Earlier this year, I watched, thanks to a prompt from my editor, all 58 episodes of Tere Bin over the course of a few days (I don’t sleep much, have no discipline or work ethic, forwarded a bunch of annoying parts, and may have had the theme ringing in my ears for several days). You may call me faarigh but I am dedicated to my cause (i.e. consuming popular culture). I have also read an inordinate amount of romance books in the past few months (see above, also why this column is horrifically late), and am currently writing a romance, so all of this is just to say that I am now overqualified to hold forth on love, even though I may be the least romantic person I know.
But as I watched Wahaj Ali* — and an artfully deployed background score — stir up chemistry using, in no random order, a cheese omelette, a shoe, many more shawls than the weather in Hyderabad could possibly call for, a blanket, and a hairbrush, all the while yearning for a physical relationship while lying on an extremely uncomfortable looking chaise; I thought about why is it that so much of our cultural output seems to focus on this idea that someone out there is yearning for you, all the time. Why is romance such a big part of our cultural output, even though we are a nation of cynicism, disappointed man and friendship breakup and Nach Punjaban memes, of toxic, lung-destroying air, of a country where people literally litigate against Valentine's Day? How can we still be hopeful?
I used to think that this is because we are a nation of yearning. We yearn for things to change. We quote the most achingly wistful Urdu poetry, grow up on a steady diet of inevitably tragic folk tales as our idea of romance, recognise ourselves in the mournful poetry recitations on late night radio, in the jokes about yearning and mashooqas in comedy routines and television sketches. We yearn for the power to come back on, the gas supply to last just five more minutes so that the chicken karahi can actually cook through, for the standby bucket to fill all the way to the top before the water inevitably runs out. We are a nation of cyber gham hour, as Zainab Mubashir writes: “The ‘gham hour’ is known to quietly descend upon you and coax out your deepest hurt and insecurities into the void of cyberspace without fear of reprisal. As it blankets your confessions within its invisible shroud, it offers protection from judgement. The means of expressing your sorrow can vary; you may unabashedly quote verses about heartbreak and healing, share songs that speak out your feelings, launch into threads of self-effacing monologues, or envelope your most morbid thoughts within humorous memes but this is something that even goes beyond gham hour.” Of course it isn’t surprising then that we gravitate towards romance, to heartbreak and healing. Even if it hasn’t happened to you, you know someone who has spent their life loving someone else, waiting for their parents to finally consent to a rishta, to create new goalposts. And even when there is some sort of path to dating — it is never enough — there are limits on how much time you can spend with someone, where you can go, how many people will see you, what you can do, how long you can talk for, and all you have left is acute longing.
There’s been a lot said about the revival of the romcom, the renewed appreciation for Seth Cohen/Adam Brody, the ‘kicking my feet and giggling’ feeling that watching Andrew Garfield and Amelia flirting on Chicken Shop Date evokes. I don’t think that we are more or less enamoured by the idea of romance than any other city/country/population; or that the romcom or the romance is in a state of ‘revival’ in Pakistan, that the obsession with television show couples — including this season’s Mustafa and Sharjeena — is a new phenomenon, because we have always produced romance, in every way or form, even when it didn’t feel like it.
But what sets us apart is what I think we’re craving — and what ultimately, seems to be the trick to success and viral fame and fan edits — which is the depiction of everyday intimacy - something which is glaringly missing from our public lives, from the humdrum of domesticity, from relationships around us, and even from the over-curated lives on display on the internet. It is the noticeable absence in the stilted ways we see couples bid farewell and hello at airports and at home; even long-married couples unable to greet each other affectionately at international arrivals, or offer comfort at a time of mourning. In all the #relationshipgoals and #hubby and #wifey ridiculousness on Instagram, there’s little to actually aspire to other than apparently turning into an immaculately dressed couple whose life seems to revolve around doing a standup routine about their perpetually baffled partners. There’s a reason that these visuals don't have staying power, that Instacouples are far more memorable for their acrimonious breakups than anything they do while they’re together. There is nothing romantic about the ‘…. ki dulhan’ bridal dupattas (frankly, that more parents are not stopping their children for being this wasteful is a real dereliction of duty here), but far more in Yumna making Wahaj* chai, or Mustafa trying to assuage Sharjeena’s fear of a rat in Kabhi Main Kabhi Tum.
When I think of romance in popular culture now, it is not larger-than-life stories —us-against-the-world scenarios, Anarkali walled up, Veer in a Pakistani prison, all permutations of Raj. It is in fact in the depictions of love in everyday, small gestures; the aesthetic of love depicted in virtually everything Indian jewellery designer Anu Merton does, Saira Yusuf’s internet breaking shoot with Shaharyar Munawar, Eman Suleman’s 2022 Zara Shahjahan shoot, Haider and Biba on the metro in Joyland; all evoking a level of intimacy that people keep trying to find in vintage images, in nostalgic photos of their parents, in the apparent joy of Samina Ahmed and Manzar Sehbai getting married, in the shawl draping of Wahaj Ali, in the entirely unscripted moment in which Virat Kohli quotes back a line from Band Baaja Baraat to Anushka Sharma in an interview, or Aditya telling Geet in Jab We Met that him liking her is not her problem*, in crumpled kurtas, in bare faces, even in the internet’s favourite painting**. Perhaps what we are craving is not romance per se, but gentleness, a thehrao that has gone by the wayside, that when we long for a golden era of Pakistani dramas, it is not about a different kind of love or better acting and writing and direction, but that there was a portrayal of love that was not defined by feuds and scheming cousins, that attraction and desire could be conveyed by something as simple as a white kurta (black kurta fangirls, move aside) or a shawl.
If we are in love with the aesthetic of love — of gentle gestures, of kindness, crumpled clothes and bare faces —if this is the content people want and crave and are obsessed with online and offline, then why is there not more of this? Perhaps there is a reason that fan edits focus on the most romantic moments, scrubbing the toxicity and seemingly ever-present marital rape storyline out, that allow all of us to live in a parallel reality in which everyone is starring in their own AP Dhillon-soundtracked romance in a lemon grove, and why television plays that do show domesticity and intimacy work so well. Surely this nation of yearning deserves better than having the worst parts of their life and family reflected back to them, sandwiched between a dozen ads. And perhaps, one day, all the fan edits will bleed into reality, to the acceptance of everyday romantic gestures in our daily lives, that one day we will treat the everyday aesthetic of love and care as not something from a vintage television show, as something rare and unusual and scripted, but as blissfully normal.
* you cannot make me type out the characters’ names, it is beyond me why a TV show would have two characters with such complicated names
**Salman Toor’s A Spring Night in Pakistan
Saba Imtiaz is currently writing the world’s most unrealistic romance.
