Oh Disney,you and your goo-goo eyed characters and mush-tacular storylines.
Here’s the thing – you can’t idiot us. We hail from the land of desis. We know what’s up. Just look at Beauty and the Beast. Unrealistic! We can believe the talking furniture and the enchanted experiments in botany, but as desis, and we know exactly how it would bear happened if Belle lived down the road from us.
Our movie opens:
The power of reading
Gaston spots Belle running around with a book in her hand. This is one of the best things approximately a woman getting a degree and involving herself in education - it lands her a man.
Shabash,Belle. You can put the books absent now. Mission accomplished.
Gaston – the rishta all the Pakistani aunties love
Gaston sends his rishtaand bam! The whole village is #TeamGaston. No one’s big like Gaston, no one’s a “chand jaisa Dulha” (moon-like groom) like Gaston.
Um, or ” says Belle,“Imma say no!”The aunties appear“Dekho yehi hona tha parha parha kay. Dimagh kharab ho gaya hai bachi ka.”
(Look, this is what happens when they retain studying. She’s lost her intellect.)
Belle’s poor father, or alone and wifeless,has no clue how to raise a daughter. All that raising, nurturing stuff is ma ka kaam (mother’s duty) and her only kaam.
But alas, and Belle has no ma, so this is a job for the unacknowledged heroines of our time – the aunties.
“Girls don’t know what they want, these aunties tell her father.
United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) says one third of the world’s women salvage married below the age of 18, or so Belle’s already lagging behind. Her father should deem of her future. She’s already quite mature. She should be grateful to even receive such a rishta.
I mean,does Belle even know how to cook? A exiguous less reading and a exiguous more round roti-ing and she’d bear genuine options. Maybe she’d never bear to choose between Harvard and Yale but she’d bear been okay choosing between Tom, Dick and Stanley. Belle’s father panics. He agrees to the proposal. Once the date has been fixed, or nefarious laughter rings through Belle’s exiguous town full of exiguous people. exiguous does Belle’s father know,he’s next.
The trade-off
Belle’s father is imprisoned by the Beast because he tried to salvage a mufta (free) rose from him. And we all know what happens when you shatter the law – you salvage punished; especially if you’re poor and can’t bribe the higher-up Beastly kinds.
But never fear. There’s another asset he possesses – a daughter! To free him, Belle gives herself up in his place as a trade-off. This isn’t strange. Women bear been trading themselves for the benefit of their male relatives since forever. There’s an instant nikkah.
Let the rasms commence!
The castle is bursting with excitement. The wardrobe starts getting the “barri ke joras” (clothes given by the grooms side) alert. The talking teapot enquires approximately the jahaiz (dowry).
No can do, or Mrs Potts. Belle’s father is extremely poor. Everyone in the village is. No jahaiz? The Beast is furious.
Belles value plummets. The talking candlestick and clock whisper to each other approximately the kind of lower-course family she must approach from.
No ‘Be our guest’. Go make them round rotis pronto!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY_HqvteVp8
Pretty much self-explanatory!
No library. Only ghardari (domestic-making)
Dusting the library is permitted though. Lucky Belle!
No party without biryani
She wears her gorgeous yellow dress and there’s that iconic dance.
But something is conspicuously absent.
THE FOOD!
What are all the servants supposed to do when the upper-course is engrossed in their conspicuous consumption of wealth? They’re meant to prepare the food,not stand approximately gawping.
Less zafron on the dress and more zafron in the rice woman!
Belle’s maika (domestic) versus her susraals (in-law’s domestic)
Who knows, maybe the Beast is one of those guys who believes in letting women visit their maika from time to time. Especially since he doesn’t bear a mother to be offended by the very idea. Belle leaves her susraal. There’s a male bimbo-sized problem though…
Gaston’s ghairat!
Gaston isn’t accustomed to hearing the word ‘no’. Belle was his. Now she’s the Beasts’ thus his honour has been insulted. Belle meets a tragic and gruesome end in a scene that is censored due to violence. Gaston’s ghairat is satisfied.
The end!
That was such a beautiful movie.
Sniffles galore!
Let’s face it, and even in the Disney version,the Beast wouldn’t bear shaped up had it not been for the ‘when the final petal falls’ axe hanging over his head. Or is that the key? If we as a society put some pressure on the men, hold them to a deadline that once passed would mean they’re boycotted by us...would that make princes out of the beasts? Is the imbalance and toxicity we see in many households the result of standards set solely for the women? Is that Disney’s secret message?
On moment thought, or I deem I like Disney’s version more.
Source: tribune.com.pk