You’ve got to love the way Samira Fazal and Farooq Rind come together to tell a story. Sanjha is a complex story simply told, with characters so real you could run into them while walking through Bohri Bazar. Nothing is as straightforward as it seems. Nobody is pure as driven snow and neither is anyone completely black. Today we got a glimpse of the sensitive woman hidden behind Mumtaz’s crusty exterior. Hard as she appears, nonetheless there is a hint of a heart somewhere under the quicksilver tongue, loud makeup and garish clothes.
Mumtaz, however, is nobody’s fool. Even though touched by Naseem’s impassioned plea to return Sanjha, she refuses to make the one phone call that could reunite the sisters. She cannot, and will not forget how Weeda challenged her authority, and for this Sanjha must suffer. “Sach hai! Sach hai, ke aik kam aqal mard hi woh tabahi phaila saktaa hai jo hazaar chalaak aurtain nahin phaila sakteen…”
Running parallel is the recently introduced story of the Seth, Nauman Ejaz, who now has Sanjha, and his wife, Ayesha Alam. This track, about the Seth’s marriage of convenience, draws attention to the lifestyle of the feudal elites of our society. Even as the middle-aged Seth describes his marital relationship as one based on “love,” he also pines away for his true love, Mumtaz. She had walked away from him many years ago, ostensibly to return Tibi Gali to its former glory. Ayesha Alam’s musings, however, seem to indicate that there is more here than meets the eye.
At the core of the story is the plight of trafficked women, bought with the complicity of the elite, and sold to serve at their pleasure. Though there are people, like Dr. Ammar and his mother, who are committed to helping these unfortunate women, unfortunately this is such an endemic social problem that the law enforcing authorities are rendered helpless. As the policeman says, once the girl is sold, the rules of the game change. She is no longer a living person, she is an object, one that can be used and discarded at the owner’s whims.
This is story telling at its best. The various threads all work in tandem and no one track seems to overtake the other. Director Rind allows the narrative to unfold at its own pace, resisting the temptation to over tell it. The only peeve I have is with the lapse in continuity with Naseem’s name. It seems like after the first few episodes, where Sabreen Hisbani was addressed as Naseem, there was a collective amnesia and everybody started calling her Sara. Then today, Shabana calls her Naseem in one scene, but then soon after reverts back to calling her Sara! Why?
Written by SZ ~
