Sush 🤗
Thanks for this post ... gives me a place to vent, so bear with my rambling please! 😆 My net has been dropping intermittantly, so haven't managed to read the discussions this weekend , or all the replies here ... just the last couple of pages, apologies if I'm repeating something.
I was seriously pissed off with Arnav today. Today it was all about HIMSELF ... HIS ego, HIS vulnerability, HIS emotional cowardice, HIS weakness ... and to cover his own weakness, his own vulnerability, he lashed out at a young innocent girl, a girl who was just discovering her feelings ... and he crushed them to bits. Not only because of his ego, although that played a big role on it, but also because he was scared ... scared witless of his own vulnerability, his own loss of control, his own giving way to his emotions ...
and he is ASR ... THE ASR ... the Emotionless one, whose head rules his heart always ... so of course, this cannot happen to him.
Yes, he all but admitted his feelings in negative ... yes, he felt his only defence was attack ... but the way he went about it was cowardly and selfish in the extreme ... hurting her, because HE was hurting, wanting to wipe the smile off her face because he wanted to see her as affected by their encounter as he was ... and furious that she could cover her feelings better than he could ...
So to save his own ego, and that fragile crumbling ASR mantle of his, he lashes out so cruelly at Khushi ... tell her she means less than nothing to him, and she should give up any dreams she might have of catching a man like him. Why couldn't he just be indifferent, cool, casual, get the message across without killing her spirit, her soul in the process? She wasn't asking anything from him, she didn't expect anything ... HE were the one who came on to her big time ... returning the payal, indeed ... why not just give it to her in her hand if all he wanted to do was return it? Why that soft touch, the need to put it on her foot himeself, why those yearning looks? And then when she was confused at that totally unexpected tenderness, he went further, HE advanced, he wanted to kiss her because HE got carried away by his feelings ... yes, so did she ... but he now forcefully denies those feelings ever existed, yet mock her for hers? Because HE is scared?!
Khushi might still have held out against Buaji's taunts and emotional blackmail BUT for the memory of Arnav's words ... what he said and what he did ... poor, poor heartbroken Khushi ... realising her love and her heartbreak on the same night itself barely a heartbeat apart. And yes, she felt used, humiliated ... what had been a life-altering experience for her turned into a dirty, shameful experience by the man she realised she had fallen in love with. And the realisation that she still meant less than nothing to him, that he still looked down on her as he always had.
He doesn't, of course ... but that's another story. And I am SO looking forward to seeing Arnav hurt every bit as much as he hurt Khushi ... that little bit of anguish in the car was just an appetiser, compared to what she went through with that roadroller Buaji of hers
I will not find excuses for ASR today, not in the way he behaved with Khushi ... he was all ASR ...and ASR is a character in need of redemptiom.
But he was Arnav in those few brief moments with her parents ... and therein lies hope ... that even at his worst ... and he was definitely at his worst today in his deliberate cruelty ... he reserves his worst only for her ...
Yes, he will suffer ... tomorrow ... when reason returns ... when he realises what he has lost. Yes, she will also realise that what he said was out of anger, because she knows well that when he gets angry, he loses his reason ... but will they get a second chance?
Because this is a show, they will ... real life is not necessarily so kind. And so today I don't want to make excuses for Arnav ... because there is no excuse for hurting others to heal yourself, regardless of how much you justify it.