Dur e Fishan tells why she wouldn't like to work in dramas like 'Kaisi Teri Khudgarzi'

Oft-used tropes, monotonous plotlines, excessively long episodes, romanticizing toxic masculinity and misogyny at its best — this is what ticks off Lollywood's upcoming actress Dur e Fishan Saleem.

The 27-year-old star, who rose to prominence with the drama serial Kaisi Teri Khudgarzi, asks her fans to keep art and the artist separate.

Although Saleem propelled into stardom with Kaisi Teri Khudgarzi, she has made it steer clear for her fans to differentiate between herself and her character. The Pardes actor said that she wouldn't preferably watch such shows or even want to act as she does not resonate with the character essayed in the drama. Yet, she didn't deny working on such projects as they entertain an average Pakistani household. 

Saleem's latest offering revolved around a character, Mehak, who was the epitome of a naive and meek woman. Though the drama serial garnered negative reviews, it did commercially well. The Bharaas star lamented how women romanticize such relationships, and society accepts them without taking offence.      

In an interview with BBC Asian Network, the Juda Huway Kuch Is Tarhan starlet opened up about her preferences and the decision to work in the drama. “Kaisi Teri Khudgarzi made the producers or made me more feasible to the choices that I could say yes to. Today if I’m getting 10 scripts and I am not liking 10 of them, I would be getting five more because they would be like "Oh, we want her on board.’” 

Talking about herself, Saleem added, “Dur-e-Fishan would not watch a genre like or would even like to work in something like this again. But Dur-e-Fishan belongs to a kind of society where people really like any woman being saved from a toxic area around.”

Lamenting the deep-rooted dependence of women on men, the actress said, “Our audience is just focused on [how] a girl needs to be saved by a boy. No matter how that boy saves [her]. It’s more [about] how we raise women in our culture,” she said.

“We just tell them that your brother, your father, your husband is supposed to be around you. I feel like when I was reading the script, Dur-e-Fishan would not have acted the way Mehak did because Mehak is a Pakistani girl who has no experience of boys, who was never told that you are good yourself.”

Although she has started receiving offers to portray strong-headed females, Saleem wonders if they would be as successful as Kaisi Teri Khudgarzi.

“But again, are these types of dramas that will do commercially well? We hope so because it’s all a chain of producers getting their money back. If you’re not giving them the views, no matter how progressive, feminism-driven the drama might be, they won’t be able to make another one,” she added.

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On the work front, Saleem was recently seen in Pardes, Hangor S-131, Juda Huway Kuch Is Tarhan and Kaisi Teri Khudgarzi. She also appeared in a music video with singer Asim Azhar.

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