Jalandhar today: Mohit's tour de force - Page 5

Originally posted by: sashashyam

My dear Sohini,

It is not just that you have such a pretty name, you are very good in your montage selections and very clever in putting them together. This one is really lovely.

I am very pleased that this post did not disappoint you. It was a very sad part.

As for the part in bold, I have some comments on Shukracharya that might interest you.

Shukracharya stands in loco parentis to Jalandhar, and yet he does nothing to set him right while there is still time. He could have done it, as I had stressed in my previous post, if he had done much earlier what he did in the maya lok, given Jalandhar's crippling emotional dependence on him. But he fails to act in time, and now, when the chips are down, he simply walks away. No parent abandons a child no matter what the child has done, and moreover, what Jalandhar has done is in no way comparable to the crimes that Indra commits time and again, and gets away with too.

Plus, it is only Shukracharya's incredible folly in handing over the maya astra to Jalandhar, without putting any safeguards on its use or even asking him what he proposes to do with it, that precipitates the present crisis. Why does he not refuse it to him? A responsible mentor does not hand over a loaded gun to an obstinate, wayward pupil.

I would not say, as some have done, that Jalandhar insults his guru, he is always formally polite even if he does not adopt the feet touching kind of humility, and when his guru orders something he does it. The problem is rather that Shukracharya has too much veneration for the ansh of his aaradhya to really read him the riot act when needed. So, for Jalandhar, the habit of having his own way sets in, as with a spoilt child.

He should have been properly instructed about the Tridev in general and Mahadev in particular, and about Mahadev's fairness towards the asuras. And he should have been told early on about his guru being a Mahadev bhakt. Leaving him to find out these things from illwishers like Indra was bound to be disastrous, and this should have been forseen by Shukracharya. He suddenly loses credibility with his shishya, for he cannot prove a negative, that his Shiv bhakti does not impinge on his having Jalandhar's interests foremost in mind.

Vrinda is far more candid and effective with Jalandhar, before and even after marriage. Before, she is blunt and forceful, after, she is gently persuasive. But she keeps at it, and she does have some impact.

Shyamala Aunty

Originally posted by: Annujam23

dear shymalaa,

as usual yr post touches a chord with us as has the awsum portrayal of jallandhar by mohit raina has done with viewers!!uttakarsh has really brought this character alive but larger than life but dangerously garnered more sympathy for himself that in my numerous interactions with family n friends... thejustifucation n solid reasons fir his end has been lost on them...now disturbingly many r finding faults with mahadev n they even asked what has jallandhar really done to deserve a tragic hero end...

oldies who know purans thot it was the evil intentions of jallandhar including going after parvati amongst others pushed the tridevs including mahadev to plan his end as he was unstoppable, which sadly the makers avoided n the character which they hve known to be

really evil has turned into a tragic hero who till now does not deserve an end

moreover many r enjoying mohit's acting but they say at home"they r not doing mytho but drama accha hai" n for vrinda they r reminded by her portrayal which was similar in many aspects to her Gehna character in BV..
.

interestingly someone asked me that after vrinda's death would jallandhar torture parvati to avenge her death n when i said no, prompt came the retort then why he has to die, yr mahadev is wrong in this case!!

wonder if the writers n makers took all these aspect into consideration before making jallu as a much empathised shivansh n kid gone wrong who is not anymore" mahashatru" of mahadev as has been promoted but someone who met with injustices n betrayals by many!!!!

i am sure getting into pros ncons of the story n character analysis on ground is more interesting than what is happening on show n ironically, my enthu for the mahayudh has died downonsiderably, for which i hve to thank the writers n makers!!!,.

Originally posted by: sashashyam

My dear Annujam,

You are the first person who has really made me empathise with those who lament that Jalandhar on DKDM is not as he was in the puranas. I can see where you are coming from on this, which was more than I could say of anyone else who felt as you do.

Now let me tell you where I am coming from, and maybe you will be able to understand me too. I am very familiar with all the upkathas and the innumerable side characters in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, besides the main storyline, and I also realised, very early on, that most of those tales had so many varations, so many local aitheehams (traditional interpretations) that no one could claim that his/hers was THE true version.

As for the Shivapuranas, I am unfamiliar with them, and that is why I came to DKDM last October. I was delighted with the space and attention given to Kartikeya, who is widely worshipped in my home State of Tamil Nadu, but is far less familiar that Ganesha in the North. I loved the perfect casting of both Mahadev and Parvati, and I enjoyed all the tracks, but I never felt like writing anything about them. They were both sublime, each is his/her own way, and beyond discussion for the most part.

It was only when the Jalandhar track started that I felt like analysing him and writing about him, beginning from as recently as May 2, and my first standalone thread was on the next day, May 3. Here was a character who could be dissected and analysed, I pounced on him and started taking him apart, and he grew on me to an unbelievable degree.

Jalandhar fascinates me because he is like one of the doomed heroes of Greek mythology, of Homer's Iliad and The Odyssey, all of whom - Odysseus, Priam, Achilles, Agamemnon - were flawed in different degrees, but were great in other ways, and fascinating precisely because of these internal contradictions.

He is strong but he is also very vulnerable, always starved of emotional support and unconditional love, till he finds Vrinda. He is aloof and arrogant, but part of him is still that little boy of 8 dragging his murdered mother's body in a cart, and even today, he looks for her in the moon because she told him she would be there. He is proud and withdrawn, and yet he woos Vrinda with unexpected humility and candour.

He is a great warrior and could have been a very great king, but the constant refrain that he is important only because he is an ansh of Mahadev must have made him feel like the Hollow Man, with the shivansh, enthroned in the centre, being all that counted, while the rest of him was as nothing.

But it is his hubris - excessive arrogance and overweening ambition - that betrays him, as it did for many of Homer's heroes.

I am not sure that I always like him, but I always understand him, and I can always empathise with him.

So this eternal refrain that the "real Jalandhar', whoever that might be, was different, used to make me tired. I would not have wanted a Raavan 2 or another Tarakasur, and I love Utkarsh's conflicted, tragic Jalandhar. He is infinitely more interesting that pure white or pure black characters.

But now I see the reason for your dismay. The only way to counter it that I can think of is to go with the flow, and accept Jalandhar as he is shown, without worrying about the puranas. After all, this way one gets to see some superb acting, whereas a Ravana would have been a standard issue villain, very comforting to the purists, but so dull! 😉Even the very well cast Ravana in the current Ramayana is impressive, but entirely predictable and consistently over the top. No nuances, no soul searching, and no confession, even to himself, of any weakness.

And I have had enough of unkempt asuras with their painted faces half hidden by even more unkempt hair - even Vruttrasura is the same - whereas all the devas, even the sleazy Indra, are dressed to the nines and go into battle with what looks like half a jewellery shop on them besides a mukut. No wonder that in parts of Tamil Nadu, where I come from, Ravana is admired not only as a great scholar, which he was, but also as a great representative of the Dravidians, who resisted the Aryan invasion from the north led by Rama It is another matter that the whole Aryan invasion theory is being debunked now by scholars.

There is another aitheeham in pockets of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, that Sita was really Ravana's daughter, whom he had lost due to a curse, and had put her in that gold box and buried her in Janaka's field. So the whole of the Ramayana here was represented as his struggle to get his daughter back. So you see, ours is a country almost infinitely rich in the diversity of our classical and folk mythology.

My grandmothers firmly believed in the version that when Lakshmana refused to leave her despite Maricha's fake cries for help, Sita actually berated him saying that he would not go to Rama's rescue because he desired her and wanted to marry her after Rama's death. Yes, it is too horrible to contemplate, but this aitheeham is definitely there, and this, I was told, is the reason why, among the panchakanyas, Sita is not given pride of place, which goes to Mandodari. Of course this version was carefully avoided in the current Ramayana.

I am thus pretty sure there is some purana somewhere which Utkarsh can cite to justify his Jalandhar!😉

The mahashatru hype was probably written by a copywriter who was not told how the story was going to be developed. Well, even in his present diminished state, teetering on the edge of a mental breakdown, he is still a major threat, so perhaps he is a mahashatru after all, but once Vrinda dies, he will be half dead himself, and his defeat and death would be a welcome release.

I too care but little for the mahayudh. All the yudhs in DKDM are, in any case, unintentionally comic except when Karthikeya fights singlehandedly. Even here, I was flummoxed to see Yamaraj standing there and doing nothing for what seems like half an eternity, while Karthikeya assembles his forces and gets the blessings of his mamashri, and the devas apparate in there (borrowed from Harry Potter).😉

Earlier, if all that was to happen is in the devas-asuras battle was a one on one between Indra and Jalandhar, then why drag all these men to the battlefield? They seemed to take huge breaks from the battle while Indra holds his mahasabha, Jalandhar sorts out his affairs of the heart, and so on and so forth. This is hardly convincing. The 1988 Mahabharata was far more realistic in showing the Kurukshetra battles day after day.

And what was it with Indra's reinforced arrow travelling in excruciating slow motion while Shukracharya is struggling to get Vrinda to make that crucial declaration?😉

So it is pointless to expect anything realistic from this mahayuddh. The appeal of the Jalandhar track is in the characters, and the overarching tragedy of hubris bringing down a potentially great leader and king.

I hope I have not bored you to death with all this rambling. Come June 3, I will once again have very little to write about, so you need not fear that such inflictions will be repeated all too often!

Shyamala