I have taken a shapath after Friday's episode not to talk about Dev until we see more. I do have some theories but instead of breaking my head, I am going to wait for the CVs to clear my confusion. In the mean time, there is something else I really want to talk about from the episode, and that is the parallel of the two children relating the affairs of the day to their parents.
From an adult perspective, Soha seems like the ideal child. She fought her own battles without asking for her mother's help and made sure justice was served in the tiffin incident. She behaved in a strong and righteous manner. On the other hand, as soon as his prank was turned on him, Golu went running to his bigcha, asking to be protected from someone he had actually wronged. I can see how it looks on paper, but I want to add a different perspective from personal experience.
As a small child, I was very much like Soha. I was always a teacher's pet and got along with adults much better than people my own age. I didn't hesitate to tell the teacher when someone broke the rules and was more interested in impressing my teacher and other adults than I was my peers. As a result, I never had many friends and I was also my mom's poonch. 😆 This worked out fine until I reached my teens, but then it became really problematic. That is the age when you start to question your parents and emerge from their sheltered view of the world. It's not that I became less close to my parents, but I missed out on a lot because I wasn't able to relate to my peers, and wasn't included in a lot of these exploratory situations because my classmates were averse to my self-righteousness. In order to contend with the fact that I wasn't well-liked, I gave myself a big, fat superiority complex. Long story short, that all came crashing down when I went to boarding school, didn't have my mother to come home to every day, and was forced to learn how to be more open and with people and less uptight about rules and authority.
Honestly, that is why I related to Sona so much in the beginning. She too had that problem where she didn't let anyone in except her family, so she didn't really have friends. The only friendships she had were with Dada and Elena, and even then, they often had to pry information out of her. They did that because they knew and loved her, but friendship is more of a two-way street than family and you have to share as much of yourself as you get out of the other person, otherwise the friendship fizzles. The weird thing about it, at least what I have learned from my experiences, is that friendship is born out of shared vulnerability. Helping people is great and noble, but it creates an unequal relationship unless you ask for their help in return at some point. That is where I think Sona got tripped up in the Dixit house as well. She tried to build relationships exclusively by helping people while holding herself above their problems. This triggered very negative feelings in a house full of people with existing inferiority complexes. The only exception was when she asked Riya's help for the resort SR, and that had a totally different outcome.
Exposing your vulnerability to friends, having them tease you about it is what helps you see the humour in your own weaknesses, so you don't take them as seriously. That is how you become more confident in yourself, deep down... when you have people who know all your faults but love you anyway, people to whom you don't have to prove anything. Sona never had that and so she always tried very hard for superficial approval... the same kind of validation she got in academics, and I think that is what made rejection so devastating for her. "I don't like you" or "this is what you are doing wrong" automatically translated to, "you have failed." Sona is leading Soha down the same path she took, and even more intensely; Soha is an only child. This path of allying with adults instead of your peers might put you on the right side of the rules, but it can also make for a very lonely existence.
Dev, with Golu, is the other extreme. This is partly because he isn't responsible for Golu's primary care, but I am not ready to let him off the hook completely. It was wrong to tell him to skip his homework and play cricket, and yes, it is wrong to give him the idea that he isn't accountable for his mistakes because bigcha will fix them, but there is also something to be said for letting a kid be a kid, and letting him know that there is no shame in asking for help. At first, Dev encouraged Golu to deal with his "bully" on his own, but once Golu came to him to say the problem had accelerated, he was all ears and ready to come to his aid (to be fair, Dev has no idea that Golu stole and lied to the teacher about it). Point to be noted: Golu had the support of his friends in his "battle" against Soha, and when he faltered out of fear, they built him back up. They were no doubt doing something wrong, but that solidarity counts for something.
But there is also a certain street smarts about Golu when he manipulates his teacher with mention of his bigcha. In the end, Soha was able to find a higher authority and justice prevailed, but that is not always the case in the real world, and you have to be prepared for that outcome as well sometimes. Dev, having grown up in unjustly harsh conditions, knows this all too well. Just because his mother was righteous and noble, didn't make the men in the alley any less willing to pounce and take advantage of her, given the chance.
And it is at this juncture that I stand eagerly awaiting the Dev-Soha relationship. Sona has given Soha a strong sense of independence, but there is a point where her pride in Soha's independence may give Soha shame for being any less (Bijoy-Sona 2.0). This is where Dev can play such a valuable role, taking the shame away with the unconditional love he is capable of (as we saw with Ishwari and Sona), and Sona and Dev can make an amazing parenting team, balancing out each other's shortcomings. I am not sure if Golu will benefit more from Sona's interaction with Dev or her interaction with Elena, or both, but someone has to point out that he's well on his way to becoming another Vicky. I would love it if Dev stayed the cool uncle, but Elena really acted on that instinct she had a few episodes ago and invested in her son.
Edited by Samanalyse - 8 years ago
Ufff Yeh Love Hai Mushkil
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