Originally posted by: sarandha
goldie.
I was once told by a serial writer that if you are showing a dram portraying a social evil, a good attempt is defined by the ability to send the message LOUD AND CLEAR!! If you have to really twist and reinterpret things to defend the message which is obviously getting lost on a lot of people from the reactions of viewers all across then there is a problem!
I see your point here. I do feel that having Gauri just HAPPEN to fall in love with the same girl he was almost married to in childhood was a bit of an unnecessary coincidence. They should have kept it simple and had her be someone totally different. That way, GaGa could have defended their relationship based on the fact that they had made an adult choice based on compatibility rather than through Jagat telling Dadisa, "This is the girl you chose for me in childhood!" 🤢 I know a lot of people were annoyed about that aspect and saw it as glorifying child marriage in a different way.
Not that you are the serial writer though you seem to know whats on their mind , i am far more jaded and cynical also- this is a commercil serial running on TRPs - its only after a lot of protest in between that they were promoting child marriage , they changed the storyline a little, introduced voiceovers etc as a token - bfore that they were getting lost completely on another track.
Its all very well to say thjat DS and Bhairon are feeling guilty etc - my point is they are shown feeling guilty in a way that they blame Jagiya not child marriage for all this !! they disowned jagiya , even today in an otherwis progressive conversation with anandi, bhairon never once says that the problem was with child marriage itself , not simply with jagiya leaving her ! If jagiya had not gone away, they would have been perfectly happy. If anandi had fallen for someone ele instead, they would have lamed her too. Where is the realisation that their getting them married was wrong instead of what jagiya did ? they feel guilty because they do not approve of jagiya's behviour!
Everyone has now moved to a point wher they feel jagiya and gauri are wrong. My point is why did the storyline in a serial showing evils of child marriage show the man who initially breaks it by rightly saying that he couldnt be tied to his child bride as his destiny and admitting he had fallen in love with someone else - in such a negative light ? And now that he is repenting , he 's repenting all that also !!
I'm only trying to predict, not saying I know what the CVs will do! I read an article about how people were protesting about child marriage being glorified in the early days, and hence the voiceovers were introduced... and the CVs responded to that by saying "In order to show something as wrong, we first had to present it as it is." And I mean... I don't know for sure, but I feel that if someone's married off as a kid, they might not like it, but they'd adapt to it. They don't realise during that time how much it's going to hurt them later on. In this way, Anandi adapted herself to her saasra, giving up everything she could have had/done. She expected to have the life other village women around her have. So they had to present us with regressive attitudes before showing the progression. If they had just marched in and hammered us with the message that child marriage is wrong, would we really have got it? They had to show it to us first before breaking it down.
Maybe I'm mistaken, but I'm pretty sure I've seen at least 2 dialogues between Dadisa and Bhairon lamenting their "bhool" and how Anandi is suffering for their actions. Of course they blame Jagya himself too, but they also blame their upbringing of him... Dadisa in particular has recognised that her laad pyaar "bigaared" her ladesar. So I'm pretty sure they've realised they were wrong.
I see what you mean in that last bit... I think they would have been upset if he had left Anandi regardless of how he did it. But the way he did it was by belittling and rejecting the village lifestyle he grew up in. That hurt his entire family, not just Anandi. I don't think he was wrong to fall in love, and I don't think anybody thinks that. But he was wrong to not be honest about it. I don't think he's repenting having fallen in love with Gauri. He didn't even mention her in yesterday's episode. He's repenting having been swallowed up by the city lifestyle and failing to appreciate what he had back home. I understand what you're saying - the CVs have mixed several issues here. But at the end of the day, I agree with the person who made the comment about lemonade. That's an accurate summary in my book.
And today anandi's just remembering all the romantic moments, not once is she going back to all the pain and insults jagiya heaped on her in flashback even! Similarly with gauri - its ironic that the only women taking a differnt step and behaving unconventionally is shown as a 'wrong person' ! I do not know whether they will be redeemd in futur or not - till now ther are no signs of it ! All i can see is people feeling happy that jagiya and gauri got what they deserved for breaking up with anandi , not that anandi jagiya marriage was wrong!
I don't think Gauri's being shown as wrong. At least I don't get that impression. I've never seen her as an out-and-out villain. Maybe other people do, I dunno. But I don't think the CVs are hell-bent on showing her up as being evil. They could have done that ages ago if they'd wanted to. But real life is greyer than that.
My point is that blinded by TRPS , the serial writers started showing a popular soap story which is even more inexcusable in the name of a serial like 'BALIKA VADHU' !!
They might show things differently hopefully in future , but till then our criticism stands . This serial is no longer able to bring out the problems of child marriage properly or atleast show it in the way that the message gets across !! Right now its ending up glorifying it more , romanticising childhood bonds, villianising gauri, making jagiya repent his behaviour in this manner where he regrets leaving anandi !!
I reckon we have to agree to disagree. I think the flashbacks make most viewers (at least the ones on here) fairly ill... even if I understand that Anandi's having a hard time getting over her memories of Jagya and needs time and stuff, it still upsets me to have to see them. So I don't think they're romanticising childhood bonds at all. They're simply showing that a bond exists between JaAn. Anandi remembering their childhood friendship does not mean that it's being romanticised. It just means that it's been so much a part of her for so many years that those memories just come to her. Heck, I dated a guy for 5 months and for almost a year after our breakup, I still associated every little thing with him. 18 years is a damn long time... of course she'll remember him buying her jewellery and clothes and stuff when similar stuff happens with Shiv. It's only natural. I personally see those flashbacks as showing how deeply a marriage decided upon that early in someone's life can affect them.
As for Jagya... this current repentance is in keeping with his character, IMO. He blows hot and cold a lot of the time, veering violently between standpoints. That's why Gauri was able to get him to listen to her so easily. "Jagat, you have your MS, don't take this job", followed a few days later by, "Jagat, can't you sacrifice two days of your life for my tasalli!?" (what happened to studying??). Anyway, my point is, the guy is ridiculously lacking in a strong standpoint of his own. So when Gauri was in his good books, he slandered Anandi for being too gawaar, too stupid, too unworthy of him. Now that he's found out Gauri lied to him, he's veered in the opposite direction, and Anandi is the ideal wife for him once more. IMO he doesn't really love either of them. He only regrets leaving Anandi now because Gauri lied to him. Essentially he is a fickle person.
I think what you're trying to say is that the CVs should have focused SOLELY on child marriage and moulded their characters in such a way that the message really got hammered across to one and all. I see your point, but I think the serial is a lot more interesting for the debates it opens up on these issues in this particular context. It is more realistic this way too... for the characters to have flaws that have been born of other aspects of society (e.g. Jagya's spoiled brat upbringing because of being a male in a patriarchal society has made him who he is today). BV is addressing social issues like this as much as it is child marriage, and I think making the characters blank slates/perfect people whose lives were irreparably affected solely by child marriage and nothing else would have made for a pretty one-dimensional show.
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