oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!i fall upon the thorns of life! i bleed!
a heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
one too much like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.
~ ~ ~ percy bysshe shelley/ode to the west wind ~ ~ ~
the mists of time, the reflections of the moment, and a few most important things in your now pointed now mellifluous crooner, priya. i know you're sort of busy and not really getting into many things at present in your writing, but it was still thought provoking and beautiful.
i to have extreme discomfort and disagreement with portraying their marriage as aviadh, etc. mantras were played, there was fire, god, sindoor, mangalsutra, a man and a woman joined by an emotion that was beyond time. where was the najayas? loved the liberty versus folly warning. time it was made clear there was nothing invalid about that night. they are pati and patni. she half his reflection, he half hers.
now khushi has the key to his inner world, the fog is clearing a bit for her. the man she never could figure out, "aap aise kyon hai," is coming out of the mists, she knows why there's frost in his eyes. as i read your analysis of khushi's crossing of the bridge, from perplexity to understanding i was thinking, this is what love really rests on, doesn't it. first you connect, you don't know why, you adhere, you want, you desire, yet you don't know why, you just sense it. time passes, the feeling sinks in deeper, you see beyond the outside, you get into the person. you see things that no one needs to point out any more. you see what others don't. you become each other's part, a little you seeps into the i, and anything that happens to you can't not happen to me. the brahmo wedding vows apparently include, "may your heart be mine and may my heart be yours," in love isn't that what happens?
day before's episode had disturbed me, at many levels it was not iss pyaar ko i sensed. but at an essential place it was.
"hum bhi aapse i love you dammit." perhaps all of two minutes of the episode, yet it said to me there is hope. pandora's box had opened, all the woes of the world had come screaming out, the banshee had pronounced bane. this marriage was no marriage. and as its natural ally came allegation, insult, utter calumny. this woman had no character, she was not fit to be welcomed into the family, she was in an "avaidh" relationship.
he did all he could to erase the hurt from her eyes, the stigma from tradition bound minds. he agreed to do whatever was required to make things kosher, even marry his wife once again. he knew how much she wanted that, and he listened to his heart, even though his mind rebuked such thinking, had renounced it in a moment still behind the pall of mist and mayhem.
as she left, an emptiness filled his eyes. then she was back, with a shy sweet smile and seven little words. words that walked through the air between them and touched his body, entered his heart, lit up his eyes. khushi, the quiet, the accepting, the one who didn't say a word when every bit of her person was questioned and maligned, finally opened her mouth and said what she believed had to be. she couldn't leave him feeling lost, lonely, dejected. she couldn't leave till he knew she had crossed the bridge, and she would say it before all if need be.
the last thing in pandora's box was a thing called hope. it was here.
yesterday, the conniving of a truly crass manipulator continued. had the delivery been more nuanced, we might have actually been engrossed in the terror such people exude. unfortunately, it was just irksome. till a fine actor entered the fray and took me to the heart of ipk again, buaji. between khushi's terrified one moment, affronted the next expressions and buaji's lioness defence of her bhatiji, her principles and her way of life, all kektaness lost impact.
garimaji returned home and in one look on her face she established all the horrors of the past. not a word was spoken, yet a terrible time came and sat next to you. you wondered what it would do to the lovers you can't bear to watch in pain.
then returned the man who had heard those seven words. tameless, swift, proud. and not all the heavy weight of hours would keep him from what was his in this moment. perhaps his dadi had succeeded once before in this game. but not this time. again the son would set right a sin of the past and move a step further along his destiny.
every frame of arnav and khushi was like a perfectly cut and polished stone. one could reflect on them for days. so much was said and felt with such economy of word and gesture. the clarity and colour held you still.
hume koi taklif nahi hui hai, said the girl with the burning weal on her cheek. she only feels taklif when he is in pain, then she doesn't keep quiet. not any longer. no buaji, arnavji is not like that! horrified that he is being compared to that arrogant woman with a vile tongue sharper and more deadly than the knife in her hand. no he's nothing like that, his gussa is but a mask to hide an ocean of hurt. khushi saying this about her shaitan, her beloved shaitan, did funny things to my heart. for centuries the girls of our world have been asked to be quiet, be less, or begone. when a woman learns to get beyond that, however fictional she may be, something in me dances. those seven words have released khushi, darti hai par karti hai, may be losing her darr. two more days of contract, maybe we'll see something we didn't expect too? shoo, pandora, down.
he walked straight into buaji's house and asked to see his wife. brooking no argument, he strode into her room; the games with nani, the staying away from his reflection, the pressures of things he didn't believe him driving him to the edge of his famous anger. when he saw the mark on her face, first concern then again that temper.
but i don't get it. sab itni choti si baat ka itna bada issue kyon bana rahe hain. in fact, tum bhi-
forget it! tumhe chahiye na... let's do it. karke khatam karte hain.
did i see an expression on khushi's face at these words i hadn't seen before? wishful thinking, likely. chhoti si baat. that's what it is to him, and that's what it will possibly always be. that's why he is so damn precious.
buaji mujhe yeh pata nahin hai ki sab itni chhoti si baat ka itna bada issue kyon bana rahen hain. so mujhe khushi ke saath phere lekar yeh bas yehin khatam karni hai.
came like the wind, left rumbling and raging, especially after realising a visitor had dropped by. but with a beautiful promise, the one he carries inside which someone standing at the door with tears in her eyes can always clearly see. saat shabd, not saat phere, stupid.
mein kal aaoonga aapki beti ka haath mangne... taiyaar rahiyega.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ thinking on and some more ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
like day before, again at the end of the episode shone its finest moments . arnav singh raizada stood looking at his own reflection by his favourite poolside window and thought about the girl who had been slapped by her mother and who gave her that right willingly acknowledging her gift of a mother to one who had just lot hers.
memories of the night of their wedding flashed back, he's telling her she must marry him, she is astounded, he's dragging her up the temple steps, the mangalsutra and sindoor, the fire, the darkness the anger passion and tears of helplessness, he's throwing her out of his bedroom on to the poolside to spend the night on a cold hard floor, a girl of twenty and a bit in her wedding finery. she's taking care of him through the night. she's running with him trying to save him from his captors. he's about to run her over and a last minute swerve. he's battling shyam's goons, she's rushing in to protect him. and she's falling, falling backward off the cliff's edge.
i remembered the ten odd moments from their lives that went through his mind as he'd seen her disappear beyond the edge that day. it ended with him putting a streak of abandoned vermillion across the parting in her hair. avaidh marriage that united them in the holiest union. never far from the heart or their thoughts. how could such a marriage be wrong? or less in any way? yesterday i did fancy i saw in khushi's eyes a recognition of his belief that they indeed were husband and wife, no further ritual required.
and here before his own visage, as he looked into his own eyes his sense of right and wrong focussed and said to him his actions had deeply hurt the one he loved most. conscience has a way of getting its point across. that is of course, if you have been acquainted with it in the first place.
way back on a rainy day he had made her stand out in the open for hours. then, when he didn't understand why she got under his skin. when he was doing everything he could to deny her silken, shimmering pull that whispered promises of things he'd never imagined. that day, i'd seen his first talk with his inner moral code. he'd asked himself leaning against his famous suv, getting drenched, tortured voice: why is it that for the first time i feel i've what i am doing isn't right?
today he faced himself fair and square and acknowledged that his actions were not correct. he understood he'd hurt her beyond endurance, and yet there she was with her love and her sweet little dammit. maine khushi ko kitna tang kiya. uski life ki har ek dukh ka reason mein hi hoon. aaj jab kissi ne us par hath uthaya tab bhi main us par naraaz hua.
again this incredible man grew in depth and character and reminded me what a piece of work indeed was man.
the thorns of life are arraying all around, in shrill reminders from the past, in a stricken look on garimaji's face, in a spectre slithering across shadows inside his home. but didn't i see a glimmer of a smile on khushi's mother's face when he said he'll be there at ten with the shagun, the first step in taking her back home to him? he may fall, he may bleed, but they will be lifted out of the reach of those spikes surely. mothers know that's why they smile.
Edited by indi52 - 13 years ago
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