Perverted piya ki: Can Indian Television’s pehredaar please stand up?

Recently while flipping channels as I waited to tuck into my lunch, I had the joy of watching a few minutes of Ghulam on life OK only to hear the villain have a mental aside to the audience about how he was glad his wife was cowering in fright atop a cupboard. He hoped she would fall down and break her leg so that she would have to lie in their bed for a month atleast allowing him time to forcibly have sex with her. As I prevented myself from dropping the plate of yumminess I was holding I couldn’t help but gag a little. While the natural order of things is to progress and move forward, Indian television seems to have clearly missed that brief.

There has been a lot of furor recently about the upcoming show Pehredaar piya ki and its depiction of a marriage between an older woman and a young child of 10.

The promos were disturbing to say the least. Dressed suffocatingly in tradition, (and Aishwarya Rai’s dry-cleaned wardrobe from Jodha Akbar) a young woman steps out to celebrate Karvachauth only to reveal that the husband is actually a child. There is of course the legally obligatory disclaimer about they do not support child marriage, which is laughable given the content playing out on screen. If the first promo was shocking, the second one was kundan on the cake. The persistently overdressed dame, for a very very brief cool moment puts a gun in her ornate purse. But sadly, she can’t be badass bahu for long. In a scene that will give any sane person chills, her minor husband corrects her appearance by smearing sindoor on her forehead, marking her, labelling her his own, not knowing the depth of the relationship they share. She instead of grimacing, blinks back tears of gratitude for the sindoor on her forehead.  It’s amazing how our stories can be so perverted and yet so puritanical at the same time.

While the makers and the channel have met their purpose of having people discuss the show before its launch, watching the promos of this large-scale saga only reminded me of how often we have celebrated women in such unjust and often impossibly cruel relationships.

Star Plus had Gulaal several years ago, where under the custom of deeyarvattu a young widow marries her husband’s pre-teen brother and in the interest of all’s well that ends well, she falls in love with and they live possibly happily ever after.

There was also the immensely successful Bidaai where poor little fair girl Sadhna marries a mentally challenged Alekh to help her family out. She is more mother and caretaker than wife, but she remains loyal, never feeling the need for a normal relationship, or a midnight romp. Sandhya Mridul married a mentally challenged Varun Badola centuries ago in Koshish-ek Asha. Even the much celebrated Ballika Vadhu that highlighted the evils of child marriage, cruelly brushed Gehna’s marital rape under the carpet after a while. Gehna, one of the fierier members of the family, actually spoke up against the injustices of her marital home. But when the actor changed, the makers conveniently plastered tape on her mouth, and Gehna was reduced to a simpering side kick.

But back to perverted piya ki. If a woman is meant to be a bodyguard then why does she have to be a wife? If marriage vows were so holy and unbreakable, divorce lawyers would have starved. If they aren’t a couple in any sense of the word, why does she need to wear her mangalsutra like a medal and observe traditions like Karvachauth? Why couldn’t we have a show with a sassy, badass lady bodyguard who guards the prince’s life? Instead we have a woman whose life, loyalty and her libido have now all been chained by a mangalsutra to a child who is not even old enough to be her friend.

More disturbingly, what does this relationship mean for the child? How does he perceive this woman he is merrily applying sindoor on? I can’t help but imagine him being goaded on to ‘be a man’ and produce an heir a decade down the line. What if she then refuses to be the ‘wife’ in all senses of the word?  There is also the possibility that he will fall in love with someone younger or more compatible as he grows up, or horrifyingly not be interested in women at all. It’s also shocking how we have all been blinded by her fair skinned virtuosity into assuming that she will not abuse a minor boy and take advantage of her unique position.

While Indian traditions have always placed the responsibility of the husband’s life span on the wife by getting her to fast and worship, this show takes it one step further. By making her his bodyguard, she is literally and otherwise safeguarding his life and linking her own destiny to his for reasons she knows best. For too long we have celebrated women who choose celibate marriages over a chance at an actual relationship. Why does Indian television define true love as the absence of physical intimacy? Romance and friendship, or even taking things slow are all understandable but making a virtue out of sexless marriages is both dangerous and done to death.

Crores of rupees are pumped into shows, and thousands of people find employment in the television industry, but it’s amazing how after so many years of work, and so much criticism over regressive content by critics and concerned viewers, channels and production houses continue to churn out shows that revolve around the merits of marriage and its inevitability for women. While there is no doubt that people will watch this new show given its opulent visual quotient , it’s a shame when one thinks of what else could have been put on air in its place. Or maybe not.