That is not the end of it. Tiwari (Manoj Bajpayee) is married to a Tamilian woman, Suchitra (Priyamani). And in a birthday party scene where Suchitra’s father insists that their children should know their mother tongue, Srikant’s mother caustically says that they should know Hindi, the national language.

Suchitra’s father corrects her and says that there is no national language. The question here is why should it be a Tamilian stating facts and not a north Indian? Doesn’t this again show the rigidity of north Indians who refuse to acknowledge that Hindi is not a national language? Surely, there must be intelligent and smarter Hindi wallahs who understand this basic matter.

It still doesn’t end there, the so-called ‘Family Man’, Tiwari is hardly bothered about his wife and children. He provides absolutely no emotional support to them and puts the entire responsibility of running the household on his wife, who is also a working professional. He doesn’t even want her to change her job because that would make his life uncomfortable. He shows absolutely no sensitivity. In fact, he abuses his access to technology by tracking his wife’s and daughter’s phones. When his daughter refuses to share the details about whom she has been chatting to, he decides to snoop using some app that he has. Isn’t this quite scary and a blatant breach of privacy? Is this what NIA officials do?

Tiwari gets uncomfortable and uneasy about finding out that his wife is working with a male former colleague of hers and their exchange of messages annoys Tiwari. But, he sees absolutely no contradiction when he goes to Kashmir and shares the same bond with Sonal, played by Gul Panag. She was, in fact, his former girlfriend. Some doublespeak this is.

The series, shockingly, goes on to show how the investigative agency tries to cover up a blunder where they kill three young Muslim on mere suspicion of an attack. This cover is done in the name for the ‘greater good’ and in the interest of national security! So, this begs a question if such biases are inherent in all those working in these organisations.

It shows that even Srikant Tiwari, who is liberal enough to marry a Tamilian and rolls his eyes at the term anti-national, will still buy into the ‘Muslim is a terrorist’ theory. It’s as if Muslim students cannot have another political identity.

We need to remember that The Family Man also shows the only Christian nurse as promiscuous. This is again another idea that has been done to death by the Hindi film industry. (Remember Julie? )

Well, people may say that this all is about artistic freedom and freedom of expression, but these writers are hiding under the garb of newspaper reports to give it a cloak of truth.

Shouldn’t artistic freedom mean breaking away from stereotypes, projecting truth and shattering myths?