DRAMA REVIEW
Diyar-e-Dil hits home by
stressing family values
D
espite a long trajectory of 30 plus episodes, Diyare-Dil is maintaining a strong hold on its audience,
surprising them with one dramatic turn after another.With one elopement, two forced marriages, and
– capping it all – the deaths of two main characters in
quick succession, this serial is fast cornering the market
in melodrama. Only a strong, well-planned story, coupled with some solid performances, could sustain such
a pace; writer Farhat Ishtiaq and director Haseeb Hasan
have provided us with exactly that.
From novel to drama:
The novel itself revolves around the relationship between cousins Faarah (Maya Ali) and Wali (Osman
Khalid Butt),
and apart from
their
grandfather, Agha
Jan
(Bakhtiyar
Khan)
and Faarah's
m o t h e r ,
Roohi
(Sanam Saeed),
most of the
other characters had only
an incidental
role to play in
the last fourteen episodes.
However, this
screenplay
combined with
some
great
performances
from a well-chosen cast has established them as essential players in this saga.The sudden death of sweet and
loving Sohaib (Ali Rehman Khan), who sacrifices everything for family, came as a disturbing shock for Diyar
e Dil fans and it’s a testament to Rehman’s skills that
the audience was moved enough to share their “grief”
across social media.
The story so far:
This intergenerational story begins when Behroze (Mikaal Zulfikar), the eldest son of wealthy zamindar Bakhtiyar Khan (Abid Ali) refuses to keep a childhood engage-
ment to his cousin Arjumand (Hareem Farooq). Instead
he chooses to elope with Roohi (Sanam Saeed), a girl he
fell in love with at college. Meanwhile Behroze’s younger
brother Sohaib (Ali Rehman Khan) is forced to marry Arjumand to prop up the family’s feelings of wounded honour.This opens up a deep rift in Bakhtiyar Khan’s family,
which by the end of episode 13 Behroze tries to mend by
doing exactly what he hated his father for: emotionally
blackmailing his daughter Faraah (Maya Ali) into marrying Sohaib’s son Wali (Osman Khalid Butt).Sohaib’s
sudden death sends Behroze into a storm of guilt and
grief and ultimately he too dies sad and disappointed
that he couldn’t get the support of his wife when he felt
he needed her
the most.This
other half of the
story opens with
two main protagonists dead,
a new marriage between
two strangers
and a highly
suspicious and
antagonistic
Roohi.
She
cannot find it in
her heart to forgive and forget,
blaming her inlaws for dividing her from her
husband in the
last moments of
his life and forcing her daughter into an unwanted marriage.
Closer to traditions, closer to audience:
As a story, Diyar-e-Dil covers very traditional grounds:
the honour and obedience we owe to our parents and
the importance of family. These values are deeply ingrained in our culture, something the writer never questions but reinforces with each turn.Before his rather
sudden death, Behroze is full of regret for disobeying
his father and tells his daughter that after Allah and his
Prophet (Pbuh), we owe our obedience to our parents.
This leaves little room for parents, like all human beings,
10 | BOOM