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A sacrificial lamb
Some people are meant to serve as sacrificial lambs. Their sole, practical purpose in life is to be a ritual sacrifice towards the fulfilment of the wishes of another. Gulrez too is such a character in the show "Mohabbat, Tumse Nafrat Hai" (Love, I hate you). Right from the moment we were first introduced to him five episodes ago, he has been presented as someone who is aware of an intense love for our heroine, Maheen. We do not know why he feels so drawn to her. So far, she has been revealed as a superficial, attention-loving, somewhat spoilt person who is also a trifle bossy to those around her. While entitled, however, she is never shown to be unkind to those around her. In short, we as audience members can root for her with ease. although her forced spunkiness is starting to wear me out already.
Gulrez, as I indicated, is shown to be hopelessly in love with her. He is a mild-mannered, guileless young man with little experience of the world. He seems devoted to his ancient jalopy to a self-damaging degree (evidenced by the amount of hard-earned money he is willing to spend on the said jalopy's repairs). No scene has been shown so far in the show which spells out the exact reasons for such passionate feelings in Gulrez for either Maheen or his car. Through his devotion to his car, I think, the makers meant to show to us his passionate, devoted nature which is otherwise well concealed behind his shy, calm facade. As he is willing to bear all costs for "Foxy" (his tired automobile), so too will be the case with Maheen, we seem to have been warned. While I was initially seeking some rational basis for such passion in Gulrez (for Maheen), I now realize that in such instances, rationality is quite besides the point. Our deepest feelings can often be without real reason or rationale. Mere slights can cause us lasting pain while the most abject of cruelties can leave us unscathed. Similarly, with love. The briefest of moments can ignite in a person a fiery passion or longing that is without any parallel. Some such stray moment may have lit the divine spark of love in Gulrez although this is something we might never know.
Maheen is, as yet, unaware of the depth of Gulrez's feelings. Had that been the case, I think, she would have been more careful with him. Her flippant manner so far suggests that Maheen is still unaware of love, longing, pain, and how these emotions can shatter some fragile souls like Gulrez is thought to be. His sister, on the other hand, seems aware of both the frailty of her own sibling, as well as the pain of unrequited love and its unending longing. Maybe she too had experienced it although her husband's words in today's episode suggest that the love between them was swift, practical and accessible to both partners. Possibly there was another love in her past before her husband that she still feels shackled to against her wishes? Or, quite possibly, she is fearful for her delicate, unsullied brother like a watchful parent is for their young child as he starts to step out into the world, unaware of its frequent cruelties and ability to mercilessly crush the delicate? Being deeply bound to Gulrez may also have lent his sister a sense of foreboding about his future pain. The scene in the mausoleum of a celebrated priest where she is shown praying and crying for her brother's sake suggests that she might have become aware of something ominous in her beloved Gulrez's future. Clearly, the makers have made all efforts to make us aware of the sad end that awaits our lovelorn Gulrez. If ever there was a character that could rightfully say "Love, I hate you", it is Gulrez! I therefore, wish that he was in the centre of the title visual instead of Maheen because clearly, the one who will be martyred for love will be Gulrez, not the other two characters for whom awaits (I think) a delayed but blissful, earthy love.
Unlike Gulrez's inexplicable self-awareness, both Maheen and Waqar are clueless about their deeper selves and their yearnings. I believe that as the series progresses, these two will find their inner selves whittled by time and various experiences to the point that they start to look like mirrored halves that belong together. As they become aware of their need to be with each other, they will also become cognizant of the pain that will be Gulrez's share because, I think, the real tragedy for Gulrez (that will send him down the path of self-annihilation) will not be the fact that Maheen cannot return his affections. His doom will lie in the realization that no one on this earth can complete him. He will, I think, realize that he is one of the few that the god's rendered incomplete, unlike Maheen and Waqar, who are two halves of the same whole. Therefore, Gulrez will have to contend with a relentless, unaltered feeling of emptiness that will, I think, slowly detach him from the very world that he is currently so fervently drawn to. Death, of course, will be his final, merciful release from this unfulfilling existence, as is the case for sacrificial lambs that are brought into this world solely to be vehicles for someone else's prayers and desires. Their blood, body and souls are in service of other, often lesser, beings who use them to please the gods into fulfilling their deepest desires. The desires of the ritual sacrifices, of course, remain unacknowledged and unfulfilled. Gulrez too, appears to be such a sacrifice at the altar of Maheen and Waqar's love. After an unfulfilled existence whose sole purpose, it seems, was to make Maheen and Waqar aware of their love for each other, he will seek a swift exit from this world for himself as well as an earthly union for Maheen and Waqar. HIs pain, I think, will be the vital ingredient that will appease the gods into acquiescing to his friends' togetherness.
Most of what I have said above is based on my stringing together of promotional clips and the five episodes that have aired so far using an admittedly overactive imagination. I have in this write uppresented that story. It remains to be seen whether the story I have outlined is, indeed, the one the writers want told.
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