The Whole Relationship Conundrum…Romance And Matchmaking To Boot

As I have said in my earlier post I am into Christmas movies now. You are supposed to enjoy the breezy happily ever after romances without employing your grey cells much. But my problem is I start analysing what I see after a point.

Broadly the plot of these movies revolves around the barren, boring lives of either of the lead pair finding solace in heaps of work post heartbreak or in the absence of/unsatisfactory love life or in case of a just not into romance kind of scenario. Then there’s a friend/sister/niece/business partner who acts cupid and suddenly the pair realises that they have found true love in each other. Operation Mistletoe follows this oft beaten track.

But Renovation Romance goes one step further. Reality Show co-hosts who are also lovers in real life help mend relationships of couples on the brink of falling apart unable to cope with the pressures of house renovations. Now who has heard of that?

While bringing such a couple together on a Christmas Special Episode the hosts realise they are no longer in love with each other. The movie ends with swapping of partners…well almost. Here the bickering couple says goodbye to each other and there you have the just-out-of-relationship man eagerly kissing the hostess of the Show professing forever love – all back to back. Now how long such a relationship is going to last I wonder !!

As much as I love Pakistani Serials, in a recent watch, an ordinary middle aged Professor is made to believe by his female colleague that he is in love with his much much younger student who is also the daughter of the city don. Socially, culturally and mentally there is no match between the two. The lady who is compelling the man to fall in love with a girl fit to be his daughter is actually in love with him. That’s how complicated the plot line of Main Manto Naheen Hun is.  Seriously…???

In the slow cooked Serial Biryani a boy of  rich feudal background falls in love with a self made middle class girl. He proposes to marry her while keeping the fact a secret that he is already married to his cousin who is five years older than him. Now comes the twist.

The cousin marriage is a sham because neither of them have been able to get over the sister-brother bonding. They are friends sharing secrets. The wife knows the husband is going astray and encourages him to do so because she too wants to be out of this unconsummated marriage or so it seems. In a bid to free her spouse of this suffocating togetherness she goes all out to coax the other woman in his life to accept and get married to her husband. Well…what do you call it ? Supreme sacrifice or a convenient connivance ?

The last but not the least is the playboy turned stalker harassing a medical student from an educated family of doctors in the name of again …. love. The poor rich boy hails from a dysfunctional family where parents behave like personal rivals. There’s a wise, loving, grounded grandmother too who keeps appearing on the screen to do her bit of moral policing but fails entirely. The entitled brat does not  know the value of money or relationship because he has been taught neither.

However, what’s bothering about the serial is that we know the girl, though at present resisting, will eventually fall for the bad ‘un. It’s quite apparent. The question is why ? She is beautiful, intelligent, educated and belongs to a loving family deeply rooted in values. She has nothing in common with the guy who has loads of money and faltu time to spend hours in front of her house. He burns down their new car  purchased with hard earned money in a fit of vengeance. Next you know he buys the same model out of turn with an exorbitant additional amount to reinforce his puppy love for her.

He is also instrumental in breaking up the girl’s elder sister’s engagement.  After all these fiascos the girl’s heart is going mushy mushy little by little over this scoundrel because women are intrinsically caring, loving, nurturing, self torturing and believing that they can actually transform a spoilt punk into a noble character. Isn’t it an insult to modern empowered womanhood ? Where is her celebrated cerebrum gone?

Meri Zindagi Hai Tu which literally means You Are My Life raises concern about the kind of man woman relationship the Serial envisages when an adult male confuses obsession for love and obstinacy for romance…

Go figure.