Chandra Nandini 3: Moonrise

Folks,

As I wrote in a little note to all of you on my last thread , by 9 pm last night, the agony that I had felt after having had to endure the first two lousy episodes of this show has now somewhat subsided.

And no, this is not because the naapit, now fully clothed and parading around as Maharaja Padmanand of Magadha - but still somehow reminding one more of the ustari ( which he actually produces in the last scene, again to cut a throat) than of the talwar - had had his footage reduced. He was onscreen for at least 12 of the 20 minutes last night, hamming away to glory, but even there, the goings on were preferable to those shown earlier. This was mostly because one got a sense that the inexorable and implacable goddess, Nemesis, was already at work, and our upstart tyrant was, deep down, running scared.

Magnificent moonrise: However, these are subsidiary issues, of which more a bit later. The chief cheerer-upper (sic) was different. It was the slim, almost skinny, light-eyed boy - not a little boy, for he is 13, at that uncertain age between childhood and adolescence - who showed us, in one tight capsule, all that would be going into the making of the Emperor Chandragupta Maurya.

There is the intelligent derring do of the dangerous climb up a steep, unforgiving rock cliff to get at the beehive and the honey. It was very risky, and one could crib that if he was going to sacrifice a pagdi each time to create the protective fire, he would soon be in trouble with his harsh "father", but it was neither implausible nor impossible. There was a cool, calculating courage at the centre of it all that would later shape his military campaigns, the ability to measure the odds, take the risks, and win.

There is the spontaneous, abundant love he has for his foster mother, for all the risks he takes to get at the honey are for her alone. This love is not showy or verbose, it is simply there in the light in his eyes when he says that he got the honey because she likes it. It is there in the sudden anguish in his face as he rushes to shield her from the blows of her husband with the promise that yes, he will get the honey every day if only she is spared this abuse.

So it is not that this Chandra is either a stranger to, or an enemy of love. He rages against love precisely because he can, and does, love so deeply.

In the precap, it is this very love of his for his mother that sets him on the next stage of his journey to the imperial throne, for he decides to go to Pataliputra and make his fortune there not for the sake of the wealth, but for what that wealth can buy him, the freedom of his beloved mother from the bondage of this horrible marriage.

Crippling love: To revert, the sequence between the mother and the son that follows is clearly meant to underline what is to be the leit motif of Chandra Nandini, that Chandragupta sees prem as a debilitating, crippling force that enslaves a person and makes that individual lose his/her very sense of identity.

This theme is not a new one, it was there - OK, why not abandon the Second Commandment once and for all, seeing that it is not going to work anyway?😉 - up front and centre in Jodha Akbar as well. It was pushed into the faces of the viewers the way a conjuror makes one pick out the card he wants chosen. But there, the premises used were artificial and hardly convincing, and they were made terminally irritating by the babblings of a vapid and stupid Hamida Bano. Jalal declared, again and again, that mohabbat was for weaklings, as if it was a mathematical proposition that needed no proof. Here, it is done far, far better.

The core issue - of Chandra's mother putting up with all this physical abuse just because , as she states with the perfect conviction of the classic victim of the beaten woman syndrome, she loves her husband very, very much, that he had not been like this in the old days and was nowadays just a little out of sorts - is an utterly convincing one. As is the anger and disgust that colours the boy's face as he listens to her spout all this.

So when he responds to her Ektaish homilies - about love giving one a goal in life, and the strength to live for another - with the savage reiteration that he would never be reduced to such a state:

Koyi nahin hoga jo mujhe durbal bana sake! ..Koyi nahin hoga jo mujhe itna aasaar bana sake jitna baba ne tumhein banaya hai!.. Aisa koyi nahin hoga jise jeetne ke liye main swayam ko haar jaaon! Is sansaar mein aisa koyi nahin hoga jiske liye Chandra apna astitva kho baithe!

, it is neither natakiya nor superficial. It is utterly and totally logical. That it would, eventually, be reduced to a case of famous last words cannot take away anything from the impact it makes right now.

For this child, and he is still almost one, the sufferings of his mother are a cruel reality, and her prem for her abusive husband is the clear and evident cause for that reality. The connection is solid, and the deduction he makes, that this kind of love that enslaves a person is something to be avoided at all costs, is ineluctable, the only one that could possibly have been made under these circumstances.

Since Chandragupta's instinctive distaste for and suspicion of prem is to be a core issue in this love story, at least the rationale for it has been established perfectly, at both the emotional and the mental levels.

Nemesis: She is the Greek goddess of divine retribution She creeps up on her victim on silent feet, and strikes when least expected, and sometimes also when expected and dreaded.

Last night, Nemesis ki to chandi lag gayi. And I was cheering her on.

Strike One: First there was the vile Avantika who is, as a character, far worse that the naapit. I was delighted to see her getting her comeuppance, good and proper, from her ex-lover and current lord and master. Especially when he stated, with cool contempt, that it did not behove a woman like her to talk of vishwas aur prem, and rounded it off by casting putative doubt on the paternity of her next child! Oh Lord, it was priceless!👏

It was also, from the psychological angle, logical that thwarted and ground into the dust by Nand, Avantika turns for solace to the only outlet available to her, to taunt and insult Mura. That scene was as surprising as it was perfect. I am not an admirer of Mura's hackneyed style of delivery or her entirely predictable expressions, straight out of the old films, exactly like her character, come to think of it. But here, the script took me unawares. I loved seeing her deflate Avantika's pretensions so smoothly and effectively, with a cool confidence and a total absence of fear that were a delight to behold.

OK, let us get back to Nemesis. The pativrata naari segment between Mura and Nand was standard issue, and the only thing I could not understand is why he continues to wait for her consent for their marriage - that too for nine long years - and does not simply carry her off by brute force, which must otherwise have been his standard modus operandi. Methinks that somewhere, deep down, he cares for her in a way that goes beyond the physical, and he wants her to accept him as hers. If not, for all the insults she hurls at him, he would have killed her long ago. Odd, but then the human psyche - and even Nand must be at least partly human! - is a very strange and mysterious entity.

Strike Two: These mandatory preliminaries between the oppressed virtuous female and the covetous villain disposed of, we get to the area of specific interest to Nemesis. Mura's warning to Nand about what he will suffer because of his overwhelming love for his daughter is an eerie twist on the Goddess Durga's warning to Kamsa. Only here it is not a warning of his death, but of worse, of helpless agony watching the one he loves the most suffer humiliation and abuse. And there is real fear in Nand's eyes as he listens to Mura go on and on.

Then the predicted putri ratna duly arrives. The shower of gold scene was a pleasant surprise; I had no idea how they were going to show it , but they pulled it off neatly. There must have been many such hidden caches of gold for emergencies in every palace, and Nand just fortuitously pierces the bottom of one such. So Nandini is firmly ensconced in her father's heart as his lucky charm, and the one human being he really loves more than himself.

With that love comes vulnerability, and the fear of Mura's curse, for that is what it was in truth, gnaws constantly at the inner recesses of Nand's mind and heart, even at the height of his untrammeled and acutely oppressive power. Nemesis is still far from the kill in Nand's case, but she has moved in, and she will never, but never, let go.

Chanakya cometh: The precap shows that he is already in the wings, all set for his grand entry. The choti is loose, so it seems it is after the famous shapath that he takes after being insulted by Dhananand (or is it going to be Padmanand here? ) , that he will tie his hair only after - no, not like Draupadi, after he has washed it with Dhananand's blood - he has dethroned the tyrant.

I have often bemoaned Ekta's choice of Chanakya, having hoped against hope that the splendid Manish Wadhwa could reprise his truncated role in the 2012 version. This was all the more so because of the lingering impression of the present actor as the weaselly, obsequious Mahaamatya Khallatak - and one of the assassins of Chanakya at that! - in the just concluded Chakravartin Ashoka Samrat. However, before he played Khallatak, Manoj Kolhatkar had done a wonderful turn as the Rishi Dadichi in DKD Mahadev. I am going to pin my hopes on his being more of a Dadichi here, and less of a Khallatak!

The Picture Puzzle Problem: No, this is not a conundrum for you to solve. It is a response - made here partly to save myself the typing, and partly so that you could all see it and express your views on it - to Lashy's thesis, set out by her in my last thread on Episode 2. The core of it is that this time, unlike in the case of the well researched and well planned Jodha Akbar, where Rajat's Jalal had only been the prize piece in an already set jigsaw picture puzzle, here she was trying to fit a haphazard tale around a central, pre-chosen piece, Rajat as Chandragupta.

Lashykanna, after giving the matter a lot of thought, I do not agree with you. Jodha Akbar was easier to research and plan out because of the abundance of authentic material available, plus the familiarity of the bulk of the viewers with the subject and the broad outlines of the story. So the beginning was clearer and more crisp, and then the adult Jalal, who was the real ace of spades, came on at the end of the first episode itself. Naturally the script caught the viewer's fancy early on, and held firmly to it for the first 6 months or so.

Here, for the first two episodes, you had mainly a set of wooden characters and, worse, large chunks of a nanga panga naapit Nand - howzzat for alliteration? 😉- as he has been called elsewhere here, a most unappealing sight if ever there was one. Plus a lot of the usual rona dhona and unrelenting, literally muddy sufferings of the veeraangana mother figure, straight out of the 1970s vintage film scripts. No wonder that we were all, and me in the first place, disoriented and totally put off.

This does not, however, add up to a haphazard approach to the tale, with zero research and no plan at all.

To begin with, it seems to me, going by the various theories I was already familiar with, like the Buddhist one about Chandragupta belonging to the Sakya clan of the Lord Buddha, and the material collated and presented in this forum by Abinaya (abiariel) and the superbly meticulous Abhay (history_geek), that there is no shortage of versions of Chandragupta's origins, and all the related issues like Mura's identity and the like. It is like a supermarket - you look around and you take your pick. It could be true or it could be untrue. Nothing and no one can conclusively prove that your choice is the latter.

This one is Ekta's version, and one cannot say that it is not a researched one, but something that she has picked up at random, solely because she wants Rajat and his fan following to boost the show's TRPs. It is anything but that, and in fact there seems to be a lot going for it: the Piplavan kingdom, the overthrow of Shishunaag's dynasty by an unfaithful queen in cahoots with a lowly lover (not, however, a barber, so far as I could make out, but then why not? It lends itself to endless cracks from Mura and from Nand himself, and then, in the Grimm's fairy tales, is it not often a tailor who marries the princess and ascends the throne?😆) , and a daughter of a Nand - Padmanand ya Dhananand, antar kya hai aakhir? - marrying Chandragupta Maurya.

I feel that she had had the idea of a second magnum opus even before Jodha Akbar was limping to its end and the TRPs were dipping seriously. It has clearly been in the works for well over a year, very likely because she was mulling over how to weave in the ek naari ne Chandragupta ko mahaan Samrat Chandragupta banaya theme so beloved of her.

Once the idea was firmed up in her mind, Rajat would have been the automatic choice. Whom else could she even have thought of? Not the likes of Arjun Bijlani, that is for sure, though he too got her superb TRPs in Naagin 1.

Ekta does not need Rajat for TRPs. I doubt if Chandra Nandini is going to surpass Naagin 1, or even the horrendous Brahmarakshas in the TRP stakes. But methinks she has a hankering after doing a grand, truly imperial show once in a way, and as Akbar and Ashoka have been "done", that left only Chandragupta. No one but Rajat could carry off Chandragupta for her. Period.

So it is, to my mind, not a haphazard decision of pinning a show on a star. It is rather the fitting of the star into a pre-conceived role that no one else could take on. Whether that is going to be a good thing for us, the viewers, is still on the lap of the gods. Let us hope for the best!

OK, folks, this is it. Please do not forget to hit the Like button if you think that is warranted. My apologies in advance for not being able to reply to your comments - which I hope will be many - individually as is my usual practice. I simply dare not risk it. But I will try to give brief omnibus responses. Do bear with me, and please do indulge in a lot of discussion among yourselves, both substantive and mischievous, like that of my old Chipmunk gang. Then you will not even notice that I am not around!

See you again soon, hopefully tomorrow morning.

Shyamala/Aunty/Akka/Di

Originally posted by: smile.sara

Hello aunty ...kia ho raha hae... I like 3rd epi... I didnt watch bahubali movie... Pr every one saying so much copy from this movie... Its not good... Padmanand is handsome... He is also good actor... Chandragupt ka "no pyar" was almost like "hamare paas dil hae hi nahi"🤪

But he is cute so is nandini...

I didnt understand thus 8 years of age difference where they are almost looking same in age in childhood as well as grownups.

Bass apne hero ki entry ka intezar hae... From on shoot pics his entry will be not as king but as chanakya student and struggler ..

Originally posted by: sashashyam

Yes, Sara, but where is your Like??? See, you forgot that, you naughty girl, and now you have made my type again!😉

And after all the trouble I took to explain how the no prem was logical in this case, here you go again with the same old mantra. I begin to doubt if you have even read my post.

@bold. Of course! How on earth can he enter as the King?

Shyamala Aunty