THE DYNAMICS OF LOVE: Ashar is an irrational lover

Ashar: "meray Khirad key baarey mein barey biased Khiyalat thay…usey bolna bhee aata hai, sochna bhee aata hai,lekin us ke saath saath saada aur masoom bhee hai. Bakee larkion kee tarhan tez aur chalaak nahee hai. She is actually quite different”

         Once in love, Ashar is very open about his feelings. His dialogues before Khirads  tragic eviction are fraught with  cheesy lines  like a love sick man, depicting a growing romance. He claims that “ Woh jaisee bhee hai meray liye bohat ehem hai”.  Thus, it becomes hard to reconcile the sudden shift in his behavior when he refuses  to listen to Khirad’s  justification against her character assassination by khizr. He leaves  her to be kicked out of the house. I could not help thinking  if Khirad was  “ehem” then why didn’t he investigate rather than walking out of the door and literally out of Khirad’s life as if it didn’t matter? Why be so passively aggresive? This made me question what Ashar’s love  was based on? After all where was that lover’s gaze - those eyes  that had that “nasheelapan” whenever they looked at Khirad? Remember? 

Ashar’s love is irrational. He loves  Khirad, not because he finds mental compatibility; “we are poles apart”. Rather, he is in love with the idea of “a different girl”-  the unfamiliar domestic  girl who is distinctly apart from his social milieu, a new lens through which he can look at the lower class  with a degree of humility and renewed understanding.  Baseerat advises Ashar “ Khirad kacchi mitti ki tarhan hai. Usey jis saanchey mein daalo gay who dhal jayey gee.”  Ashar doesn’t mould her to become like the “baakee larkian”; “Khirad tumhe Sarah jaisa banney ki koi zaroorat nahee hai. He loves  the “kacchi mitti in its raw form, unaltered, original and pure.  Khirad  attains this “SAINTLY” image of purity and simplicity. He puts her on this high pedestal of goodness which creates complications and makes Khirad vulnerable even to himself. 

Ashar never expresses love in terms of  likeminded-ness. Neither does he understand the sheer inferiority complex that Khirad goes through. His love lines  are  dramatic and fabricated, confined to the intensity of words. Love cannot be sustained in the absence of  communication and understanding. Khirad only reveals her feelings to Baseerat while Ashar is eaves dropping. She wants to tell him about her pregnancy but it remains a  “surprise”. She doesn’t tell she donated blood to Khizr. Ashar too,does not allow conversation to happen, by staring at her like an x- ray machine or unpredictably  giving to bouts of anger: 

Yeh har waqt kay chonchaley achey nahee lagtey... yeh bachpana aur yeh third class romantic harkatein...had hotee hai yaar grow up. 

Then he is uncomfortable with Khizr talking about “apnaiyat" with Khirad showing how he  is possessive  and blinded by words to penetrate the wickedness of Khizr and Fareeda. After Khirad leaves he never talks to her for 4 years - SO EGOISTIC !!

Unpredictability, rashness and irrationality are the major inconconsistencies in Ashar’s love.  He is “jazbaati” and excessive passion is bound to destroy you because it is a veil to the truth. Ashar later says “ main tau pyaar k laiq hee nahee hoon”- because his love is incomplete far from  apnaiyat , “aitbaar”, “yaqeen”, and attunement .  Thus we see Khirad  screaming “Ashar meraa yaqeen karein…meree baat sunain…mere taraf dekhain”. Quratul ain Baloch then encapsulates the lover ‘s flaw best in 'WOH HUMSAFAR THA MAGAR US SEY HUMNAWAI NA THI.'- humnawai being absent in this irrational lover.