Obsessions exist in our society and women are often stalked. PARTH TAYAl looks into this new trend on television which the producers say is their answer to highlighting issues which are otherwise piling up as unnoticed cases of harassment on police counters
‘Romanticism is as good as dead in the fast lane that life has taken in modern times. Time has moved and so has love. Romeo-Juliet or Heer-Ranjha, the youth is not interested in pure love, the negative shades of romance luring them more.
This fact is ably verified by the obsessive compulsive love stories that are in season on television, that too with high TRPs. The soap dish has always been throbbing with experimentation and concepts that follow latest trends and the trend since 2017 has been all about villains.
The industry has also started turning heroes into villains by giving them a psychoavatar which has drawn in the viewers, one such show being Iss Pyaar Ko Kya Naam Doon which is back with its third season along with heartthrob Barun Sobti. The makers of the show have left no stone unturned to give him the look of a rough and tough guy with a dark past leading him on to a path of revenge. He is a fine example of hero-turned-villain actor.
Actor Barun Sobti says: “The role that I am playing is of a ferocious, fierce and outraged guy who is seeking revenge and will go to any extent to take it, be it making a women madly falling in love with me or even hurting her if required”.
Writers and directors have long been creative around love with usually simple stories. But they are now all trying to push the boundaries to get out of the humdrum and some have managed to take it on to a whole new level where love is not just shown as a feeling but an obsession with no boundaries, no reason or gentleness.
Take the case of Beyhadh, an ongoing TV show which is about an obsessive girl Maya who flouts all laws and turns into a killer psycho attributed to her disturbing past. She is shown to be so obsessive that in order to get the man she loves; she removes all obstacles that come in her way, even if they meant turning into a criminal and hurting people without guilt or reason.
Director Vikram labhe explains: “Sony has always believed in experimenting. The uniqueness of this story prompted me to direct the show and I would give a lot of credit to the writers who do not let the suspense fizzle out and keep the viewers wondering what Maya will do next. A cue is taken from the lovers of this generation who are very possessive,” he adds.
Beyhadh has growing company in this emerging segment of negative love. Saubhagyawati Bhava, a 2013 show in which our Sriti Jha aka Pragya fromKumkum Bhagya was the victim of domestic abuse and harassment by her obsessively in love husband Viraj played to the hilt by Karanvir Bohra, started it all on TV.
Produced Vikas Seth explains: “What we showed in the serial was something which was going on if not publicly, but privately (inside the four walls) and things like this needed to be addressed. Women should know their rights and should be independent only then issues like this would get resolved, one must not take it practically that ‘All is fair in love and war’ because that’s impractical”.
Though the evergreen concept of saas-bahu sagas refuses to fade away, love obsessions are finding a way out of family houses. In a way, they reflect what our women go through in real life, what with increasing cases of acid attacks, rapes and even murders. So in a way these serials show a mirror to the dirt in our society.
Apart from converting heroes into villains and showing obsessive love at its peak some TV shows had gone miles ahead to address the issue of lGBT and had made love between person belonging to different sex, one such is Shakti-Astitva Ke Ehsaas Ki (colors) where our very own charming Vivian Dsena aka Harman is shown making love with Rubina Dilaik aka surbhi who is shown as transgender. While this show has been partially successful in addressing the problem of this unprivileged and backward community, another show Waaris is a hard core Hindi drama thriller which successfully exhibits the problem of lGBT people in our country and makes us think about equality and democracy in true sense, in this show Amba a Punjabi mom is shown to raise her intersex child as a boy (Mannu), just to avoid the embracement and to give the same love and equality that other children get from the society. But being a daily soap love is bound to happen and so when Mannu grows up he happens to falls for Raj and so the saga of love story begins.
Director Tabrez Khan says: “We wanted to show people the diversity that exist not only in cast, creed or religion but also in gender and how their rights are being compromised, even these people have right to fall in love”.
Obsessive love stories are not new or fancy things, and can always be traced within the sub-plots of many serials, but lately they have found more of an identity with serial makers converting them into full blown serials.