Disturbing but trending TV shows

So I was passing by my drawing room the other day and saw my Mother in law sitting straight up with complete concentration on what is happening on our TV. So I stopped to see what was going on. On the TV was some Bengali show wherein the entire household is standing in a round table conference and giving earful to the young lady who is supposed to be the Daughter in law of the house because she has decided to take up a career for herself.

2 things here that caught my eye!

1. A career for a daughter in law!!!!!!!!! What blasphemy!!!! How dare she want to have an identity of her own! She should be hung till death happens or she changes her mind about her career!
2. Everyone lives in a joint family – the protagonist, his wife, his parents, all his paternal uncles their wives and their children, the protagonist’s grandparents, all his brothers and their wives & children, his unmarried sisters, protagonist’s father’s sisters, and the protagonist’s one time love interest – who has no business living in the same house.

WHY???? Dear Producers of the Indian TV show…. WHY????

As my MIL is not much into Hindi TV shows, I do not get to know what’s happening there, but since Bengali channels are on in the house from morning to evening, I fairly know what’s happening in which show!

Our lunch time is filled with a show wherein the man has lost his memory and is found by a family whose first decision is to get their daughter married off to this guy with amnesia. No one wants to know whether this guy was previously married or not!  And guess who has taken up the job of a nurse in the same house?? The amnesia man’s estranged wife who somehow cannot tell anyone that the man is her husband!

Again… few things which I found way too weird not to think about

1. What if this guy is a murderer or a rapist?
2. What if he has some terminal or contagious disease?
3. What if he already has a wife and 10 children?

What is absolutely horrific is that in these shows, these leading ladies or the good bahus bring upon the misery on to themselves most of the time! Most shows no matter on which channel they are depicts the leading lady as a masochist.

They take the ‘Good will win over Evil’ funda and stretch it like a chewing gum so all you can see episode after episode that the good woman is being tortured emotionally and physically and she tolerates it all in the name of keeping the family together or respecting the elders because one day (when the producers decide) she will have victory!

On one hand people are fighting for women’s rights and gender equality and on the other hand channels are showing concepts which approve of misogyny and literally urge women to become spineless masochists.

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