A few years ago, a show called Balika Vadhu highlighted the social evil of child marriage that is still prevalent in various parts of the country. The show was highly praised for its choice of subject and even though it lost its way in a few years, the good years of the show were considered historical by fans of Indian television.
But this happened 9 years ago and a lot has changed in those 9 years.
Now, we have a show about a 9-year-old boy marrying an adult woman. The makers will tell you that it’s a ‘progressive show’ but if this is what we call progressive, we are probably living in the wrong era.
Pehredaar Piya Ki has introduced us to some of the cringiest content ever seen on Indian television and if that wasn’t sufficient, the lead actress of the show, Tejaswi Prakash, just compared her show to HBO’s Game of Thrones.
After you’ve wiped that puzzled expression off your face, read ahead.
Tejaswi apparently believes that the same thing happened on Game of Thrones and nobody objected to it but when it happened on Pehredaar Piya Ki, everybody criticised it. She said:
“It also happened in Game Of Thrones… People love Game Of Thrones and if same thing happens in Pehredaar Piya Ki, then it’s an issue.”
Here, she must be referring to the wedding of Tommen Baratheon and Margaery Tyrell and as those who have seen the show will know that there marriage was not for love but only for Margaery’s desire to become the Queen. But honestly, there isn’t any comparison here.
Game of Thrones is loved all over the world for its intricate storyline that is full of twists, complex characters, picturesque locations and some marvelous writing. GoT is a show that has everything from incest to dragons and as well all know, their universe is anything but real.
On the other hand, Pehredaar Piya Ki is set in present times and claims itself to be a ‘unique love story’. This is not a show that is set in a fictional universe where the viewers aren’t aware of the rules or customs.
On this show, we are fed the regular TV tropes of bahus with ghunghat and rajwadon ka khandaan. But in the name of ‘kuch different dikhate hain’, we see a 9-year-old boy married to an adult woman and somehow the actor expects us to accept it just like GoT!?
Tejaswi also believes that this is a progressive show and we wonder what progressive really means in her dictionary. She said:
“I think it’s really progressive. But again, a lot of people believe in judging a book by its cover… They love being judgmental and people have nothing better to do than judging somebody else’s work. Then okay, what can I do?”
If the show was just being judged on the basis of its promos, we doubt it would have created this ruckus. This writer watched the show for a week to actually understand if there was some detail that everyone else was missing out on but found out that this book is exactly what the cover suggests.
Game of Thrones became a rage all over the world because of the content they made but we highly doubt that Pehredaar Piya Ki will reach that status someday.
H/T: Hindustan Times
