When RK coerced his ill wife into having a herbal concoction with "Option A... Option B" which were actually no option at all, he may never have imagined the depth to which that sort of non-option that has been his way of life would etch its mark on Madhu's mind and heart, and on their relationship.😳
When he lay unbreathing in the hospital, it was "Option A... Option B" that Madhu first dredged out to try to bully him back to life.
And it has become the same non-option that now governs the Rishbala equation at all points.😳 Two people who have not yet acknowledged even to themselves that they love each other - against reason and logic, and without coherent thought.
For what seems like ages now, the Rishbala separation was *the* topic of debate. Would it happen? How would it happen? When? For how long? With what circumstantial impetus or feelings as reason? Would RK send Madhu back in atonement? Would Madhu storm to her maayka after some misunderstanding?😕
I was reasonably sure (as in praying desperately😆 that the CVs wouldn't massacre RK's characterization like Shamsher's but in the opposite direction😕) that RK would never send Madhu back with his current tender protective cherishing feelings for her.😳 Remorse cannot be a motivator, because he feels no remorse for the course he took, though he has grown to regret hurting Madhu. The man who dislikes 'sorry' and 'thank you' seeks to heal that hurt and insult by giving Madhu care and respect, however complicatedly.😊
But it is all based on Madhu no longer being the crusading girl who humiliated him, but rather his wife whose devotion and loyalty has won his regard.😳 If it were all to happen again, would he react any differently to her actions? I doubt it.
It would be drastically out of character for RK to send Madhu back in good faith. In fury, out of a sense of betrayal or washing his hands off her and despising her, yes.
But not out of guilt or for atonement. So long as he cares about Madhu and has regard for her, he won't expose his reasonably conservative wife to insult and insinuations by sending her back to her maayka permanently.😊 Rather, he has been trying to get along with Madhu's family so that they can more easily and constantly be a part of Madhu's new life. This pleases Madhu, and seeing her happy pleases RK.😃 But he doesn't have some idealized image of Madhu's 'perfect family'. He can see their flaws, and sees no reason to believe Madhu would be happier as a castoff wife back in her maayka. What he is trying to do is gradually establish Madhu's honoured position as his wife in truth.
At least so far, though it may all be Schrodinger's cat.
At the base of this is the fact that in this matter, RK and Madhu are both conservative at heart. Madhu is obviously so, belated only in recognizing the depth of her commitment. RK *appears* anything but, and appearances are deceiving.
He knows exactly what it would mean for Madhu to return permanently to her maayka after marriage. It was a humiliation he held in reserve when he wanted revenge, and it is now something he will not even chance the perception of.😳
What was *unexpected* was that Madhu not only took no initiative herself to return to her maayka in a snit for any duration, but also that she was ambiguous in her words to Padmini at the chawl to shield her husband's image in her mother's eyes.😳
So no need to rehabilitate himself in his wife's eyes can drive RK to send her away permanently, and neither being offended nor believing her loved ones wronged can make Madhu consider leaving him even temporarily.😳 The CVs found the middle ground - RK taking her back to her maayka for a short stay without her involvement in the decision.😊
Even in the 1st Nov. ep, Madhu had believed that her Maalik had humbled himself and set aside the past to attempt reconciled relations with RK - that too not once but thrice.😲 And yet, not even her anger at RK for purportedly humiliating Shamsher stood even a slight chance in the face of RK doing disservice to his own health by not taking his medication.😛
The girl has gone even past the point where even the greatest wrong he may do matters nothing in the face of his wellbeing.
If RK wants Madhu to do something, he need only show physical or emotional vulnerability or hurt. He would not need to pretend. Just a fractional unveiling of actuality, and she would be putty in his hands. How ironical then that the master-manipulator can't even think of deliberately using so surefire a weapon against the wife whose devotion to him is so clear even when she is displeased or irate.😳
It is not merely his ego that stops him - that ego which had once had him stand in front of Padmini and Madhu at their home and pretend a nonsensical history of being misreared, spoilt and never criticized (really? Radha🤢 who badmouths her son to people at first acquaintance spent 17 years without being manipulated by her wonderful second husband and stepson into blaming her own son for everything they implied?😡). That day, RK had played a role that had nothing to do with his actual life but was safely unconnected, cliched and tugged at the heartstrings, and insured he could acquire revenge, without abandoning humanity to unleash any sort of vicious horror against Madhu.
But now, more than even his absolute ego is his desire to not manipulate for selfish gain the one person who - despite their cause for mutual antagonism - has never knowingly betrayed or deceived him.😳
Bittuji may be the one other person who, having had opportunity to backstab RK, has never done so. But then, he has never had quite the sterling negativity seeped into the very core of his association with RK that Madhu has. And yet even in her most puerile and naively hostile manipulations, she never knowingly sought to truly do RK any irreparable harm.😊
When RK maligned himself to Madhu vis-a-vis his three 'interactions' with Shamsher, he did not know that it would be so easily forgivable an offence in his Biwi's eyes.
She adores her father. She implied she worshipped that father. Her husband has yet to realize that love that truly crosses the level into 'worship' is a Rubicon his wife has only recently crossed, albeit unknowingly.
She does not gaze reverently upon her husband, she does not hang on his every word. But she can think of nothing in worry or concern for anyone else against hurt - physical or emotional - to him.
Even wondering and anticipatorily irate, she came to feed him rather than let him try unsuccessfully to feed himself. That might be considered humanity.
But even after storming away in a supposedly well-informed burst of temper, merely the information that he had not had his medicine was enough to set temper and offence at naught, and she hurried to his side to ensure he have the medication.
She did not come with grudging concern. She came with concern that left all grudges uncared in its wake.
In the 2nd Nov ep, neither Madhu bitterly talking of RK 'insulting' her Maalik and fleeing the room in tears, nor RK denying the blame when alone and kicking at furniture held the signs of any lasting discord. By the time RK took her on a visit to her maayka that was as much surprise to her as to her parents, she was again wife far more than daughter. The girl who had once gone to great lengths to get RK to apologize repeatedly to her mother for embarrassing her perhaps ceased to exist with the knowledge that she had unknowingly crossed a line unthinkable to her to get that result. This time, she had no interest in or expectation of her husband apologizing to her father for 'disrespect'.
Madhu does not believe RK cares enough about her to be affected or hurt by her words. And yet, even in flaring temper, she noticeably hitched - in the 31st Oct. ep - at saying even dialogues reminiscent of insults she once used to his face.
She did not want him told that she had donated blood to him because she worried at the hurt it would cause his *pride* to owe her anything. Would she have been able to utter a word in anger even at her father supposedly being unjustifiably disrespected, had she known her opinion can now *grieve* her husband, though it would not prevent him from doing what needs must to keep her from being shattered?
She told Radha, then Bittuji and finally RK himself that, had positions been reversed, RK would have done no less for her than she did for him. She reminded RK that he too would not have ehsaan jataaofied once things were well.
But all that was for physical hurt. She knows RK cares about her wellbeing to the extent of protecting her from physical hurt or harm.
But the true extent of RK's care for her was - ironically - revealed in his conversation with Shamsher (31st Oct ep).😃 What was also painfully obvious in that scene was that had Radha not been such a wretched judge of character and had instead remarried a man of worth and integrity who would be true in relationships, Rishabh would have accepted a second father-figure not in place of his deceased father but certainly with equal or nearly equal regard.
And I see no reason why Mallick - once he has, like Padmini, overcome the aberrant self-righteous "You couldn't have done anything worse to us" (like hell he couldn't have, and any of it would truly have been monstrous) nonsense - wouldn't be able to forge a strong positive bond with the man who cares as much and more about Madhu as he himself does.😊
Found Padmini immensely irritating when she was climbing on metaphorical soapboxes and encouraging Madhu to be witlessly provoking to her 'jaanwar' husband.😕 But there was the hope that her good sense would soon return from vacation. And if Padmini could find her way back to customary good sense, Mallick definitely should be able to.😃
It's hardly like Madhu's deprioritizing of everyone and everything for her husband is likely to be obvious to anyone besides RK... unless she walks in on Shamsher trying a 'fourth time lucky' attempt to 'reconcile' with his son-in-law.😕 I can almost pity both RK and Shamsher in the event of such a situation coming about, because that girl in temper or tears? Each of the two men whose heart she holds - one quite unknowingly - in one each of her hands may wish he were dead rather than be the cause of her torment.😭
Madhu's lack of desire to fully comprehend her own feelings and the complications involved is also dimming her awareness of the tricky situation her relationships with the two most important men in her life are in.
At the puja, when Madhu baulked at sitting beside RK for the rituals, thought of her father watching may have featured more or less in her reasons alongside her wish to be contrary after losing her ego-clash with RK over changing out of Dipali's sari.😕 And when she and RK had to get up again, she helped him up reflexively and unasked. *That* should truly have been - far more than sitting beside her husband as ritually required - a point of hesitation, something that should not even have occurred to her with her father watching - his daughter helping, in unprompted attentiveness, the man with whom all of Mallick's memories bore so negative a hue.
And later when RK conducted himself within the maryaadaa of relationships with Madhu's parents - never disrespectful even in his insistence on a blessing from Shamsher, Madhu could not keep the unbounded contented tenderness from her gaze when she looked at her husband.
Certainly Shamsher's feelings about RK in light of the past appeared to matter to her far less than RK willingly and of his own volition accepting yet another facet of his and Madhu's marriage - treating his parents-in-law with respect.
Consciously, Madhu knows she owes it to the father who fought so rashly for her that she should maintain antagonism towards his - and her - then opponent.
But unconsciously? The moment Madhu admitted to Padmini that she had felt her own breath and heartbeat would halt with RK's, she had given in to whatever it was she felt so overwhelmingly and unreasoningly.
Had Padmini chosen the opposite tack to the one she did, had she chastised Madhu to remember the antagonism, Madhu would have been in torment over her welter of feelings. But she would have been unable to erase what she had never consciously cultivated. It would have fractured the mother-daughter relationship.
Instead, Padmini's reaction and advice was couched in her gladness that she could, with the certainty that RK was no Balraj, strive for her daughter's marriage - however unsavoury its beginning - to work out.
Madhu's mother unknowingly preserved her own relationship with her daughter by keeping Madhu's heart from warring against itself in a battle the outcome of which was already certain.
Did Madhu unconsciously count on that with her father as well? That he would accept the feelings she could not fight, set aside his own antagonism and accept his son-in-law? Unrealistic? Definitely. And yet, when RK told her that Shamsher had not once but thrice tried to do exactly that, she accepted it without even a flicker of doubt. Her fury was at her husband for not letting it work out. For a girl like Madhu to believe that her hot-tempered father, who just a while previously blessed his son-in-law only on the latter's insistence, had tried and failed *twice* before that to extend an olive branch to RK... It beggars belief. Until one takes into account that when it comes to RK, Madhu's usual wits, malleability and unassuming nature always seem to take flight.
With RK, she is in truth a sherni. But the sherni's attitude and purpose have both changed absolutely, from attacker to defender.
For me, the effect Rishbala have on each other was epitomized in two moments of the 1st Nov. ep.
First, when RK sits back in the wake of his wife storming away with fiery words of condemnation after he slandered himself to preserve her father's image in her eyes. The man whose vindictiveness was once paramount now - for Madhu - willingly not only let off someone who had struck at him but even accepted blame in that person's stead.😳
The second, when Madhu hurried into their bedroom with the tray of milk and medication, looking for her husband, with concern and not an iota of temper in her bearing.😳
Neither RK nor Madhu had any thought or care for themselves in face of care for the other. Whatever needed to be done in the other's interests was done with no second thought, no qualms at the sacrifice or risk they would leave themselves open to.😳
Book Talk
Ye Hai Mohabbatein
