Series title: Dhoop Ki Deewar
Cast: Samina Ahmed, Ahad Raza Mir, Savera Nadeem, Sajal Aly, Manzar Sehbai and Samiya Mumtaz
Director: Haseeb Hassan
Platform: Zee5
Rating: 3/5
Dhoop Ki Deewar is a refreshingly unexpected tale of peace and love between people of two warring nations – India and Pakistan.
As you dig into the first episode of this Umera Ahmed written series, you start assuming it to be a typical India versus Pakistan story, especially as the very first scenes you are introduced to two families; the Ali’s from Lahore and the Malhotra’s from Amritsar who are deeply invested in an India versus Pakistan cricket match, but what unfolds is an emotional family drama.
After the cricket matches ends, while one family is celebrating the win the other is frustrated with their team losing, they are both about to share a common grief.
News comes that the men of the house from both families, have died at the border during cross border fighting.
This is where full credit goes to Umera on the writing, who has ensured each character is carefully etched out, and we the audience get to feel the pain, the grief and the emotions of not just the children Sara [Sajal Aly] and Vishal [Ahad Raza Mir] the main protagonists of the series, but also from the grandparents and the wives perspectives.
Each character comes with their own challenges, with the elders about property and who should now look after them, to the wives, who have a life of loneliness, nothing but the memories of their spouses to live by and not to mention the bureaucracy and paperwork in getting their dues and rights on becoming the wife of a martyred army man and this is what makes the series a good watch. Thus, giving us a real insight into the casualties of war, who are not just the soldiers but the entire family, who have to live with the tragedy for the rest of their lives.
But the series gives us hope in that people divided by war can be united in grief and this helps the story develop through Sara and Vishal, who after a warring exchange on social media due to their shared grief develop their world of love. It is of course forbidden love, but not the Romeo Juliet kind, more of the current era of social media kind.
Sajal and Ahad are very well cast and deliver endearing performances. The rest of the cast should also be mentioned for delivering noteworthy performance, which makes it really hard to fault this series, except that the pace could have been a little faster.
A good watch if you enjoy high emotion and high drama.
