Pakistan’s sweetheart Mahira Khan has officially married her long-term partner Salim Karim over the weekend. Short snippets we received of the ceremony showed it was an emotional moment for the bride and groom, who could be seen shedding tears as Mahira walked down the altar, looking mesmerising in ivory.
We’re incredibly happy for her, and we will keep championing women finding their happily ever after- but it seems like the Pakistani instinct to crush any woman in love remains ever present like some disease. Because we can’t fathom the idea that a woman could marry for love, right? Itna rata tou Pakistani dramas ko dekh kar lagwa liya hai.
A tweet has gained a lot of traction on X (formerly Twitter) where a user shared the unverified net worth of Mahira’s husband Salim- which totaled up to $1 million dollars, claiming that the actress got married for the sake of money rather than love.
“So in the end, its all about money. Larkooo!! Paise kamao ….” the user wrote.
Why would the biggest actress of Pakistan- who is also an ambassador for international brands like Lux- want to marry for money? Mahira doesn’t even star in most of the biggest projects currently airing in Pakistan, yet she makes international headlines because of a small snippet from her wedding. The math is not mathing here.
Why did we feel so necessary to write a long piece slamming this insensitive tweet, since we have lives as well? Because this isn’t just something Mahira alone has faced. Countless women in Pakistan are scrutinised for marrying of their own accord, or even being happy in their marriages because on a regular basis they are met with gossip mongers’ who assume these women married for money. But these women and Mahira are not being targetted because of money- it’s because our ghulami mindset mulk can’t imagine a woman being this happy on her wedding day and being in love with a man. It doesn’t sit right with Pakistanis that a woman is miserable since she has been bound for life to another man, and Mahira isn’t.
Mahira Khan is a woman who is completely self-made, did not rely on any man to build up her career, and then went on to travel the entire world on her own while being a single mother. A woman living her life on her own terms, choosing to get married in her forties and doing so while having been married previously and also having a son? Not something easy to swallow for a Pakistani man.
Our mard hazarat can’t settle on the prospect that any woman can be financially secure and choose who she wants to marry, since our cultural upbringing teaches us it is men who can be the sole providers and women must depend on them for survival so therefore, marriage is done purely on the basis of financial security, not for love or comfort. But here is a woman marrying someone she was in a relationship with for a while, and shattering this stereotype while looking phenomenal on her wedding. Clearly the knee-jerk reaction is to assume Mahira is a gold digger, right?
Have social media users learned about the concept of leaving other people’s private business alone? It is not Mahira’s job to justify to you why she chose to get married, and it clearly is no one’s business to make assumptions about such a thing. Rather than fixating on whether an actress had any ulterior motives behind marrying, focus this much energy on your own life because trust us- by the end of the day Mahira will keep outshining her haters and so will every other woman who laughed away on her wedding.
No woman owes any one explanations about her personal life, and we hope Mahira keeps on living rent-free in the minds of haters.
