The Chasm: Semantic Possibilities - Page 2

I was blown away.. Brilliant post as usual..👏👏👏

Brilliant brilliant Indrani, this has to be the most phenomenal analysis 👍🏼

The pati pati dialogue so nonchalantly and sarcastically uttered seems so symbolic. And that ought to be the key to their growth as a couple. Wish the cvs could take a cue from your interpretations when they actually develop the transition!

PS: attributing this question to my lack of knowledge, wanted to know whether you have authored any books already- you have such amazing writing prowess!

Originally posted by: Roshni2015

Res.

Indrani,

You posted this finally... Yayy!!!

Let me read it n I will come back to unres this...😉

Indrani, amazing analysis 👏

Indrani,

I started reading the post and in parallel started searching for meanings of some words in google. Then went from link to link , back and forth and finally got lost.



So just capturing a few lines 😉 for those like me who are more aware of Semantic web than the semantics of the lines

• I will not be happy with any girl => Dad, mind it. Do not say later that my marital issues are because Sumo is my wife. So buzz off.
• I will not let another Nirmala Ahuja => Dad, whatever tricks you try in future - I wiill not let Sumo go away. She is in my life for good.

• Chota Sa Kaam => Sumo, we are in love from time immemorial. And we will continue to be till death do us apart. Wedding is just a miniscule moment in the larger picture.
• Pati- Patni => It takes two to tango. Sumo, come join me in the dance 😃

• It is easy to get married but difficult to get out of => Hey client , you do not know Pushpa. I know what kind of roller coaster ride my life is going to be 😆. I have to be on my toes all the time lest I be thrown out tangentially.
  

Very well written and analyzed post!! You have magic in ur writing. I keep in waiting to read such kind of ur posts

Originally posted by: indranigupta

I don't really have to tell you how good your post is, do I? However, i will...i am so glad you decided to post it. This serial is wonderful in the sense that it allows the ones who want to find semantic possibilities in words spoken and also allows the ones who want to have a good laugh over the words spoken. The beauty is it manages to give equal enjoyment to both.

After all when we laughed at the "Woh Sumo" Woh sab kuch kar sakti hain, ...shaadi bhi aur bacche bhi khud paida kar sakti hain...was a hoot...yet while we laughed, some amongst us also saw in the churlish Shravan getting upset that his Sumo did not need him for anything. Wanting to feel needed and feeling left out made him make that outburst...that is the semantic possibility of that outburst..😉

Would like to point out that both Friday and yesterday's (Tuesday) episode were connected to each other...in the way words were used and hence, I shall start with my two cents from the Friday episode.. Words have a way to signify both time and space.. Words can suggest the past and the future as well as embody the present moment...Words give shape to a space, it does cover distances as well as propose the gaps to be filled...to be traversed... Friday's episode was pregnant with semantic possibilities...and the power of words to shape our world, to construct it.

Yes, absolutely...every conversation from the time he told himself wryly that once marrying her was a dream and is now a bitter memory right to the statement he made to his client yesterday that getting married is easy but getting out of it is difficult is pregnant with possibilities...

Shravan had taken the most important decision of his life ...a decision which he has lived with, felt it in these last ten years...he had said yes to a marriage with his Sumo...and yet, he was broken, disillusioned and almost driven to despair... Trying to drink away his pain... desperately attempting to find sense in the chaotic world of which he was a miniscule atom... He wanted to negate the reasons for which he was marrying Sumo...wanted to consciously reason it as because of his father's promise to Nanu...yet, a son whose father was everything...why didn't he feel the joy of doing something for him...Why? Because here was a man who was marrying the girl of his choice, of his dreams and yet, could not spell it out as love... His love could not be defined as such...it could not be given a name...but could only be verbalized in terms of duty and responsibility towards his father...His love was being crippled by terms where equal partnership was merely an illusion...Love here was a choice denied...He wanted to marry Sumo because he loved her...a conscious choice on his part... Not where, the choices though it leads to the same purpose categorically negates it as a choice...Shravan read Sumo as saying yes to the marriage not merely because he was the alternative choice but rather, he was the only available option/choice... He was chosen by a Nanu or Sumo because there was a need by her family to dispense her to anyone that comes along... A man who is driven to despair and disillusionment nevertheless feels the need to ensure his father that his marriage will not fail. Why does he bother about it failing or not? Its another matter that his father already feels he is doomed.

Fantabulous Indrani...how beautifully you have surmised Shravan's mental state. I can't add anything to this beautiful description. 👏👏 For me, the semantic possibility began with his monologue on Friday when he tells himself of the bitter memory that his dream was now consigned to. As if on cue, Sumo's call comes asking him if they could meet. The bitter memory was getting a new lease of life.

Shravan says he will not let Sumo to become a Nirmala...and this is where I say that the words begin to suggest more than what is being articulated...Meaning as of now, in the present moment Shravan still considers Sumo as different from a Nirmala. There is a huge chasm between the girl he loves (now unconsciously felt) and is marrying (as he wants to believe because of his father) and the persona of his absent and yet ever present figure of his mother. In his stated words he proposes that he shall ask her to forgo her ambition and her self-respect because he does not want her to be like his mother. His mother who left him as he has understood over the years because she chose ambition over her family...the mother who for him, is representative of a persona whose choices have had huge repercussions on those left behind. However, between the figure of Sumo and Nirmala is a huge gap, a divide which he wants to sustain...so, that his Sumo never leaves him. Sumo is not like Nirmala and he wishes to maintain this binary divide between the two...And for that chasm to be maintained he would do anything...so that his marriage works out...

@bold and underlined.. Absolutely...If I may explain this binary divide a little here and here comes a semantic possibility too. In his heart Sumo is not Nirmala...simply bcos Nirmala is never in his peripher of vision ever consciously. Yes, she might enter it as as result of Sumo tho. Viewers may have noticed that his problems related to Nirmala are really magnified only in relation to Sumo. I am not saying that Nirmala's leaving has not affected him. Ofc it has but all I am saying is he views Nirmala's issue through the prism of Sumo's behaviour when she deserted him. For him, it is about Sumo and Sumo alone. When Sumo brought him face to face with Nirmala, his anger was reserved for Sumo for ruining his moment yet he spared not a thought for Nirmala, the subject of his ire. For instance, when he reconciled with Sumo after the Nirmal faceoff...remember what he told his father about how Sumo could have a view different from them about Nirmala. Coming back to the semantic possibility of his determination of ensuring Sumo does not become Nirmala, his motivation can be clearly understood by how affected he is by Sumo. While Nirmala assumed that Shravan was out to create trouble for Adi and Sumo becos of her, we all know what guided Shravan during that painful period, Sumo and Sumo alone. A aspect that even Sumo has never realised.

What he fails to understand is that his father asked her to toe a line, to follow his regressive thinking...Superficially, this also seems to be Shravan's attitude, yet...I see it as a ray of hope.. as even in his drunken state and when he is almost oblivious to any and everyone's pain.. this man is able to see that Sumo is still not working under someone's shadow... Further, toeing the line masks his fear that she may leave him...as Nirmala left his father... This cynical man still believes ...fast diminishing ...yes...but, still there.. that his Sumo is creator of her own stories...❤️

Ironic... One can see this train of thought mirrored in Sumo's optimism ...she is willing to work, to make her marriage a success...because she believes even though there are many differences between Shravan and her...the love tangentially still holds or flows. Her viewpoint is positive...though they have several misunderstandings between them ...yet, there is an unseen, invisible connection between them... not yet spelled out but felt...Love..😳

She believes this marriage will work and she will make it work... How did she manage to find so much belief in her love for him? Keeping in mind the circumstances...she should have given up on him ...if not moved on...What made her believe as E. E. Cummings said:

love is more thicker than forget...

it is most sane and sunly

and more it cannot die

than all the sky which only

is higher than the sky

👏👏👏

Her hope is made possible by the fact, that it is a hope invested not only in her personality but in the person to whom she is marrying.. Why do I say it? Ten years before they had a fall-out..and Sumo waited for him to come back...he did...❤️

One can see this semantic possibility further ...in Ramnath's threat to Sumo...to let him know what were her plans to ensnare Shravan? Was Ramnath scared? Why was he so interested in knowing those so-called plans? Anyways, the word plan is interesting...we know neither Sumo nor Shravan had planned...neither had Nanu...yet, as Sumo said... Shravan jo mujhse nafrat karta hain aur mujhe respect nahin karta...sochiye woh kitna desperate hoga mujhse shaadi karne ke liye" -😎 That is the crux...Shravan was desperate to marry Sumo?

Shravan used one open window of guru dakshina to make Sumo his own...it may not be consciously felt...or reasoned... but, nevertheless, it was not to be a good son that Shravan was marrying Sumo. Had he been a good son, he shouldnt have ever married her...as he knew his father believed she was an exact replica of the woman who had abandoned them. The last semantic possibility that was there in the Friday's episode was Shravan saying it did not matter who he married...the result would have been the same...he would have still been broken. My question why? Only Sumo and Nirmala had wronged him...why blame the other nameless women out there in the world...

@underlined and bold Yes, that semantic possibility of that question that Sumo asked so confidently yet..isn't it true..this man is desperate to marry Sumo.. even taking it as a sacrifice which gives him no sense of accomplishment. Guru-Dakshina worked like the sprain on his leg during the Chandigarh wedding. He wanted desperately to stay back yet could not refuse his father...the sprain presented the opportunity...Time again these semantics have been at play when Shravan and Ram talk. He says one thing and almost regularly does the opposite. He told his father after the Nirmala face-off, no one could be above his father in his life and yet when it mattered he showed exactly who sits high on the list of his priorities.

The results would have been the same only because these were the two women whose loss he felt so strongly...

One can see that chasm in his sense of loss as against Sumo's sense of hope...

In both ways, you feel so strongly because the love itself was the most powerful semantic thread... He loved her and he believed he has lost her...hence, the rage, the conflict...

She loved him and hence the optimism...she will win him again...In both accounts...the belief is not in oneself but invested in the other...❤️

Coming to yesterday's episode...Many have discussed as to who is right and who is wrong...Am not going to discuss that...As I am concerned with words and how words not only mean what it says but also what is unsaid...what is implied...

The lines ...Pati_patni...😆

Remarkable...as much this dialogue was irreverent, mocking, sneering at Sumo's self-respect...

This dialogue opened up a world-view which is prevalent about language today...Language is understood by theorists (poststructuralists) as a system of signs...Where meaning is evolved as being a part of that system...So, if one were to ask how to define phoneme "A"...the answer is A is what B is not...A in itself has no identity, no intrinsic self...it can only be understood in terms of relationships...Shravan may sign all the papers in the world... He may become the husband...but, as he impudently mentioned...he needs her to sign on the papers as the wife... for him to become a hubby...A relation...where both work together... but, more so it brings to mind Daboo's eternal query? Kya aap Suman didi ke Shravan ho? He replied no...paradoxically, yesterday...he redefined himself without comprehending that those words manifested not the chasm...but distances traversed... Shravan cannot be what he wishes to be without Sumo...

Yes chasm is supposed to indicate distance but as you rightly pointed out it means the distance traversed in the relationship...what a lovely semantic possibility...👏 When Shravan sat across Sumo and refused to be Sumo didi's Shravan he was reacting to the Sumo of his memory and while that held the bad parts of the meomory, they were soon merged into the good parts of the memory of Sumo. So much so that, in the distance they had traversed, he was able to overcome his feeling of worthlessness that he had nursed for ten long years. From a young man feeling that he did not deserve love, he turned into a man who felt betrayed...(yeah I know, that was not the transformation we sought but imagine the distance he travelled...that he overshot it from the point of being in love...to get to that lovely state, he needs to retrace a few steps, learn why he is Sumo's Shravan again)

And Sumo...who was hurt beyond measure by this suave but cynic and manipulative man...did not refuse to let him be that hubby...

Ten years before...a friendship started because of a challenge ...can you complete this puzzle of a cube...in one a half minutes...Someone had rose to that challenge...Yesterday, it was the other half who did not hold back ...and took the plunge...to answer Kaun Sumo? The girl who loved...😳

There is another powerful dialogue in yesterday's episode...you can easily marry, but you have to live with it and you cannot come out of it as easily...as much as this reflected a foreboding of things to come...it also reflected of a man torn...between his desires and the collapse of those desires...

There are other aspects to it...which I shall leave for Rekha (Sanfan) to explain (she is the best person to explain it😳)...

I know I have bored you all long enough...But before I sign off...a small poem by Christiana Rossetti...which speaks very well for SS...

I loved you first: but afterwards your love

Outsoaring mine, sang such a loftier song

As drowned the friendly cooings of my dove.

Which owes the other most? my love was long,

And yours one moment seemed to wax more strong;

I loved and guessed at you, you construed me

And loved me for what might or might not be -

Nay, weights and measures do us both a wrong.

For verily love knows not mine' or thine;'

With separate I' and thou' free love has done,

For one is both and both are one in love:

Rich love knows nought of thine that is not mine;'

Both have the strength and both the length thereof,

Both of us, of the love which makes us one.

Rosetti...

For this...I quote Khalil Gibran...

When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams
as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Indrani...u have penned an absolute beauty...my lovely girl...👏👏

If you have managed to read this post...and found some meaning in it...do leave your responses as well...😃😃

Unresed...
Hope I make sense 😆

Res

@rekha and @glassdoor - i am in awe, yet again! how do you guys write SO well!?