I will, my dear, PM you I mean, though I have not done any episode analyses of Everest as yet.
I am not sure I want to do any.
Everest flows like a smooth river and it is charming in a deceptive fashion. Such a tale should be simply relished, not analysed to death and parsed in nine columns.
There are such delightful little nuggets, like the conversation in the bus to Uttarkashi between Anjali and a 50 year old lady, who has been cossetted and protected all her life, by her parents, her husband and her two grown up children, but who is delighted to be on her own for once. That was in Episode 8, I think.
Then one of the most delicate, fascinating first
rencontres ever shown on TV, between Akash and Anjali, when he takes photos of her standing at a height and revelling in the great outdoors. For a long time, she is unaware that he is taking those shots, and when she does catch on, her mock anger is so natural and refreshing, as is his charming, slightly cheeky insouciance. That scene, before she realises he is there, was sheer poetry.That too was in Episode 8, I think, as we have now done 10 episodes.
Watch the missing episodes as soon as you can, Sandhya.
Airlines has become boring and badly scripted, and the acting was always mediocre, so though I still watch it, as it is only 1 hour a week, I have lost interest in it. But
Everest will not flag in quality, since it is written by Ashutosh Gowariker himself.
And after all, we have lasted thru over 370 episodes of Jodha Akbar, many of which set at least my teeth on edge. And those included Jalal's Jodhaesque
bhashan to the poor terrified Salim about the duties of a Shahenshah - which apparently includes wandering about daily, like Diogenes with his lantern, to make sure that no one in the awaam is hungry, before the Shahenshan can turn in for the night!š The speech was OTT, as was the delivery. Rajat is beginning to overdo things time and again these days.
Not to speak of Jalal again hamming it up imperially in the Diwan-e-Aam last night. I hold no brief for Salim's cowardice in running away, but why does Jalal not, while he is about it, fail to also enquire into how Nadira and her boy companion had sneaked into the Shahi bagh and were merrily stealing mangoes? Is there no punishment for
nanhi (he somehow forgets to add the standard adjective,
masoom!) chornis and their aides?
I wish Ruqaiya had really potted Jalal with her arrow, but of course she did not want to do so. And the
insaaf ka tarazu scene between Jalal and Jodha was just as bad as the loud, crude Diwan-e-Aam scene.
As for Jalal's ranting about Mughaliya
insaaf being the same for all, what about the
insaaf for the heap of soldiers killed by Sujamal during his escape? And was Jodha Begum made to go and serve the families of all the soldiers killed by Khyber? So why only Salim? It is all tommyrot.
And still we watch Jodha Akbar, don't we, with the lame excuse that we watch it for Rajat, and never mind if he hams steadily thru one climactic scene after another? So why not a good serial like this one?
To revert to
Everest, there is going to be this trio, each with an inner, personal Everest to tame. Anjali - to win her father's acceptance and make him proud of her. Akash - to finally leave behind the guilt of Gaurav's death and tame his vertigo. Arjun - to get over a personal tragedy buried in his past of which we know nothing as of know.
I do not know about you, but whether I drop out of anything else or not, I am going to stay with this one. If you want to, take a look at a post on mine on Pranii's thread here, at
There is a fascinating account that I have included there, of the daughter of an Andhra farm-working couple, Poorna Malavath, who, on May 25, 2014, became, at 13 years and 11 months, the youngest person in the world to have scaled the 29029 feet high summit of Mt.Everest.
And the best and most reassuring thing about it , apart from the child's grit, determination and courage, is that Poorna was, along with some of her schoolmates, encouraged to take up mountaineering by a retired policeman. And her school, a part of the Andhra Pradesh Social Welfare Residential Educational Institutions, trained Poorna and several other students from her region for the climb. Not a fancy high end residential school in Dehra Dun, mind, but a simple school down there in the south where they would never have seen snow!
Of course, our Brig. Jagat Singh Rawat would never have heard of Poorna Malavath, nor of Bachendri Pal, Arunima Singh, Premlata Agarwal, and all the other Indian women who have done what he missed doing, climbed Mt. Everest.
Shyamala Aunty
Originally posted by: Sandhya.A
So finally watched the first 3 episodes of Everest. The first shot was oooh for sure. this aakash reminds me of TV Shah Rukh Khan - similar dimple and a natural performance. Anjali - okay, but there is something plastic about the way she speaks.
And the colonel is so obsessed about having a son - what would he have done if he wanted to be a musician or poet? Shot him perhaps or forced him to shoot himself.š” a la Prof. Virus of 3 idiots. And our Abba Huzoor is complained of being unjust and partial 500 yrs ago.š”š
Dropped out of Airlines after the first 3 or 4. Hope to see this for some more time. š
Do PM if there are any episode analysis please.š
Originally posted by: sashashyam
My dear Nels,
So we meet again after Yudh!
First thing, we do not need to worry that this one will go on and on endlessly, for there is apparently going to be just one season, and it was mentioned in an article that most of the shooting had been completed between December 2013 and September 2014. I am sure Ashutosh Gowariker will soon bury himself in Mohenjodaro with Hrithik, and will have no time for writing and producing a longwinded TV show.
Second, the art director is clearly competent, and the sets looked very realistic, and not flashy or over opulent regardless of the characters and their financial status. The bungalow looked like a proper senior Army officer's house, and Akash's place too was properly and credibly set up.
Third, the supporting cast is excellent, with Manish Choudhury, Suhasini Mulay and Rajat Kapoor for starters and more, like Milind Gunaji and Mohan Kapoor to come.
Of the core trio of newcomers, I liked the young man who played Akash, I think he is Rohan Gandotra. His fit of claustrophobia-cum-vertigo in the lift was extremely convincing. The girl who plays Anjali looks ok, but it is, as you have noted, early days yet.
I can see that the girl child theme is going to be pushed with a vengeance. Col. Rawat's obsessive longing for the son he can never have, which keeps him from valuing the treasure he has, is both very sad and very depressing. I suppose that apart from the good old naam aage le jaanewala mantra, there is also the macho angle involved, of having his son follow him into the Army and do even better than he has done in actual combat. Where the Indian Army does not allow women soldiers to venture, at least not yet.
I wished that Anjali had not gone for the cliched smashing of her State topper award. And since when do such university awards look like a beauty contest trophy for Miss Ghatkopar? šA glass thingy on a base? University toppers get gold medals.
Like you, I loved the opening segment, a thriller if ever there was one. I was holding my breath as Anjali was negotiating the ladder-bridge, and I came clear out of my chair when she fell. If nothing else, this serial is going to have some spectacular sequences that will surely top even this one.
I have something of an Everest connection, though I have never been a mountaineer. At the very beginning of my 38 years as an Indian diplomat, I was the Indian Vice Consul in Geneva in 1973, when the 20th anniversary of the first climb of Mt. Everest by Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay was celebrated in Geneva, at the residence of the famous Swiss mountaineer Raymond Lambert, who, along with Tenzing, held the then world record for the highest climb on Everest without oxygen, to within 800 feet of the summit, in May 1952. Just a year before Tenzing finally reached the summit with Hillary, on May 29, 1953.
He lived on the 6th floor of a building where I lived on the 1st floor, and we had become good friends with his whole family.As I was the Indian diplomatic representative in Geneva, I was requested to host a reception in our flat for all of mountaineer colleagues of Lambert's, to be followed by dinner at the Lambert residence, and of course I agreed.
Besides Tenzing, who was charmingly shy, and Major Kohli, the head of the Indian Mountaineering Institute, and of course Raymond Lambert, there were Maurice Herzog, the conqueror of Annapurna and then the Mayor of Chamonix in the south of France at the foot of Mont Blanc, Reinhold Messner, the first to reach the Everest summit without oxygen, and several others. I was very young then, and I just looked at all these heroes of the ice slopes and sat and listened to their insider talk. It was truly an occasion to remember.
In 2002, Lambert's son Yves and Tenzing's grandson Tashi climbed Everest in a Rolex-sponsored expedition. They took up to the summit, for the second time, a red and black scarf that Tenzing had taken with him on the 1953 climb. I saw it draped on a Buddha statue at the Lamberts when I visited them in 2004.
I had the good fortune of meeting the other Everest hero, Sir Edmund Hillary, at the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi in 1990, when I was a Joint Secretary and he was the New Zealand High Commissioner (Ambassador of one Commonwealth country to another) to India. He was a giant of a man, but very modest, and he was deeply involved in social welfare schemes for the Sherpas.
Shyamala B.Cowsik
Edited by sashashyam - 10 years ago
