Chandra Nandini 76-85
Part 2: Love in the time of treachery
The real gift:
The most wonderful bit, however, comes at the very end. Nandini, having overruled his reservations, and having herself arranged all the childhood items in a thali, covers the whole with a velvet cloth, She smooths the cloth with her hands, smiling radiantly, while her head bobs from side to side in delighted satisfaction. Chandra looks at her fixedly, his eyes showing both amazement and subdued happiness at her complete identification with his own feelings. That is the real gift for him!
The gift was really a very touching one. And Nandini was very sincere in the suggestion and the enthusiastic display on the thaali...👏
The insider joke: The vaanar theme, actually invented, inadvertently, by Chandra himself, soon becomes a running insider joke between our Odd Couple, echoed and re-echoed in snippet after snippet. The confidential looks exchanged between the two during the performance in court by the monkey are all the more delightful for being a first for them.
But the No.1 vaanar moment, so to speak, comes at the end of the mad chase around the room after Chandra mock threatens Nandini with dire consequences if she calls him a vaanar or derides his looks ever again. Both of them are punch drunk with happiness at the prospect of now having more time together thanks to daadi, and this erupts into unrestrained hilarity, with Nandini doubling up with laughter and Chandra following suit.
punch drunk...🤔
As Chandra wonders to himself at the way in which her happiness gives him santosh, all unbeknownst to himself, he sums up the very essence of love.
👏👏 👏👏
Instinctive absorption:
This is so after the humiliating snankaksh encounter for Nandini, when she runs back to her room with a bleeding hand only to find Daadi, and the painter - who is the one who looks like a real charwaha ! - waiting for her.
😆
The most recent, and the most moving of these special moments comes when Nandini is preparing to leave. Chandra is in a blue mood, gazing up at his namesake in silent depression. When she comes up to him with a book that he likes, as a gift, for one instant, he does not react at all. Then, as he turns towards her, he seems to be literally dragging himself back from the gloom in which he had been enveloped. His face reflects that transition as if it was a mirror. That shot is one of Rajat's best.
Nandini too is superb in the simple gentleness with which she insists on his taking the book:Manaa mat karo! She never has any ego when it comes to him, not even in the worst situations.
Scenes such as these are sincere tender and glide through you like a gentle breeze...and make you forget for a few minutes, the incoherent script. Shweta has a good control over her modulation and can convey moods through it if she wants to.
Later, when he gifts Nandini his favourite doshala (now, Sandhya, Khushi, Lavanya et al, no more cracks about it being a left over from Jodha Akbar! 😉Though I did wonder about how and when she had used it more than he had) , the exchange, of words and looks, between them is almost physically laden with longing and the despair of their impending separation.
Jo aagya.🤓
Best and second best: We now arrive at the two best scenes during this fortnight, which could not be more different one from the other, but which, taken together and separately, sum up the essence of the Chandra-Nandini relationship as it is at present.
One is heavy duty emotional, turbulent, agonized. The other is gentle and warm, full of the subdued joy of mutual understanding. One is nearly 10 minutes of unbroken confrontation. The other is not even 3 minutes, and made up as much of looks that convey volumes as of spoken lines.
The essence of both the contrasting scenes, so well put.👏👏
The madira scene and the diya scene. Both have the lead pair performing exceptionally well, and Rajat in the former is only a little behind his bravura take in Episode 75. It is tough to choose between them. I will begin with the former.
Remarkable restraint:
This time, with painful earnestness, he seeks again and again to understand the sudden behavioural swings she displays of late. He cannot understand how the girl, who is so affectionate and caring towards his mother and his family, a girl he had thought of as worthy of his sammaan even when he saw her as his enemy, the one who seemed to be a suljhi hui, nishchal, pyaari, buddhimaan, achchi ladki, could become so charitraheen and run after another man.
Again and again, like a sentence spoken in an echo chamber, his words repeat themselves: Kaun ho tum? Sach ho ya bhram? Nandini ho ya koyi aur? Samasya kya hai tumhari? Samaanya stree ho ya vikshipt? He comes so close to the truth, as Nandini perceives it, with this last sentence that she closes her eyes in pain.
Again and again he demands answers to his questions, his face increasingly drawn and tense under the strain, his eyes alternately hard and almost pleading, seeking an answer, any answer at all, that could put an end to his endless chatpatana, like a swimmer gasping for air.
👏
He just wants one glimmer of hope that would be a lifeline he could hold on. Some hint that she does feel for him, the way he does, inspite of all their bitter past, inspite of his being the destroyer of her family. He does see her intelligence, kindness, humour and wit, overall general virtues and goodness, things that he respects, admires and loves, yet not that extra indication that he can understand as being akin to anything he feels for her.
He would have probably been relieved if she had told him that she behaved in that depraved fashion just to revenge him and that she doesn't feel anything for Malayketu.
But even then, I would have preferred if the dance scene was avoided as it was a public display and the proprieties of a queen razed and Chandra came out of it looking like a spineless king.
But what she says, in beautiful, moving lines, does not answer his single question: Kaun ho tum, aur kyon aisa abhadra vyavahaar kar rahi ho? She speaks of her willingless to die for the one she would love, and if need be to kill for him. Of her having a heart that seeks no throne, no rank, nothing material. Which beats only for love, for emotions. A heart very diferent from his, a heart which suffers, which breaks, which weeps. A heart of the kind that he, Chandra, boasts of not possessing.
Eloquent, but hardly an answer to Chandra's desperate questions!
Not that I expected Nandini to say anything to help him. Searing bitterness drips from his words and his eyes, which abates not a jot even she responds, with an infinitely sad smile that is reflected in hers: Main jaanti hoon, tumhein to gyaat hi nahin hai ki mere hriday mein kya hai!
I was almost yelling at her: You dim-witted female! Just add one more word: Tum! But of course she did no such thing. 😡
😡
Chandra, forced into the last ditch, takes refuge in his standard threat of swift and dire punishment for her next transgression, not just banishment, but poore sansaar se hi nishkasit kar doonga! I said to myself Famous last words!, while Nandini simply responds: Uchit hai!
He is consistent about that. It is always the NEXT.😆
Unexpectedly, she smiles, and there is a whole world of emotion hidden behind that smile. Chandra's returning smile is as eloquent of unspoken, bitter sadness, and the two part, each to live with, as Nandini remarks, apna apna satya.
😭
The glow of love: Literally, this time, as the glow of the diyas is reflected in Nandini's eyes and she gazes, ektak, at Chandra. This is one of the most visually and emotionally beautiful scenes we have seen thus far.
Yes. It was. 😳
When he expresses his deep gratitude to her for having made it possible for him, after so long, to get the darshan of his father, the sincerity and the earnestness in his voice are touching. But far more significant is that when she explains how she used to decorate the whole palace with diyas for her pitamaharaj's birthdays, and how her gift for him was always the best of all, there is an answering smile of understanding on Chandra's face, for all that Padmanand is his mortal enemy.
It is a measure of how far their relationship has come that he, who used to gloat about the number of pieces into which he would cut up Padmanand's body, is now able to share her nostalgia about her days with her father and, in effect, accept her seeing him today in Mura.
It must have given him immense pleasure that Nandini whose love for her Pitaji Maharaj was immense, now extends a similar warmth towards his family as well.😊
The palace terrace is alight with the glow of love more even than that of the diyas.
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