Airing from Mondays to Thursdays at 9.00 pm on ARY Digital, Dushman e Jaan stars Mohib Mirza, Tuba Siddiqui and Madiha Imam. It is surprisingly turning into a show that I’m happily watching, despite getting seriously tropey vibes from it in the beginning. Then I got Hum Aapke Dil Main Rehte Hain feels but the show’s actually got something original to it. I wish the marketing of it had been better though. The same problem was there with Ye Dil Mera which, in the beginning, seemed like it was justifying workplace harassment. But it later turned out to be nothing of the sort.
Dushman e Jaan is about two families, one rich and upper class while the other is poor and lower middle class. Mohib Mirza’s character, Hatim, belongs to the rich class. His mother, played by Saba Hameed, had never given him time when he was a child. She is really guilty about this. While on the other hand you have Ramsha and Rubab’s family. Their mother is no more and their father (Irfan Khoosat) gives tuitions to young children. Ramsha (Tooba Siddiqui) has been engaged to Zaheer for two years but they aren’t getting married because Ramsha is working to support her family. She has a brother who is a kidney patient.
While Dushman e Jaan seems straight out of a ’70s film with Nadeem and Shabnam, the show has some satisfying and empowering themes for its female protagonist. Ramsha isn’t exactly righteous or evil. She flipflops as we all do, as humans, during the course of our lives. She plans to blackmail Hatim initially but decides otherwise. She meets Hatim’s mother and the two have a heart-to-heart about the importance of parents. (Cringe – nothing better to melt rich peoples’ hearts than a righteous lecture from the underprivileged.) Tuba’s character is perhaps the most real of all the characters in the tv show.
Despite the cliches, there are plenty of great things about the tv show so far. It’s got some great performances (notably by Tuba Siddiqui) and the story will manage to grip you, regardless. Some of the sequences are unintentionally funny (Hatim lounging around and giving evil looks, Zaheer’s haplessness about his own marriage and Rubab’s deliberate sharmaana and Hatim’s super career oriented mother suddenly turning into a domestic goddess) but from what it looks like, the upcoming episodes have a lot of interesting twists and turns in store for the audiences. And yeah, I’m hooked!