Originally posted by: Lodestar
I think people are really misunderstanding that Imlie’sguilt is only related to Malini Didi. The level of guilt that Imlie feels is due to her truly believing that she is the reason for all the unhappiness that is currently in the lives of Adi, Malini, Tripathis & even Chaturvedis.
Imlie holds herself accountable for bringing trouble in Adi’s life as a whole. Because of her NN’s desire to ruin her life, Adi’s life which was going on smoothly got brutally stormed. He was literally forced to get married to Imlie at gun point without any fault of his. Imlie till the last moments before marriage was trying to devise ways to get help to Adi & she failed & they got married. She already knew that he was in love with Malini & they were planning their wedding. So basically she ruined the happy life that he was living. That is why she was the one who came up with the idea to hide the truth of the marriage so that he can go on living his life as planned.
Once she came to Delhi, she saw his family who were so nice to her & immediately included her into their fold. She met Malini Didi who was also very nice to her. Adi kept on blaming her for the forced marriage in anger & kept on repeating that Malini is his love, his perfect life partner & Imlie would never be his wife. He made Malini the focal point of his happiness in front of Imlie. Also she saw how happy the Tripathis were with Malini being their bahu. So Malini basically became the reason of happiness in the lives of the Tripathi family & especially Adi for Imlie. This is where I think she put Malini Didi on a higher pedestal.
After that she made peace with living a life without the title of a wife but she was happy seeing Adi living a happy life with Didi. She felt that at least she had not ruined the life of Adi, Malini & Tripathis.Her guilt of being the reason for forced marriage decreased.
So now that Adi is pulling away from Malini Didi due to her,she sees Malini Didi being unhappy & equates it to everyone being unhappy.She believes since Didi was the reason for their happiness, if Didi leaves then all the happiness will also leave. Thus ultimately making her believe that she herself is the reason for Didi’s life being ruined along with Adi & his family. She is not able to handle this guilt. Hence her insistence on Adi continuing to stay with Didi & wanting to take herself out of the equation.
Yes, she is not understanding that Adi-Malini will not remain happy if they stay together as Adi has completely detached from Malini & cannot fulfil his responsibilities as a husband. But this is in large part due to her belief & naivety that everything will be fine if they both stay together. Its like she can’t see the larger picture because of her guilt of being the reason of everyone’s unhappiness.
Adi tries to make her understand this simple point but the feelings that she has for Adi make her feel that she can’t trust herself that if she takes the decision of telling the truth then it would be because she is being selfish in grabbing her own happiness. That is why she needs an outside perspective from a genuine well wisher who makes her understand the larger picture that she is currently ignoring.