Jyoti - Burning light of woman power

It is rare in television to come across a female character with ‘spunk’. NDTV Imagine’s Jyoti is one such character who is willing to fight against odds in order to maintain her self respect and dignity. She is not a wailing wallflower who laments upon her fate and curses her destiny every time difficulties cross her path. She has the courage to take on problems headfirst and emerge a winner. And on occasions where the odds do manage to defeat her, she has the spirit to learn her lessons and move on.

Dumped by her lover Brij, who to add insult to injury, marries her younger sister, she loses her balance for a while. But she fights back and restores her lost sense of pride when she enthrals a large audience with her dance recital, despite being severely depressed. Upon discovering that the same Brij is ill-treating her sister Sushma, she goes out on a limb to rescue her sister from his evil intentions even as her own family misunderstands her motives. She is not afraid to express her hurt at her step-mother (this bit of family truth had been hidden from her) but is not disrespectful towards her. She is mindful of her duties as the eldest child of her family even in times when the said family has betrayed her faith and love.

She marries a visually challenged character, Pankaj, but is never pitiful in her attitude towards him. Her respect for him as a person is the foundation for her love that happens eventually, gradually and normally. As the eldest daughter-in-law of a powerful family, she has a lot of responsibilities that she fulfils with great élan. However that does not stop her from taking care of the needs of her paternal family and she does so with the help of her own earnings. She does not depend on her husband and his riches to look after her wheelchair-bound father, old grandmother, her step-mother and her siblings. Her complete faith in her own abilities is praise-worthy and something that characters from other serials ought to emulate.

She is right now in the midst of tremendous personal grief. Her loving husband has thrown her out of his life and his house as his judgement has been clouded over by the actions of her erstwhile-lover-turned enemy, Brij. Brij has convinced Pankaj that Jyoti carried on an affair with the former while and in spite of being married to the latter. Humiliated and hurt, Jyoti has returned to her father’s house and has re-embarked on a journey to find her own bearings again. She had managed to gain employment at one place but Pankaj had her thrown out of there as well. Having found this out, she does not run away from him but instead goes on to confront him with such grace. She has just discovered that she is carrying Pankaj’s child. What this new life does to her story remains to be seen. Will this be a new beginning for Pankaj and Jyoti?