Okay let me try doing the sorting out of my own conflicting yes and no for your argument Ganga - hopefully in a distinct way, and not end up with a jumble. [I'm using caps in all the places I'd use italics for emphasis... so yeh, bear with that please]
Gulaal is a paradox in the person she is. The one constant thing about her is that she always - ALWAYS does what SHE thinks is the BEST thing to do, in the scheme of things. The scheme of things can be one wrong and one right - where the choice is easy. But more often, the scheme of things is a bunch of right decisions, and her choice to make is the BEST right out of a selection.
How does she decide what's BEST right? This is where her paradox comes to play. She can be all at once a very orthodox thinking conventionally groomed girl, and yet, a rebel who will stand up for what she deems right. In a strange way - her sacrifices have not exactly been sacrifices. They are in part - because they may be easy to commit to but, are hard to live as lifelong decisions (as PooBaa told her today). But for her - the idea of sacrifice tends to become a little less idealistic, and a little more of personal compulsion, because her innate nature cannot survive the idea of putting herself first. Even the very spirited, very happy, very 'free' Gulaal who first met Vasant - had that quality. Circumstances have exploited her nature and used it to the extent of 'abuse' but technically it was always there. She feels a natural instinct to lead , but not for the position of a leader, but for the position of someone who becomes solely responsible for everyone, everything. whatsoever. That vintage one man army Gulaal version.
I'm not going to go all the way back to a decade and say what the DV had been at that time - to her, to Kesar, to the world. Let's jump to the point where Kesar breaks off wedding with Talli in the name of this DV. Gulaal's first reaction - break the DV heck she never thought of it as one! She doesn't succeed - but to have her way, she walks out. At this point, with so many emotions/thoughts/priorities making a web inside her system, her head and heart both agree with this DV being WRONG.
Then - she is compelled to come back home. I have personally believed that a part of her always knew that her ghar chodna was like Kesar's recent humesha humesha! A stop gap arrangement. So really, even though her plight and I dunno, even a sense of self pity, apart of feeling of being violated and forced makes her think she is doing it as her last option - really, she always knew she was coming back. Or at least - if Kesar had not forced her to return - after a point of easing off from the height of stress at that point, come to a stoic mode where she would partially regret being hasty... and not just finding a better way to deal with Kesar... after all, if she could survive Dushyant - this was HER Kesar, right? Anyway - so her heart and head are still in concurrence, to her most active conviction.
GK hit rock bottom in their estrangement phase, and finally Kesar realizes, he's doing this the wrong way though and through. So one out of two people regains better sense and logic - and puts it to very good use, thank god. A semblance of peace comes to exist. But does Gulaal have a change of heart? Uh, not yet, ofc. Her head and heart still agree the DV needs to break. It is moral, and right, and what she WANTS.
Of course, peace means she cannot keep the wall a constant feature between Kesar and her - so she resorts to keeping it at her easiest quickest disposal - the moment her Kesar is man radar beeps, it comes on. To the extent, that while her 'friend act' is getting warmer, the walls are becoming all the more stricken. At this point, she's thinking of nothing, except the very tedious drill of pulling the wall up and down. Its playing on her nerves, she's stressed to the peak - although she doesn't realize it. But in between, she has also come to relive some truly happy moments. Which really make this hot and cold living all then more hard.
Until - she snaps and questions Kesar's intentions. Which is really when the tip of the iceberg begins to melt away - finally.
Now there's a phase where its no longer hot and cold - but a sort of luke warm mostly, with hot flushes, and really - not absolute cold waves. She's progressed. She has been reminded, this is HER Kesar, and she can deal with him without living like a soldier on the LOC. She tells him they should be friends - but really, she has let him enter the true informal boundary around her. It moves into nuances like G confessing she wants to stay back forever, in K telling her she must then fall in love, in G telling K she's doing the vrat out of her dharam, and not force, in K telling her he's not thinking of the future, but he has made his personal promise and will live it out - upto the Dushyant showdown.
Just in this phase - the dynamics has hugely shifted. Gulaal's heart at least has had a great movement. She hasn't come to what PooBaa today called giving Kesar the place of pati in her heart - but she is okay to think of him as pati for 3 months. Strings attached as always. She's okay with it - she's actually finding it easy to live like this. She doesn't question why or what - because Kesar lets her brush it away, because there are no compelling circumstances - because she can really survive not challenging herself until D Day...
But things happen faster. She gets abandoned in the span of a night. Her dream comes crashing drown. She is the fallen angel. And the way she lets Kesar take over for the next days in the haveli - without trying to sort her heart from her head - is because again, her circumstances are so big, that little battle finds an easy chance to be safely sidelined.
Then they move out of the house - the blur begins to clear. The extent of what Kesar has told her in plain confession, but lets on no more lest he hurts becomes clearer than ever before. In addition, she begins to recognize a dull thudding in reciprocation to his pain - not in sympathy, but in empathy. The dull thud is not dull because this is its inception, its dull only because she has only just detected it. Then suddenly it roars and leaps - when the threat letter comes in especially, its at a peak! When Kesar repeats living the last few days - the look they share is the shift for good in Gulaal's heart - its change of teams, not against the head.
What is her head's argument? The family. Or SO she believes. When Gulaal finally breaks the DV, it is for the family. In her head, its ONLY that. Or SO she's telling herself. It's easiest to explain to herself, that she cannot go with her heart, because it wants something that will hurt others - the innate Gulaal trait of not knowing how to let 'another' sacrifice for her... interestingly, this rule has always had the exception in the form of Kesar - but that's not the point here. We're talking about the world. Kesar is another story.
In the mandir scene she can see his heartbreak - she can distinguish her own, equal and just like his - but she's putting it down in the name of duty. During the pheras - comes another height of her realization - where her heart tries to beat her head using REASON. It reasons out, that if her idea is sacrificing for other peoples' happiness, why is Kesar still pained. Fine she is - but that was always a trade off. But why is Kesar sharing this sacrificing pain with her? A question she cannot answer - ofc - and before she can dwell in it - comes home MB, and poof! Her head's greatest reason is gone!
Now there is no Talli to suffer, no family against G, not one logical reason to come in the way of Gk union.
Except? Yes - the original - which got buried under layers and layers of other circumstances and reasons that she kept using as prime arguments from time to time - kabhi koi tha, kabhi koi aur 0 kuch, or fir kuch aur... but really... where had it all begun? In sharing that place Vasant once had with another... in giving it to another, in letting Vasant be replaced. Please remember - while all her problems have been resolved - all her reasons proved baseless - because really they were just time to time arguments she was using as pretexts to cement her debate - this one reason, has explicitly never been resolved. At no point - absolutely NO point - have we seen Gulaal find her 'conscious' freedom from this hold. Mostly because she's topped with too many other things and it has taken all this while to remove that debris on top and come back to THIS reason.
At this point, unlike when it all started - Gulaal's heart and head are not on the same side. She is acutely aware of it. And her predicament in that has become far more convoluted - not to suggest anyone but she is to blame. But that's usually true about all humans. Some of the greatest problems exist because we are avoiding the obvious solutions. Anyway - not digressing. Gulaal knows what her heart wants. She knows her head has lost all 'tangible' - in a sense - arguments. But the battle between her head and heart now stands hence. Her heart can distinguish between Vasant and Kesar, as both being men in her life, men in their own places, such that they can co-exist as her past and present. Her head however STILL manages to come up with that other worldly distinction. Vasant the deceased husband who deserves her undivided loyalty -which hello, she needs to realize is not even the case anymore, as you said Ganga - but that's why I say she thinks he 'deserves' it, and not 'has' it, like he once did. And Kesar - that husband's younger brother. Her once ward. The grown up but younger man. And all those worldly reasons which make loving Kesar 'wrong by the book'. She knows how badly she wants her heart to win - she realizes the string she dangles by is now very very fragile, the separating line so nearly gone, but just surviving... and when she avoids meeting Kesar, or wanting to face PooBaa 'wording' the truth she knows... it because she fears the line will break in a snap! Why she doesn't want it to break - is the paradox in her nature. She STILL hasn't come to the realization where what she deems as her heart's desire/temptation can concur with the 'righteous' thing to do. No matter what anyone says - in HER head, its not the BEST right decision. She has been groomed in customs and dogmas that are strange like that (while the same dogmas attest a DV, her DV too, in her own mind is not usual) so whatever anyone tells her - she cannot overcome (yet) her personally set set of rules. Where breaking a norm is right, ONLY to fulfill a duty. Her heart's desire is not a DUTY to her just this second, but a weakening force. The accident - IMO - will bring in the duty aspect. The Vasant angle will bring in the final verdict on why desire and righteousness in this case are the same thing.
As a final note (damn - I know I just typed half a book here, I'm not even going to scroll up and read, isssh!) - if I was looking just at GK - Gulaal is being ridiculous. Her realization has long come, and been justified, she's lingering for ABSOLUTELY no reason! And using an accident and Vasant as final impetus is yes, to me a GK fan - unfair to Kesar's love! But Gulaal as a woman in her grooming and mind set and ideologies is undergoing the final phase of realism to her character in the big picture. A picture which may center on GK, but has many other angles. Her heart has learned to be free... but her head needs the final push. And really, we all know Gulaal's head is only stubbornly wrong place which always thinks its right. So that truly, is in character for her. Fair for Kesar or not - THIS is the woman he loved, loves, and will continue to - the good and bad of her!
Are you guys still alive?! *sheepish* i know bad question. But cut me slack for the length on the sympathy vote of how dedicated I was to type this out on a phone. I'll give myself a virtual medal for it :D
[And I still can't believe I'm defending Vasant. Geez! I have some paradox issues in my head too.]
xx
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