Zindagi Gulzar Hai 9

Last week passed with one question on the mind. Would Zaroon slap Kashaf?

I haven’t read the book but those who have (and have been talking about it incessantly) shared that Zaroon does slap Kashaf in Umera Ahmad’s original story. When Kashaf overhears him criticizing and mocking her “middle class mentality” in the college library she confronts him and tears up his notes in fury. She hurls accusations right back at him, calling him a myopic low life who cannot respect others because he has no respect of his own. This is when he slaps her. Or at least in the book he does.

We aren’t living in the Medieval times and physically assaulting a lady isn’t something any hero, no matter how irresistible, can expect to live down.  This is exactly why the director, Sultana Siddiqui, decided to modify the story for the script, according to more civilized circumstances. The slap changed to a shove and a push, still aggressive, but not quite so unforgivable.

This one scene was the climax of the episode, and was acted out brilliantly by both Fawad Khan and Sanam Saeed. What one didn’t understand is how Asmara, being a twenty-first century emancipated female, could endorse him to hit her.

“You should have given her a slap or two,” she calls to tell him later that evening.

 Meanwhile, Sara gets married.

The rest of the episode revolves around the library scene. We are, for a while, taken back to the social consciousness of the play and the overbearing burdens that Rafia has to undertake to make life tolerable for her daughters. She breaks down momentarily when she learns of the plush comforts Murtaza and his second wife Nigar are enjoying, thanks to ill means. She questions how he could neglect and forget his own daughters.

Sidra acts as the balancing agent in the household as she comforts her mother as well as Kashaf, who returns from college swallowing hot tears of humiliation and vows never to go back. Sidra acts as the voice of reason when Kashaf returns to her wallowing and self-pity. She questions God’s love for her and wonders why he has forgotten her when handing out happiness.

She spends a couple of days at home, wallowing in self-pity and loathing for Zaroon. She admits that her sub-conscience warned her that Zaroon would hurt/harm her and she wonders whether she can ever go back to college after enduring such intense humiliation. But finally she realizes that she has to; quitting would impact no one except for her mother and sisters. How will she face Zaroon? We’ll find out in the next episode, when apparently Zaroon will also end up committing to Asmara.