When I had initially started drafting this essay way back in January of 2022, it was the first semi-academic piece of writing I had started in months. I intended to write about hyperrealism, consumerism, and how popular entertainment forces people to ‘create a time outside of their quotidian experience’.
You see, I am a grad student and consume fiction by vocation. It’s one of those things academics do to valorise our perpetual destitution.
But had you told me, pre-plague, that I would not only watch a Hindi daily soap but that it would be therapeutic to me, I would have laughed at the absurdity of it all and for a good reason.
In recent years, Star Plus, India’s top-rated GEC, has aired shows like Nazar — a show revolving around a Dayan and her offsprings, produced by 4 Lions Films headed by Gul Khan. It is currently airing Banni Chow Home Delivery at 9:00 pm IST — a love story between a mentally disabled man with the mental age of a child and a neurotypical adult.
Why am I even here? To be quite honest, I started watching Hindi serials during the lockdown. I was also stuck in a highly coercive, manipulative, and harmful dynamic in the lockdown. My emotional consent was being constantly violated, and I had stopped functioning intellectually.
Serials gave me a nostalgic, absurdist sort of escape. Of coming home from school and seeing my mother in her ink blue chiffon sari. Of feeling the soft monsoon winds caress my tresses as Tere Ishq Mein weaves through the roof.
Abuse and trauma brought about such a strong bout of self-aversion in me that I’d have preferred to forget my name, let alone theorise upon whatever I was supposed to do in Grad School.
Enter Aryan Singh Rathore, Imlie, Episode 310. Imlie— produced by 4 Lions Films— was a serial I consciously avoided as much as I tried to avoid the plague itself. You see, my self-hatred did not involve the constant need to re-traumatise myself.
Played by the prodigious Sumbul Touqeer of Article 14 -fame, the titular character Imlie transverses through the social stigma of illegitimacy, ostracisation, and forced marriage to a much older, urbane journalist (played by Gashmeer Mahajani), who then employs her as an unpaid maid all the whilst marrying her estranged half-sister without divorcing her, in her very short life!
Aryan Singh Rathore, played by Fahmaan Khan, enters her life as her boss who pushes her to focus on her career and break the cycle of emotional abuse perpetuated by her now-estranged husband. Who accuses them of sleeping together almost as much as he breathes.
Aryan-Imlie’s— Arylie’s— relationship hinges upon a common, albeit toxic, trope of romantic genre; that of the boss-employee. It is, on paper, aggravated by Aryan being a hypermasculine archetype. He’s tall, suave, rich, can fight, and exudes authority in whichever rooms he enters. Lo and behold, the dude also has unresolved trauma that involves Imlie’s now ex-husband. He could really do with some therapy.
Even as Aryan embodies all the tropes of toxic machismo of the typical romantic hero, he annihilates all of them with his feminism. He is starkly aware of the power imbalance of the dynamic. He shuts up whatever attraction he feels for Imlie both (sub)consciously and verbally. He has uttered “hum dost nahi hai, Imlie!” more than he’s proclaimed his love on the show. He lets her dress him down and argue with him despite being her boss/fiance/husband. He values her consent at every step of the way. Aryan Singh Rathore and Imlie represent such a trustworthy relationship that an alleged rape perpetrated on Imlie doesn’t bring any distance, stigmatisation or shame between them.
Aryan Singh Rathore is a cultural reset in a medium so mercenary that it refuses to ever disturb the status quo with respect to gender, caste, or religion. It is not to say that this particular story does not impinge upon the formulaic hyperreal tropes of the daily soap; it has its fair share of camp and the ridiculous, which make it entertaining. In a medium so wary of change and based upon addictive consumption, Aryan Singh Rathore is a breath of fresh air wherein Khan excels in expressing so much through stoicism.
Seeing Aryan selflessly love Imlie even as she regressed and progressed to break the cycle of abuse gave me hope in a time when I was trying to gather any semblance of sanity for myself.
Aryan is flawed as we all are; whenever he regresses and whenever his walk does not match his talk, he recognises his folly, accepts it, and rectifies it. How easy it is for romance to turn masculine trauma into masculine rage and for the heroine to be reduced into a vessel for such anger à la the Kabir Singhs, Ranjhanaas, and Arnav Singh Raizadas of the world? Aryan’s few acts of selfishness are met with Imlie’s equally enduring opposition as well as true self-negation on his part.
In Aryan, Imlie grows and heals. In Aryan, Imlie learns to recognise gaslighting; to demand better from herself and for herself — and so do the billions of women who watch the show. Who might just be faceless, mindless piggybanks for the producers and Star Plus.
4 Lions Films supposedly intends to wrap up Aryan and Imlie’s story without any happiness or togetherness for them. The message almost seems to be ‘sucks to be divorced and fall in love, poor you.’ The show will suffer from the loss of any modicum of progressiveness it might have had and two brilliant actors.
Back to the stories of witches in a country where women still get lynched for alleged witchcraft, then!
But, in Aryan, I could heal. But seeing Aryan and Imlie move on from their trauma and play Holi, compelled me to go out and celebrate the festival. Aryan Singh Rathore and Imlie are irreplaceable.