Mubarak Ho Beti Hui Hai is an ARY digital drama, of which 8 episodes have been aired. The drama deals with age old facade of preferring sons over daughters and treating women as if they have a role in selecting the gender of their baby. The issue is probably as old as mankind itself and recently, there has been so much awareness surrounding it that people are not very vocal anymore in showing their displeasure at the birth of female child. Nonetheless, there are still some socioeconomic classes where they perceive a male offspring as the guarantee of ultimate success and security in life. This drama deals with this dilemma in its ugliest form, which is kind of understandable because a certain amount of dramatization and exaggeration is required to keep viewers glued.
The plot, superficially is just about the hardships a woman faces when she gives birth ma to unwanted daughters and her sheer grit to do everything in her power to improve the their lifestyle. But, on a deeper inspection, you will see many subtle messages and ideas that keep you engrossed. Its about intensively cunning women, who are other women’s worst enemy. No man is able to destroy a woman until another woman aids him in doing so is the repeatedly emerging idea of this play. There are women who lie and steal and cheat to get their way and then their is this mother who not only struggles for the basic needs of her daughters but with her limited education and resources, fights tooth and nail for their self respect and dignity. There are spineless men like her husband and her own brother who lack any kind of ability to view situations through their own eyes and analyse them in their own minds. If our society is on a moral and ethical downfall, it is due to such men and this fact is depicted accurately in this play.
As far as acting is concerned, Sajid Hasan is phenomenal as the clueless, illiterate and opportunistic Sadiq whose mother has infused in him the faith that his eternal happiness lies in the birth of a male offspring. The full brunt of this mentality is borne by his first wife Naheed and his four daughters. At the birth of their fourth daughter, his mother marries him to his widowed sister in law who already has two sons with Sadiq’s late brother ; hence proved that she is hard wired to manufacture sons.
This marriage starts a series of hardships for Naheed and her daughters, one of which is the diagnosis that the youngest born had contracted polio because she was not immunised on time. The mistreatment that she faces at the hands of Sadiq and his wife forced Naheed to go to her brother’s place, where she is once again disappointed by the second responsible male figure in her life. His wife is even worse than Sadiq’s new wife and Naheed and his daughters are once again on the road with no destination in sight.
The lead protagonist Naheed is played by Saima Noor. Her acting and persona are sometimes too over the top but I’m so in love with this character, who despite facing so much agony due to her daughters, never once mistreats them. She never takes out her frustration on them and never makes them feel bad for coming into her life. Rather she treats her unwanted and unloved daughters as her very own princesses. So, no matter where Saima falls short in acting, the screen space given to her character is like the light of love among all other dark and evil characters. That makes her flawless in my eyes in this drama.
Sabreen Baloch and Naheed Shabbir are doing well in their despicable characters… you can’t decide whom to hate more. Ayesha Khan is Sadiq’s mom and she is showing signs of a guilty conscience at what she has done with Sadiq’s first wife.
The latest episode was full of tragedy as Naheed eventually realises that her brother is as useless to her as her husband and she can only count on herself in this world. But the next one made me hopeful of the arrival of karma in this play as Sadiq and Aleena’s first son is diagnosed as abnormal by doctor. How they take to this news and what other blows of karma are in store for them remains to be viewed.
Stay tuned and we will discuss it on next Wednesday again.
