The scripts there are beautiful, the men drop-dead gorgeous. The saving grace for Indian soaps - they are a lot stronger on the women front

LAST MONTH, I fell in love. With Fawad Afzal Khan. This doesn’t happen all that often with me. The last time it happened was in 1988, again when I was watching TV. The show was called Fauji and I was mesmerised by Commando Abhimanyu Rai. That was a love affair that has lasted several decades. This one might well too. After all, how can you not fall for a guy whose eyes promise sex, lust and utter devotion – and not necessarily in that order – without any help from Baahon ke darmiyan or Hum… hum tum playing in the background?

The mothers in my life had been gushing for a while about the new channel that was beaming Pakistani serials, but they had diametrically opposite favourites. When I watch TV, it is with commitment. Anyone with less gurda would have chickened out of the last eight months of Bade Achhe Lagte Hai. So, the choice of which Pakistani serial to watch had me dithering for some weeks. Then a friend WhatsApped: “You must watch Zindagi Gulzar Hai – it is just amazing!”

So the decision was taken. Zindagi Gulzar Hai was locked. And Fawad Khan happened to me. And, with him, the chaska of Pakistani serials. Soon, the channel, Zindagi, was no longer enough. I was scouring YouTube for Fawad Khan serials. After devouring ZGH, I watched Dastan. Then moved to Humsafar, which is where I am now, halfway down. And I am still hooked. It was a chore going back to Ek Hasina Thi (STAR Plus), Beintehaa (Colors) and Ekk Nayi Pehchaan (Sony). The thing about Pakistani serials is that they are effectively made and beautifully scripted. The dialogues are natural and sound just the way you and I would speak (if we were speaking chaste Urdu, of course). The characters can actually intersperse flawless English with the Urdu — they don’t say “Ded” when they want to say “Dad”. And they definitely don’t say, “This is a very good news!”

Each 45-minute episode has a distinct development. There is no religious excess (entire weeks of episodes are not thrown away on religious celebrations). You seldom even see the characters praying. Best of all, the serials end. Indian producers would do well to take five years off to go to Pakistan and learn the art of making an effective TV serial. But… and this is quite a big but! Once the initial rose-tinted haze cast by Fawad Khan had worn off, I found myself looking more critically at the serials I had been watching. Some things jarred, most prominently the agency of women. The serials showed women as definitely subordinate to men, even those women that started out as strong and independent.

In ZGH, Kashaf is a selfmade woman. Abandoned by her father and brought up by an independent, working mother, she carves out a life for herself through persistence and hard work. When she finally becomes a government officer, her father comes wheedling back to her with requests to help the son for whom he had abandoned her. And her mother is quick to persuade her to accept him back: “Aakhir woh tumhare Abba hai.”

Once Kashaf gets married to Zaroon, her mother carries on with the advice: you must do everything for your shauhar, he must get addicted to the taste of the food you cook (even if, as a government officer, you have servants galore). In short, women must make their husbands completely dependent on them — maybe that’s how you avoid those three little words no one wants to hear. The “bad” modern working woman motif (unless, like Kashaf, she is doubling up as superwoman in the kitchen and bedroom) continues throughout the serial. Zaroon’s headstrong sister, Sara, heads for a divorce because she will not listen to her husband’s admonition that she leave off going out with her friends, which include men. Zaroon breaks off his earlier engagement with Asmara because he does not approve of her going to late night beach parties in a mixed group. And Zaroon is unhappy with his mother, Ghazala, because he thinks that she neglected her family for her career. “Sabhi mard Abba ki tarah nahin hote,” he tells her, meaning not as accepting as Abba.

The theme continues in Humsafar, where the docile, home-loving Khirad is obviously more heroine material than the Westernised, office-going Sara — and more worthy of the hero’s love. Let’s be clear, this theme of the good women who stay at home versus the bad women who go out and work finds echoes in most Indian serials as well. The most confused example would be Ekk Nayi Pehchaan, where you have the MBAtoting Sakshi quite happy to trot after main- law Sharda, learning how to make perfect dal and the halwa that her husband, Karan, loves, whereas her sister-in-law, Latika, is perennially on bad terms with her husband because she will not give up her career to look after home and hearth.

But Sakshi also compels the illiterate Sharda to go out and study and, when Sharda discovers that her husband, Suresh, has another wife, helps her start her own business and make it a success. Never mind that both threads got cast by the wayside when the TRP Gods frowned. It is also Sharda’s co-wife, Pallavi, who decides that it is time their mutual husband was taught a lesson in respect for women and incites her to rebel against his treatment of her.

In Beintehaa, which is an Indian Muslim serial, Aaliya is an upright character with strong beliefs and the courage of her convictions. She takes stands and refuses to budge from what she knows is right. That it doesn’t make her a very lovable character is neither here nor there. People of strong convictions seldom are. Ek Hasina Thi also has a strong female protagonist in Durga Thakur, the fireand- brimstone heroine who is out to take revenge on the wealthy, influential Goenkas for the atrocities they committed on her and her family. In comparison, the hero, Dev, is a wimp (there’s really no other way to describe him!).

So, to all of you who are exulting about Zindagi and the fare it has on offer, I have only this to say. Yes, we do need to tone down the eye shadow (interestingly, the “bad” women in Pakistan also seem to spend more money on eye shadow), we need to go easy on the jewellery (a girl who’s wearing ten lakh rupees worth of jewellery cannot be telling the arranger of her ishtimayi shaadi, “Aap nahin hote to hum gareebon ka kya hota?!”), we need to lower the pitch on the background music, and we need to press a firm delete on the neverending music interludes, the irritatingly long and silly reaction shots and the repeated interspersing of flashback shots to remind viewers of what happened 10 minutes ago. But as far as basic message is concerned, Indian TV serials are a lot stronger on the women front. If only we made them like they did in Pakistan!

Meanwhile, Fawad Khan has followed in SRK’s footsteps and moved to Bollywood. His Khoobsurat (yes, a remake of “the” Khoobsurat) released this September.