Yikes! How cruel can well-meaning friends be! Just ask Ujala and Faisal, whose friend Kiran came visiting with her baby in tow. Throughout this episode, Kiran’s incessant excited chatter, about Ujala’s pregnancy, and the tormented couple’s interactions with the baby kept bringing up the elephant in the room –the fate of the unborn child. Would Ujala agree to terminate her pregnancy, or would Faisal find it in his heart to accept the baby and raise it as his own?
Writer Mohsin Ali and the director Anjum Shahzad deserve applause for tackling these very important questions in a very creative manner. Having Ujala confront her moral dilemma via the friend’s visit was an excellent way to add perspective. The unsuspecting Kiran had no idea that her excitement about her friend’s baby was only serving to add further fuel to the fiery moral dilemma already alive and burning in Ujala’s mind. Similarly, the news story about a husband who killed his wife and unborn child, because he suspected the child was not his, was yet another excellent ploy on the writer and director’s part. Since Faisal refuses to discuss his predicament with anybody else what better way for him to see the other side of the picture than a news story that he was forced to present. Was it the unborn child’s fault that it was the product of a rape?
Even as he continued to fight his inner demons, Faisal also carried on his search for Pasha, Ujala’s rapist. And, he came one step closer to finding him in this episode. However, I do wonder, if, once his thirst for revenge is slaked, whether Faisal would be able to put the past completely behind him. Would his relationship with Ujala ever be able to go back to being what it was? Aamina Shaikh and Adeel Hussein are excellent as the once in-love couple now being torn apart due to their unfortunate circumstances.
Overall, this was yet another engrossing episode. The pace, though, was lethargic, but from next week’s pre-cap it seems like the narrative is going to pick up speed dramatically. From Faisal’s irritation with his family, to Faisal and Ujala’s accident, to Faisal broken leg, to Ujala’s tearful declaration that she would give up the baby, all these scenes were a part of the pre-cap. I do wonder though, now that all the high points of the next week have already been revealed, why/how do the producers expect the viewers to tune in to the following episode.
Written by S Z ~
