After a hiatus of almost three months , Geo and Bashar Momin are back. Last time we saw Bashar he was manipulating and negotiating his way to purchase Rudaba. Let’s make no mistake that this was a transaction , like most modern day bargains it involved a written contract in this instance a Nikkah Nama and an exchange of goods and services. Rudaba’s brother Adil gets fifty per cent of Bashar’s business ,and a happy life with his wife and child while Bashar gets Rudabba . Rudaba had so many high hopes of her brother Adil , that it was sad to see how he let her down .
And that my dears is the problem with bholi larkiya . Rudaba is a good girl , she listens to her father , he makes a bad decision for her in the shape of russi run Bulund . Rudaba is a good girl ,she listens to her brother he makes a bad decision for her in the form of Bashar Momin Criminal at large . For some reason she refuses to use the sense she was born with and run , instead she allows herself to be blackmailed and cornered into a quite frankly disgusting situation , which is only made palatable on screen by the fact that Bashar Momin is played by Faysal Qureshi.
I was actually quite pleased to see Bulund at the wedding , guys like him deserve all they get and hopefully more . Supposedly Bulund is a well educated man , who has seen the world ; yet since day one of his interactions with Rudaba he has given her nothing but trouble . At any point when Rudabba needed his trust or help, he let her down . Not only would he withdraw in a rage but would spend time ‘punishing ” her by giving her the cold shoulder and ignoring her even when she cut her hand. When Adil says , that he could hardly trust a Man who ran off to America ,abandoning his sister in a fit of anger , it had an undeniable ring of truth to it . 
The star of the show was again Zanjabeel Asim’s fabulous well written script. The scene between Rudabba and Adil was well written and well acted . Yasirr Mazar is impressive at every turn in this drama while Ushna Shah seems to carry her scenes with enthusiasm rather than skill . She has a lot of raw , talent which with some control and right director will make her an even better actress one day. The highlight of the episode was not Bashar and Rudabba’s Shadi ,but Bulund’s confrontation with Tayyaba. Somwhere along the line Rudabba had used some common sense and sent Bulund an email explaining her situation . So when Tayyab follows him home after the wedding scene to dig her claws in , Bulund is forwarned and for-armed. Sami Khan did complete justice to this well written scene that made me suddenly like his character again. I suppose we should have expected the wet towel that is Tayyaba to get herself into an accident only moments later ; she can’t cross a road without a bridge collapsing on her . Again in the final scene between Sami Khan , Yasirr Mazar and Maheen Rizvi , Sami Khan stole the show just by listening . There was sense of acknowledgement , of acceptance and even understanding in his expressions that communicated more than words could.
Over all this was your typical Bashar Momin episode : high on melodrama , strange camera shots filled with mist and darkness and/ or candle light and overt styling and a badly used background score which sometimes distracts from the actual story. Some how it works , somehow it is entertaining but it could have been so much more . I wish they really had not spent so much money on the sets and the annoying hairstyles and especially not on the candles . Bashar Momin has a strong script , good actors and a competent director but it is all being drowned out by too many bells and whistles . Hopefully we will see more of Bashar next week but one last point : women are not goats or sheep who , if tied to something for long enough will eventually grow to like it . I truly worry when I see story lines where a women is forced to marry by an obsessive lover then grows to ..ahem like him …. that we are promoting a rape culture , a culture which almost justifies forcing women into a situation that they will supposedly get to like later . That is wrong and patently untrue.
I am covering for RB who will be reviewing next week
written bySADAF
