Thank you so much for the beautiful post. There is a different beauty in the Turbulence. 😉Folks,
Have you ever been at the seaside on a day when, despite some grey clouds on the horizon, there is the sun shining, a gentle breeze blows inland, and the white-tipped waves creep gently along the sand and wet your feet? Nature seems set to overcome any bad weather, to be gentle, balmy and invigorating, and your heart and mood soar in tandem with these prospects.
Then suddenly, without warning, the skies darken. Lightning flashes blindingly in jagged streaks. The clouds gather in menacing formations and the wind blows like a hurricane, ready to carry off anything and everything in its path. The waves, just a little while ago frisky like lambs in a meadow, are now roaring down from the dark sea, high and angry and aggressive. The rain starts descending in sheets.
You look around for shelter but there is none to be seen in the whole wide beach. There is nothing to be done but to run as far away from the lashing waters as you can, and find some place where you can wait out the storm.
This is exactly how I felt after watching Episodes 74 and 75, the ones of Thursday and Friday last. After the balmy delights of Thursday, Friday descended on the unwary viewers like a thunderstorm, with the promise of worse to come.
Wonderful description and your parallels are ⭐️
The heart has its reasons
Nandini: what love can do: When Chandra insists that love is something that weakens an individual, I tend to agree, and for proof, one has to go no farther than the girl he loves and resents with equal ferocity.
Nandini is by now so deeply in love with Chandra 1 (see my last Mrigtrishna post) that she cannot bring herself to jettison even the insufferably obnoxious Chandra 2.
I am liking the way you have warmed up to Nandini character - The way you describe her predicament makes one realize her difficult position much more acutely. But you expect a lot of clarifity from her many times - I think she is simply not in her elements at all - I loved how Anne puts it - When it comes to emotional tangles , she is a novice. I am going with that.
As I had noted in my last post, there is something in Nandini's make up which makes her snap at a point when she can take no more of humiliation, and just wants out, even if this is by falsely incriminating herself in order to put and end to this torture. It is stupid, and she shortchanges herself to no purpose, but that is just the way she is.
Very perceptive. Yes - She does take blame on hersefl - Again Anne's take was very good for her behaviour.
NB: It seems there are people who are like that. In Agatha Christie's Towards Zero, which is one of her best mysteries, the central character in it, a woman, suffers from this very syndrome.
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But this was not a minor matter. It was a confession of marital infidelity. That too not in 2017 but in the 4th century BC, where such a confession, regardless of whether it was true or false, would have destroyed the woman's life for keeps.
NO married woman in that era would EVER confess falsely to loving another man.She would never confess it even if it was true. That is why Avantika never comes clean with Nandini about her complicity in Nand murdering Shishunaag, for she cannot bear the idea of facing her daughter after doing that.
After reading what you wrote, i realize the enormity of what she has done - But she still does not seem to realize that this has left a strong print in Chandra's mind. She expects Chandra to understand her through her actions, may be ?
Chandra: Agonising obsession: By the time the last part of episode 75 arrives, Chandra has already flagellated himself to bleeding point, and every fibre of his being is raw and lacerated by the pain of betrayal, a betrayal "proved" by the incontrovertible evidence of his .
What Can I say to such writing ? You make us feel his pain that much more.
So I was delighted when Mura, her voice cracking like a whiplash, snaps at him: Kiski anumati se?...adding that Nandini was, in the first place, Mauryavansh ki bahu, aur us vansh ki badi abhi jeevit hai! Kisne tumhein yeh adhikaar diya? And I thought to myself, Good for you, buster!😉
Mura is not a cheer leader still unlike the Jodha Beta types but she does like Nandini- She would have said the same thing, had chandra done this to Helena or Dur. She is fair. And she is now MATA to me. 😉
Their decidedly juvenile spats in Chandra's rooms - about his entering without knocking when Nandini is changing, and then about his insisting on blowing out the lights when she (largely to plague him, if truth be told!) wants to read, are amusing. It is also revealing that despite her sulking, she does not march out and insist on going back to her old rooms. Push comes to shove, she is always accommodating vis a vis Chandra.
The way she applied the lep like Plaster of Paris and covered it with a bedsheet ( Who will wash them ?!!) I was thinking how will Daadi go to bathroom ? But Daadi springs to life and starts walking all over palace in no time. 😆
Revelation!: When she has ended up using him as a teddy bear for the night,😉 part of Chandra's long, revealing soliloquy sounded decidedly unconvincing to me! For one thing, there was no need for him to stay awake to make sure she gets up in time for the vrat, for the daasi turns up like clockwork to do just that. Nor does he quietly ease Nandini off him to her side of the bed. The fact is that he is perfectly happy to be her teddy bear, for all that he seems to be spending most of the night bemoaning this and much else! 😉😉
Cute scene. I liked it. There is something about both of them together. ( Not Roopa but with Nandini). Today's pre-cap is puke worthy.
Never mind, there was another line that made up for this exercise in self-delusion and hypocrisy. This was when he asks himself: Kyon main seh nahin paata ki tumhein mujhse nahin, meri behen Chhaya ke pati Malayketu se prem hai? Kyon mujhe Malay se eershya hoti hai? So there, for all his continued lament about this being his durbalta, we had Chandragupta Maurya's incognito hriday laid out, at long last, for our inspection!😉
Ah !! You caught the Hruday piece. 😆
He seems to have been taken aback by her saying that , and his response is initially matter of fact. But the sense of rejection, and the hurt that comes with rejection, seeps thru when he makes a sarcastic remark about his having amused himself watching the changing expressions on her face in sleep, and even more so in his parting line: Jab sab jaante hain ki tumhein mujh mein koyi ruchi nahin hai..
I think he wanted to make fun of her but she took the discussion in a different tangent so he retorted to serious dialogue there, me thinks.
Nandini, having of course failed to grasp the very obvious undercurrent beneath that remark, merely repeats her standard line about his ghrina for her, and wonders at her own decision, despite that, to keep the vrat for him. Chandra did the same earlier vis a vis Nandini. Sometimes I feel like washing my hands of this extraordinarily dense couple!
So now we arrive at the delightful Episode 74, the deceptively reassuring interlude before the storm broke about our ears.
Mesmerised absorption: The correct word to describe how Chandra looks at Nandini, almost non-stop, right thru the Shiv pooja ceremony would be nihaarna.
This is poetically written. Absolutely loved it. Took another shot at watching it again with your commentary pauses. Totally worth it.
Perhaps this magnetic pull, the magic that is sucking him in, frightens him anew, which is why he tries to get out of participating in the shivlinga sthapana, only to be dragged back relentlessly by the combo of the priest and his daadi.
But once there, his absorption in Nandini takes over anew, and he spends more time looking sideways at her than working on the shivalinga, so much so that one is surprised that the task gets done at all! 😉
It does, but not before we get to see a most unaffectedly charming snippet, when Chandra wipes a blob of mud off Nandini's cheek with the back of his hand. The infinitely gentle care with which he does it, and the exchange of nods between them when the mud is gone - questioning on hers and vigorously reassuring on his - were so delightful ki hamara to hriday prasanna ho gaya!
This mud thing looked forced to me and the expressions from both sides were magnified.
It is almost as charming when Nandini, after an initial instant of hesitation, reaches over to touch and hold Chandra's arm as he is performing the pooja, and he then holds the kumkum thali as she applies it to the shivalinga.
This instance, SBP scored a tad more than RT. Fleet of a second , She wants to touch his hand as it is the norm. He acts funny - She gave a restrained look but a bit weary. It was marvellous.
Catastrophe
The storm breaks: So we arrive at the piece de resistance, 08:31 minutes of high voltage drama that turns both Chandra and Nandini inside , and leaves them emotionally in shreds and bleeding inside.
It begins with deceptive quiet, however, as Chandra's mock applause brings confused apprehension to poor Nandini's face. There is lava bubbling underneath, but at this point, Chandra's face reflects only smooth, smiling sarcasm as he gets set to quiz her into confessing the "truth". And this time, even I could not skewer him for his behaviour, for the CVs have done him a great favour, they have anchored his rage on the foundation of what he has seen. That this too can be mithya is not something he can be expected to know at that point of time.
As he gets her to state that she kept the vrat since it was her duty as a wife, something startling happens. Chandra begins to laugh. It is not the laughter of mirth, anything but. It is the laughter that comes of distilled bitterness that can find no other outlet.
The mock hilarity continues, and becomes searing as he goes on : Avashya iska kaaran prem hi hoga, hai na?, and moves to embrace her, a gesture clearly meant to provoke a rebuff, and to get Nandini to abandon what he sees as a pretence and to come clean.
Mind blowing moments start here and I have nothing to add to your magnificent re-capture of such display. 👏
Vile accusation: While she struggles to find a way out of this trap, his accusations become suddenly much uglier, and utterly incomprehensible. He accuses her of being promiscuous, of having a string of lovers of whom Malayketu might be only one. Now she was engaged to Malayketu once, so Chandra's suspecting , this time after seeing "Nandini" with Malay, that she still loves him is at least understandable. But where does this other very distasteful accusation of wholesale promiscuity come in? She has done nothing to warrant it, and it reflects very badly on Chandra that he descends abruptly to this level. 😡
Kitne hai was very cruel but the linkage to her father was good and relevant from his current status and POV, I thought.
All that one can say in his defence is that after having come to believe, at the Shiv pooja, that she had kept the vrat for him because she cared for him, the shock of actually "seeing" that she had been cheating him all along is so terrible that he has temporarily lost it.
He can no longer bear to manhandle her as he used to do before when in a rage with her, so instead he hits out at her with the most wounding accusations he can think up, and this is what he comes up with.
The moment of truth: As she goes on, Chandra is watching her with deep set eyes that are pools of lambent, suppressed rage and disbelief. Looking at those narrowed eyes in a hard, rock-like face, one senses that something is going to explode very soon. And explode it does, as she stops herself in the nick of time with Phir bhi main.... We know what she would have said had she continued. But it is Chandra who picks up her unfinished sentence. Phir bhi main kya, Nandini, phir bhi main kya?
Then comes the moment of truth, straight out of the horse's mouth, as they say. Tumhare sthan par koyi aur hota, avashya yeh kehta "Phir bhi main tumse bahut prem karti hoon...Kya kahein, aur main aankh moond kar us par vishwas kar leta!" The right side of his mouth twists in a bitter half smile as he mocks himself and his own weakness for this girl who, he believes, cares nothing for him or his honour.
I could not realize it when i was watching it. This dialogue is still confusing to me.
It is finally out, the truth about his heart and what it craves. But Nandini is once again tone deaf, and what follows, Chandra's tirade about all the reasons for her to hate him, probably drowns out his unexpected, unplanned confession. It is an enormous pity, that our Odd Couple never manage to hear each other's words just when they matter the most!
The last tirade: When Chandra finally mentions her having crossed the limit of shamelessness in going to Malayketu's rooms, I would have wanted Nandini to shout out that she had done no such thing, swearing on whateve sacred symbol she could think of. He would not have believed her, thanks to the Roopa phenomenon, but at least it would have been more forceful that her simply reiterating that she had kept the vrat with poori nishtha, poora vishwas, for his long life, and adding that ghrina aati hai tumhari soch par.
Bura - His expression when he said it was out of the world. Take a bow, RT !!
It is mindblowing, the emotional resources that Rajat brings to this small bit, and to the earlier, even smaller snippet when Nandini pins him down and demands to know the truth. His whole face , his eyes, his mouth, all work in a struggle to control his emotions, and not to expose the weakest chink in his makeup to this faithless Jezebel, as he sees her. In the end, he refuses to answer her desperate query, and effectively walks away, from himself and from her.
Now your writing has reached the cresendo. No one could have captured such a turmoil as you have done. 👏⭐️
We leave Nandini sunk to the floor, weeping her heart out, but still unable to hate the man who has made her life a living hell, because of what she now feels for him. Such is love.
On the other hand we have Chandra wiping his own rebellious ashru, and telling himself that his feelings for Nandini have now become so strong that he cannot understand them. So instead of confessing that it is love, it would be better to declare that he hates her.
As for me, I wanted to clout both of them.😡 Thanks to their cumulative folly, we will surely have to suffer thru God knows how many asinine episodes, with Roopa running riot, more and more misery being piled on Nandini, day in and day out, till Roopa is exposed and Nandini redeemed, probably only after having saved Chandra's life once more, this time from Roopa. Not an inviting prospect!
So let me close with something much more pleasant, Rajat's performance in this final sequence with Nandini.
Scintillating performance: In one word, Rajat's Chandra was fabulous. Not perhaps quite at the gut wrenching level of his Jalal at the end of the Sujamal track ( a mindblowing 11:56 minute sequence that I had celebrated in my Shakespearian Heights post) - where the circumstances were very different - but he ran it a close second.
I still feel Swetha did all she could have done - When one ferocious river is flowing the other character has to take a contrast level of performance . Else it will be a shouting match - The episode was so much intense because she brought a lot of pain too.
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