Originally posted by: Bluegrass
Teer means riverbank in Hindi. They never meet even if they run along. "Bad" is an inadequate word. I felt piteous for Malini today. The way I perceive her at this moment isn't based on what the writers were planning to do or going to do. I only consider how she culminates in the writing now.
I can imagine Dev and Anu experiencing an ennui in their marriage even before Malini was in her teenage. She was an elitist, self-centred woman who would have loved the idea of a perfect couple. She'd constantly perform her love in society parties and all that. Dev, on the other hand, married her to elevate his career, but he didn't love her. Sure, they must have been attracted to each other, but they were both shallow enough for that attraction to never transform into actual love. They would have been pleasant but deep-down very bored with each other.
Comes Malini, their golden child. They would have dotted on her. But they still do not love each other beyond a certain pleasantness that could turn nasty anytime they could not keep up the pretence.
Now Dev is a self-righteous man, but he also has narcissistic ideas about artists and their inspiration and all that jazz. Bored as hell with the plastic society life, he says : 'f–ck it, let's see how poor people live. Let me paint them and earn lakhs from them.' Not in so many crude words of course, he thinks very highly of himself.
So, he goes to Pagdandiya, gets 'inspired' by it enough to fall in love with a young Meethi. She must have served his self-image very well. A young, unworldly girl completely enamoured with middle-aged Dev? Sure-sure.
He impregnates her, but oh shit! Remember his self-righteousness? He can't imagine wrecking his marriage with his rich wife, but he neither can abandon his unborn child. The rich wife wins over the dehati muse, of course.
To Anu, the loss of image would have been devastating, she would have hated Dev for wrecking her pleasantness. But a middle-aged Anu upturned by some dehati belle. No, we couldn't have that. There would be no divorce.
She weaponises the only thing that matters to Dev the cheater: Malini. Malini is sandwiched between her mother's rotting unhappiness and her father's guilt for bringing such betrayal and sadness to their household.
Both are neglectful and bad parents; they compensate their lack of attention by pampering her. She's a love-starved child who gets all she desires.
Unhappy but pleasant, she decides that her life will be filled with happiness and love unlike her mother's. She meets Aditya. A perfect match between an academic and a conscientious journalist. He fulfills her need for attention, and she unknowingly feeds his ego. They do everything right. A good friendship turning into a long courtship. It's pleasant; not having any better example, she thinks it love. Trying to be better than her mother, she doesn't even question it when her fiance brings a random girl back from the same place. It completely destabilises her to even think that her fiance could be forcefully married to the girl. This was her only chance at happiness, after all.
The first few months of marriage are truly good till Aditya decides that he indeed loves the much younger Imlie, who because of her social conditioning, thinks of him as her husband and worships him. Malini's marriage is destroyed. Her husband has always been married to her half-sister, but she also tries to be better person than her mother.
But wait... She's also someone who a) gets everything she wants b) has been weaponised by her mother in her resentful marriage. She snaps, she realises that her life mirrors her mother's in the most cruel way. She's had enough.
She won't let anyone else snatch away her idea of happiness just like what happened to her mother. She's willing to go to any length. She knows that Aditya gets a high from the attention of both the women; she worms her way into her own sister's relationship. But sinks to the depth of seventh hell, she rapes Aditya and impregnates herself.
Now she's the one weaponising her child in her dead marriage. She's just like her mother.
I do not empathise with a rapist. Really, how does one do it? But her breakdown today was a breakdown of a person who has sunk to such depths that she doesn't recognise herself. She wasn't a bad person, she would not have turned one had Aditya been an adult enough to tell her the truth despite her fainting. Had he not indulged their courtship knowing that he doesn't love her. Again asserting what I said above she wouldn't have turned this way had Anu and Dev not been such emotionally manipulative parents.
In her mind, she has avenged herself and her mother from Imlie. But she knows that she has lost the love she had so badly craved, she has lost herself, she has lost her sister. She has become a monster to the point of no return.
I feel bad for Imlie too— the other teer of this river. An illegitimate child, all her relationships had been questioned from her very beginning. All those who were her family couldn't be called so by her and her mother. In Malini, she found a sister she could actually claim and proclaim to the world. She loved her and wanted her to be happy. Now she has lost her own idea of love and her sister. She'd be able to move on from her fangirlish ideas of romantic love. But how does one move on from seeing your sister turn into a bloodthirsty zombie?
Please do not bring your pot-shots about Aditya's true and sacrificing love here. He only loved either women as far as they made him feel good about himself. He's the real titli
Because reading comprehension is so rare, I am editing to add that Aditya is no way responsible for what Malini did to him. What she did is unpardonable. Again, like I mentioned above, I do not empathasise with her.
But it is also true that Aditya, prior to the day of abuse, had been emotionally callous to her. And right now, he's emotionally cheating on Imlie. All three things are mutually exclusive to each other. I expect nuance from adults.
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