The Making Up That Was Beautiful Enough to Forget the Rage
When Malika and Raza finally come together after the painful distance between them, it was a catharsis of emotions, where the world around them seemed to melt away and all that mattered was the two of them, in a perfect universe – the normal a person is drawn to after their world is miserably shattered.
Regardless of how temporary or brittle that normal is – the feeling of intense love, the awareness that I mean everything to this person beside me, that he will pluck the flowers from heaven and climb the tallest mountains for me, that feeling is what Malika and perhaps Raza too, crave desperately when they’re apart.
The hospital scene and the one after that brought all these emotions between Raza and Malika to the forefront. So much so, that we desperately wanted to believe in the happily ever after… just as much as them. And one must applaud the actors and the team for executing emotions, dialogues, expression and frames in the scenes that made us feel exactly the way Malika and Raza feel for each other at that moment in time, yet, we also step back and take a long, hard, look at them, knowing deep down inside that no matter what, this happy momentum, this coming together, a beautifully intangible make-up moment is unfortunately, not destined to last.
And this is why, it is essential for victims of domestic abuse – victims of verbal and emotional abuse, to take in Pamaal in its entirety, not just this scene, but the ones that preceded it and the ones that follow it.
Raza’s ego battle, his unhinged rage, yet his helplessness and sorrow at being separated from Malika, is exactly the kind of depiction we see in real life people we’ve known or seen. So is Malika’s torture at being abandoned, and so is the make-up moment. The way Malika held on to Raza at the hospital, the way they both cried, the way he apologized to her at home, is exactly the kind of feel-good moment couples like them crave.
Add to that, the mantra we are fed at home, regurgitated by Malika’s mother Gaitee – that men need time, men must be obeyed, men must be shown their worth, and patience will win a girl everything in life… eventually, is not just a character serving dialogues, but a society speaking through that character to most young girls of marriageable age, or in the throes of a difficult marriage, that their partner will come around, all will be well, if they just give their relationship some time and perhaps (what no one says out loud) the best years of their life.
Perhaps Malika’s later life voiceover will deliver the same realisation, perhaps we have to tread her story to understand how a woman is transformed from a light-hearted, romantic, life-embracing creature to a fearful, walking on egg shells, perpetually unnerved being who has no clue when her husband will flip the switch and slip into the raging avatar that emerges, almost like the Hulk – one moment there, the next moment gone.
How do women like Malika step out of this relationship cage – of habit, of experiencing a perpetual cycle of rage and making up, intense love and intense anger, to spend their entire lives second guessing how, when or well will their partner react and to exactly what?
When will the rage pass and the feel-good moments replace the anger to give her exactly what she craved for, exactly why she said yes to the man, exactly why the momentary yet exceptionally high dopamine love hit makes it all worth hit?
Or does it really? Is it all worth it?
A question to ask many young women who tread Malika’s life off the screen and have a Raza to bring them flowers.
Pamaal is a Multiverse Entertainment production, written by Zanjabeel Asim and directed by Khizer Idrees, with Tehreem Chaudhary serving as producer. The cast includes Saba Qamar, Usman Mukhtar, Haris Waheed, Salma Asim, Adnan Jaffar, Faiza Gillani, Naima Khan, Shahnawaz Zaidi, and Fatiq.
