Ankita I typed a whole big post and it just went missing. So you will have to make do with whatever little I have time to type. Who decides the upper and lower limits of revenge? Which revenge is noble and which revenge is selfish?
I guess that revenge is revenge. There is nothing noble about one kind of revenge and base about some other kind of revenge. It is an all consuming emotion like love or hate. It does not seek or do anything by halves. It seeks perfect annihilation. I feel that you are judging things in an ancient context with modern sensibilities, niceties, code of honor, ideas of right and wrong.
Supposing we meet with an injustice, our recourse to justice is perhaps easier. We have the courts and police to go to. It was not so in those days. It was all a game of power politics. The weak would keep on getting exploited and cheated as long as they remained weak and did not protest. To make a big line of inequity shorter without rubbing it, there were times when you had to draw a bigger line of retribution beside it. I am not using the word righteousness or goodness here.
Those days you could perhaps not set a wrong right with righteousness alone. You had to get down into the slime and the swamp of badness yourself without completely drowning in it to clean or fill it up. You couldn't be very finicky about how you set right wrongs done to you in that particular period. The means to the end were not always right. The final destination was always what mattered in the period we are discussing about.
You had very few options and opportunities you could try. You had to take them. Helena took whatever opportunities came her way. The means never mattered as long as you reached your end. You call Chandra's revenge noble because he has more grounds for justification and Helena's revenge "bad or selfish" because according to you she has less grounds of justification. But the truth remains that no revenge is completely good. It razes and annihilates everything that comes in its path, both good or bad.
Moreover, Helena is not an actual instrument of war. She is just catalyzing it with her help and support. You think you would have praised or been impressed with Helena if she just kept quiet, crying in a corner for everything Malay did to her without seeking justice and suffering away like patience on a monument? She impresses by the very fact that she challenges these social stereotypes and goes beyond them unlike Nandini who never goes beyond the set patterns and conditioning with which she is brought up. She never crosses the Lakshman Rekha drawn by a patriarchal society.
To this day, there are people in the society who blame Draupadi for precipitating the Kurukshetra War. There are many who say. "So what if you were insulted. Wear a saree and stay at home! Why do you seek revenge? What wrong did all those thousands and thousands who died for the sake of this revenge do? They were entirely unconnected to any of this!"
Will you call this criticism on Draupadi right or wrong? You may call her right because she was disrobed in public so she had to be avenged in public as well. Just because Helena's body and soul were stripped in private, and her insult happened within a tent, she had to let go the insult, forgive the person who wronged her and doesn't feel even an ounce guilty about his behavior, and move on? Anyway this war was destined to happen long before, the day Shishnaag and Suryagupt were cruelly killed and Moora was imprisoned. It was ignited the day Chanakya was insulted in the Sabha by Nand and he made that Pratigya.
Regarding Nandini, I agree she rubs Chandra the wrong way. Aunty calls her Chandra's Bete-Noire, or that is how he sees her equation with him at the present. I have always called her the collateral damage in this war between Nand and Chandra. This girl has simply been caught in the crossfire and there have been occasions when Nand has fired over her shoulder while there have been yet other instances when she has been used as a shield by Chandra. But in all this firing and cross firing, this girl pretends to be clueless and ignorant. This cannot be! Which means she knows and yet pretends not to know; or she knows and has no problem with it.
I personally have no qualms with her being grey. I will accept her like that too. I only would like to see her honest with herself and know what she really is and not to pretend otherwise. If she tells, "I know my Dad is not very good. But I love him and will support him all the same as a good daughter. If somebody harms him, I will punish that person", I will actually sympathize with her and definitely support her. But I would certainly be peeved and irritated if she spouts sermons or tries to act blind, try to whitewash that awful Dad of hers at the cost of the whole world, and condemn someone else who is really not at fault and condemn him/her for something they are well-justified in doing.
If it is not any of the above it means she is plain dull, bull-headed, and mulish, one whose cranial cavity is stuffed with cotton wool and the best sound, sense and logic proofing that nothing or nobody can penetrate so easily; and will take a lot of persistent dinning in from all sides for months together before anybody cracks even a tip of the ice berg.
I know that according to the show she is supposed to turn into this. But I find this last scenario of her character sketch hardly inviting, appetizing or appealing in interest to me. Goodness does not mean priggishness and insipidity. I would rather love her as a grey character and accept her like that as well than with a mulishly good one. However I know for sure we are ultimately going to end up with the cranial cushioning mulishly good version of Nandini. If that really happens I may continue watching the show for other reasons, but Nandini would hardly figure in that list of "My Reasons for Watching CN". This is my feeling about the topic. You could differ from me; or both of us could always pleasantly agree to disagree.
PS: There is a lot in history that is controversial. It is not like we support someone because their cause is right and noble, and we don't support someone because it is just a power trip! If that is the case, I think all of us should give up on one of our greatest national icons, Ashok, CGM's grandson. He was all that Helena is now! So should we castigate him too?
Originally posted by: BrienneOfTarth
Shailaja do chk my post on this pg...its the completed one. That one was posted incomplete by mistake. Stupid cell. Anyways I am aware that people then were just so. Am I supposed to say they used to be like that and let it go? I cant do that. If their motivations are wrong I will call them out on it. Helena's motives for waging war on a kingdom are selfish and obssessive. Arent we all rooting for CGM and Chanakya because their goal of Akhand Bharat is a good cause? Would webe so sympathetic to their cause if it was all a power trip? Nandini is less brains and more hearts. Fool that she is. Her mettle is yet to be tested truly. Sorry if I am going against popular opinion here. Its just how I see them. That of course makes them no less enjoyable to watch do all the plotting and fighting. LoL. I can enjoy my greys but still condemn their poor choices.
Edited by shailusri1983 - 8 years ago
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