“Churails” were never so scary!
Zubaida was born in slums, she aims to become a boxing champion and was also in love with a boy but according to her father, all of her desires are immoral and he beats her up to get her on the right ‘pious’ path. But she rebels ferociously and leaves her house to spend her life according to her own will.
Zubaida is one of the characters of an online series “Churrails” that became a sensation recently. The series produced in Karachi portrays women as the most powerful characters who dare to challenge double standards, stereotypes, and gender discrimination against women in this society.
The series was created for an Indian online streaming website ‘Zee5’ and is comprised of 10 episodes.
The story revolves around 4 women hailing from different social backgrounds and instead of submitting themselves to their unfavorable exploitative circumstances; they decide to break the shackles. Together they founded a secret agency to spy on their dishonest husbands.
Pakistani drama serials have a large audience in South Asia, and a majority of them portray women as weak and sensitive creatures while in negative characters they are usually seen conspiring, making plots cunningly. Most of the stories revolve around family systems in which all the female characters are fighting to seek approval of one man and ultimately the one who is pious, forgiving, and compromising becomes the ideal of the audience.
Pakistani dramas are usually produced mostly for the female audience but it is a dilemma that nowhere we can see women being portrayed as empowered and strong entities.
Describing the traits of ideal women of our society, a women rights activist Sadaf Khan lists out traits such as obedience, patience, and ability to compromise as the basic qualities that supposedly make the powerful women of our society.
But drama serial Churrails has destroyed this stereotypical portrayal of women. Under the direction of Asim Abbas, we can see women smoking cigarettes, consuming alcohol, and not only that, but we also saw a woman killing her husband as he attempted to rape her daughter and later on suffered imprisonment.
Conservatives were infuriated over this series as they considered it against the values of Pakistani culture.
The writer of navigating Pakistani feminism Ayesha Sarwari says that if the story of a drama can cause any harm to society, it just proves how fragile those moral values are on which the society is standing.
According to Z5 officials, Pakistani authorities have pressurized them to ban this series. But other than that, some enlightened people have also been seen criticizing Churrails. As journalist Mehwish Ejaz says that although drama serial Churrails tend to challenge the system which is unfavorable for women the way it has been portrayed is a bit questionable.
Women activist Sadaf Khan suggests that we should create scripts keeping in view the real-time circumstances of Pakistani women and the changing dynamics of this society and the phase of empowerment through which our women are going should also be highlighted.
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