INFOTAINMENT

A message of hope

Only if you read Sigmund Freud, you will understand why and how childhood
experiences impact your entire life. With focus on child abuse, Freud’s work called
attention to the importance of living a happy childhood. ‘Udaari’, a drama serial
aired few months ago, didn’t just highlight the growing problem of child abuse, it also
created awareness on how to deal with it. The culture is that we don’t talk about
child abuse, we don’t take it seriously and Udaari helped us in opening up.

Ahsan Khan (Imtiaz)

We need to show some responsibility towards the society, and as an actor, this character has made me do that and I took this as a challenge. I took the biggest risk of my life as I’ve been a hero for nearly a decade. This was a very risky step for my career as I was an anti-hero in the drama for which people could abuse me or dislike me. However, things turned out differently and the drama was well-received and went on successfully. I’m humbled and I’m glad that our audience was intelligent enough to understand the idea behind the drama. Udaari was an educational project; people enjoyed it and learned some great lessons. Since then, a lot of young people have come to me telling what happened in their childhood and how they came out of their trauma. It’s about time we should talk about this without feeling ashamed. We should try, spread the word, educate people and say no to child abuse. It’s just not about the sexual abuse but also mental abuse, health abuse and a lot of other things. We need to work on this and this is the message my character conveys. I was very concerned about the script and I made sure that my character is punished for the crime so that everybody could see a bad deed has a bad result.

Roshaneh Zafar,

Managing Director Kashf Foundation

Udaari is special for it gives a message of hope. Since Udaari has been aired, many individuals have come up to me and said Udaari is my story and have shared how this drama has given them the courage to reclaim their past.  It is also special because it breaks the mould by shifting the burden from the victim of the abuse on to the perpetrator of the crime; this was the aspect that we wanted to tackle most when it came to the way our society views victims or rather survivors of abuse. In fact, the survivors of abuse require our compassion and support, and young people not only to speak out against child sexual abuse for it is and assault on the future generations, but also need to educate themselves regarding acceptable and non-acceptable behaviours. Any act whether verbal or physical that makes an individual uncomfortable and negatively impacts on their self-esteem, is by definition unacceptable. Remember, no one deserves to be physically, mentally or emotionally abused; every individual has a right to a safe and secure future.

 

Urwa Hocane (Meeran)

 I want our youth, especially our girls, to know there’s no challenge greater than the power of your will. Be strong, be fierce, be bold and break out of your shells. Meeran fought against all odds, day and night, to achieve what she did. Don’t settle for an ordinary life, find the extraordinary in yourself and once you have found it, keep it alive!