LIST OF CHANDRA NANDINI EPISODE ANALYSES ON THIS THREAD
Chandra Nandini 46-48: Theatre of the absurd
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Chandra Nandini 46-48: Theatre of the absurd
Folks,
First of all, here I am, with my sincere apologies for having gone AWOL for the past 3 weeks. It was partly due to a succession of lousy colds, and part because, as often happens when one deviates from a well established pattern, in this case of biweekly posts, for over 2 weeks, one simply loses the necessary discipline, and goes on postponing things.
Crazy seesaw script: Moreover the script seesawed with such alarming regularity that I simply could not get my act together at all.
To cite just one example, after the saanjha hamaam incident, which created such a furore here (undoubtedly to the secret delight of the CVs), on the very next day, Chandra and Nandini, especially she, behaved as if absolutely nothing had gone wrong between them. Not just that, he personally carried her all the way to her rooms after she had hurt herself in the jump to save the nirdosh pakshi from the rubber snake😉 , and then he personally slathered lep all over her skinned knees.
Again, a day later, Chandra is shown doing what no king would ever do even for his favourite queen, ie personally lug in an armful of books and deposit it in her rooms. Note that he does this for the wife who had tried to kill him twice in the last 3 days! Odd, would you not say?
As if this was not enough, Nandini, acting as per Helena's commands, responds by bluntly turning down this remarkable gesture. She then proceeds to rave and rant at him, not just about his commoner upbringing, but also by spewing abuses against his parents, especially his mother. I was truly astonished by the degree of self control Chandra displayed in that scene, not going beyond raising his voice in a stentorian NANDINI! Remember that while we know why she is being so horrible, he does not. He rages to Helena later about Nandini's behaviour, so one presumes that he perceives this insult as unforgivable.
But the very next day, it is again as if nothing of the kind had ever happened between them! What does one make of this kind of drastically inconsistent script?
Theatre of the absurd: So I have decided to give up on analyzing this show seriously, and to take a different tack. Whence this new title. It is as near a perfect fit for the goings on onscreen over last dozen episodes as I can make it!
In the European, post World War II style of theatre that went by this name, the idea apparently was to convey what happens when human existence has no meaning or purpose, and logical construction and argument give way to the irrational and the illogical. Don't you perceive the parallel to what has been dished out to us these last 3 weeks?😉
Now, as I cannot possibly cover all the missing episodes after No. 33 - much as I would like to discuss Chandragupta's marvellously fresh and delightful comic scenes with both Durdhara and Helena - I am going to limit this post to this week's three episodes, Nos. 46, 47 & 48. In discussing these, I am going to keep my tongue, for the most part, firmly in my cheek.😉 So be forewarned.
And I am going backwards, and beginning with No. 48, as it is by far the most comic of the three.
Chandra Nandini 48: Heights of absurdity
Or depths, if you prefer that!
The best part of the otherwise totally forgettable episode came at the very end, when the voice of the hooded spy revealed beyond any doubt that it is Malayaketu. A very neat, unexpected twist.👏
I had heard that the real Chanakya had persuaded this very Malayketu to co-operate with him and Chandragupta against Nand, promising him half the kingdom, and had then got rid of him using a vishkanya that Malayaketu had, predictably, fancied. But I hardly think Chetan would have settled for such a short contract, especially since this time, he cannot come back as he did in Jodha Akbar, as his Adham Khan's lookalike son Haider!😉
Double agent: It is clear that here too Chanakya has struck a deal with Malayaketu for his help against the Nands, probably in exchange for part of the territory of Magadha or something comparable. It would have had to be a big deal to tempt him, unless Chandragupta has conquered the kingdom of Parvatak and Chanakya has now offered to give it back to Malayaketu and his father in return for this help against Padmanand.
It is not yet clear whether Malayaketu is a double agent or a triple agent - ie whether he is Chanakya's spy in the Nand camp, or Rakshas' spy, pretending to be Chanakya's spy in the Nand camp, but actually leaking all of Chanakya's plans to Rakshas.
I would plump for the former. For the fact is that the info he gives Chanakya about the plans of the Nand camp is accurate. Only, he refers to a gupt army, whereas to Padmanand he says it would be meri sena .
I wonder what his deal with Nand would have been in either case. Perhaps Nand apni priya putri ke ulte phere laganewala tha, so that she could then marry Malayaketu, in case that is what he still wants!😉
I also wonder why they keep the chap wrapped up in that blanket and make him slouch to reduce his height. Once he opens his mouth, his voice and his way of speaking are both so characteristic that he would be identified at once!
Incomprehensible leniency: The other point in this episode that struck me, once I had got over the disappointment of Jodha's delightful daadisaa not playing Chandra ki daadi now - had it been her, I would have swallowed the lousiest script for the pure pleasure of watching her sunny, roly poly self! - was that the bade buzurg seem to have been remarkably lenient in those days!
Nandini tells the daadi that Yeh mera soubhagya hai ki mera vivah Chandra se hua.. and that wo mera bahut dhyan rakhta hai. So Chandra's daadi is OK with the new bride not only uttering her husband's name - a complete taboo even today in conservative families, whence the Ramu ke baba!kind of appellations! - but referring to him using not the mandatory wo form, but the familiar, disrespectful tu form??? It is unbelievable.
It is bad enough to have all his wives, including the two Bharatiya ones, referring to their husband by name as Chandra, but doing the same thing in front of his daadi is the ruddy limit!😲
Even odder is that fact that the daadi does not seem to have any special words of affection for the grandson she must have given up as dead for 20 years. The way in which she greets him is extraordinary, given these circumstances. She behaves absolutely casually, as if he had just dropped in from Pataliputra!
In contrast, for some odd reason, she is ready to gush at once over Nandini - the daughter of the man who murdered her son Suryagupta, and kept her daughter in law prisoner for 20 years - whereas she has nothing comparable to say to Chandra's other two queens. Agreed, what Padmanand did was not Nandini's fault, but in such cases, at least some resentment still lingers, and such an excessively open-hearted welcome seemed very odd.
Anachronisms galore:While we have by now got inured to these in the language used, it was still startling to hear Chandra's daadi, who could hardly have had the exposure to Persian that Helena has had, saying khudh khush! Kya kahein in logon ke baare mein? 😡
Cramped and constrained: Chandra looks, for the most part, like a hunted fox in the last stages of the chase. It does not suit him.
Amidst such ludicrous goings on, and probably with his concussion lingering, I am not surprised at Rajat sleepwalking thru these scenes, but we the viewers are getting shortchanged. There was not a single scene of his last night which was a standout.
Nor could one understand his preoccupation with Nandini's creature comforts. If she had slept hugging that dratted book of hers, iska kya jaata tha? I suppose this is the sign to us dumb clucks that prem ke ankur dheere dheere uske (kuchale hue) hriday mein pallavit ho rahe hain.😆
The dhakka, like much else here was, a washed out adaptation of the original in Jodha Akbar, which was of course set in entirely different circumstances, and had a very different outcome.
Bizarre mannat: As for the daadi' s sudden bombshell about her teen mannats, we have seen in the earlier episodes how Chandra voluntarily and repeatedly lugs this less than svelte female around in his arms, most recently after she landed on her knees.
In fact the two of them seem to have, for the most part, only 2 sorts of interaction: (a) he is holding her hand and dragging her along or (b) he is carrying her somewhere in his arms.😉
So I could not understand his sudden reluctance to heave her in similar fashion to the top of whatever hillock there is. If SRK could lug Deepika Padukone, who is a couple of inches taller than he is and surely no lightweight, up what looked like 300 temple steps (in Chennai Express), why can Chandra, who is a strong boy, not follow suit?
But that corny crack of his about Nandini being bhaari - na jaane kya kya khaati hai! - i would have gone down well with the TRP audience, I expect, as would all the rest of the nonsense that was dished out by the pretty healthy looking daadi last night. They would now feel that they were right back in familiar territory.
Exactly as they would when daadi asks Chauthi bhi hai kya? , and even Nandini smiles.
Incognito Chhaya: One point, to clear doubts expressed about Chandra's royal relatives not having taken care of Chhaya. They would all have gone into hiding as soon as Suryagupta had been assassinated. If not Nand would surely have got rid of Suryagupta's younger brother. They would have re-emerged from wherever they were hiding in exile only now, after Chandragupta had conquered Magadha.
So Chhaya, who is raised not by this chacha, but by her mama, Mura's brother, and his wife, would have been lost to her paternal family for the whole of this time, as they were themselves in hiding and would have, moreover, assumed that she had also been killed. And the mama-mami would have been concentrating on keeping themselves inconspicuous, for obvious reasons, though they bring Chhaya up in the full knowledge of her royal heritage. Not that this stops her from falling for a commoner!😉
The sylvan seductress: Tonight, we can look forward to an utsav, and that they did not simply say jashn was the sole nod to the period that I could see!
But after Chandra has, hopefully, survived the trip up the hill with this substantial armful, he is more likely to need a whole tube of Moov 😉 than a celebration during which he would have to fight seriously as well, given Padmanand's decision to attack Chandra at Piplivan!
Oh, I almost forgot. The forest spirit who, according to the spoilers, covets Chandragupta and thus wants to eliminate Nandini (thereby displaying unexpected good sense! 😉 ) is also on the cards for this mini pilgrimage, is she not? Now we can cherish a slender hope that she will be a slinky, gorgeous creature, for poor Chandragupta badly needs some eye candy of the Godiva chocolate kind. All that he has got till now is like hard, sour peppermints!😆
Not that he will have the good sense to take advantage of such a heaven-sent opportunity. Instead he will be busy saving the life of the Third Wife! Oh well, what can't be cured and all that jazz!😉
Unexpected pathos: One last and perhaps unexpected point. The eagerness on Helena's face as she comes forward to kneel at daadi's feet and touch them was very well done. It was the same when, during Chhaya's wedding, she gets up with alacrity to do the kanyadaan along with Chandragupta. At those moments, all her faults notwithstanding, I felt really sorry for her, so eager to belong and to take the place of the patrani!
Now on to the Monday and Tuesday episodes.
Chandra Nandini 46 & 47: Rollercoaster
I don't know what you feel, folks, but to me this tale looks like a rollercoaster on the downride.
Events, often those borrowed from Jodha Akbar, that would have been stretched out to 2/3 episodes in the normal course, are here compressed to sliver thinness, whether it is the case of Nandini taking poison or the whole potential shindy about Chhaya's love affair. A few nonsensical lines are uttered, and bingo! The problem is solved, with nothing much having moved forward on the main track.
Chhaya ki prem gaatha: At least in this case, I expected a lot of arguments - between Chandragupta, Chanakya, Chhaya, Mura, perhaps even Helena who would have shoehorned herself in there, and Durdhura - about the political and decidedly negative fallout of the Magadha Samrat breaking his word given to the Kalinga royal family, and thus presumably insulting and alienating another royal who was, moreover, his classmate at the gurukul. Should Acharya Chanakya not have had an opinion to express on this, as on all political matters? He is, for once, totally maun!
Then there is the other issue , the one about the propriety of a princess of Magadha marrying a jeweller. Rajmata Mura clearly had no idea about this love affair, so it must have come as a shock to her. Should she not have had something to say in the matter, for or against Chhaya? But she does not even open her mouth.
Lasly, there should surely have been a good bit of sarcastic comments against love from Chandragupta. But there was nothing of the kind.
Chandragupta just comes back into the court,and once his own affairs with Nandini are sorted out, he moves across and announces the new marriage! End of story.
Idiotic lines: When I mentioned nonsensical lines earlier, I was thinking of Chanakya declaring that Nandini was right and that Chandragupta's decision to exile Nandini from the palace had been taken without enough tark vitark, or discussion. What on earth was there to discuss when Nandini would not say a word in her own defence, and Satyajit had (sensibly!😉) taken to his heels?
Later, Nandini asserts not only that Chhaya's brother was a stranger to love, but adds a bizarre clincher: Jisne shasan ke liye apni sagi behen ki bali chadha di! This when Chandra had no clue of this amar prem kahani till a few minutes earlier! What sort of gibberish is this? 😡
Equally foolish was her statement that she had maintained silence because she did not want Satyajit to be punished for having loved a princess, the king's elder sister. But then did she not realise that he would be punished much more severely for the crime of having a love affair with the queen of Magadha, with a sure death sentence? 😕
I have by now lost most of my once very high hopes of an A class performance from Nandini, for she seems to do well only when she is silent - she was really good for once in the scenes with Chandra after she is caught with Satyajit, and later in the court. But at least till now she was not giving any bhashans. Now that too has started!
Overall, it seems that the CVs have taken leave of such sense as they ever had. 😡
Solo sabha: But on one count, as to why the court proceedings now and not when Nandini actually tried twice to kill Chandragupta, they cannot be faulted. There is a clear explanation for this omission on those two prior occasions.
For once that is done, the only possible sentence would be death, and Chandra and Chanakya do not want Nandini dead. In fact, it would have been the same for an unfaithful queen in any era right up to the French revolution.
But here Chandra only exiles Nandini from the palace. Not from Magadha, and this is for a perfectly good reason; they can then keep her under surveillance wherever they incarcerate her outside the palace.
That way, Chandra will also be able to sleep soundly! And this without having to provide himself with some rudimentary life insurance in the shape of a kataar next to his sword arm. Not under the pillow, for then he will be using up most of the lead time he has in getting to it!😉
This apart, as the behaviour of Mura, Chhaya and even Chandragupta towards the Nand family women shows, Chandragupta's family seems to have a lot of spare cheeks😉. Though this period is over 320 years before Jesus Christ, they seem to have adopted the turn your other cheek principle cited in the Holy Bible. Soon, they will all be spinning like tops, with the circular momentum imparted by repeated slaps on alternate cheeks!😆
Striking scenes: There were just two of these in these episodes.
Chandra-Helena: Shipwreck: The first was of the blowup between Chandragupta and Helena, in which Chandra's slow fuse anger and ominous warning were superbly done.
But what I liked best here was not just the way in which he hissed at her from six inches away: Yeh jo abhi kaha hai, phir kabhi mat dohrana! .. Yeh baat jeevan bhar smaran rakhna ki aaj main agar raja hoon to kewal aur kewal mere Acharya ke kaaran! Jeevan bhar is baat ko apne mastishk mein baithakar rakhna! , though I enjoyed watching Helena being pulled down several pegs at one go.
It was rather the progressive changes in Chandragupta's face and eyes as he turns round from near the door and looks back at Helena. The dawning realisation of what exactly she had just said comes out in the near incredulous KYA?, and then there is the slow upsurge of anger as his face sets, almost rigidly, and the eyes under the drawn brows narrow to mere slits as he turns and begins to walk back towards her.
Any woman with an ounce of commonsense would have quailed at the look on his face and backtracked as fast as she could, but then Helena does not have any of that useful commodity!😉
I was also quietly patting myself on the back for having, for once, guessed a plot development correctly. For I had said, on my last thread, while lamenting over the steep decline in Helena's characterization,
And if she makes the cardinal error of once, even once reminding Chandragupta that it was she who had made him the king ( a patent exaggeration, and in any case it was a deal that she too needed desperately) , she will plummet in his estimation in just that one second.
Helena did exactly what I had feared she would, and the result was exactly what I had predicted. She is a fool thru and thru, and has no grasp of the male psychology at all. Lord, what a shipwreck of such a strong, beautiful, promising relationship to which I devoted so much exultant space in my Helen 2.0 post!😭
Chandra-Nandini: A rare glimpse of chemistry: The second was the one where Nandini is trying to hide Chhaya's letter in her casket when Chandragupta turns up(the chap seems to haunt her rooms! 😉 And they despite Helena's diktats, still seem very large and ostentatious enough!😆).
There is the mandatory moment of suspense as Nandini waits, with bated breath, for Chandra to spot the roll of Chhaya's letters. But he does not look into the casket at all, and starts smiling suddenly. It was startling, and it must have been even more so to the tense Nandini.
The exchange that follows her question about why he let her continue with her studies was charming in its normalcy, the first such sensible interaction between them. But it was when Nandini, her mind pre-occupied with Chhaya's misery, asks why the same rule of equal rights for all to education does not apply to prem, that Chandra's reaction is as unexpected as it is intriguing.
He begins to laugh, and as he comes back to her side, comments with total candour : Yeh kya hai na ki mujhe aaj tak prem nahin hua, aura agar hua bhi to maine kuch anubhav nahin kiya hai..
As he finishes saying this, Nandini has turned towards him, and they look into each other's eyes for a long, long moment. One could not read their expressions, especially Chandragupta's, but it was very intriguing. A daasi entering at that moment broke the spell, but for very first time, one felt some spark of chemistry between them. Maybe there is some hope for this love story after all!
Below par: After these two excellent scenes, unfortunately, it seemed as if Rajat's Chandragupta had been infected with the kind of ticks that Nandini displays in every one of her angry scenes without exception. From the time he comes across her and that Satyajit together, he glares and glares for all he is worth, the only saving grace being.that he too did not begin biting his lower lip as she does!
It was the same in the day after. As Nandini asks Chanakya whether the decision the king took earlier was shastrorth, or according to the shastras, Chandragupta looks as overwhelmingly melancholy as an undertaker's assistant (who has, for professional reasons, to look even more mournful than the undertaker himself😉 ). One side of his face droops, making it look lopsided, and he seems about to burst into tears. It looked very odd.
And I am tired of these stereotyped confrontation scenes between him and Nandini , where the lines seem as repetitive as those in Naagin 1 and Naagin 2. In the closing one today, any gains in terms of performance that Nandini had made in the scenes in court - where she kept her mouth shut and looked and acted much better than usual - were abruptly dumped, and she went back to status quo ante, with widened eyes and that lower lip biting gimmick.
The sole silver lining was that Dhananand's escape was actually deliberately engineered by the C&C duo for their own teda purposes. I had hoped that Chandragupta had let Nandini meet Dhananand too only to see if she learnt anything vital from him, but that was not made clear at all. Regardless, this latter devious move was clever enough to make me feel a bit better. 😛
Of course Amatya Rakshas, who, with his pot belly and his strange outfit, looks more like the head executioner than like a chief minister😉, won that round too by spiriting Padmanand and his cohorts away in time, for all of Chandragupta's demonstrating to Nandini how to count to five!
I have no idea what material the CVs have stored up to carry this story thru the anticipated 500+ episodes, but they seem to me to be squandering whatever they do have in great and unnecessary haste.
Latest promo: This is strikingly original!
Just consider the sequence of the shots. Nandini is rushing along near a water body carrying a basket of red roses. She is naturally looking in the direction at right angles to where she is going. So she collides sharply with Chandragupta and - hold your breaths! - both of them tumble into the water body and cling to each other.
This time, mindful of all the furore the last time this happened, both are fully clothed. And for added novelty, you have Helena on the sidelines, swearing dire retribution against Nandini and ferociously declaiming that she will never, but NEVER let her come close to Chandragupta.
Now howzzat for originality? 😆
Sorely missed: No Aapama to be seen yet, not even as a slight brightness on the horizon. Methinks she has apparated across to Takshashila or thereabouts to dispense some of her abundant wisdom to Seleucus.
I only hope she has not done an Abdul on us and disappeared for good from the script, maybe due to differences of opinion with the make up department about her wig, about which I had seen several cutting remarks here😆. Fingers crossed for her to come back, for to lose her totally would truly be cruel and unusual punishment for the hapless viewers. 😡
Moreover, when (not if!) she returns, now that Helena has burnt her bridges with Chandragupta and is constantly furious with him, maybe Aapama can begin to plot in right earnest, this time against her daamaad, to revive the erstwhile hopes of Alexander about ruling over Bharatvarsha. With a subtle, sophisticated brain like hers in action, that should be fun. 😃 Helena is just not cut out to be Villain No.1. 😉
Questions:
-One presumes that the letters from Satyajit were all addressed to Chhaya by name, actually as Vaishali, a name that Chandragupta would have known about. Similarly, her farewell letter to him should have had her name at the end.
Chandragupta reads all those letters as soon as he seizes them from Nandini. How then does he not realise at once they were all letters exchanged between Chhaya and Satyajit?
-Why do they wrap Chandragupta constantly round with heavy brocade uttareeyams (male dupattas) that cover the left shoulder? It makes him look broader and shorter. Now that he does not look as khaata peetha as he did in the Jodha Akbar hamaam scenes that you gals used to delight in, and has in fact become really trim, why does he have to go about looking like this?
The kind of excessive abs show favoured by Padmanand is ludicrous, but why can't Chandragupta dress like Malayaketu does?
-Why do the Nand women all look like dyed in the wool criminals caught red-handed whenever Chandragupta or Mura come into their rooms, and this with a formal announcement that gives them enough lead time to compose themselves? Have they no idea of what a keeping a straight face means?
- Why this steep decline in Chhaya's character and her overall utility to the plot? It is dumbfounding and saddening. She was, apart from everything else, so good-looking when she was first introduced, and now look at her! Now that she has been duly married off, I hope she disappears to the jewellery shop in Vaishali.
-What about Sunanda and the Great Secret she has that Padmanand was so keen to get hold of? I hope she does not do a vanishing act and take that along with her. I have not spotted her for a while now.
OK, folks, this is it for now. I can practically hear you breathing a sigh of relief! 😉
Please do not forget to hit the Like button if you think that is warranted. See you again soon.
Shyamala/Aunty/Akka/Di
PS: I still remember my Heartbreak Road, and Heartbreak ++ posts on those episodes from Jodha Akbar, during and after the dhakka in that show, posts which are among my own favourites. Anyone from the old Jodha Akbar group who might be interested in going thru them again, and washing away the taste of the clumsy parody here last night, can find them at
Jodha Akbar 130: Heartbreak Road
https://www.indiaforums.com/forum/jodha-akbar/3850310/jodha-akbar-130-heartbreak-road
Jodha Akbar 131: Heartbreak ++
Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi 2
Mannat Har Khushi Paane Ki
Vasudha
