Posted:
Reliving IPK ...
Episode 191
Tum meri patni ho
He had expected all of it, had even been wearily prepared to for it. Disbelieving pleas, incoherent, gasping shock, furious rankling ... But he had not expected such a prolonged, oppressively laborious melt down.
Every one needs to calm down and take a step back. They are married. It is done. They can see it. He can't give them their answers, but all this unnecessary drama needs to end now !
Aap sab itna overreact kuon kar rahay hai, he snaps, losing his temper. His Di tears reign him in immediately. Not meeting her eyes, he offers his explanation. Aap aur Nani chatay thay ki mein shaadi kar loon, toh kar li. Baat khatam. He unsuccessfully attempts to stem the barrage of insistent questioning.
Not good enough ! His careless response only ignites his Nani and Di more. Hysterically, they push him further. They want the truth ... Why was it so necessary to marry in such a rush, without any one present. The unsaid aspersions are cast darkly, unfairly on Khushi's character. Her Bua and Amma, painfully close their eyes, their tears slipping silently at the implied dishonor.
Once again, his voice strangled, barely being able to enunciated clearly through the wall of tears lining his throat, he repeats ... Aapnay kaha tha ... Shaadi kar lo, toh kar li. Unwilling to let the snake see him breakdown, he stalks out of the room, leaving her all alone to fend off the relentless attack.
She is silently, faint fully numb ... They grab her, jostle her ... All who loved her, who thought the world of her, now shake her, gash their teeth at her, Scoffing, deriding, accusing ... Wanting answers. How could she ? He is stubborn, doesn't know right from wrong, they reason ... But she ? She knows the enormity of this transgression ... Knows the significance of these symbols she wears ... Then why ... How ... Their question rain down on her long and hard ...
Her eyes glass, as she remembers ...
The stormy darkness of this endless night is dispelled by the fiery glow of the sacred fire blazing at the top of the temple steps. His car screeches to a halt, jolting them both. He turns his head to look at the temple.
Destiny ...
Mein Bhagwan ko nahin manat. Mein vohi karta hoon jo meri marzi hoti hai.
He is here. On his own will ... But ironically, also against it ... brought to a place he had, in her eyes, disdainfully dishonored the last time they were here. She has been proven right in her proclamations but so is he, in his assertions.
It has not been a gentle herding ... A watchful shepherding as she had proclaimed. Months ago, she had prophesied, Ek din asa aya gay jab aapko pata chalay ga ki apnay apnay liya jo kuch bhi likha, voh Devi Maiya nay aap ka haath pakad kar aapsay likhvaya hai.
Not quite the will less puppet, bring mutely pulled along as she had described ... He is a matador. He has challenged, he has battled, he has fought every second of the way ... Not willing to give destiny a free hand, he has eked out his own narrow path. Not a path he would have defined for himself, but it is neither the path he had been brutally trampled on.
His dance with destiny ... A dance of survival ... He has fiercely wrestled with it ... He has boldly charged at it ... Even gently, willfully, persuaded it to go where he wants to lead it ... Hoping to tame it ... But destiny, it cannot be yoked ... It had been merciless ... Just when he saw the spoils of victory, just when he was not looking, it had, in one brutal swoop, knocked his knees from under him, ruthlessly goring him ...
Inescapably trapped, his breath knocked out of him, his heart shattered, he still had not been willing to be defeated. He had stood up, had spun the bull to face him. Looking it squarely in the face, he now says ... You do not drag me ... I take charge ... I take us where you want me to go ...
He looks at her. His eyes are stolidly intractable. Her eyes plead with him one last time ... Softly, tearfully ... Hoping to find the man she has pledged her heart to. A man she had hoped to marry ... To love ... To honor ... She searches ... He is no where to be found in the hard visage of the darkened face before her ... Not in the coldness of this mans's eyes, not in the stubborn steeliness of his jaw.
He grabs her by her hand and pulls her out. Not the actions of thoughtful, even remotely caring man, but a wounded warrior with a single minded focus.
Her hand in a fierce hold, with long, swift, grim strides he drags her up the temple steps. Her lengha hitched in one hand, her Duppatta trailing, she stumbles tearfully behind him. At the top of the stairs, if front of the sanctuary, he swings her violently to face him.
The wind picks up ... It sways the temple bells ... It lifts the sacred, fiery red pennants and sets the air ablaze with their flutter ... They both turn together to look at her Devi.
The elements ... The surging wind, the alit sky, the luminous fire, her volubly, stonily silent Goddess, her unstoppable tears ... All present ... All witness to the propitious event ...
It is not a hushed, reverential, joyful, rehearsed ceremony, but an elemental, passionate, raw, fiery claiming. It is binding ... It is sacred ... It is a vow ... It is what he wants. It is a bare bones, steely, skeletal promise, robbed of all its adornments ... Denuded of all its tinselly beauty ... It is a solemn oath ... Harsh and primitive in its naked state. I bind you to me.
Amidst the rending crescendo of the tolling bells, haunting vedic chants, roaring flames, he ties the mangalsutra around her neck. Her tears spill hard ... They do not melt him. Yeh sab cheezain tumharay liya bahut mainay rakhti hai ... Yeh raha magasutra aur yeh rah sindoor.
He moves her tikka out of the way and floods her maang with the red vermillion of his claim. The color spills, its fiery pigment scattering in her hair ... Igniting her maang with a red leaping flame that singes her forehead. An age old, most basic, most elemental ritual of a wedding.
They are wed. As easily, as bindingly, as irrefutably, she is his.
Over the years, the mangalsutra and the sindoor would have carried her ... She would have forgotten the tears ... Time would have eroded the pain ... It would have been replaced by a hazy, softened, forgiving memory of this night ... A night aflame with the fiery passion of her husband ... Inked in shades of red gold ... Their undeniable, difficult romance ... Two lovers, uniting with no one but her goddess as the witness ... It would have morphed into something beautiful, something secret, something shared ...
It is not the rashly, forcefully conducted rituals, but what he says next that makes a complete mockery of the scared vows. That inks poison into the sacred air ... Abb tum meri patni ho, he instructs fiercely and then lays down the law. Par sirif duniya ki nazar mein ... Chay mahinay ... Oos kay baad mein tumhay aazad kar doonga ...
Ironically, months from now, they both will undoubtedly believe in the validity, the sanctity of their ritual, it is the duniya they will have to convince ...
Seher Hone Ko Hai
Cricket
115