Pakistan refracted through the television glass

Indians have had few windows into Pakistan, its people, civil society and everyday life framed in a border of post-Partition distrust through which there have been few insights. But now, quite suddenly, new vistas have opened up, at least for India’s television watching public -- even though the view they offer is as schizophrenic and conflicted as the India-Pakistan equation itself.

Two very different Pakistans are rolling out on prime time. There is the country of rabid Islam, suicide bombers and a rogue government in the American thriller Homeland and the very different world of gentle romances, urban angst and the everyday struggles of everyday people unfolding on Pakistani serials thanks to the channel, Zindagi. The first confirms and perpetuates the Western stereotype, the second offers a slice of quite another Pakistan where issues of gender and job, family tensions and relationships sweet and sour play out in often, modern settings.

This duality only mirrors the India-Pakistan relationship itself which has always been one of binaries, of love and hate, of a shared past and a bitterly divided present, of a common culture but distinctly different politics. Which is why Indians love all things Pakistani when it comes to the arts and fashion even as an aggressive, hyperbolic patriotism ensures that levels of hostility are sustained.

Style trends quickly make it to India, from the latest cuts in kurtas to palazzos or whatever it is that fashionistas in Pakistani high society are wearing. The dark prose of Saadat Hasan Manto and the reflective verse of Faiz Ahmed Faiz find huge resonance in India. And Pakistani artistes have always found a welcoming audience, and indeed profitable market, in India, be it Noorjehan or Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Reshma or Abida Parveen.

So it was one evening this August when the headlines were all about civilian killings along the Line of Control. Discussions may have centred on how to teach Pakistan a lesson but frenzied fans turned up nonetheless at an indoor stadium in New Delhi to hear Pakistani singer Shafqat Amanat Ali, who belted out many hits and even Mahatma Gandhi’s favourite bhajan, Vaishnav Janato. The barriers all but disappeared -- and the parallel realities of a thriving composite culture and the restive relationship between the two neighbours who have fought three wars was once again emphasised.

It is pretty much the same on the other side of the border, of course, with the likes of Dilip Kumar and Shah Rukh Khan evoking near hysteria. And it is often said, only half in jest, that Lahore’s Gaddafi stadium would fill up in an instant were Lata Mangeshkar ever to perform there.

While Pakistanis have always had some insights into India and its everyday life through the movies, Indians have so far been denied that opportunity. Serials like Dhoop Kinare some 20 years ago made a splash but were confined to a small section who owned VCRs. There was nothing else since – until now.

Unfortunately, both Homeland and the Pakistani soaps only forward the yin and yang -- inbuilt into anything to do with India and Pakistan and thoroughly confusing for any viewer who watches both. The American serial shows an Islamabad with cluttered streets and shuttered houses, giving little sense of the planned city of expansive streets and spacious bungalows that the Pakistan capital actually is. It depicts a thoroughly complicit State where the country’s foreign minister himself orders that Taliban terrorists be freed after a dramatic trade-off with an abducted American. A cop opens a car boot to find an American gagged and bound and quickly shuts it down. And the ISI is so powerful that it can get the American ambassador’s husband to switch the CIA station chief’s meds in her home bathroom. 

At the other end of the spectrum is the quieter, saner world of the soaps. For all those Indians who ask whether women in Pakistan are swaddled in burkhas and whether all of society across the border is about the isms of fundamentalism and terrorism, Zindagi channel should provide the answer. Quite unlike most Indian soaps that stretch into thousands of episodes and are almost without exception loud with bejewelled women who spend their days conspiring against each other and sitting in on various pujas, these have a definite beginning, middle and an end – and are a huge hit. 

True, like serials anywhere in the world, these characters too inhabit a strangely disconnected world where politics doesn’t intrude, but they are real life people in identifiable situations. And quite educative, for us at least. Kashaf in Zindagi Gulzar Hai is an angry young woman, whose father married a second time because he wanted a son, and has grown up with the firm belief that there is nothing more important than an education. She takes admission in an elite business school and shuns a private sector career for a government job. Ideas of space in a marriage, equality and even feminism find their way into the discussion even if they don’t find full fruition. Then there’s Khirad in Humsafar, the upright daughter of a school teacher unwilling to forgive her upper class husband for humiliating her. 

The serials give a glimpse of a Muslim society where religious identity is not all, of women who are more than homemakers and wear not just enveloping salwar kameezes but also jeans and saris with sleeveless blouses. Two of the mothers in ZGH and Humsafar work for NGOs and travel abroad for conferences – a cliché yes, but instructive for all those who believe in a monochrome, overtly religious Pakistan.

Quite coincidentally, the actor at the centre of these two serials is the increasingly popular Fawad Khan who made his Bollywood debut with Khoobsurat -- which had a teen exclaiming that he was the real 'khoobsurat' not his co-star Sonam Kapoor -- and is currently spelling romance for several generations of Indian women.

It is to be hoped that love for Fawad Khan and his ilk is able to bridge the people-politics divide, to broaden our horizons. As TRPs grow, hopefully so will the understanding that Pakistan is not all about bombings and burkhas but about a multi-layered society. 
In this era of Skype, Facebook and Whatsapp, the India-Pakistani connect cannot just be through showbiz screens. 

The author is a consulting editor dna