Daily Times

‘Sabaat’ was a TV Show that was televised by Hum Tv from 29th March 2020 to 25th October 2020.

The drama explores the lives of people with different personalities, and how the difference in their personalities affects their lives.

According to the writer, the word “Sabaat” means “permanence”, that which stays forever. And perhaps that’s what the show displays, that not everything is meant to stay forever, and that change is a part of life. It’s never easy but change always grows us, in ways which we never expect.

The drama reflects the life of four principle characters Miraal Farid, Hasan Farid, Anaya Aziz and Dr. Haris. The drama started off showing the life of the lead character Miraal Farid who is a spoilt brat and the daughter of a Bussiness Tycoon.

The drama shows how this character’s difficult and stubborn personality becomes a problem not only for her family but also for herself eventually.

Miraal is a woman who is brought up in a manner that she doesn’t have the habit of hearing any refusal. It seems that her father Seth Farid has the responsibility of the way she leads her life, as he fulfils even the smallest wish of hers. Mr. Farid is a loving and devoted father, but his love for his daughter ends up being the biggest problem of her life. In contrast, Miraal’s mother belongs to a more realistic thinking, that Miraal should have a habit of hearing a “no” as practically life will not always be according to her wishes and the slightest discomfort will disturb her greatly. But Mr. Farid believes that all the things he struggled for during his life, should be easily available for his children, without realizing that they can end up becoming monsters.

Miraal is the owner of a very complex personality. She thinks things done the way she wants is the only right way. She’s stuck in a box of her own ideologies and believes anything foreign to her ideas is completely wrong. Being the proud daughter of a bussiness tycoon, she believes anyone from a different background is below her, she suffers from grandiosity.

Not only this, but as everyone considers only her opinion to be the best she has developed a controlling nature and a never-ending habit of interfering in the lives of her loved ones. For instance, she is completely against her brother, Hasan being interested in and marrying Anaya, solely because she belongs to a different background.

At different occasions she ignores the advice of her grandmother and mother, who try to change her mindset of letting matters be the way they are, without her interference. She only listens to her father, that too because he let’s her have her way out, out of almost everything.

A highly flawed character who doesn’t take the opinion of anyone, Miraal’s life takes a new turn when her grandmother passes away after she has an argument with her, and Miraal reflects on the teachings of life given to her by her grandmother.

As she begins to have hallucinations of her grandmother, she meets a Psychiatrist, Dr. Haris, to seek help, upon the advice of her friend. Dr. Haris, a man who belongs to a broken family and finds peace in bringing others a peace of mind, finds Miraal’s case an interesting one.

His sessions with Miraal solves her problem of having hallucinations of her grandmother, as she stops having them.

As time goes by, Dr. Haris realises he has developed feelings for Miraal, and he behaves professionally and refers her case to other psychiatrists.

After sometime, we see him getting down on one knee,proposing Miraal, and despite knowing how difficult she is, they get married.

Due to her difficult nature, we see Miraal ruining her brother’s life as she does not accept Anaya as her sister-in-law. First she brings him to a point where he leaves his own house, then she makes sure that Anaya is out of his life.

Not only this, we see how Miraal is on the verge of completely destroying her own life when she sees her husband Dr. Haris carrying out his duties as a Psychiatrist and counselling a patient, who is a female.

She gets insecure and asks him to leave his profession or else she’ll leave him, which is one of the strangest things she does with her own life. She feels he’ll end up cheating on her, however he’s eventually proven to be very loyal and caring. Due to this, she asks him to divorce her. He doesn’t because he’s sincere with her and finds it absolutely absurd to divorce her on such a petty matter. He also finds it foolish to do so, because he is a mature and stable person who believes that relationships can not be broken so easily. The story takes an important turn in the last episode, when Miraal has a terrible car accident and is presumed to be paralyzed. And after the accident, her ex-fiance, Ali, who she was planning to return to after her divorce from Dr. Haris, leaves her being paralyzed and escapes from the whole situation.

It is only then, when Miraal realizes how she has made her loved ones’ lives a misery and how she had almost ruined her own life too. Some sort of wisdom is achieved by Miraal after her accident and she seeks forgiveness from those she hurt, including her sister-in-law who she hated so much, Anaya.

Not only this, she also realizes how Dr. Haris stood by her even in the toughest situation, while her ex-fiance, Ali, deserted her. She’s very embarrassed and ashamed for earlier abandoning him, in foolishness and immaturity. At the end of the drama, the eventual change in Miraal’s character reminds us of the line from the OST, “Bhut Jo Khud Tarashe Thy, Ban Gaye Khuda Hain Sub, Inko Zair Karna Hai, Ab Inhen Girana Hai.”

Sarah Khan has taken the audience by surprise with her flawless performance! After seeing her crying behind innocent characters, we finally see her as the complex and vicious Miraal Farid. I’d say she’s done an award-winning performance!

On the other hand, the audience is introduced to the other female lead, Anaya Aziz. She’s the daughter of a simple yet hardworking man and we see how her family is a strongly bonded family, a family of values, whose respect and dignity are very important to.

Anaya is shown to be a very strong and independent woman with morals and a woman who has a very clear thinking about life.

A character who knows how to balance her self-respect, family values and ethics very properly.

Since the very first episode, we see how she does not put her foot down and how she believes in equality in all regards.

She respects her elders and peers and also tries to defend herself, if a finger is pointed unjustly towards her.

A strong character who grows to be an independent lady, and even after Hasan abandons her, she painfully withstands the death of her father, gives birth to their child and supports her family by doing a job.

Anaya is a woman who values her self-esteem like we all should, and is against the belief of being dependent on someone else for her needs.

One of the proofs of Anaya’s strong personality is that her ideas and thinking process inspires her class fellow, her later husband, Hasan Farid.

People like Anaya are a living proof, that strong parents give birth to strong children. Strong children, whom Allah gives the strength to endure any kind of adversity. They are a proof, that parents who focus on the upbringing of their children, are never let down and their children can be role models of strength and grace for the society. Mawra Hussain, has impressed the audience, by portraying every emotion beautifully.

Talking about the the Male leads of the show, starting with Hasan Farid, we see a transformation that we don’t see very often in our everyday lives.

Hasan being the son of a huge business icon, is a spoilt brat like his sister in the beginning of the show.

The change in his personality takes place when he comes 2nd, instead of 1st, the place which Anaya wins, and I suppose, for the first time in his life, he experiences defeat.

After having an argument with Anaya, he spends time dwelling on the things she says to him to keep him in his place. In the beginning he tries to give an answer to her, and then realizes how he has never seen a girl as strong as Anaya. He gets impressed from her personality and plans to marry her.

Like Anaya, Hasan is shown to be a man who values his self-esteem, and when he realizes that his sister, who is supported by their father, will makes his and his wife’s life miserable, he leaves the house and standing on his own two feet supports his wife. We see another spurt of growth in Hasan’s character, as we see how his character develops when he being a pampered child, has to go out in the world all by himself and earn for his living. He prefers to move away from the protective yet suffocating wing of his family and work like a common man rather than like the son of a huge personality. Anaya being the strong lady she is, stands by him through thick and thin, never leaving his side.

No human is perfect, and here’s where we see how Hasan, being under the strong influence of his friend Atif, ends up suspecting his wife of cheating him and abandons her. Here’s the weakness of his character, which the audience witnesses, that instead of trusting his wife, he trusts his friend. But it cannot be ignored that his ears are fed day and night by the misconception that women who progress in their professional life are cheating their husbands, so having said that he was partially to be blamed for abandoning Anaya, but not fully.

Ameen Gilani, who may be new to the acting field, has portrayed the character of Hasan Farid very well, and seeing his acting skills, it doesn’t even seem like he’s new to the field.

Finally coming to Dr Haris’s character. Played by the very talented Usman Mukhtar, who managed to get a huge audience to his earlier debut serial “Anaa”, was the character everyone looked forward to. One of the reasons everyone looked forward to his character was, because the audience had seen Miraal create trouble everywhere she went, and the audience really wanted a character that could transform Miraal for the better.

Being an experienced Psychiatrist, Dr Haris, deals with Miraal very patiently and tries to make her think of the reasons that she has hallucinations of her grandmother. He also makes her look to the bright side of life and after having some sessions with her, she finally gets rid of her grandmother’s hallucinations.

When he realizes that he is developing an interest in her, he refers her to other psychiatrists, as a professional person would do. Later, he proposes to her and marries her. At some point in the show, his character seemed useless to the audience as they felt he was not able to change Miraal.

But after watching the last episode, people’s opinion changed. And the audience realized how wrong they were.

It is evident that the accident was an important turning point of Miraal’s life and a blessing in disguise as it makes her realize of her faults and the pain which she had caused to her loved ones. Hence this proves that some people in our lives are so difficult that the change in their behaviour can be brought about only by the Almighty, who deals with everything anyways in our lives. We see how Dr. Haris stands by Miraal through thick and thin. He tolerates all her tantrums and is not ready to give up on her.

In the times which we live in, people normally do not stand by the people they love and desert them when matters go out of hand. Dr. Haris seems to be a man with a mindset of the olden days, where a popular saying comes to one’s mind, that once when an elderly couple was asked, “How did you manage to stay together for 65 years?” To which the couple replied, “We were born in a time when if something was broken, we would fix it, not throw it away..”.

Dr. Haris’s character is eventually proven to be a very patient and wise character. People who thought he was too simple to give up on a woman as messed up as Miraal, are proven wrong as he proves to be one of those who would stay by one’s side till the end.

His character delivered powerful dialogues when he says, “Relationships are not like a business, that if the business is not doing well, one closes it down.”

He also says that, “The ones who come in this world cannot be killed by death. Death is just a transition that transfers us from this world to the next. The next world is a place where we get reward or punishment for our doings in this world. The lowest person of this world can be at the highest point in the next world. It all depends on what deeds we write in our diary. The next world is our destination and will never be old, it is permanent unlike this one which is temporary.”

All in all, this drama is a blockbuster one. Be it the performances of the entire cast, the script, the direction, the music, everything! Sabaat has taught us many lessons and it will remain an essential and thought-provoking show for the future. It has very delicately covered human emotions and the strength of human relationships, tested multiple times.

Sabaat also sheds light on the fact that only Allah is perfect, and only He is in control of our lives. Our lives’ matters are beyond our control and understanding, only Allah knows what is right for us and what should be removed from our lives. We humans often feel helpless when we cannot comprehend the blessing in disguise. The tough times in our lives mould us and cause our growth so that we become stronger. Eventually even Miraal appreciates the existence of Allah after her accident, when she realizes that after controlling the matters of her life and other’s lives, that one accident was something which was not in her plan and way beyond her control, leaving her paralyzed at that time. It’s very true the way Dr. Haris says, “The fight and struggle in this life never ends…only the wars change.”

Shahzad Kashmiri, the director, who always makes shows with multiple moral lessons. Much to everyone’s surprise, Kashif Anwar who plays the character of the villain Yasir Qureshi, along with nailing the evil character, he has penned a very powerful show, which will be remembered for a long time. Ali Sethi as usual has sung a great song on the composition and lyrics of Naveed Nashad and Kashif Anwar, respectively.

Many Congratulations to the entire team on the success of this blockbuster!

The writer is a student and a published author. She tweets at @moosa_11 and can be reached at haneenmoosa@gmail.com