Tan Man Neel o Neel aired its last episode this week in which………everyone dies! It sounds both mainstream Bollywoodish and melodramatic, yes, but what is interesting is that this ending has seeped into reality so much so that the entire country is a bit short of words at this surprise no one knew the drama team had up its sleeves.
Pakistani drama endings, lately, have nosedived into so much carelessness that the audience hardly ever feels that poetic justice has been served. In most cases, after twenty-four to twenty-five episodes of brutal torture, the perpetrator encounters an accident in the twenty-sixth episode and the victims are forced to forgive them. It is both quick and dissatisfying, leaving one thinking why an otherwise meticulously handled serial ended so abruptly and with cosmic powers more at play than logic.
The writer-director duo of Mustafa Afridi and Saife Hassan, however, has always taken care to give us wholesome stuff to watch on Pakistan television, and with Tan Man Neel o Neel, the team has upped its game to a level unsurpassable, at least for now.
A colouful drama serial, Tan Man Neel o Neel opened with multiple issues, both contemporary and centuries-old. From looks askance at people who want to be dancers and the hurdles of vlogging in a young girl’s life to sexual abuse faced by young boys, the drama had much to offer but with an on-screen look so bright so as not to let the audience fall completely into depression at getting to have such a heavy dose of social issues.
The serial continued to address these issues for ten episodes, and then, without dragging the story and without losing even a single of its viewers, it came to an end with the 11th episode – with, as stated earlier, everyone dying!
The episode’s ending credits then show the photos of all those people who have lost their lives as a result of false blasphemy accusations in Pakistan emerging as something even more unpredictable than the story’s ending
These multiple deaths, however, do not result from the characters shooting each other out of jealousy or unrequited love, as one is inclined to think when told about such an ending of a story. They are but a consequence of mob violence. A group of people with their blood seemingly boiling at a dance performance which they want to present as a heresy, enter a nicely planned event and launch a mob attack.
What is important to note here is the brave representation of how Pakistanis exploit and have been exploiting religion to suit their own purposes. The leader of the mob attack admires the girl who happens to be on the organising team of the event and who is also in love with one of the dancers. To inveigle the locality into believing that the dancer is a blasphemer, he refers to a video of his, shot at an abandoned and decrepit Sikh building, and accuses him of dancing in a mosque, only because the architecture of the building looks like that of a mosque. This fabrication to use religion for personal motives is what stands out in this scene, and the ensuing attack in which everyone, including the leader’s own father, loses their life. The fact that he is not able to save his father from his own team is an intelligent depiction of what happens when things are mulled over not with intelligence but with unbridled emotion only.
Moreover, the idea of “violence begets violence” or “blood begets blood” comes to the fore as an added theme. The drama not concluding on a positive note or on the entire locality being able to save itself from the mob attack is what renders the ending not only real but real in a thought-provoking manner. We do not get to see a hero and his friend unrealistically and ideally fighting the mob, but dying, something which has been happening, happens, and will continue to happen if Pakistan’s mob mentalities are not looked into. A striking sub-scene is that of the girl’s dupatta falling from a balcony of the house in which a part of the mob enters, which undoubtedly might have led many to believe that the girl’s honour has been put at stake. This is something we cannot say could not have happened, for rapes in the name of religion have been a thing ever since the inception of Pakistan and India.
The questions that the viewers are made to ponder upon are: 1. What does the villain get? He loses a parent. He loses the girl he always wanted. Even if we assume that she is only raped and not killed, it’s a loss for her conservative lover, the likes of whom exist at large in our patriarchal society. 2. What does violence result in? It results in added, unplanned, and uncontrollable violence.
The episode’s ending credits then show the photos of all those people who have lost their lives as a result of false blasphemy accusations in Pakistan, emerging as something even more unpredictable than the story’s ending. It seems as if the entire team, including the producer, writer, director, and actors have put their lives at stake to give out the message that Pakistanis’ fanaticism needs to be looked into lest we may lose more lives.
Kudos to the team of Tan Man Neel o Neel for initiating this endeavour of calling out untrue blasphemy accusations and mob mentality, the repercussions of which the country is witnessing at large. “Extremist” is a term we haven’t procured out of nothing, but following our rigid attitudes.