Emotional, over the top and heartfelt, family-oriented dramas are a regular staple of television in Pakistan today. Having one of the finest television industries in the world and producing top rank dramas, we take great pride in our family sagas, especially the ones that focus on the similarities of our own society, much thanks to the audiences’ appreciation of family values and unity. It won’t be incorrect to say that this is one of the major reasons why our television’s highest-rated drama series are based on familial issues, majorly the joint family system.
Coming to the massive hit that recently ended, Baby Baji. Now Baby Baji amassed a big viewership for itself, all thanks to its very relative content about a dysfunctional joint family held together by the elders of the house. Produced by Abdullah Seja under his production banner iDream Entertainment Baby Baji’s story revolved around the trials and tribulations faced by a joint family, and how it was the elders’ values of love, togetherness, and sacrifice that held the family together. Although the parents tried to instill the same values in their children, they somehow failed.
The Takeaways We Got From Baby Baji
Baby Baji was indeed a spectacular watch. Each actor did a wonderful job. People fell in love with the characters and the actors behind them. Fazal Hussain as Waleed, Sunita Marshall as Asma, Samina Ahmed as Baby Baji and not to forget the very toxic Azra played remarkably well by Javeria Saud. This doesn’t mean that the other actors didn’t do a good enough job, but these four actors nailed their characters to the T, making the audience love, cry and hate with them.
Story was amazing, performances were superb, acting and execution to the point along with the direction direction but what we as audience have loved most about Baby Baji is the fact that this drama stayed as close to reality as possible. Although initially we were miffed about the drama preaching joint family system as one of the best living styles in the society, one soon realized that this drama was not about praising a joint family but depicting how one ought to behave in one.
Mostly, it was about the younger and older generation’s equation with their parents and the ups and downs of this relationship. The drama ended on a sad note and some people might have found the ending without a closure, but that was the beauty of Baby Baji. Real life doesn’t always give you closure. Real life doesn’t always give you second chances. Real life doesn’t always allow you to apologize for your wrongdoings before people you have wronged pass away.
Did Baby Baji Impart The Right Lesson?
Partly perhaps. We think it is perfectly okay to stay in nuclear families. Parents or siblings could always be nearby with different set ups of their own, allowing privacy to each family and yet staying together. What we didn’t like about Baby Baji was the fact that the drama preached staying together in a joint family system as the ultimate ideal while demanding a separate home, away from the toxicity of a few relatives in the same house, as something to be looked down upon.
While Azra was toxic and demanded her own separate living space out loud by creating misunderstandings and rifts in the family, Farhat on the other hand was more poisonous by keeping everything in her own heart and polluting just the husband’s mind, even for his own mother. And the way these men got manipulated at the hands of their wives, the outcome was very pathetic. That perhaps was the only think the writer didn’t’ think before depicting.
Striking the Balance
It is indeed a man who maintains a balance in his life with his parents and his wife. Had the characters of Wasif and Jamal shown some backbone right from the start, Baby Baji wouldn’t have suffered at the hands of her daughter in laws, as she did. We know the situation was dramatized for the television affect, but it has become the case with many families and we would have preferred if the drama showed a more relative solution to the problem.
Baby Baji taught a valuable lesson about caring for one’s parents while they are alive, realizing their importance before its too late, and understanding the privacy and nature of members inside a joint family. There’s plenty to learn from Baby Baji, but for now we will take the backstage and admire the skills of all involved and let viewers make their own judgements.
