Posted:
Essay time
In this serial, I'll use this thread to discuss my views on the serial, and just comment on comments in the WUs. Everything would be in one place, that way.
First of all, this first episode was a great downer!!! Sure, the costumes, the set & everything else looked awesome, but if there are changes in the story - something inevitable - that end up depicting certain characters unfairly, it leaves someone rather unimpressed.
The opening - Krishna's narration. I think this serial should go easy on the bhashans, especially about dharam/adharm, since there was plenty of both to go around. Besides, somehow, SRJ did not deliver the intro as nicely as he used to in DkDM - no offense to his fans here.
Opening scene - bizarre!!! Some rakshashas are attacking Hastinapur, and first Bheeshma stops them, and then persuades Shantanu to accept an agreement where neither trespasses on others' land? Maybe, they are laying the foundation of Hidimbaa not being able to live w/ Bhima later, but it's still rather lame. Instead, they could have shown Hastinapur being attacked by a real enemy, maybe Jarasandha, and Bheeshma intervening to thwart that.
As someone else noted in another thread, they totally skipped Shantanu's romance w/ Ganga, as well as the birth of Bheeshma. Can't say I blame them - it's hard to rationalize the drowning of 7 babies, especially if the goal of the serial is to reach out to a modern viewership, that's a lot less likely to endorse something like this, even under the rationalization of liberation from previous births. I'd say the CVs made a good judgement call in starting this story w/ Bheeshma's appearance in Hastinapur & his re-union w/ his father. And they covered the ending of the relationship b/w Shantanu & Ganga well - Ganga telling them that her avatar as a woman was over, and that she would leave. Incidentally, I was somewhat unimpressed by Vivana, but then, hers was just a cameo appearance.
Having said that, there was a period of time b/w Bheeshma returning to Hastinapur, and his father seeing & getting smitten by Satyavati. Shantanu had already crowned Bheeshma, and was ruling normally, but always felt the absense of a woman in his life. As a result, when he saw Satyavati, he got smitten. But by then, quite a bit of time had passed, and so, when the request was made to him that Satyavati's son become yuvraj, he balked. But here, they showed it like Satyavati was already Shantanu's girlfriend on the side when Bheeshma was introduced 🤣
Now, here is probably the most controversial aspect of what they showed, & not b'cos of just the inaccuracy. At that time, as Varaali has pointed out, women didn't have rights - a man, particularly a king, could simply pick up a girl from anywhere & marry her. The only people who could stop him would be a male relative of the girl - father, brother, (husband - as in the case of Sita 😆), and so on. Princesses had a little more right in that if they were lucky enough to get swayamvaras - as opposed to being gifted by their fathers or brothers to friendly rulers in order to forge matrimonial alliances, then they got the opportunity to either choose their husband, or at least get a worthy husband from the best of a lot. But someone like Satyavati - daughter of a fisherman - had no say in who she got to marry. This is why I disagree here w/ everybody who is critical of her, going to ridiculous lengths by comparing her to Kaikeyi. By showing Satyavati as independently deciding where she would live after marriage, they distorted not just her character - bad enough - but also the depiction of what the norms were like at the time, which is totally ridiculous: women just didn't have such a say even in their own lives, no matter what Swastik Productions might want us to believe.
Oh, and Satyavati's condition that she'd marry Shantanu but not live in the Hastinapur palace? Why would that be difficult for Shantanu - he'd get the best of both worlds - his Devrath being yuvraj & ultimately king, while he could retire w/ Satyavati. As it is, usually when a king crowned his son yuvraj & retired b4 death, he would retire w/ his wife to the forest - he never lived as a retiree in the palace (Dhritarashtra was a weird exception). So had Shantanu been presented w/ this option, it would have been a pretty good option for him, given his desire to retire.
Which is why omitting Satyavati's father, and showing her as being the ambitious one made no sense. Also, maybe it's just me, but if this is how they wanted to show Satyavati, Sayantani was the worst vehicle they could have chosen for this role - somehow, she doesn't deliver the vamp persona that the CVs decided to 'bestow' on this Satyavati. If anything, Sayantani could have swapped roles w/ Ratan Rajput - she could have played Amba later, while Ratan could have played Satyavati - that would have been more convincing a turn-off.
Also, if this condition was imposed, and Devrath was not yet yuvraj, then why would Shantanu have gone ahead & had him crowned then? The reason Shantanu was in a quandry was that Devrath was already yuvraj for a while, and that he'd have to remove him and replace him w/ a son yet to be born. Otherwise, Shantanu could have defered this decision, agreed to Satyavati's father (or Satyavati's, if one wants to go by this serial) and married her. Devrath could and would not have complained about not becoming yuvraj, particularly if he was so willing to give it up, along w/ his right to marry.
The final scene - Devrath resolving to find out what was bothering Shantanu. In the original story, Devrath asked Shantanu's courtiers about it, and they told him about Satyavati. He then met her father, who told her about his conditions, which he happily accepted. Here, they showed it like he magically divined what was in Shantanu's mind, went to Satyavati, confronted her, and got an earful about the miserable life she'd have to lead after marrying the king.
Sorry, while I may have watched it at prime time, this serial is not worth the extra effort to watch during the reruns. Like DkDM nowadays, I'll probably mainly follow and discuss it here.
Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi 2
Mannat Har Khushi Paane Ki
