Meray Paas Tum Ho: What a woman wants?
BY ALI NAQVI –
If it is not too early to say, drama serial Meray Pass Tum Ho is a rare masterpiece. A drama that takes us to the heart of human condition. The characters struggle to make sense of their own existence while invoking the most basic yet the ever puzzling question of philosophy; what is the meaning of life? Is there any?
Is life absurd and meaningless? Is it possible to cope with the conflict between the body and the mind? To make life worth living one has to reconcile the body with the mind. The reconciliation between the two may never come without a compromise, otherwise life is not worth living.
The character of Mehwish played by Ayeza Khan was caught between her family/husband and the impulse for material wealth and status. Danish, Humayun Saeed, on the other hand was stuck between his financial responsibilities and his conscience that stood in his way.
Written by Khalil-ur-Rehman Qamar, Meray Paas Tum Ho is not entertaining. It increasingly becomes a difficult watch as the story progresses. A tension that does not show keeps on mounting within us as well as the characters. The absurdity grows. The conflict becomes unbearable. Among many clashing themes and contradicting ideas what is most disturbing is the idea of love. The harder we try to fathom what love is the more elusive it becomes.
Meray Paas Tum Ho tackles the seemingly simple yet essentially complex themes. Themes of love, beauty, materialism and the moral dilemmas of a common man jolts our preconceived notions about everything we take for granted.
To understand the phenomenon of love one must understand its object first. Woman. She has always been the focus of poetry, music, painting or any other form of art and literature. Though man admires, adores, glorifies, praises and loves the woman with compassion yet his passions are not without the poisonous thorns of possession. Is it really necessary to possess a woman in order to love and adore her beauty? It is the possession that makes love a problem. The institution of marriage settles the issue of possession but the problem of love remains unsolved.
Danish’s life was meaningful because he thought that he was in possession of the most beautiful and loveable woman in the world. It is hard to keep the element of possession out of the equation whether it is a marriage or a love affair.
If love is all about possession then it comes crumbling down from the lofty romantic level to the grounds of the physical. Like it or not, we are all physical beings needing physical comfort and connection. Paradoxically the physicality originates not from the physical urges but from the pure emotional and psychological impulses making the whole affair more complex and beyond the reach of reasoning. As the name suggests Meray Paas Tum Ho, one of the simplest definition of love could be “a desperate effort to spend time with someone you care about.”
