Originally posted by: sashashyam
Folks,
I am back again after a gap of a fortnight, largely for reasons of health, but also because this last week left me feeling drained and depressed by the onscreen goings on. Whence the title of this post, mrigtrishna, or a mirage.
What a title !!
That is exactly what it felt like to me at least, to have all this junk dumped on me after the high expectations stirred up by an unexpectedly charming interlude at the Takshashila ashram , followed by two incredibly beautiful scenes between our lead pair, of a quality rarely seen on TV. Well, quality is probably not what makes for high TRPs, and show business runs on TRPs. I can understand that. But this logical explanation for the sudden degradation of the script did not make things any more bearable for me.
True - CGM Character getting dumbed down . Chankya making some paste for Daadi. Lack of politics. CG always surrounded by ladies. Or he goes tupsy - turvy in his dialogues and talks some inconsistent gibberish ( borrowed from you 😆). It is too much of a hodge-podge but the lead pair is strikingly good whenever they are together.
When one sits down to a meal, there is always a debate as to which to eat first, what one likes the best, or what one likes the least, to get that over and done with before moving on one's favourites. I choose the former, for unpalatable fare spoils the taste of even the most delicious offerings that follow. So let us begin with Episodes 61-63, in fact till the beginning of Episode 64, to see what it was that was so refreshing all thru, and enchanting in parts, that contributed so much to my bitter disappointment when it turned out to be a mrigtrishna after all.
When I serve my food, the problem is reverse - All are so bad . 😆
I am skipping some parts which i have already commented in previous thread.
Episode 63
After I had digested Chandra's being shot (pun intended!) upwards in a gravity defying manner that would have sent Isaac Newton scurrying back to re-research his law of gravity, 😉 I focussed on the way in which Nandini set about trying to save him.
She does it very competently, both in terms of the scripting, and that of her performance, which reflects the panic that is now gripping her when she spots the kalakoot vish, but also her ability to think clearly even when in a very tight corner. Their horses had presumably been stolen by Malayaketu's bandits who survived and made good their escape, but her luck holds and she finds a timely bullock cart. All thru the ride, she keeps her head, trying to prevent Chandra from slipping into a coma, and applying a tourniquet from a torn strip of her dupatta to block the spread of the poison. She is clearly a very courageous, reliable and resourceful helpmate when the going gets rough.
True - I was wondering what happened to the horses. 😆 She did not try anything like what Devi Mata tried like typing CGM to her on the horse. It was written defintely better and she did show a real concern. None of those times there was a reference to Pita Mharaj and her brother. Which shows she cannot really mean and do a killing on him.
In her constant calls to him to try and get him to recover consciousness, Chandra! Chandra!, as his head lolls in her lap, one can feel her desperate determination to make sure that no matter what, he does not succumb. What a 180 degrees change this is from what she wanted just days earlier!
The rest of the episode is nice and smooth and predictable, including the inexplicable way in which Nandini, instead of insisting in digging out the antidote as soon as she gets into the palace, lets herself be bullied by Helena and booted into the open air jail to begin with, till Mura extricates her from it just in time.
The oil stored for years was too much. I would have gladly preferred your explanation of she doing a small suregory in forest and taking out Vish. But then Helena had to be instigated. So it all has to happen in front of the crowd.
Then there is Malayaketu, ruminating hopefully about Chandra's imminent demise, with his satisfaction showing in such a stupid and overt manner that it sets one's teeth on edge. The fellow has clearly never heard of putting on an act. 😡
Apaama is back at last, to become her frantic daughter's puppetmaster (mistress?). I hope the quality of her lines is as unchanged as her blue dress!😉
Magic in the air: We now come to the highlight of the whole episode. A segment of less than a minute, that nonetheless managed to create pure magic.
I am sure you all truly loved this sequence much as I did, for it was so beautiful and so expressive. That too made so not by the lines, which were all spoken by others, but solely, and silently, by the two principals.
Chandra, assailed by alternating eulogies to Nandini from the rajvaid and from Mura, too bone weary to turn his head, turns his eyes and looks at Nandini. There is a sort of confusion in the look, but also an unspoken question - Why did you do all this for me? And a dim, dawning light - of gladness? I am not sure. He seems too tired for that.
While Chandra's expression does not change during this whole sequence, Nandini - who earlier seems literally lit up from inside, her sheer relief and gladness bubbling out in the tone of her Chandra! - first drops her eyes, and then looks down and away, as if downplaying all the praise being lavished on her. But by the end, she raises her eyes and looks Chandra full in the face for a long, long moment. There is no shyness in those eyes, no reticence, no overt rejoicing as earlier.There is only a stillness, and something else.
A kind of silent communion. Her gaze is steady and it never wavers. It is as if her eyes were clinging to his. As if, for those 30 seconds, the two of them are in a bubble all of their own, from which the external world has been shut out.
Beautifully written and I said it before in your thread. These days it is happening more often - They just get lost in each other's eyes and time almost freezes. They are doing it magically. Are n't also glad that there is no "Is aaknon ki ..." that used to blow earlier ? Silence is the best way to show these scenes.
Quite extraordinary. There is nothing like a near death situation for clarifying confused feelings! The bonus: Nandini, her face seeming more soft and rounded and young than ever before, was just perfect.
Telling snippet: The patent disapproval on Sunanda's face as she watches Nandini s eyes light up with joy when Chandra begins to stir, and her gladness bubble over in her Chandra! This is a clue to much that is to follow, though the Roopa stunt would have been in the works in any case.
Sunanda has a differnt sexiness quotient compared to Avantika - Both are attractive in some sense. The guy Nand had it all, almost. 😆
Episode 64a
Magic renewed: The opening scene is delightfully comic to begin with, with Chandra's decidedly alarmed expression as Nandini bears down on him seeking the explanation' for a difficult sloka, and then the fake insouciance with which he tries to bluff his way thru that sticky patch, vying for top honours😉. A deadpan Nandini plays along perfectly with her mock seriousness.
The way in which Chandra's eyes follow her as she goes to the other side of the bed to get his aushadi is charmingly revealing, something that he does again when she is leaving the room later, regardless of Helena literally looming over him at that moment!
I also noticed it - I have picked up few tricks of how to enjoy the episodes better and read sub-text from your write-ups but still there is a long way to go. 😆
Then the mood changes abruptly, and there follows one of the most unusual and moving interactions I have ever seen between the leads in a serial. It is not so much romantic as exploratory: an attempt on Nandini's part to share with Chandra her deep felt loss and grief at having had to give up her love for adhayayan and the acquisition of gyaan, as also to explain why even that loss could be suffered gladly because of her love for her father.
When Helena makes those statements, it suddenly looks like Chandra's brain has gone on a holiday and it has not come back yet. There is a saying called Ekkanam kettaple . He does that only in every episode these days. 😆
But of course she has to be ambiguous - nahin to apni kahaani yahin rukh nahin jaati? - and so there is, on Chandra's part , a confused but persistent effort to understand where she is coming from. He has as yet no idea whose sneh she is referring to, and he does not ask her outright about that, which too would have shortcircuited the tale by at least another 20 acutely irritating episodes. Par hamare aise bhagya kahaan? 😉
😆😆
The argument for and against prem is all too familiar, though it leaves one wondering which will be the sabse priya vastu that Chandra will eventually sacrifice for the love of his life.
He does not have a sabse priya vastu still, me thinks. It will of course be Nandini evantually. so this dialogue is some passing remark.
But not so the look in Chandra's eyes as he listens to Nandini hold forth on the lifesaving properties of pain. It is not the entranced gaze of a lover, nor even the concerned, empathetic look of one friend supporting another. It is a questing, half curious, half impressed expression, the look of a debater listening with total attention and trying to get at the nub of what the opponent's line of argument is, while at the same time remaining open to being convinced by it if it can carry conviction.
When she does all this lecture, she clearly does not seem to give Bhashaan. She shares her feelings . To that extent I give credit to the Director.
It is noteworthy that Nandini does not contradict Chandra's assertion Mere anusaar, prem jeevan mein kasht ke alaava aur kuch nahin deta hai. Instead she proceeds by the demonstration route, climbing across the bed and coming right next to him, and then placing her hand lightly on his wound.
I noticed it 😉 and it was a clever thing by CVs and a charming thing to do by a wife. Just going blah-blah takes away the charm of a good conversation. There was a good sub-text in her reaction to him.
She then begins a physically pragmatic but emotionally questionable disquisition that is so high falutin' that it sweeps us, and most likely Chandra as well, along on the tide of its eloquence. That its emotional logic is questionable never occurs to us till later!
Dard (sic) ho raha hai? Yadi peedha nahin hoti to pata hai kya hota? Koyi tumhare ghaav ko aur kured deta, aur gehra kar deta, aur tumhein pata bhi nahin chalta. Peedha ne hi to humein sambhala hai..humein mehsoos (sic) karwaaya hai ki peedha hai, jiske kaaran hum apne ghaav ko aur gehra hone se rokh paate hain..Peedha hi humein jeevit rakhta hai.. aur isi peedha ke kaaran hi main aaj tak jeevit hoon..
Her eyes, clouded with the memory of loss and pain, cling to his for a long, unbroken moment, while Chandra, his own gaze fixed unblinkingly on her face and her eyes, strives to grasp what exactly it is that she is trying to tell him. Once again, as on the previous occasion, one has the sense that for these two, time is standing still , and the rest of the world has receded and left them in a gossamer cocoon of their own making.
True. Another magical shot.
It was such a mesmerizing scene that I was entranced all over again, and my hopes for what lay ahead soared in proportion. As things turned out, they soared all too high, and all too soon. For right then, Helena and her mother make a sudden entrance , Nandini draws her hand back in haste, and time starts moving once again.
😆😆 - For that you need to direct. 😃
Seeing what followed, which was nothing but a deliberate trashing of this magic, I was reminded of the Lady of Shalott, and Tennyson's lovely, sad lines:
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror cracked from side to side;
'The curse is come upon me' cried
The Lady of Shalott.
For with this sudden break in that entrancing interlude, the curse descended on not just Chandra and Nandini, but on us the viewers as well, as the script descended, with lip smacking gusto, into all the worst excesses of TV soap operas.😡 It has already been a full six and a half episodes of this junk, and who knows how long this is going to drag on before even a modicum of good sense and good taste make a reappearance onscreen?
Munni has a good take to it. CG is growing up both as a king and a person - He is still 20. He is suddenly feeling love or an emotion closer to love, jealousy, attraction, confused mix of all at times. So he is behaving very differently with her and does not maintain any consistency. I think this is a reasonable logic to give to his behaviour last week.
In any case, it is going to be a long, long while before we get back to anything approximating the sheer beauty of these two scenes, so we should rejoice in them while we can.
But one thing is for sure. As and when they get the opportunity, this jodi can create the illusion of true love. Already, they are able to project that air of total, mesmerized absorption in each other that lies at the core of the divine passion. We can thus hope to (eventually) see something very special.
At last - yes at last. I love Chandni Akka. I watch each of their scenes 5 times. 😃
Part 2: Promise belied
Episodes 64b to 70
I do not propose to take these up sequentially, or to go into any of the plot detail. The material is not worth it, and I would not be able to do so much in any case, as even Part 1 has had to be done by instalments. I shall thus discuss only two aspects: the characters of Chandra and of Nandini in these episodes and the performances of the actors, and then one standout scene. Standout from my point of view, that is , which might or might not coincide with yours, but please do bear with me!
Chandra 1 and Chandra 2:
Who exerts himself so far as to coach her, and to accompany her, togged out as a most unconvincing youth, to Takshashila, exposing himself to all the attendant risks of travelling incognito without an escort. Who protects her during their stay in the ashram. Who rejoices in Nandini's outstanding performance in the exams as the triumph of his protegee, and argues successfully with his own Acharya to get her the upaadhi she had earned rightfully.
What a para !!! Take a bow Akka ⭐️. You have summarized why our little girl has fallen head over heels for him. She has to remind herself he is my Shatru Shatru in feeble voice now.
In fact at a later point Helena is foolish enough to say that Malayaketu said that to her about Nandini, but this barely registers in Chandra 2's consciousness. She also waxes eloquent about how Nandini was hellbent on marrying Malayaketu, which was why he had ditched her , Helena, but she is never pinned down and asked how she knows all this.
Instead, Chandra 2 blows his very short fuse and asserts that he does not care whom Nandini loves, as he married her only to be able to take revenge on her father. Whereupon, Helena makes the technically correct, but unwise remark that Nandini too had married him only to take revenge on him.
I love this theory of Chandra 1 and Chandra 2. My only worry is will Chandra 1 make a come back ? Or will there be a chandra 3 who will resemble J*l*l ?
You have become such a good Psycho analyst with CN. 😆
At this point, any man with an ounce of commonsense would have asked Helena why then did Nandini save his life just the other day, when she could very easily have let him die? It would have brought Helena up short, and would have spiked her guns for a while at least. But this simple question never occurs to our Chandra 2.
His brain and commonsense both must be in Goa now . By Jan end, we can hope for the long holiday to end. 😉
Endless folly: From then on, he goes from one benighted instance of crude behaviour towards Nandini to another.
When Nandini, driven by a fit of girlish anticipation in the idea of pleasing him - the sudden lighting up of her eyes at the very thought is delightful ! - trots across to his room with an armful of books, and very unaffectedly and sweetly offers to read them to him if he so wishes, he rebuffs her with a fury that makes her recoil in shock and almost paralyses her.
She was good in that scene. Infact she is now doing very well - Understated, Classy and dignified in her interactions with Chandra .
He has just then been injected with yet another dose of venom against Nandini by Helena, and having no powers of independent thought or judgement, he reacts like the male equivalent of a fishwife. The language he uses is so gross and uncalled for that it made me feel ashamed of him. Even so, Nandini maintains her dignity and her composure, and responds only with Jaise tumhari ichcha, before leaving the books here and quietly exiting the room.
The Chandra 2 parade of folly then proceeds apace.
There is a succession of scenes in which he rages at Nandini with and without justification, but in a uniformly and insupportably OTT manner, as the stupid, childish drama of his BP shooting up over Nandini's supposed love for Malayaketu takes over and, feeding on itself, simply will not let go of him. And it is clear that we are even now nowhere near the end of this nonsense.
I am somehow liking RT's acting here - He is a suspicous husband and he has all of a sudden fallen in love with the girl ( shatru ka beti etc) and he himself does not fully realize he has fallen in love. He is trying to decipher the feeling at times - In denial also. He is frustrated that she is in love with Malay so this kind of angry response is apt . He cannot be icy with his wife whom he suspects.
He pierces her heart with so many harsh words in the hope of listening that one emphatic statement I do not love Malay. But she in turn cuts his heart through words like Yes I love Malay.
It is very silly and stupid but still some momentum is there.
It is tough to decide who, between Helena and Malayaketu, is the more obnoxious and in your face in rubbing Chandra 2's already red and puffed up nose in this ugly canard about Nandini, but they run each other a close race. Helena is insufferable, both in the vulgarity of her boasts to Nandini about her closeness to Chandra, and in her endless, crass insinuations to Chandra about Nandini and Malay, and the "evidence" of the letter she fabricates, and plants in such an absurdly crude manner, to crucify Nandini in Chandra's eyes.
Feel pity for Malay or Chetan. The guy is capable of doing some good roles but his scenes are so cliched and repetitive.
No one but Chandra 2 would have been taken in by this last piece of chicanery. Why on earth would Nandini, who could have sent that letter to Malay at any time thru a daasi, be so stupid as to plant it in a bowl of laddus from where it could have fallen into anyone's hands and exposed her in a disastrous fashion? But of course this simple piece of reasoning would never occur to Chandra 2.
As for Malayaketu, if any man had said to another about the latter's wife what he says to Chandra about Nandini, he would have ended up with a black eye and a bleeding lip. But apna Chandra 2 swallows that arrant impertinence without any reaction, and only charges faster than before towards Nandini's rooms. It was unbelievable!😡
OTT ranting: Once he gets there, things go from bad to worse, though Nandini handles herself with calm good sense even in the face of Chandra's angry accusation about the raj ghoshana, and denies it quietly and without any sign of embarrassment.
At this juncture, Chandra's reaction is fascinating: his eyes glow almost like coals, and he regards her with a terrible fixity, almost as if he would drag a confession out of her. But this is the sole good snippet in his take on this scene, for the rest is pure OTT hamming.
When she asks him that piercingly pertinent question, as to what is actually making him so angry, the raj ghoshana or the Malayaketu angle, he loses it completely, and rants like there is no tomorrow, going so far as to disown her as his wife.
She catches him off guard with that question - She is a good analyzer of an interrogator mind.
It never even enters his mind to question why, if Nandini loves Malayaketu, she did not simultaneously secure both her own love and her father's interests by simply letting Chandra die on the forest floor on the way back from Takshashila, but instead exerted every resource she could muster to save his life.
The jealosus husband has taken viswaroopam . Everything else takes backseat. I liked the whole segment.
He made me feel sick. If I had been in Nandini's place, faced with such a gross insult to her honour as a woman, I would have slapped Chandra twice as hard as Roopa slaps Helena. 😡Unfortunately, Nandini is not the slapping kind.
Yes - She is soft. She is now coming across as kind queen. She even acks Daasi's help etc by small gestures. I think CVs are guarding her characterization well.
Yes, Chandra is, without realising it more than dimly, blind with jealous rage, and I could even accept the lines he uses here, for all their excess, for they actually mean the opposite of what he says.
Chandra responds with a loud, fake casual Bahut achchi baat hai!, where his frustration and fury, both at her and at himself, come thru convincingly.
Mukut farce and its conclusion: This Mukud thing was such a yawn and bore Akka - I do not know why they keep such silly episodes.
Descent into near sadism:The affair of the sej was one segment where, having by now got used to Chandra 2's unrelenting stupidity and crassness, which has here descended into something perilously close to pure sadism, the person I felt like clouting was not him but Nandini. 😡
Any self-respecting woman in her place would have told him to get lost, adding that the mukut idea was Durdhara's, not hers, that she had been inveigled into it by Helena, and that she was not a daasi, thank you, to go about decorating her souten's sej. But Nandini does no such thing, and goes about completing the humiliating task like a bond slave.
So masochistic had she become at the hands of her (unacknowledged) prem for Chandra that she then stands at the door of the room looking back at Chandra, who stares at her with arrogance in every line of his face and in his body language. 😡😡
She is madly in love with him. And she keeps looking for some assurance from him. But what chandra asked was crass. it is a huge let down of his character. I am seeing there is a nice halo getting formed around Nandini in a subtle way.
She looked so much like a lost little girl that despite my acute irritation, my heart went out to the poor thing.
Poorna tyaag: OK, I am beginning to flag badly, so let us get to the last significant Chandra-Nandini scene, the one that immediately follows that lovely, heartwarming one between a tearful Nandini and a motherly, affectionate, accommodating Mura.
In fact, in all the scenes of this kind that Nandini does, whether with Mura or with Chhaya, she comes across exceedingly well, whether it is a question of her expressions, of her voice, or of her body language. Her troubled eyes, the sob in her voice, the softness and respect with which she greets Mura, all are most convincing.
When Mura rescues her from the humiliation of being overlooked as his queen by Chandra, and declares that she is like a daughter for her, the slight smile of glad triumph on Nandini's face is more in her eyes than on her lips. A very subtle take.👏
And Mura's take on love is exceedingly beautiful, and curiously enough, it echoes the lines of Aapama in her introductory scene. Great minds think alike!😉
Loved Mura - Nandini interaction - I have removed JOKE from JOKEMATA - From now on , She is MATA to me. 😆
Prem bahut vichitra hai.Uske chaal bade mayaavi hain.Wo kab hamare man mein bas jaata hai, humein gyaat bhi nahin hota.Aur jab gyaat hota hai, tab hum uske vash mein hote hain!
The rest of the scene is on predictable lines, including Chandra's total failure to grasp the open expression of Nandini's misery at his favouring Helena. Pata nahin kyon, par yeh sab dekh kar mera man bahut dukhta hai.. How much clearer can a girl get?
😆 - He does lift his head and eyebrows differently - I think he got the message and has kept it in his backpacket. He will use this lever in coming episodes. But using Helena as a pagadai is also very distasteful - Helena does have rights over CG as Nandini . They are undermining the femininity of Helena through this J Track. I hate it.
Or of her loaded reference to herself: Jiske vishay mein tumhein lagta hai ki main Chhaya ka grahast jeevan nasht kar rahi hoon.., which hardly jells with her earlier "confession".
The end of the scene needs no comment, except that Nandini's expression when she cuts Chandra short , saying that she has to pack for her departure, is marvellous.
Yes - That was good - He keeps pulling her hands very forcefully . It appears he tries to exert his Pati status with all that stuff.
What can one think of a man, not to speak of a king, who is so uncaring about his own solemn commitments that he orders his legally wedded wife to leave the palace that very night, knowing full well that she has nowhere to go, as her mayka no longer exists? What if something goes horribly wrong with her once she is outside the palace, as could happen very easily? 😡
To sum things up bluntly, I had looked forward to Chandra doing an Othello in his jealous rage, or a Jalal in his Shakespearian heights sequence at the end of the Sujamal track, when he turned himself inside out in uncontrollable, self-destructive agony. I do not know about you folks, but what I got was a Shashi Kapoor take on a suspicious husband from a 1970s film! Poor Rajat, and even more so, poor me!
Oh - My first crush was Shashi Kapoor. 😆
Generous touches: Despite all this, it is revealing, and touching, that Nandini can still find it in her to wish Chandra a happy life with Helena, and that she still has enough confidence in his integrity and sense of honour to be sure that he will continue to look after her mother and the other Nand family ladies.
This is a very perceptive and insightful comment - Many may write about the episodes but it takes you to bring our a line like this.
And her grief at this departure is open and moving, as is the earlier scene of her emotional near collapse after her stormy encounter with Chandra in the corridor.
In fact, Shweta's Nandini, despite her evident determination to outdo Niobe in the weeping department,😉 is impressive almost throughout in her helpless misery, triggered by an emotional upheaval she does not quite understand.
A peek ahead: OK, we need a bit of light relief! My track record in such matters is dismal, 😉 but here is my (hopeful!) prediction for the next week.
Well - You are almost there. 😆
Standout scene: Chandra-Chanakya: It is in this marvellous segment that I got back my Rajat, and I rejoiced! His dissolving into a puddle of helpless regret , the inimitable expression in his eyes and face as he exclaims, almost involuntarily, Aur waise bhi, wo Malay ko chahti hai!, were a tour de force.👏
His justification for pardoning Avantika is pure nonsense - at this rate all married women could get away with murder ! - but by the end of it, his eyes are brimming over with misery, and Chanakya spots that at once. He canes Chandra not to punish him but to test him, and his experiment succeeds, whence his parting warning to his shishya to take himself in hand while there is still time.
I would not blame Chanakya for that. He sees his life's mission of creating an Akhand Bharat endangered because of his star pupil's dangerous obsession, and naturally he moves to nip this threat in the bud if he can. It is another matter that he cannot pull it off.
It is in the ending snippet that Rajat is at his very best. As he exclaimes in confusion, Kya ho raha hai mujhe?, and wonders if perhaps his Acharya was not right after all, his face is a study in helpless indecision and misery.
His features suddenly seems blurred, in an odd reflection of his inner chaos, as he repeats, with increasing emphasis, as if to convince himself: Nahin!! Shatru hai wo meri, main use pasand nahin kar sakta! And the near roar dies away to a despairing whisper as he repeats: Main use pasand nahin kar sakta...By now he is almost weeping.
It was a remarkable performance; something to remember for a long time.👏👏
YES YES YES and Oh YES !!!! Superlative Rajat.
As for the Chandra-Chanakya-Malayaketu scene which ends with the main accused dead courtesy Malay, I would like to believe that the whole was a smart ploy by C & C to confirm their suspicions of Malay. But going by past experience, I am not setting my hopes too high!😉
Well, folks, I am dished, and so, I suspect will you be if you make it till here! 😉😉Please do not forget to hit the Like button if you think it is warranted.
See you again as soon as I can make it.
See you soon. 😃
Shyamala/Aunty/Akka/Di
Hindi TV Shows
Financial markets and global economy
