Prologue:
Magadhsamrat Chandragupta Maurya is seated on his throne. The special rajsabha he has summoned at the dead of night, as soon as he was able to drag himself out of his sickbed, to judge Nandini for the crimes of having deliberately killed Chhaya's unborn child, and gr ievously harmed Chandragupt, is about to begin.
After 3 continuous days of detoxification by the vaidyas (shown extremely well, and in sharp contrast to previous depictions in similar cases👏, and including the traditional jalavaidya, while poor Chandra, pulled and pushed this way and that and half drowned in water, looked like a toppled marble statue of Greek provenance!😉), Chandra has survived, but he is bone weary.
But even more than the physical weakness, it is the unexpected tragedy, that has suddenly come out of nowhere , which darkens his mind with black despair. His voice is slurred and low, his eyes are clouded, more deep set than ever before. Every movement is a fresh strain that it seems he can barely take; even his right arm, when he moves it to one side, flops limply. And there is, in the lines of his face, in his hooded eyes, something else. A sullen anger, a resentment at this backhanded blow fate has dealt him.
What stood out here was the limp, totally exhausted, almost extinguished quality Rajat infused into Chandra's voice in the court scene, and even earlier when he was getting out of bed. It was a remarkable display of voice control, of a kind he has never before had a chance to explore, and he pulled it off splendidly.👏
Open and shut case: The hearing begins. It is odd that Nandini looks shocked at the charges against her. What else did she expect? That too when she says to herself, as she comes in, that the charges against her do not matter for her, only the fact that Chandra is alive?
Again, when Chandra, after all the three testimonies have been given, says that all the evidence is against her, Nandini looks alarmed. This is equally bizarre. She barely seems to recognize the gravity of the charges against her. Maybe she is lightheaded after 3 days of mirjal upavaaas, and no, I am not joking.
But when she says to herself at this point Tum meri aankhon mein satya nahin dekh paa rahe ho, Chandra? Tum bhi??, I was hard put to contain my amazement. Does she think that he has telescope eyes that he can see the truth in hers from 50 feet away?
Already, even before he made the supreme gesture of his faith in her by swallowing the allegedly poisoned medicine she had brought for Chhaya, he had gone further than any standard issue husband would to defend her, citing what were rather weak and specious grounds - bar the one argument that if she had wanted to do so, she could have killed him at any time earlier. He even tries to persuade Durdhara that she has had a brahm that Nandini had pushed Chhaya down the stairs, and he silences Helena's untimely protest with brutal directness. All because, as he declares with no hesitation: Mujhe Nandini par vishwas hai!
This was not just a faith that needed no proof. It was a faith that was ready and willing to provide the proof, and did so. With deadly consequences.
What more does, or should Nandini expect from Chandra? That too when every bit of direct, eyewitness evidence is against her?
Lingering hope: Even now, when , despite the crushing evidence against her, Chandra still gives Nandini a hearing, a chance to exculpate herself, his face is more anguished than hers. He has, by now, been driven into a corner, and he can see no way out. All of his slender hopes, his whole being, seem to be hanging on the words to come out of Nandini's lips.
It shows in his face, his eyes, as she says Chandra, mujhe ek rog hai!, and he looks wearily across at her. This was not what he was expecting. It sounds very weak, like the insanity defence that is often the last resort of those accused of murder, and he can probably also see the danger inherent in this defence, of which more later.
When she finishes - and she does not contest the charges, and only pleads that it was her disease that had made her do all that - his voice sounds even more exhausted, and the lines of his faces look even deeper, as he asks her whether she can prove it. Maybe there is still some hope, his mind calculates, of getting her off the death sentence. But Sunanda turns Nandini down flat, and Chandra's hopes come crashing down . His face freezes in disappointment, the magnitude of which is reflected in his stentorian roar that cuts off her desperate pleas: MAUN, Nandiini!!
The final judgement is a classic case of force majeure, but not even Nandini seems to realise what it must have cost Chandra to pronounce it.
Apne paksh mein kuch bhi saabit karne mein tum asaphal rahi..Sare sakshya tumhare viruddh hain..To us kaaran, main, Magadhnaresh Chandragupta Maurya - here his voice thickens and catches in his throat, and he seems to be short of breath - yeh aadesh deta hoon ki tumhein jeevit deewaar mein chunwa diya jai!
Nandini's face freezes in shock, but none of the other reactions is up to par. Avantika's blank face is the worst, but even Daadi, who later pleads with Chandra to reconsider his verdict, looks at this point only as if she had a slight headache, not as if her beloved pautravadhu was about to be executed on the morrow!
When Daadi is haranguing Chandra in the precap, his face is unmoved, and he seems to be looking sideways to avoid her eyes. But he also seems to be nodding his head. Is it in acquiescence with her insistence that Nandini could not be guilty of this crime?
As Nandini is being walled in, her face is still and unmoved; she is clearly resigned to her fate. The crucial question, however, remains. What fate?
Folks,
Let us now get into the nitty gritty of all this.
Mughal-e-Azam remixed?: The Friday episode set off a virtual storm of lamentations in the forum, and Chandra was roundly castigated for
(a) not having believed Nandini's frantic denials, and delivered a false verdict based on insufficient or inconclusive evidence,
(b) for not having had Nandini's claim of a maanasik rog investigated before finding her guilty and
(c) for the anticipated OTT efforts he was confidently expected to make, once he had learnt the truth from Chhaya, to tear the brick wall down himself with his dhai kilo ke haath, and then weep buckets all over Nandini and flagellate himself, hopefully only metaphorically😉, for his failure to recognize that she could never be guilty of this crime, or indeed of any crime.
In fact, as regards the last point, the complainants know not what they have escaped!😉 They should count their blessings that we are not likely to get a remix of Filmistan's 1960 (or thereabouts)Anarkali, where Pradeep Kumar, as Salim, dragged himself on his stomach all the way to that wall! And the audiences wept and applauded, while I, even at that very young age, gnashed my teeth.
Also that Nandini contented herself with a nirjal upavaas to save Chandra's life, instead of the CVs getting ideas from The Da Vinci Code, and having her flagellate herself. 😉
NB: Actually it is the CVs who need to be horsewhipped for inflicting such cruel and unusual punishment on us, and on Nandini and Helena,for those horrible and endlessly repeated outfits. Helena has only 2, the white and the maroon, and I cannot understand how they are not both in tatters by now. As for Nandini, that blue and pink confection of hers makes me want to climb a wall.😡
Now I am not saying that the lamenters could not be reading the minds of the CVs accurately. They just might. It is all a question of experience and the ability to get on to the same wavelength.
But it is equally possible that they are wrong, and it is this line that I am going to explore now. And also present a logical defence of Chandra on all the above counts.
The walling in option: Putting the best possible spin on the developments on Friday, see, there just might be a different reason for the walling in method of execution for Nandini. The death penalty is a given, but she could have been beheaded - they never hanged royals. Now walling in is the only method of execution where there is a possibility of extracting the condemned person without anyone else finding out about it.
The sentence was pronounced at the dead of night. So the execution could not be before the next day. Which would leave quite enough time for Chandra, who is now recovered, to have a secret exit built in the back. Once Nandini has been smuggled to safety, he can watch the reactions of the rest and try and unmask the culprit. He need not have any idea of the Roopa angle, only that Nandini has been, as he feels instinctively, framed by the really guilty person.
Those here who have watched Chakravartin Ashoka Samrat would remember the very dramatic scene where Helena is unmasked in open court by Ashoka. There he actually switches tunnels, and it could not have been easy. When he could have been shown doing that complicated exercise , why not Chandra now, with a much simpler one? Jalal did something roughly similar in the Atifa case, he faked his own death to unmask Maham Anga.
The rush to judgement: Also, why the tearing hurry for Chandra to try Nandini and pronounce judgement on her the very night after he regains consciousness? It could just as well have been done after he was a bit stronger, and Nandini was safely in house arrest anyway. Is he worried that now that he had not died, the culprit might try to escape, and that he must move as fast as he can now to prevent that?
As I noted earlier, I am not saying this is what will happen - the Cassandras here might, like the dismal daughter of King Priam of Troy, turn out to be right - but that it might. And if it does, it will be fascinating. Surely it is better to anticipate something intelligent that to beat one's breast and wail in advance!😉
The Mukhya Maharani angle: Last but not the least, one should not lose sight of the very odd provision in the list of items for the Mukhya Maharani drawn up by Chanakya, viz that if for some reason, she is subjected to some punishment, the Maharaja too would be subject to the same punishment.
What would that mean in this case, that Chandragupta Maurya should also be walled in alive? Sochnewaali baat hai. It is true that Chandra does not let Nandini sit on the Mukhya Maharani's throne, and states that she is an accused, but the fact remains that as of the date of the punishment, she IS the Mukhya Maharani. Which makes for a nice conundrum for Chandra!
The verdict: Now for the critiques of the verdict.
Nandini cannot blame Chandra for not accepting her innocence after seeing the evidence - there is Durdhara's eye witness evidence, and then Nandini was the only one, as she herself says, to have handled the medicine, and it was poisoned. What more does the prosecution need to prove her guilt, and what could she have done to prove her innocence?
Remember that she believes her alter ego, the other personality, has actually committed this crime. She cannot prove that either, even after he has given her a chance, for Sunanda lets her down flat. Even if Sunanda had supported Nandini, it would not have been a ticket to freedom. Nandini would have been locked away in an asylum for life.
After Sunanda's denial, there is NO way, that Chandra could have avoided sentencing Nandini, and the only possible penalty was death. If he had freed her, no one would ever have believed in Mauryan royal justice any more.
Finally, it is Nandini who has brought all this down on herself by clinging to that asinine vachan she gave her Badimaa. Such arrant stupidity brings its own rewards!😡
Not to speak of her supplementary folly in being blind and deaf to the sight of Roopa, reaching out right in front, within a foot of her, and pouring that deadly liquid into the aushadi Nandini has prepared for Chhaya.😡
The maanasik rog angle: It is true that if Nandini had been examined in greater detail and cross-questioned, the penny might have dropped for Chandra, for he is the one who knows of most of the contradictions in her behaviour, in Pataliputra and in Pataalgram.
In that case, she would have been sent for long term treatment, and one does not know if she would ever have accepted back into the royal family. All the others, bar Chandra, would always have been afraid of her, thinking that the alter ego might surface at any moment. This is because Nandini's supposed vipareet vyaktitva was not a gentle, inoffensive one, but patently murderous.
Or else, the supposed alter ego would have been punished with life imprisonment. Either way, Nandini's life would have been hell.
As I pointed out earlier, Chandra could not have let her off simply on the basis of his personal conviction. The scandal would have been horrendous, and she would then have been boycotted and reviled by the whole royal family, headed by Durdhara, bar Chandra, of course. After a while, it would have become unbearable for the poor girl.
Lastly, to answer a plaint that if Chandra had been found afflicted with the same maanasik rog, his queens would not have abandoned him, as Chandra was now apparently doing with Nandini, the point is that more serious things would be at stake for the king in question than his queens being loyal to him.
If Chandra had been shown to have this illness, he would have been dethroned and sent for treatment, and most likely killed off quietly by the next in line, in this case Malayaketu, who would have taken over the throne and the kingdom. One cannot have a mentally unstable man ruling a kingdom, and Chanakya would be the first to endorse that.
To revert, the only way out for Nandini now is for Roopa to be found, before she follows Aapama's self-serving advice and vamooses.
Tenacious hope: To sum up, I harbour a distinct hope that the walling in is a deliberate ploy - thought out by Chandra himself, based on his instinct that tell him that Nandini is innocent and has been framed - for trapping the real culprit, though he would of course have no idea of its being Roopa. Let us wait and watch.
Acclimatisation to poison: It is widely known that Chanakya used to feed Chandragupta small amounts of poison in his daily food so as to make him, over time, immune to poison. Question were thus raised when Chandra collapses, bleeding from the mouth, after consuming Roopa's poison. But then no amount of acclimatisation to poison can make one immune to all poisons.
The effect of each poison on the human nervous system and the rest of the body is unique to that poison. Thus, people have been made immune to arsenic poisoning thru this regular ingestion technique. But that does not meant immunity to strychnine or cyanide poisoning! I am sure Chanakya must have fed Chandra a fairly wide bouquet of lethal stuff, but even that could not have covered all possible poisons.
Whether the script flags this point or not, it is clearly only because of that earlier preventive training that Chandra does not die, but survives, and is restored to functional health very quickly, in a matter of 3 days. But for that acclimatisation to poisons in general, he would have been as dead as a door nail in a matter of minutes from Roopa's Rambaan.
The unseen bond: All this apart, what stood out in the rest of the episode was, firstly, Nandini's realization of what it is that Chandra really means for her, and following from that, her grasping the fact that she cannot now exist without him.
Whence her desperate laments on being sent into house arrest, not so much to exculpate herself, though there is that as well, as not to get separated from Chandra. Whence the almost demented energy with which she clings to Chandra's side, and even escapes from the guards and rushes back to him. wailing Chandra, main tumhein kabhi nahin chhodoongi!
While I was exasperated at her trying to rationalize the poisoning as due to her maanasik rog, I loved the way in which she talks even the tempestuous Helena out of strangling her thru simple, calm reasoning. And even more so the way in which she asserts that Chandra mera bhi pati hai, and at two points, stops just short of confessing that she loves him, and perhaps even that the love is mutual : aur ab jab main aur wo... and Jis bhanti tum use prem karti ho... and her voice trails off, as her still eyes hide the secret of her love.
The whole sequence of Nandini's nirjal upavaas till Chandra is declared to be out of danger follows from the above. She suffers in the hope that her penance might be accepted by God and that He might, in return, spare the life of the man she loves. I was pleased that she prayed silently for the most part, her face set in determined piety, and did not break into an anachronistic bhajan.😉
The final segment of this sequence, as Nandini prays with unwavering focus, and Chandra is being subjected to the jalavaidya, which does not work to begin with, is meant to underline the same cardinal point, of a soul connect between Nandini and Chandra. In the very end, as an exhausted Nandini slumps to the floor, murmuring Chandra!, Chandra!, the water in the jalavaidya starts flowing green at long last, and Chandra's lips move.
Nandini has won this battle, and Chandra has been saved.
NB: It was strange to see Kanha materialise, in a solid bronze incarnation, out of the blue in Nandini's rooms, or are they Chandra's rooms? Any such mini temple needs daily pujas, and not once were we shown Nandini doing anything of the kind till now. Nor any other member of the palace lot, come to think of it. All they did was to sit around at havans. There was no puja niche even in the hut at Pataalgram.
Now suddenly you have a gorgeous bronze Kanha - though he was not addressed as such, probably to differentiate him from Jodha Begum's ishta devata - complete with an enormously long flute that reminded me of nothing so much as the Alpine horns that Swiss men compete in blowing. I think they made sure they did not reuse the birthday gift of a lovely bansuri that Jalal gave Jodha!
Oh Lord, see how long this has become already! Now for the rest, and don't fret, I will try to be both comprehensive and relatively brief!😉
The remaining Chandra-Nandini scenes: My favourite among these is the simultaneous kshama yaachana scene. It was utterly sweet, charmingly natural, and unaffected, and they both looked like very young lovers making up after their first big quarrel. Right down to Chandra's odd question at the end: Kyon?, her response to which is cut short by the news of Chhaya's accident. So pleasing was this passage that I was ready to overlook Nandini's babbling about having said so much bura bhala to Chandra, when the fact was after he booted her out of their room, she had not seen him at all!
I also loved the way in which earlier, when Chandra is railing at her father and then expelling her from their rooms, Nandini is still trying to find a way out of the crisis and pleading with him to let her go and talk to her pitamaharaj.
Newfound camaraderie: Even more delightful was the sally with which she greets him when he enters the room straight from his failed attempt to persuade Chanakya to accept Padmanand's ransom demand for Bharati.
I was in stitches listening to her: Are mujhe sangeet sunaayi de raha hai!Aisa lagta hai ki mera maanasik santulan bigad gaya hai! Ya phir kisi vaanar ka prabhaav hai!
This new found ease and camaraderie that she feels with him is a carryover from the earlier scene where he is so strongly influenced by his friends' words of wisdom about the manifestations of love. I found the part with the friends very silly, though Chandra was not affected so much by it.
Even in the Chandra-Nandini scene that followed, the stand out part was the way in which Nandini comes over, on her own, to apply the tilak on Chandra's forehead, puts his mukut on, and then teases him about the odd appearance he is bound to make in court with the headgear on awry.
To my mind, the lizard scene was overdone, and childish beyond a point. Romance does not have to be jejune! They could have thought of something more intelligent and subtle, or at least delightful like the Pataalgram scenes, but they rate the IQ of the viewers very low!
Rajat, however, was clearly enjoying himself, and he was marvellous in that last shot when Daadi was teasing him. Shweta was really good too. Most of all when Nandini realises that Chandra is pretending that the lizard is still around so that she would continue to hug him. 😆Her mock angry eye movements, and the way in which she nods her head in fake reproof, were delightful, and it also showed how far they have moved away from their old days of prickly hostility.
Multiple matrimony: The one which looked so promising in the precap, where Chandra teases Nandini that he need not take her permission, Mukhya Maharani or not, before marrying any number of more wives, began well, with a visibly jealous Nandini insisting that her permission would be needed, unless she abdicated her position as the Mukhya Maharani which, she notes cunningly, would never be permitted by Acharya Chanakya!
And I loved the way in which, when she notes that the rules had been made not by her but by the Acharya, Chandra instinctively looks over his shoulder is some trepidation, as if Chanakya was there with his cane! 😆
But then, perhaps understandably, it fizzled out when he asks her why she did not plague him more despite having all the opportunities. In fact, the only reasons for the inclusion of this scene seem to be Chandra's questing expression as he asks her why she did nothing, Nandini's beautiful close-up, and Chandra's mischievous, satisfied smile after she has stormed off in a huff!😉
The sum and substance of it all is that our lead pair jell very well together, no matter what the mood in the scene might be. If the scene is not up to par, it is mostly the fault of the script, more than that of the actors.
Lachrymose excess: Thus, the big disappointment for me was the closing Chandra-Nandini scene in Episode 98. It was overdone and literally soggy with all that weeping. Why does Nandini have to urge him to cry when he was already doing it, blubbering all over the place and declaring himself a durbal king because his sister fell down a staircase, lost her baby, and went into a coma? Is this going to be the touchstone for deciding who is a strong king? 😡
To top that, he declares that Chandra had never cried before, which is nonsense. He has done so time and again, not only Nandini ke samaksh, but apni ma ke samaksh when he meets her for the first time, and uske Acharya ke samakhsh when he apologises to him on his knees for having overruled him and ordered the execution of Dhananand, to mention just a couple of instances.
I felt somewhat more charitable the second time I watched it, but the fact is that even Rajat could not save that fully 6 minute scene. One could not make out even half of what he was saying, and whatever appeal was left in it was washed away by the concluding 15 seconds with both making the momentous discovery that Chandra has a hriday after all. Ugh..😡
Chandra-Roopa: A charming little bit came up after Roopa, as Nandini, has finished singing Chandra's favourite Madhuban song, and explains its meaning: Main tumse bahut prem karti hoon, aur main tumhein kabhi nahin bhool paaongi!
The expression on Chandra's face at this point is inimitable. There is a kind of still hopefulness, as if he wanted to believe that what was being told to him by, as he assumes, Nandini, was really the truth. And a trace of subdued, repressed joy at this prospect. Then Roopa says that this was what her daasi had told her. It is as if a spell that had held Chandra in thrall is broken. He turns away, smiling normally, if a trifle shamefacedly at his reverie of a moment earlier.
Roopa: near dementia: One has to give it to Shweta. Her wild, by now nearly demented Roopa is really very competently played. One cannot imagine any sane girl imagining that she can pull off taking Nandini's place for keeps, but this Roopa does just that, without the least sliver of a doubt. Her wild raging put Helena's in the shade, and her bursts of violence are downright scary for Sunanda, who deserves that and more.
But the best, performance wise, comes when the jubilant Aapama (for whom the latest miscarriage of Roopa's plans comes as a double jackpot; she has got rid of Nandini and Roopa at one go!) comes to inform Sunanda and Roopa that the latter has by now shot her bolt, and would have to leave the palace at once to save her life. The normally feisty, aggressive Roopa is now silent, paralysed as much by the thought of what she has inadvertently done to Chandra as by the danger to her life. Shweta does that bit very well.
Roopa- Padmanand: bond of blood: One thing is now clear: Padmanand's real daughter, in terms of character, is Roopa, not Nandini.
Just look at how both of them behave almost identically in a crunch situation, like chickens with their head cut off, running headlong into disaster unthinking of the consequences! Roopa would have stabbed and killed Nandini in a fit of raging jealousy, without bothering about how to dispose of the corpse and what would happen if she was caught trying to do that. Padmanand would, in a fit of frustration and sudden rage, have killed Chanakya's daughter without thinking that then he would have no card left with which to force Chandra to return Nandini to him.
Incidentally, I always wonder why Amatya Rakshas sticks around with an unstable, arrogant, dangerous bully like Padmanand, with whom his own life is periodically at risk. Especially when he ends up becoming Chandragupta's Mahaamatya, at the request of none other than Chanakya. Perhaps it is with that switchover in mind that he is always shown having at least some sense of right and wrong.
Chanakya: Unbending principles: The one who stands the tallest at the end of this week is Chanakya. Having redeemed his reputation as the most astute strategic and tactical thinker India has ever known with the Trojan Elephant episode the week before, he now strengthens his reputation for unwavering integrity and adherence to principle with his handling of Padmanand's ransom demand for the release of his daughter Bharati.
His concept of his dharma and his duty towards Magadha is as straight and unbending as his back as he strides rapidly down the palace corridor, bluntly dismissing Chandra's idea that they give in to Padmanand. Poor Chandra's attempts to breach the wall of his Acharya's conviction are shattered, like waves hitting a rock. I loved Chanakya's blunt statement: Nandini Magadha ki Mukhya Maharani hai, koyi vastu nahin jiska sauda kiya jai!
But I also loved the way in which Chandra, while trying his luck with his Acharya by attempting to order him, as the king, to comply with the ransom demand, immediately rushes over to him, hands folded to nullify any inadvertent note of defiance in his previous sentence, and tries once again, this time pleadingly. Rajat brings off one of his swift changes of expression here, from sudden, kingly obstinacy to the pleading appeal of a devoted shishya, and it is a delight to behold. 👏
The moment of truth: Now for the title.
It applies to Chandragupta, whose true mettle should be revealed by his handling of l'affaire Nandini tonight (incidentally, I would expect that he would go to meet her in her rooms before the execution) , by whether he is able to save the woman he loves, and whom he believes to be innocent, without abandoning his rajadharma.
It also applies to Chanakya, now on an as yet mysterious mission to Padmanand's lair to save his daughter, but without betraying his principles as the Mahaamatya of Magadha. I loved his closing line as he sets out thru the jungle without even the mashaal: Jise bhay se bhay ho, wo pehle hi kshan mar jaata hai!
OK, folks, this is it, for my fingers and your attention span alike. I wanted to cover some of the previous week's standout scenes - I had even started a post called Idyll lite - but it is impossible now, for which you should thank your lucky stars!😆
See you again soon. Please do not forget to hit the Like button if you think it is warranted.
Shyamala/Aunty/Periyamma/ Akka/Di