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episode 265
the breath was always key, at the core of story. saansey ruk jaygi, hamari dhadkane ek ho jaati hai, acidity, dhakdhak. there were many ways the breath came and gave life to story.
and then there was gust of wind, smoothly breezing in, wrapping around two strangers who would be lovers one day, sometimes it lifted a veil and stroked against a man's face leaving a touch behind, at others it came and left in a quick swirl, or it came and stayed and breathed as if waiting for them to see something, to realise something. that day in berserai, way back in episode thirty something, they spoke not a word to each other, he tried, she rushed away, but for long moments, gust of wind stayed and murmured, a bated urgency in it.
i wonder was the wind as if a symbol of breath too? that of the skies, the heavens, the universe itself? i am letting myself go a bit into this ornament that decorated the love story... a simple sound handled with finesse and complete imagination... something that might have become utterly corny like many other things in the tale, but somehow didn't.
it's always been in the air... and it has been different, given a sign when they have sensed and felt each other, been attracted, taken note of the other, longed. in that first rabba vey, it was the wind that rushed in first, later when he thought she had left for lucknow but she hadn't, it was again there the moment she walked in with the sweets for anjali's anniversary... and later still on a day the electricity went, he walked into the house and felt her presence thanks to that susurrating sound of a breeze.
and today after many days of not seeing one another, of constantly wanting to see the other, of fearing yet loving fearlessly, of suffering yet loving with pure joy, they are on either side of a wall...
we could all see it was a cardboard structure... it shook every time barun or sanaya touched it. sometimes it just moved on its own, perhaps even the gust of wind too much to bear. the otherwise realistic set was suddenly reduced to what it was... a tacky tv serial set... where possibly the funds were already on the wane.
and yet, it really didn't matter.
what i saw was so beautiful, that's what counted.
the writing of this meeting was done with great care and empathy with very specific asr khushi notes in it; the direction was intricate; lighting, editing, sound... everywhere there was the creative person's interest and effort showing. and oh the acting. without a word, with minimum gestures, how two actors made me believe yes, it is possible to feel the other even through a thick impenetrable wall.
two people deeply involved do probably sense each other... i at least think so. and there is a coming together of prana, breath maybe in them too. khushi and asr have spent many months together, seeing, hearing, feeling things, over time perhaps a sixth sense about each other has grown. no, not perhaps, it has... and kidnap was the ideal time to explore it.
in the godown, she awakens, "yeh kaisi jagah hai, hum yahan kaise pahunche?" what sort of a place is this, how did i get here? then she seems to recall that rocky hit her. she looks around flustered, disoriented... tense.
rocky with his scorpion tattoo was reminiscent, for me, of shakaal with his odd shoe size in yaadon ki baraat... an obvious little giveaway that leads the protagonist to some major find/truth. filmi, hindi filmi, but it brought her here to this wall.
beautiful first shot of him, mysterious, fleeting, he sits on the other side... then a closing up and a good look at the captive.
he was flopped against the wall, perhaps a wave of hopelessness washing over him when he heard it... the gust came from nowhere and halted him in his tracks, eyes registered it... something, what was that... out there.
and an instant or less later, her head stopped moving jaggedly, her thoughts changed track , she had heard it too... it touched her...
piano notes trilled in...a feeling you have felt looking into each other's eyes, facing each other, it perhaps finds ways to imprint itself in you and you begin to sense the other even when that one is not right before you.
there was energy and movement in the frame at once, his eyes darted, no lack of focus, worry, fear, nothing in it anymore; only a search... perhaps a lick of hope.
hey hey.
she turned her head... focus coming into her eyes too... behind her maybe there was something?
his head turned toward the same wall between them... sensing. yes a cardboard wall that shook, but the density and of expression...
she looked at the wall in wonder... what was behind it, why did it call her...
he turned further, his ears straining it seemed to catch a clue, something... what was there...
and the next level of longing... of sensing, a hand came up. touch. her fingers traced a path up the wall, searching.
the sense of sound is the last to go i hear, is it the first to be alerted?... do we "hear" our instinct?
he moved in to touch the wall too...
and as she felt him through that wall, her memories unshackled... a cascade released that they both felt and touch and immersed in. a moment of pure connection between two people who were connected in ways even they had no idea of...
is this love? is this the ideal we seek ? is there something biological here? or is it just plain fantasy that has no basis in what really happens? would we be fools to believe in such things...? yet haven't we felt things about those we connect to without there being a rational basis for it? and love, is it not inherently extra-logical... extra-rational? my favourite logical vulcan, spock, never quite understood it. in a way, my dear handsome asr was vulcanish... till it was time to be human and perfectly, headily utterly illogical.
the first memory: it's the first rabba ve...he looks stunned at her. is that when the absolute anchoring happened and that thread that started with a snap picked its first real perfect pearl?
back in the present: he brought his other hand up, wanting to feel her, touch her with all of him... always this need in him... where is she? is she here? there's only one person who makes him feel this way... no other. is she here? his fingers felt the wall almost full of wonder... hope, yes... only hope... and longing maybe. for many days he has sat in a dark room, bound... he has summoned his will, his courage to free his hands, he has worked his mind to think. but in his heart a yearning he has spoken of, khushi, i love you, and then has had to leave alone. but now perhaps that longing erupts... completely taking him away from every rational thought and flinging him into a torrent of hope. there was a sense of inevitability perhaps seeping into the darkness and now it seems shaken..
the next memory: colour. touch. feelings. on a rangoli they lie... what happens to our emotions when they fly around and settle here and there leaving colour, marking their place?
she stares at the wall in wonder. it seems to say something. she has not seen him for days, she has worried, fretted, dreamed, feared the worst... arnav ji is all her heart has focused on. nothing else. maybe that's why there was the sensitivity in her that was needed to feel the call...
a memory: and he touches her... she feels it on her ankle, a payal slipping on...
a funny sort of accepting in both that this is no coincidence or hallucination. she articulates it, "aise kyun lag raha hai jaise arnav ji yahin kahin hain?" why does it feel as though he is here somewhere?
his eyes say the same. a little lifting of lips as a memory overwhelms him... of picking her up and making her sit up on bed, taking care of her... ah nainital, so long ago, even before he had any idea this might be love, even when he was with another.
she seems to catch the drift of that same memory and recalls what came after. she had run to him in the hospital.
the feeling is to real, it seems to galvanize him, he gets up from the floor, and tries to reach up and look at the other side through the ventilator... a kiss by a poolside flashes through their minds...
hear, touch, want,... stages of connection.
her eyes grow keener, searching...
both are ready to move toward each other... here, right here.
from an inner space a leap is taken, a boundary scaled and a need lands on the hard harried floor of a warehouse.
both get up and look around for a way to reach something. a note of desperation. restless to find out if what they suspect is indeed true.
and it's time for the next sense. sound. to speak the word. on her lips, "arnav ji," with her eyes closed, as though it is a prayer... but then, isn't it? the lover's name in its purest most sacred call is a call to the eternal... to life itself, isn't it?
arnav ji.
we see him straight after that call. he has heard it... yes, he has... music takes note. an energy a racy urgency in it now, a dynamism, an excitement.. a sense of right here right now.
khushi?
one word... changes everything.
she is here.
his entire focus shifts... she is here. his head turns and this time unerringly it finds the ventilator that looks into the room abutting
he's at the wall again and a sotto voce, throbbing, "khushi!"
her eyes are still shut... then she hears it...eyes open wide.
she is here and in him a vigour fresh and ascendant... khushi!
he's trying to reach her, calling out, straining against the wall, possibly already thinking how to break it down...
khushi!
but she is almost hyperventilating... disbelieving... relief mixing with pent up emotions.
they stand on either side of a ridiculous cardboard wall calling out to each other as though an ocean separates them... just because of the power of acting, i am convinced it does.
"arnav ji, arnav ji!" a smile in her through the tears... "woh woh yahin hain!" he is here.
khushi!
khushi! he is beside himself with emotions of all sorts.. and oh the energy flowing rushing whirling into him... man taking command, taking charge. who cares who is the captive and who the captor... he is asr and his wife is on the other side of the wall and he is going to get her...
not for a second did i doubt he would. no matter what the needs of the narrative, he would get to her. defying the writers and directors, even channel if need be.
she cries clinging to the wall as he calls her, bangs the wall... like that phone is this wall to her, something that has her arnav ji... and he ready to scale it because it parts him from her.
"khushi, khushi, upar ki taraf dekho, ventilator hai..." look up, khushi, there's a ventilator above.
solutions he has looked for all his life, especially when emotions have overwhelmed him. now too. look for a way to solve this situation.
"haan hume dikhi... ek minute ek minute," yes, i have seen, one minute...
she feels the flow of life asserting instantly. there is a way to him... she will solve this problem too... khushi always took action as well, once she had focused on an issue.
he has found a chair and reached the ventilator looking down, "khushi" he calls.
and then the sweetest thing. "khushi dhyan.. dhyan se..." khushi, careful! tender urgent voice and like a blessing, ah a note of asr anger, clenched teeth too... "be care.. careful khushi...!"
where is dammit... when the dammit is here all is right with the world... such specific characterisation.
she looks up at the voice, then climbs up onto the box and her first sight of him in days... rabba vey had to burst forth, her heart... it's all her heart talking
and his.
brilliant use of rabba vey to say it all... it gushes forth... no soft trilling in...
a look, a smile, a tear... and a hand reaches the mesh in between, a need to touch, to feel assured, it is you, you are here.
his fingers rise to meet hers. there are doubles and fake walls, but there is a real feeling. and a song too.
as he touches her fingers, the girl to leave whom he only feels taqleef and who maybe for a short while he had feared he may not see, asr is simply moved to tears... this is khushi and he can touch her, see her, hear her.
the love of his life, someone he had never ever thought he would find, in fact how securely he had locked every door to that possibility, yet she had found her way. found her way to him... found him.
i can't believe it's you she wept, exhausted by the emotions of what seems like a lifetime.
"khushi, main..." his voice was tender... what did he want to say?
"akhir humne aapko dhoond hi liya..." i did find you finally, she said jubilant and maybe still a little disbelieving.
he nods with the sweetest smile and then, "dhoond liya tumne." the delivery was outstanding i thought... crisp, cool and dense, with wonder and love in it.
she did find him despite all. and he loved her because she found him... him that had receded so deep within that nothing could reach... she did reach it.
magic moments between two lovers in a darkened miserable place where danger lurked yet was somehow made irrelevant... because dhoond liya tumne, because khushi, i love you... because of a wind you can feel and a song in your being.
she leaned closer as he looked at her as if recording her every little nuance and storing it in him.
she peered at him and a gaze that said she worried.
he reassured her, "khushi, i'm fine!"
"nahin!" her voice was not tender. it was irritated and full of angry love...
with a right she had never shown before, she stormed, you are not well, i knew you were in trouble. why did you lie to me on the phone?
he tried to handle it. "khushi, stop..."
"nahin! hum nahin rukenge..." she is not stopping, she is the aap shut up girl, she is not going to listen to you just because you are asr.
beautiful. normal rhythms of asr khushi surging in...
she is angry, he is trying to stop her. but she rants, i know you aren't ok so why are you lying to me...
how much love is there in every word, every look.
these two actors are not shooting together, yet the matching of emotions the perfect rally of words... not for a second falters.
"khushi, shh!" he knows she is concerned.. otherwise how dare anyone talk to asr like that...
"ok.. hum sab kuch discuss kar lenge..." we'll discuss everything.
i feel like giggling... how much this man abhors melodrama and high emotion. all the time trying to pull it down to a reasonable "normal" level.
of course, he had to fall for jhalli drama queen. life's law that is.
"pehle mujhe yeh grill todni hogi..." first i have to break this grill.
she grabs his hand, you are going nowhere, mister.
"khushi, tum chahti ho main tumhare paas aaon..." khushi, you want me to come to you? gently, softly, he asks rhetorically... she was only eight when her loved ones were suddenly gone... maybe he knows how vulnerable she is... a child within still hurting... like him.
he reasons with her...
she won't let go still... he will not shout today, instead, a hand comes up to join their clasped fingers, and, "khushi, main tumhare paas hi hoon, yahin pe." khushi, i am near you... here.
he has never ever spoken to her with his feelings so bare, though he has longed to, now that he has said what he has, that she is before him, the tenderness of the most angry i don't care man sees no need not to flow...
i love you says his every look, every word...
all he wants is her... nothing else.
when she tries to help him with the grill.. "khushi, no, don't! main kar loonga, tumhe lag jaygi.." i'll do it, you'll get hurt... i want to weep. the writing of asr in this different moment is flawless.
"khushi, i said neeche utro..." khushi, i said get down.
"nahin, hum yahan..." no, i here...
imaptient move of head, "khushi, go now..." a peek of asr anger, so natural and a beautiful detail.
"dhyan se! khushi, you ok?"
no doubt now who is in charge.
"arnav ji!" she panics when she can't see him for an instant.
"khushi, main yahin hoon, i'm right here"... the voice is sure, the look is full of softness.
"main yeh grill todkar uss taraf aa rahan hoon, okay?" i'll break this grill and come to the other side, okay?
"relax."
i pass out quietly at that relax, so so asr.
and there's an an interruption by rocky. when asr realises his girl was touched by the cretin, a sharp, "usne mara tumhe?" he hit you? the anger is here...
"ek tarah se accha hi hua warna hum aap tak kaise pahunch paatey..." in a way it was good, she said, how'd i have reached you otherwise.
he strains in anger.
and suddenly his concern for her makes him furious... he says paradoxically, what was the need for you to come here! how did you get here! "khushi tumhe... tumhe kuch ho jata toh." khushi, if something happened to you...
and we are on a road... at night when he had felt he might have lost her...
arnav singh raizada can bear everything but not losing khushi.
"itna bada risk leni ki kya zaroorat thi..?" what was the need to take such a big risk?
she is smiling, he is raging.
"khushi, what's so funny! muskara kyun rahi ho!" he is rough and angry.
"itne din jo ho gaye aapke daant sunke," it's been so many days since i heard your scolding.
joyous writing... stupendous acting.
kyun dard hai itna plays... she smiles at him as he looks on at her touching her fingers, giving in to that love. no one, he perhaps feels, loves him as much as this pagal of his. the one who puts mango juice in shoes, and sugar in petrol tanks, and who wants him to shout at her.
all the sadness and longing of the days gone by seep into the frame, as two lovers meet and unite, no matter there is a wall in between...
was this not true uniting too, a consummation? with both hands they grab each other. a rope is passed between the mesh by both as he devises a way to take out the grill.
"you told me tumhe pata hai main musibat mein hoon... kaise..."
khushi, you said you knew i was in trouble... how.
khushi, i love you... she remembers.
that string between them held taut by him, there was always a tie, a dori, a rishta. great touch.
the breath... the wind... khushi and asr to me were always about life. never death. to be immortalised they did not need to die like heer ranjha, romeo juliet, laila majnu... they were the lovers of our times who could rave rant fight scream misunderstand nahin understand and love deeply passionately imaginatively, emotionally, physically, with telepathy, and in a way be in the moment and yet transcendent.
this meeting between any two lovers would have been memorable. but this one was so truly khushi asr, including gussa and sanka.
asides
that setting up of a night away using mami ji and her sudden love... stay with your family to khushi... while a bit obvious, filled me with delight... the hugs are here and so is the hut.
what was that whole payal in a restaurant with coffee drinker about? was something considered then canned? or was it truly time pass... maybe a screen test for the guy... strange to say the least.
That's what I call a brilliant writing.
I highlighted my favorite lines, but IF crashed. again I highlighted, again it crashed. I don't have time or energy left to do it for the third time. But i enjoyed reading throughout.
firstly how you started assimilating their divine love with wind, was beautiful. Like you I also never wanted tragedy in their love, like all the epic love stories. we are the generation of modern era, so no melancholic love story works for us. we want ASR-Khushi's real love story with a mixture of little less reality like telepathy, or mehsoos.
you didn't miss a single moment of this reunion, just flew with their emotions.
an emaciated, despondent ASR suddenly got rejuvenated with her presence, as if he absorbed all the energy from her.. what you said about the energy is so true. And Khushi is always over active. she never loses hope. the optimism is always in her character.
throughout the episode ASR was unbelievably tender to her. got to see a different side of him. the acting was beyond excellence. But I missed Khushi's beautiful hand and that thin wrist of BD irritated me a lot.
the cardboard wall irritated you, But i was less bothered, cause I was completely blown away by this two actors brilliant acting, what seemed so real to me.
Cricket
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