Originally posted by: sashashyam
Folks,
This is exactly what last night's episode reminded me of, a PPT by the CVs in seven parts, which were, alternately, and sometimes within the part itself, good, indifferent, bad, and unintentionally comic. I am simply going to take them ad seriatim.
-Deja vu: I HATE scenes of domestic abuse, and when it is a skinny kid who is being beaten up, it is the absolute pits. For two pins, I would have jumped into the TV and made kachumber of Chandra's (as yet unnamed) foster mother's amar prem.😡 Unable to do that, I merely gritted my teeth, but the cool, unafraid arrogance Chandra displayed while facing his thug of a baba cheered me up somewhat. Especially the counting of the prahaar and the explanation why, and the final crack about not paying for the treatment for any bones broken in a drunken fall.
Then came his pativrata istree of a mother, and I started gritting my teeth all over again. That woman, as I mentioned earlier (Tripti, you goose, she is NOT Mura! Mura is another adarsh bharatiya nari, but she is somewhere else at present. More of her later), is a closet masochist. If I have to listen to her babble just once more about the shakti that her amit, amar prem for her goon of a husband gives her to tolerate the beatings, I shall start climbing the nearest wall😡. It is such women who make such men even worse than they are, and I have NO sympathy for her.
My heart went out to poor Chandra, stuck with his love for this benighted female and her repetitive, identical pravachans on prem, like an LP stuck in the same groove. But then he started in the same LP mode as well, with all his trigger words: durbal, astitva, aatma samman - and I was back to gritting teeth mode.
There was another, shorter passage about prem a little later, centred on the rajnandini mudra, but I am passing over that. There is only so much of this you and I can take! 😉I am devoutly glad that we will not have any more prem se ghrina bhashans now that Chandra will soon pass on to Chanakya's tutelage, and Chanakya is not going to babble about prem, not even for his Bharat bhoomi!
AHHH, the same speech again for both Chandra and his foster mother😡, now its indeed a huge relief that Chanakya is in the picture so Chandra's mind will leave that theme aside for a while and focus in his development as a warrior and most important, to search his true identity.
-Ashoka vatika rebooted: In the whole of the passage between little Nandini - who, though cute like most 5 year olds, looks a bit like an illustration for the nursery rhyme line Along came a little bird and pecked off her nose! 😉- I was thinking of only one thing. Why this sudden shift from an appropriately gloomy underground dungeon to a wide open space, with a raised chabootara in the centre, with a pillar to which she is chained? Then it hit me: it is a replication of Sita in the Ashoka vatika, with Nand's visitations replicating the equally fruitless ones of Ravana. Only this Sita rebooted is looking not for her husband but for her son to take revenge on the rakshasa who holds her in thrall, and free her.
But why does Nand stand around till the end of Mura's tirade, instead of sensibly walking off with his daughter before she had opened her mouth? Why, because that is in the classic tradition of TV soap characters. 😆
As for the scene itself, its sole purpose clearly was to demonstrate Nandini Jr.'s unshakeable love and admiration for her daddy dearest. I don't blame her, for she is blissfully ignorant of his other side, and her mother will not enlighten her out of fear for her own life. But knowing the truth of what really goes on, I could understand, and even share, the cold-eyed hatred in Chandra's eyes in the precap, as he looks after Nandini, setting off once again on her triumphal parade once her escort has finished whipping the escapee Mura.
Poor child, I just felt pity for her, and who can blame her? But once the bubble created by her parents is burst out, she will pass through a huge identity crisis and question herself about everything in her life. And as the serial and the story progresses in a neutral way, I'm on Chandra's side regarding the current situation in the precap.
- Depths of degradation: Nemesis got one more bash at Avantika as she literally groveled in front of her contemptuous partner in crime, babbling of her love for him and seeking the reciprocation that she knows perfectly well by now will never come. It was creepily satisfying to watch this evil woman being ground into the dust by a vengeful goddess.
😃😃😃
But she did get one sword thrust in under Nand's guard, and he did look afraid when she ranted about his love for Nandini leading to his downfall. There is an interesting bit of psychoanalysis about Avantika and Nandini in Shailaja (shailusri1983)'s post on my last thread that would interest you, so do look it up.
Her ranting is basically Mura's curse! And Shailaja's post is excellent.
-Robin Hood or Bahubali?: Now I am laboring under the serious handicap of not having watched Bahubali, so I am periodically blindsided by references to it here from those who have. So, for the woodland scene, I have to fall back on the Robin Hood and his merry men parallel, the one familiar to my generation and hopefully not unknown even to yours!
I shall begin by braving your likely amusement and declaring that I loved the scene , corny or not, right from the vertical upside down descent to grab the sword, to his walk off the scene, his pride intact (MDS, no comparisons with Siddharth, please! 😉This kid is no Siddharth, eyes dancing with mischief and effortless cockiness, but he is all we have at the moment, and his lines are excellent, so let us bear with him!) . It is clearly meant as a follow up to the honeycomb raid scene, to establish that this skinny, undernourished, abused kid has the guts and the skills to face any situation and come out on top. As in the previous case, he demonstrates anew that he has the ability to plan in advance, calculate the extent of what he can pull off, and then actually pull it off.
Absolutely agree. He's not Siddharth or Rajat in his teens, but his eyes and lines made a good improvisation
However, here we are shown more. His cool confidence and unshaken calm even when facing the senapati of Magadha and a whole contingent of soldiers. His clear-minded, unafraid enunciation of why he and his companions did what they did. His sense of self-respect that has him doing a remix of Amitabh Bachchan's shoeshine boy Vijay in Deewaar (made before most of you were born, but you might still have caught up with it on TV) and refusing the tossed reward. Which he does not with arrogance, but with quiet, polite self assurance.
It's nice to see his character development so established. Eager to see his qualites marvelously shaped when he comes into adulthood!
No wonder that Amatya Rakshas - who bears an uncanny resemblance to a Red Indian chieftain from the old cowboy films 😉- is so taken with this little boy, with the bearing of a king and the swabhimaan of an emperor.
Finally, when Chandra responds to Rakshas' shocked query about the welts on his back with Ab peedha nahin hoti. Ab abhyaas ho chukka hai. .. the bitterness in the lines sears the screen, overcoming even the limitations of the child mouthing them.
An aside. Did you folks notice that the other, unnamed amatya, who is shown advising the army commander Varkanas to release the royal family they had taken prisoner, bears a distinct resemblance to Gollum in The Lord of the Rings? I fully expected him to fall on all fours and start crawling after Chandra, mumbling My precious! 😉😉
-Videshi kudrishti: There seems to be a fad for kudrishti in this show. First it was Mura ranting about Nand's omnipresent kudrishti directed at any female within reach, and now it is Bharatmata doing the same about Alexander of Macedon's kudrishti, directed, no, not at any female at all, but solely at herself.
There also seems to be a fad for getting videshi characters to voice their lines in Hindi, making them almost incomprehensible to even attentive viewers. Alexander too falls prey to this totally unnecessary obsession of the director. Above all, what earthly sense does it make for a Macedonian to address his Macedonian and other assorted troops, and his advisers, in Hindi? He should have been shown speaking in Greek, as his lines are in any case subtitled, for obvious reasons. And why does he use totally anachronistic Urdu words like fateh, kabza, kaamyaab, mulk?
Alex O'Neill looks properly Greek (or Macedonian), with his smooth good looks, and his Alexander clearly believes in advance planning, as he is thinking fully 7 years ahead. Plus, his intelligence network, which alerts him to phoot among the Indian kings when he is still in Persia, seems to be good beyond belief.
HUGE ANACHRONISM🤔
He tries hard to sound like one of the greatest military commanders ever. But in the end, when he is roaring encouragement to his troops, mouth fully open and shot at the wrong angle, I was reminded of nothing so much as a patient in the dentist's chair, responding obediently to the order: Open up now!😆
-The Grand Entry: Of Chanakya, of course. He is given the slow, mysterious, foot to head build up usually reserved for the stars, and very good lines too, right from the Nauka se pehle choohe bhagte hain,aur desh doobne se pehle kaayar.Main kaayar nahin hoon!
The scene with the repentant drunkard is written for effect, to underline the cardinal maxim than both Acharya Chanakya and Amatya Rakshas share, that Shatru par prahaar keval buddhi se kiya jaata hai..Buddhi ke age bal vyart hai.. However, I am sure they both know that it is necessary for the buddhi to manipulate the brute bal if success is to be guaranteed.
Now for the big question: can he or can't he? Pull it off, that is, and directed at the actor now playing Chanakya after having just wound up an excellent and very different turn as the Mahaamatya Khallatak in Chakravartin Ashoka Samrat.
My answer would be a qualified yes. He is already fully competent, if not inspired. He might lack the sheer presence of his predecessors in Chakravartin Ashoka Samrat and the 2012 Chandragupta Maurya, but I feel that very soon he will put his own stamp on the role and make us forget that he was ever anyone but Chanakya.
I think he can make Chanakya his own, let's give him a chance⭐️
- Ek hi uddheshya, ek hi marg, ek hi lakshya: The closing part, with Chanakya and Chandragupta both setting out for Pataliputra, each to save his special maa, was beautifully conceived, scripted, and shot. I loved the very last line: Jo aaj tak mile nahin, wo bhavishya mein aise milnewale the ki Bharat ke itihaas mein unka naam saath saath liya jaanewala tha.
And no Nandini can change that!
AMEN TO THAT!!!!👏
OK, folks, this is it. Please do not forget to hit the Like button if you think that is warranted.
Last night, I ended up responding individually to most of the comments as the omnibus response concept simply would not work. But I do not think this can be sustained - yes, Ria dear, I can see you waiting to scold me all over again for overdoing things! 😉- and I do so wish there could be a lot of discussion among yourselves. There was surely enough material in the very many interesting comments on the last thread to get things going! So please do try this time, won't you?
Shyamala/Aunty/Akka/Di
how she is able to think like this😳.
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