her to spread her wings, knowing that he's the only one who has access to the scissors that can end it all?

It's a tale as old as time, one that has been ingrained into each of us. A rich husband who graciously grants you the right to choose? What more can you possibly ask for, you ungrateful girl?

But Maya is neither ungrateful nor ignorant, just obediently silent, compliant, and malleable to her father's demands. The mark of a perfect daughter. Her dreams are no longer an expression of self but an extension of her being stretched thin for the convenience of a man who wants a polished doctor-wife.

So Maya stays quiet, even if only in pursuit of a degree that matters more than her peace of mind. Her educational institutes are the only places where she can temporarily flee her troubles, until her fiancé Waleed becomes adamant on invading those too.

Abuse in whispers

Parwarish doesn't hand its audience a caricature of aggression but patiently paints one. What makes Waleed truly dangerous isn't just that he's an abuser but a smart one. From deriding Maya's intelligence to taking possession of her class schedule, he exercises his power leisurely and ensures that he's taking slow steps towards trapping her.

He shields his complacency behind flowers and cheap flirtation. When he lashes out, he softens up just enough to pressurise Maya into apologising for being too difficult. He commands hesitation that gives Maya pause, making her wonder whether or not she's mad to notice his blatant switch-ups and the alarm bells that ring in her head as a result of these drastic personality shifts.

Waleed's subjugation is silent - a picture-perfect companion to Maya's forced yet quiet deference. Until, of course, he realises that he has her completely cornered. In Episode 17, he lets his perversion slip and harasses her inside her own home because, by this point, he knows where the real weight of consequences lies - and it's not with him.

"Don't say no to me. I don't like hearing refusal," he drills into a frightened Maya, thereby eliminating all doubts that might've salvaged his character. Waleed is an abuser through and through, and he takes pride in it because he knows no one will call him one.

What drives the point further is when Maya, in a rare act of hopeless resistance, bursts and informs her mother that she's being crushed to no end - walking on eggshells around her fiancé and beaten into submission by her father simultaneously.

She later also admits to her sister that Waleed terrifies her because she can't deny the traits he shares with her father. She declares with a clarity that might shock Pakistani drama audiences, "I don't want to live my mother's life."

A tragic mirror

Maya is merely a fictional echo of many girls and women who now lie six feet under. Her depiction calls to mind Sania Zehra, a 20-year-old woman who was found hanging by a noose in her Multan home last year in July. Her in-laws maintained that it was a suicide, dismissive of the bruises and other marks of torture. Does the fact that Sania was pregnant and a mother of two evoke due sympathy that wasn't granted while she was still alive?

How about the more recent case of femicide that has rattled the nation? Does Sana Yousaf, a 17-year-old influencer who was murdered for repeatedly turning down a man's "offers off friendship", deserve sympathy? If the answer is an emphatic yes then that does beg the question of why these two, along with many others, are no longer with us.

The problem isn't that there's little sympathy to go around, but that girls and women are deemed unworthy of it while they can still be saved. Cries for help are buried under the belief that domestic affairs are simply none of our business or the assertion that a content creator choosing to share parts of her life with the world must surely be asking for it.

Years later, Qandeel Baloch still haunts the mind. Even in death her right to live is debated because a woman's lifestyle determines whether she qualifies as a human being, at least enough to warrant public support.

Maya may only be a fictional mirror for all the lives we have lost to femicide and ones we could potentially lose, but she is a mirror that reflects reality. She's resonant because she isn't afforded the option of saying no, because exercising caution isn't enough of a solution for her.

The difference is, Parwarish might save Maya, but how many will we continue to lose to the whetted blade of patriarchy?