Chandra Nandini 9: A Houdini act - Page 3

Hello Shyamala ji

My poor Lavanya,

Did you dislike it so much? I loved it, once I had got over the irritation of my plan A not materialising. The court scene and Chandragupta's icy defiance of such horrendous odds were so wonderful that I watched them three times in a row. Not because Rajat looked so handsome, but because he performed so superbly. I was also delighted with the Three Musketeerish ending.

Look, kid, you are asking for too much. Chanakya made sure that Malayketu did not escape from the gurukul, make his way to Pataliputra and trip Chandragupta up. How on earth could he have provided for the bizarre decision of Raja Parvatak to personally land up in Pataliputra to apologise to Nand? No self-respecting king would have done that. He looked and sounded more like a chamcha of Nand's than anything else. It was just a bit of very bad luck and it floored poor Chandragupta.

You have not thought the situation thru either. Does Chanakya have an army of tried and trusted spies that he can set to shadow Parvathak on the odd chance of his taking it into his head to go to Pataliputra to tender his son's apologies? And then apparate into Pataliputra before Parvathak gets there to warn Chandragupta? Have a heart, my dear.He must be having only a handful of trusted acolytes, of whom Chandra is the best.

If you had watched the 1990 Chanakya, you would have realised with what infinite patience, effort, and untiring, relentless persuasion Chanakya built his coalition against, first the Macedonians left behind by Alexander, and then against the Indian allies of the Macedonians, beginning with Purushottam (aka Porus) - whose daughter, married to Ambhi of Takshashila, was a devotee of Chanakya's - and finally against Magadha. This narrative is like shorthand already, and here you are, wanting Chanakya to be, not one of the greatest strategic thinkers ever, but a ruddy magician!

And what on earth do you mean by asserting that Chanakya has as yet not given any evidence of buddhi? I would say that you were talking thru your hat if it were not that you do not wear a hat! What nonsense, my dear girl, and you can actually say this after watching that tremendous, visionary scene of him with Chandragupta on that hilltop in the pouring rain? And the earlier scenes where he trains Chandragupta and stands up for him?

I do not think you read my posts well at all. If, after going thru all that I had written about that fabulous scene, and claiming that you liked it, you do not seem to have agreed with anything I wrote there, it is a great and dismaying mystery to me.

Lavanya, my very dear girl, you seem to be in danger of joining those here who are always carping and can, as a result, enjoy nothing, not even the really good parts. You must shake loose from this tendency, child! Otherwise you will become a Cassandra, and I for one would not want that at all.

I am sorry if I sound irritated, but the fact is that while I do not care much what anyone else says or does, it upsets me when one of my girls makes kneejerk, unthinking comments.

Affectionately,

Shyamala Aunty

Originally posted by: Sabdabhala

YOUR ANALYSIS MADE IT WORTHWHILE FOR ME TO BEAR THE OTHERWISE BORDERING ON AWFUL EPISODE, AUNTY. AND I AM SURE EVERYONE HERE WILL AGREE THAT THUS FAR YOUR POSTS ARE MUCH MUCH BETTER THAN THE EPISODES. THE ONLY OTHER SAVING GRACE FOR ME IS WATCHING RAJAT LOOK ABSOLUTELY GREEK GODISH 😉

I AGREE THAT CHANDRA WAS QUITE UNLIKE CHANAKYA'S PUPIL IN ALMOST ALL SCENES. BUT HE AS USUAL, LOOKED UFFF!!. BUT I LOVED THE MOMENT WHEN HE WON THE DUEL AND REJECTED THE ALLIANCE.

AS REGARDS MAHARAJ PARVATAK, I THOUGHT CHANAKYA SHOULD HAVE BEEN ABLE TO PREEMPT AND TIE THE LOOSE ENDS SUITABLY. SO FAR IN THE SHOW I HAVE NOT REALLY SEEN CHANAKYA'S FAMED BUDDHI IN EVIDENCE, APART FROM WHEN HE BOUGHT CHANDRA 😆

NANDINI WAS QUITE IRRITATING WITH HER OVER EXPRESSIVENESS AT EVERY JUNCTURE. SPECIALLY WHEN CHANDRA'S FRAUD WAS REVEALED AND HE HUMILIATED HER BY THE REJECTION, I THOUGHT SHE WOULD TELL HER DAD ABOUT HIS CLAIMS TO CAPTURE MAGADHA. OF COURSE SHE DID NOT ATTEMPT TO DO SO

I WONDER WHY QUEEN AVANTIKA HASNT TOLD NANDINI ANYTHING ABOUT HER DAD AND SURPRISINGLY THERE SEEMS TO BE NO GOSSIP GRAPEVINE AT ALL, WHEREAS MOST WOMENS'QUARTERS ARE USUALLY ABUZZ WITH ALL KINDS OF GOSSIP

BUT THEN AGAIN, NANDINI HAS TO BE BESOTTED WITH DEAR DAD FOR HER TO HATE AND DETEST CHANDRA, SO I AM SURE THERES GOING TO BE NO CHANGE IN THAT. GHRINA IN HUGE DOLLOPS 😉 IS WHAT WE ARE ING TO BE SERVED WITH SOON

THE TUN TUN BHABHI IS GETTING ON MY NERVES NOW, WITH HER MARATHON LADDOO STUFFING TO BEAT THE DEPRESSION OF HER HUBBY'S DEFEAT 😆 THAT HER FAVE SHOWED NO SIGNS OF ANY SADNESS, IS QUITE ANOTHER MATTER 😆

SURPRISINGLY MURA WAS QUITE DIGNIFIED IN HER ACTIONS TODAY AND I TOO LIKED THE FACT THAT SHE DID NOT BOLT WITH CHANDRA. I COMPLETELY AGREE WITH YOUR LOGIC ABOUT HER REASONS FOR STAYING

I ALSO LIKED THE SNIPPETS OF CHANAKYA CHANDRA TRAINING FLASHBACKS THAT WERE SHOWN

BUT I WAS WONDERING WHY CHANDRA WAS USING THE KNIFE FOR HIS TIED HANDS WHEN MURA WAS UP AND ABOUT.

PRECAP CERTAINLY PROMISES MORE DRAMA 😆

TAKE CARE AUNTY

My dear Viji,

Thanks a lot!

That is a neat escape route for the CVs that you have thought up there, except that the beard is too neat fitting to fit in with this tucked behind the ears hypothesis. My Saraswathi Akka thought up something different, that it could have been the beard and moustache set he had earlier yanked off Nandini, which would of course have had spirit gum smeared all over it!😉

I am glad that we are of a mind on a lot of things, but maybe there might be something which you would like to thrash out on one of my future threads. I would enjoy that.

Warm regards

Shyamala

PS: You might like to cancel the inadvertent double post.

Originally posted by: vijisridhar

Hello Shyamala ji

As usual a great word flow of analysis. Have always loved your way with how the words flow so lucidly. 👏

Anyhow, I thot, one of those replying to you here would let you know, but, till now, none had, so thot, i would tell you. I dont think that it was a blooper. 😉

See carefully, when Chandra kills the guard in front of Mura, he not only yanks his clothes, but, also a lock of hair from the dead guy, which, i presume he used it for facial hair to disguise again. But, how, it fits perfectly, only the make up guy would know, but, again its safe to think that CGM tucks either ends of the hair lock tightly under his huge head gear. 😆

I know, Ekta commits some seriously silly bloopers which even a KG kid finds out, but she can be careful for the first 100 - 150 episodes when her precious TRPs are important.

Am not commenting on your threads much, as i concur with many of the analysis and replies here.

See ya

Viji

My dear Sutapa,

What a sweet thing to say! Thank you!!

Shyamala

Originally posted by: Sutapasima

Again the same addicion to your awesome writing shyamala

My dear (what do I call you?),

Thank you so much!

Now this is a very interesting take on Nandini, and it is plausible too, especially the part that I have now italicised. There is something to be said for being born royal or aristocratic, in those days and even much later - the French aristos almost all died on the guillotine without a whimper, their heads held high. Blood counts for about 50% of a person's make up, and the upbringing for the other half. In Nandini, it remains to be seen how and how much the royal side of hers surfaces.

Avantika looks and behaves like royalty. Nand and Nandini behave like commoners. And Avantika is far better looking than Nandini as well. She must have been a stunner when she was younger.

Shyamala

Originally posted by: chicksoup

Shyamala,

Brilliant!!!👏 As usual! 😊

Your comments on Nandini cracked me up. You really can't stand childish women, right! 😆
True, I can't. Lashy was asking me about this, and I wanted to clarify that what I cannot stand is silly, gossiping, giggling flocks of girls with neither ideas in their heads or goals in their life.

I see Nandini as more of the common man that Nand is and less of the queen Avantika is. I feel Nand proudly brought her up as his own kind, hence the blind devotion to her father is justified.

Nandini is vastly different from Jodha in this respect- her loyalty is not so much towards the country as it is to her father. She is much flawed here.

I feel Nandini really hasn't paid attention to the political scenario- she sees only what her father wants her to see, as Avantika pointed out. Essentially, that makes her a daddy's girl who is happy to stay his darling all her life, so long as she can play pranks on her SIL and go about saving drowning goats.😆

Very funny, and this makes her as shallow as could be. She is going to have a very rude awakening.

But there must be a little bit of Avantika's royalty in her that will certainly be polished up much later on..Until then...I guess we have to put up with the childishness!

My dear Shailaja,

Now this is more like it! It is as if I was saying all this myself, bar the fangirling!😉😉 I agree with everything that you have written here, and so I am in the happy position of having nothing to add, ie to type!

Now I can laugh at our brahmastra blowing up in our collective faces like one of those unguided rockets we used to set off at Deepavali, which sometimes zoomed into a neighbour's open window while we all tried to make ourselves scarce, like hit and run drivers.

I used the Abhimanyu comparison not from the angle of the entry and exit from the chakravyuh, but only for the sheer fearlessness the two, Abhimanyu and Chandragupta, displayed.

As for Houdini, I too have read that that was what he used to do. He was like a rubber man. He never failed in that escape trick. He died when a member of the audience in one of his shows met him backstage and asked him if he could withstand a very hard punch in the abdomen. Houdini said yes, if he was ready for it. But the idiotic fan punched him at once, very hard, before Houdini could tighten his abdominal muscles. His innards were ruptured as a result and he died after a few days of agony. An awful way to go, and so pointless as well. The ways of the Lord are inscrutable. The accident in which Amitabh Bachchan nearly died in 1982 was very similar to the one that killed Houdini.

Shyamala Aunty

Originally posted by: shailusri1983

Aunty, all of Chandra's follies on the count of Kautilya neeti notwithstanding. It was a seeti maar episode for me, after a long long time it made me want to relive my fangirling teenage days. I must assure you that I have not done it after Rajat's Prithviraj Chauhan. Not even his Jalal could do that for me!

Your Option A was neat and also fantastic but the CVs chose otherwise. Not too much ingenuity to be expected of them. They love to disappoint us when we start building our hopes too much on the characters. Here three of us, Chanakya, you, and I were going ga ga over this infallible Brahmastra or missile in human form, and plonk it goes in our face.

He goes about giving way too many hints about his activities to a random Daasi. He was unnecessarily putting himself under the Radar of suspicion.To boot it all, he fails to figure out that the Daasi is Rajkumari Nandini herself. He was making too many faux paux and that is surely shoddy work for any spy in the making. He should at least have turned behind to see if Nandini was gone, or taken the path she had told him to take and left his exploratory tour of the palace for some other opportune moment.

But I understand that even if he was clever enough, it was going to make no difference because he had such a run of bad luck in elder Parvatak turning up to apologize for his son's absence. All it would have saved is my respect for him as a redoubtable spy if he had seen through Nandini. So my utter confidence in him takes a beating. But he makes a terrific comeback after that in the Raj Sabha when he is unmasked.

He stands his ground unmoved and literally unshaken even when the carpet has been pulled beneath his feet. He roundly defeats Dhananand in the sword fighting and squarely rejects Nandini's hand which was really the cherry on the cake. Then he meets Moora in the prison before he pulls up the Houdini disappearing act. My father used to tell me about this. It seems that Houdini used to unshackle the iron chains with which he was bound by dislocating his muscles and bones and later fixing them up and escaping. Is it true, aunty?

Aunty this is no Abhimanyu in a Chakra Vyuh! Chandra is an Arjun who knows to get into and break free from any Chakra Vyuh as and when he wills it. This boy has finally learnt his lesson. Earlier, he underestimated Nandini. I usually quarrel with the CVs when they dumbify the male lead to make the female lead look clever. But here, they made Nandini look clever, but Chandra was also not so foolish or dumb either. He was just a bit careless, and laid back in his attitude. He will not repeat the same mistake again. He makes use of that very strength of Padmanand in escaping from Magadh. I am off to watch the episode Catch-Up again. I am hardly in a sane state of mind today with all that blood thumping action.

OK, my dear Ankita. All is forgiven!🤗

And of course such disagreements as we have had and are surely going to have in the future will always be amiable ones!

Shyamala Aunty

Originally posted by: BrienneOfTarth

Ah Aunty, you are a strict one! Still...one likes what one likes. 😆

I, personally, enjoy both the characterizations of our leads. I will stay firm on my points.Just highlighting the parts I added.

I did not mind his carelessness before Nandini because to him a daasi was not at all anything important. Judging from the way he was walking off after knowing she was a woman, I think he did not take her seriously anymore. It was a mistake nonetheless. Chanakya would slap him again for it 😉 but atleast it proves that the guy still has room for improvement. How boring to see a perfect hero right from the start and not one that grows better along the way! That's how I see it anyway.

What I did mind was the beard of his next avatar. Yes, you heard me. That was illogical. How did he even get that lock of hair to stick I ask you? 😆The costume would have been enough. The facial hair was overkill.

The best thing about the court scene was Chandra's stillness. If you notice, once he is unmasked, he does not waver. In his mind he knows he is surrounded but there is no anxiety or fear in him. When the guards put their swords to him even then he is still. Th enemy speaks of killing him but he makes no response.

This stillness reminds me of a seasoned predator. Silent, observing and assessing. There is an alertness to his unmoving stature, a calculative anticipation in his face. Here is a warrior who knows how not to waste his energy on useless posturing and blustering. He'd rather conserve his strength and seek the right moment to strike. He speaks only after his rival, the heir, is defeated.

Pain is no stranger to him. He is transforming the agony of those lashes into controlled fury as they fall. His defiance of a king's pride as he rejects his most important thing, his daughter, is a masterstroke.

A point to note, he bears the lashes without screaming, he bears the bearing also in silence. He refuses to let the enemy take even that bit of dignity from him!

He calculates and stays eight steps ahead of his enemy. Everything is planned. Even a weakened fall that hides the stealing of a weapon which will aid in a future escape. Quite fascinating, the way this warrior's mind works.

Chanakya has successfully created the kind of warrior that is rarely seen. The perfect kind.

I say again what is the point of railing against her childlike disposition when that is what she really must show at this point of the story? Bacchi hai toh bachpana hi karegi na. 😆

She is childish but that is how she must start out. How wonderful it will be to see her transformation, I tell you.

She is a kid at heart. The invincibility of her father and brothers is an immutable fact of her life. She has thwarted a spy (according to her) and been of use to her family. It is an adventure for our naughty girl, for her excitement makes it plain that she has not yet attained that maturity of a woman. Now she will watch the spy she has caught, a first experience for her, be punished justly. The way she defends her father later to her mother makes it all the more obvious. She is daddy's girl.

How else can one explain her declaration, that she will never marry! No one is as good as her family, for she has discovered a better warrior who is not good. He is better, but he is a spy. A bad person in her mind. Better is not equal to more goodness, anymore!

Her awakening to womanhood is yet on the horizon. But the first stones are being laid. Today she has seen her undefeatable brother be defeated. It has shaken her up. That is why she is angry. This spy has not just shaken the court but also her view of the world.

Yet there are signs that she may yet be great...the last scene when Chandra turns up, a man in a bath full of women...all the females squeal and flock to hide behind the queen but Nandini does not. Fleeing, I sense, does not even cross her mind. It is shock and then anger at this man's outrageousness that exists in her head. Whatever her father may be, he has raised a woman that thinks herself no less to any man. In those days I dare say any female would be that bold when an unknown man invaded their bathplace! Still, since you say that is how royalty should act, then be glad at least she has that much sense. 😉😆

I am enjoying their story and also enjoying our amiable disagreements. 😆Tickling your temper is quite amusing. I still say dont take it to heart. I used to get so angry during my Madhubala:Ek Ishq Ek Junoon phase when the CVs disappointed me. I stopped coming to IF for more than a year! Now I apply the Zen technique and keep my mastishk free of expectations. I find I can enjoy the serial better that way.😳

Mama I am quite impressed by your analysis..there are so many faults in the scenes as you have mentioned...but even a block buster movie has its own pitfalls..as they have mentioned there should be the beginning of love and hence the appropriate scenes to be created..too much of criticism spoils the enjoyment of the show..as a whole..the episode was handed in a decent manner and it captivates the audience

My very dear Saraswathi Akka,

I am so glad that you are now fully on board for this particular ride!

As for this post resembling my Jodha Akbar re-run posts, why do you think so? When I sit down to write a post, I almost never know how it is going to turn out, so I am not able to judge my posts either. I am just so relieved, every single time, to have them over and done with!😉

My comments in blue, as usual. I also see that Baby and Babloo are up and kicking, so I will get to them tomorrow.

Shyamala

PS: Your DP photo is very charming!

Originally posted by: karkuzhali

My dear Shyamala,

I am able to see the episodes daily from the "Kasam Theri Pyar ki.com" web site.

I saw the latest today before I read your analysis.

Shyamala, I somehow get a feeling that your write up today bears resemblance to your reviews in JA threads, especially those of the re run episodes, which I had a chance to enjoy.

I have given my comments in red.

Yours

Saraswathi akka.

Thank you, and I quite agree with the latter part of your comments.

I do not criticise for the sake of criticism - do see my response to Lavany above - and am usually quite patient with the CVs, unless the level of folly passes all bounds. What Chandragupta did with that pseudo daasi fits into this latter category.One expects more from him than one would from anyone else, as he is Chanakya's star pupil.

As for the beginning of love, we are very far from that as of now, for which I am grateful. I am far more interested in Chanakya coalition building against the Macedonians left behind by Alexander and their Indian allies, and then against Magadha.

By the way, why do you call me Mama? Aunty would be the right term to use, I think.

Shyamala Aunty ( Or Di or Akka if you prefer it)

Originally posted by: siva06

Mama I am quite impressed by your analysis..there are so many faults in the scenes as you have mentioned...but even a block buster movie has its own pitfalls..as they have mentioned there should be the beginning of love and hence the appropriate scenes to be created..too much of criticism spoils the enjoyment of the show..as a whole..the episode was handed in a decent manner and it captivates the audience