Chandra Nandini 10: The Mystery of the Missing Chemistry - Page 7

Originally posted by: ---Khushi---

N Malayketu reminds me of Rajesh Khanna in the nineties' films...where he would wear a tight white trouser, a tight bright yellow tshirt, with a notebook in his hand , n ... off to college 😆

N Helena looks like Rajesh Khanna's History lecturer in college 😆

Yet to catch up the most recent episode of CN; so I apparently have no idea of how the entire thing pans out from here. But the ending of the episode I saw looks like a merry tea party in the making at the coronation ceremony of one poor chap, Parvatak Malayketu!

Then for all those 'ahistorical script' decrients, the historical short put by the CVs on the epic Battle of Hydaepses starts and ends before you even know it, and a lay person who does not know his history could even be asking himself, "Who the heck is this Porus?" They get back to what they do best, their forte, Drama!

Alexander and his rationale for (magnanimously) forgiving Porus completely eludes me as it does his men who are more busy celebrating their victory and concentrating on food and drink and enjoying anecdotes on a 'supposed spaniel' of one of the ladies is the war camp and his phobia for lightening.

As always, the saving grace of the episode was the superbly scripted and well executed Chandra-Chanakya scene! Chandra doesn't comprehend how his master who keeps advocating against love so much can have such an ardent and passionate love for his motherland. Chanakya tells Chandra that he is not against love that helps one rise. He is against the clinging, cloying, suffocating, self-defeating, and self-destructive kind of love!

He tells Chandra that he took him away from his mother so that he could love his motherland all the more. For a split second, Chandra shows signs as if he is remembering something from another birth when he hears all this talk on patriotism and love for the motherland. Remember Chandra was doing an Abimanyu in Moora's stomach when Suryagupt and Shishunaag were speechifying to the populace on Maa for Maatrubhoomi! He tells Chanakya about how all this talk sounds familiar to him. Chanakya smiles and tells, "Then I was not so wrong in choosing you for this mission!"

So this time, Chanakya sends Chandra on another errand. He asks him to go and study Sikander and his war strategies! Whether Chanakya sees his mistake in choosing Chandra for this errand or not, I am definitely seeing it now! This boy plays truant the minute Chanakya's back is turned. Last time it was a woman parading as man, and later a Daasi who is a Princess to whom he reserves the juiciest tit-bits of his perfidious behavior which ends up in his first spying mission ending in a fiasco.

This time he reserves his throwaway remarks and suspicious behavior to Sikander himself. When he should have been taking care not to attract notice towards himself after infiltrating into the Greek army and landing himself the plump job of cook to Philips, one of Sikander's aide-de-camps, he goes about with his attention inviting behavior, first to the guards by inadvertently showing their security lapses in having failed to spot the knives he had hidden in his cap and under his shoes.

The only possible reason I see why Chandra was not immediately spotted in the war camp was because everybody there were more interested in hanging to the pearls of wisdom dropping from Helena's mouth of whose teeth and eyes, I got a full close up, just like that of a model posing for a Kajal-cum-Toothpaste TV AD, than in unmasking a possible intruder and infiltrator! An assortment of quirky females with definite Blue Cross credentials in Chandra's life! One will save Bakris, the other will do the lalan palan of lightening phobic-prone spaniels!

Sikander decides to send Helena and Selecus, along with our Cook Chandra and Party to the mad tea party cooking up at the province of Parvatak for obvious security reasons! Nand and Party are of course invited because the Bushy Old Man and his son have definite matchmaking aims. Attention please! A mad tea party ahead!

An admirably succinct summary of the last week's key aspects, Sandhya my dear. I wish I had this particular talent for brevity, then all my posts would be less than a page, to all round relief, most of all for myself!😉

Shyamala Aunty

Originally posted by: Sandhya.A

Whether Chemistry exists or not, Physics certainly does not in CN.

If it does indeed, then Newton will have to redefine his laws of motion and gravity.

The RT introduction scene was so implausible with his making the spear wheel with a rope or whatever in Rajinikant ishtyle, which would have looked comical on ANY other actor but RT (and ofcourse Rajniklant😆). The Shweta pole vault sans a pole in the sword fight scene was indeed comical. Esp given her height, she did look like a froggie taking a high jump. But the actions in the 10th Episode were truly bizzaire. Chandra takes a straight air dive down with a rope made instantly by twisting green leaves and straw like twigs; but then where from does he gain the required angular momentum to go around all the soldiers and tie them firmly and neatly!😲

The baahubali takeoffs, the use of Urdu words in BC India (Insaniyat ke naathe, shaadi, behroopiya, etc), the direct lifts from JA - nirdosh pashu pakshi saving intro, the reptile dupatta misunderstanding (Agree with Lashy that hope there were no retakes, the slap was solid!😲) the numerous bloopers all notwithstanding, CN last week was worth every minute of watch due to RT's portrayal of Chandra.👍🏼

I never thought that Chandra could look as handsome as Jalal, but he does and younger and fitter too.😳 And from every angle. In babloo's words Chandru looks very ' handmany'. The 8 rings, numerous pearl necklaces, glittering pagdi, embroidered silks were all missing. But even in Saffron costumes, Rudraksha and Holy Ash, RT was as stunning as ever.

And Chandra so different from Jalal. While the latter was effervescent, impulsive, wicked, rakish, yet noble, this one is icy, still (the stillness of a spinning top comparison is perfect.👏), unruffled, devout and noble. A star student who could make a teacher of Chanakya's calibre frequently proud, he looks detatched from the wordly trivialities. Yes. More like a yogi. And his general attitude reminds me of the famous verse of Needhi Neri.

Meivarutham paaraar, Pasi nokkaar, Kan thunjaar

Evvevar Theemaiyum Kollar - Sevvi

Arumaiyum paaaraar, Avamadhippum Kollaar

Karumame Kannaayinaar.

Which means,

He to whom Karm, that is duty is prime, cares not for physical hardships, hunger, sleep, time, evil by others and their criticisms.

Beautiful! Remember what I wrote about him in the swayamwar part?

A warrior sans pareil: That is to say, without an equal.

When Padmanand mentions his taking his father's blessings, what must have been crushing blow falls on Chandragupta. Does he show the kind of reaction 999 out of a 1000 would have showed? No. His chin comes up, and his gaze is even more level than usual. There is no other reaction. No shock, no alarm, nothing. He is able to absorb this development, which pulls the rug out from under his feet, demolishing his whole plan of action and exposing him to immediate and deadly danger, as if nothing had happened.

This is the ultimate in detachment, of the kind of nirmohi yogi of a warrior that Lord Krishna speaks of in the Gita, one who knows neither fear nor joy, neither pleasure nor pain, but only his lakshya.

Chandragupta is like lambent fire sheathed in ice. His inner core is always still, and underneath this stillness - which shields his intellect from paralyzing panic - his mind is ceaselessly assessing the situation, testing possible openings, weighing their possibilities.

When Parvatak asserts that this is not his son, there is a very faint smile on Chandragupta's face. When Padmanand baits him about this, this broadens into a wide smile of pure amusement, as he exclaims: Nissandeh!

Thus would Abhimanyu, even when encircled by his Kaurava enemies, have looked: unafraid, unfazed, and almost casual in the face of death.

And he was picture perfect in the Swayamvar scene. Especially the Humein yeh sambandh sweekar nahin. It was a totally seeti maar scene. The sentence that might have probably hurt Nandini the most, she has never been trifled with or slighted the least. This was a blow to her pride, on which the subsequent killings of her dear father and brothers will probably build an unshakeable hatred towards Chandra.

And Chandra too has a reason to hate Nandini. She has spoilt all his plans of getting his Acharya what he wanted by seeing through his disguise, or rather he thought so as Padmanand declared so. And may be she will inadvertantly foil his plans with Alexander too.

Chandra has a sense of humour which was evident in a couple of scenes with Malayketu and his self-talks regarding the Greek costumes. Given Nandini's penchant for fun, they might strike a chord here.

But just wish he learns to talk less, especially at the most inopportune moments, like his revealing his ideas on Magadh to a daasi and praising Chandra to Alexander. He has this trait of horn-tooting which Chanakya has perhaps overlooked or failed to correct.

I wanted to sock him one the first time, but this time I am not so sure it was not deliberate, like the way in which he removes those two knives from their hiding places. It is possible that he was playing the fool in order to be taken for one, and let alone as a harmless chap.

Nandini - SBP is pretty and delightful with Kajol-ish bubby-ness. And aunty, I do like her girlish giggles and pranks.

You were clearly born twenty or so years too late. You should have been around in the 1970s. You would have loved the girlish giggles and pranks of Asha Parekh, Saira Banu, Sadhana, the lot of them. I am sure the bhatakti aatma sequence is high on your approved list. Oh Lord!

It is all fine within family. But yes, I do agree that she ought to have been more circumspect in the Swayamvar Mandap. Here she is not her daddy dearest's darling daughter but a princess. Her reactions were so un-princess like. Also, she looked unsavoury in her male disguise. And thankfully she has not begun to bhaashan yet. I was dreading one just after the bakri ka bachcha save. She also has fluidity of dialogue delivery and expressions that don't look staged. So far so good!😃

Like Kajol? I am sure that if she heard it, she would, like Queen Victoria, not be amused. Pretty, maybe, but delightful? Not by a long chalk, not for me! She looks, in one word, commonplace. Jodha was at least really beautiful, especially in orange and yellow Rajasthani outfits. I used to call her an ambulant sunflower. Nandini looked her best after she was exposed in that masculine outfit. Plus she needs to lose some more weight. She should try and look lissome.

I too was shocked with Chetan's entry. Chetan? A student???? And I pray Jalal's begums don't pop up here. I can't stand another round of preaching and screeching. 😲 But the Helena looks like a horrible prospect, looking old enough to be Chandra's badi ammi.😡

Chanakya - I have watched every episode of Ashoka and the 'Rajkumar Sushim' still echoes in my mind, though faintly now after 10 episodes. 😆 But the actor was very good in certain parts, esp the hilltop scene with little Chandra, and the rain scene with the senior. 👍🏼

Last week's posts were all excellent aunty and I learnt 7 new words.😉😆

Question: From where does Chanakya produce the resources to equip Chandragupta, and his necessary retinue, sufficiently grandly for him to be able to pass himself off as Prince Parvathak Malayaketu?

Being a teacher of Princes, he is bound to be paid. And Chanakya well knows that he needs money to fulfill his plans. Else why wouold he waste time on the likes of Malayaketus??

-Apples in the palace gardens at Pataliputra? Must be a fruit grower's paradise!

It was not mentioned apples, just phal. May be they were some red fruits cultivated then.😔
I watched that bit three times, and the falling fruit were apples.

Chandra walks up a vertical wall to do an entirely unnecessary somersault before landing on his feet, which is where he was in the first place!😉

I laughed so much at this line.🤣

Lastly, to top things off, there is the Star Trekkie Amatya Rakshas babbling about the conjunction of the full moon (Chandra, get it?) and the Rohini nakshatra, making it especially auspicious for Nandini, as she was born at an identical conjunction

He is a red Indian chief, CN's Shaguni Bhai and Amatya all rolled into one.🤣

Liquid lightning: What an apt description for RT's Shamsheerbaazi.👏

Talking about chemistry me think RT has great chemistry with the camera,as always

Not a mad tea party, my dear Shailaja, but a Greek farce with the most bizarre ingredients. More of that tomorrow.

But the pet was a rabbit, not a puppy, and that bit was surprisingly telling as far as Helena's character was concerned.

Loved the crack about the Blue Cross brigade.

Shyamala Aunty

Originally posted by: shailusri1983

Yet to catch up the most recent episode of CN; so I apparently have no idea of how the entire thing pans out from here. But the ending of the episode I saw looks like a merry tea party in the making at the coronation ceremony of one poor chap, Parvatak Malayketu!

Then for all those 'ahistorical script' decrients, the historical short put by the CVs on the epic Battle of Hydaepses starts and ends before you even know it, and a lay person who does not know his history could even be asking himself, "Who the heck is this Porus?" They get back to what they do best, their forte, Drama!

Alexander and his rationale for (magnanimously) forgiving Porus completely eludes me as it does his men who are more busy celebrating their victory and concentrating on food and drink and enjoying anecdotes on a 'supposed spaniel' of one of the ladies is the war camp and his phobia for lightening.

No, my dear, his letting Porus off lightly makes perfect sense, as he then makes him a satrap, who has to use the reserves of his own former kingdom to fight other bharatiya rajas on Alexander's behalf, like the Rajput Mansabdars under the Mughals.

As always, the saving grace of the episode was the superbly scripted and well executed Chandra-Chanakya scene! Chandra doesn't comprehend how his master who keeps advocating against love so much can have such an ardent and passionate love for his motherland. Chanakya tells Chandra that he is not against love that helps one rise. He is against the clinging, cloying, suffocating, self-defeating, and self-destructive kind of love!

He tells Chandra that he took him away from his mother so that he could love his motherland all the more. For a split second, Chandra shows signs as if he is remembering something from another birth when he hears all this talk on patriotism and love for the motherland. Remember Chandra was doing an Abimanyu in Moora's stomach when Suryagupt and Shishunaag were speechifying to the populace on Maa for Maatrubhoomi! He tells Chanakya about how all this talk sounds familiar to him. Chanakya smiles and tells, "Then I was not so wrong in choosing you for this mission!"

So this time, Chanakya sends Chandra on another errand. He asks him to go and study Sikander and his war strategies!

There is one version of pre-Mauryan history where Chandragupta actually goes to Alexander's camp to invite him to attack Magadha. He is dismissed and barely escapes being executed, the real Alexander not being anything like as benign as this one and subject to drunken rages. The Greeks called Chandragupta Sandrocottos.

Whether Chanakya sees his mistake in choosing Chandra for this errand or not, I am definitely seeing it now! This boy plays truant the minute Chanakya's back is turned. Last time it was a woman parading as man, and later a Daasi who is a Princess to whom he reserves the juiciest tit-bits of his perfidious behavior which ends up in his first spying mission ending in a fiasco.

This time he reserves his throwaway remarks and suspicious behavior to Sikander himself. When he should have been taking care not to attract notice towards himself after infiltrating into the Greek army and landing himself the plump job of cook to Philips, one of Sikander's aide-de-camps, he goes about with his attention inviting behavior, first to the guards by inadvertently showing their security lapses in having failed to spot the knives he had hidden in his cap and under his shoes.

He seems to be an inveterate show off,but this time, I am going to attempt a plausible defence of his behaviour.

Everyone there in the war camp seemed more interested in hanging to the pearls of wisdom dropping from Helena's mouth of whose teeth and eyes, I got a full close up, just like that of a model posing for a Kajal-cum-Toothpaste TV AD. An assortment of quirky females with definite Blue Cross credentials in Chandra's life! One will save Bakris, the other will do the lalan palan of lightening phobic-prone spaniels!

Sikander decides to send Helena and Selecus, along with our Cook Chandra and Party to the mad tea party cooking up at the province of Parvatak for obvious security reasons! Nand and Party are of course invited because the Bushy Old Man and his son have definite matchmaking aims. Attention please! A mad tea party ahead!

Will eagerly await your take! It was a rabbit, was it? I bet this Bakri prem of Nandini and Rabbit prem of Helena is to show how both these ladies have a soft and Komal Hriday! If Chandra had a pet, I bet it will be a tiger or lion! I don't see him identifying with mild animals. He seems to have a penchant for wild cats!

Originally posted by: sashashyam

<font face="Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif">Not a mad tea party, my dear Shailaja, but a Greek farce with the most bizarre ingredients. More of that tomorrow.

But the pet was a rabbit, not a puppy, and that bit was surprisingly telling as far as Helena's character was concerned.

Loved the crack about the Blue Cross brigade.

Shyamala Aunty


</font>

Originally posted by: shailusri1983

He seems to have a penchant for wild cats!

Well, Khushi my poppet, Subha had spotted the same thing in the swayamvar sequence, when Nandini was being led into the hall. You are both spot on.

As intrepreting Nandini's character properly, that would mean a lot of work, both for her and for the CVs, whereas girlish giggles and pranks are very easy to do and seem to go down well with the most unexpected folks! The promo sequences are far, far away, and for now, she is happy imitating the 1970s heroines brigade to the T.

Today, she added a dollop of unexpected arrogance, when she looked across, with patent pleasure, at her father who had just forced Chandragupta to fasten her payal around her ankle. How I wish all those bees had stung her good and proper!😉

She is generally over-dressed and those cork screw curls, even when she was doing Mayurbhanj Chhau moves around that bejaan putla (Sri complains about the BC gardens looking decidedly AD, but what I can't stand is so many Urdu words in the 4th century BC😡), do nothing for her. She looked her best in that masculine outfit, just when she had been exposed as a woman.

Acting wise, she was good the other day when she was assuring her father than she wanted to be his greatest strength and fight his enemies. The closing shot of her face was striking.

As of now, the only really pleasing parts are the Chandragupta-Chanakya ones.

Shyamala Aunty

Originally posted by: ---Khushi---

Hello Shyamala Aunty...

Just saw the last 2 epis n I just realised what I don't like about Sweta"s Nandini...her GAIT...it's very very 'commoner' type...I think she has not interpreted Nandini's character properly...I had loved her in the promos, but for me, she hasn't delivered as yet.. maybe early days...

N I also just realised what I love about RT's CGM... Everything!!!😎👍🏼(except for his entry n the ottt leap from the tree 😆 to tie the soldiers...chemistry, physics, biology, literature everything was missing there...😆..but RT sure fits CGM's role to the 'T'...

N Malayketu reminds me of Rajesh Khanna in the nineties' films...where he would wear a tight white trouser, a tight bright yellow tshirt, with a notebook in his hand , n ... off to college 😆

No, darling, Rajesh Khanna never wrote tight T shirts. His shirts were always loose and long enough to cover his ample posterior. Nor did he specialise in tight white trousers. You are mixing him up with the white trousers and white shoes specialist, Jeetendra!😆

N Helena looks like Rajesh Khanna's History lecturer in college 😆

But all in all, enjoying CN...n more so, coming to your threads...

Frankly, i haven't read most of your posts lately, coz I want to relish them at leisure...so will do that next week maybe.. 😃

Not so much a penchant, as that he attracts them the way catnip attracts cats.

Shyamala Aunty

Originally posted by: cute.manasi

😆

A lion, of course, my dear. Remember the CGM lion in Ashoka?

Shyamala Aunty

Originally posted by: shailusri1983

Will eagerly await your take! It was a rabbit, was it? I bet this Bakri prem of Nandini and Rabbit prem of Helena is to show how both these ladies have a soft and Komal Hriday! If Chandra had a pet, I bet it will be a tiger or lion! I don't see him identifying with mild animals. He seems to have a penchant for wild cats!