My dear Ela,
I am nowhere near normalcy as yet, but I loved the first 2 episodes of Mahakumbh as much as you did, so I thought I would use my 15 minutes daily laptop quota to add this to your thread.
I was delighted to see that my favourite writer from DKDM, Utkarsh Naithani, has, once that was wound up, embarked on this Dan Brownish mytho-historical thriller, Mahakumbh. Right down to the Polish opening scenes, complete with a cold-eyed Bishop in a black cassock and a red sash (if he had been a Cardinal, he would of course have had a scarlet cape), and the Governing Board of the secret society with representation from every continent, Nice,very nice.
I simply revelled in the first two episodes, and plan to be glued to it till the end. The pacing and the script are both superb, which comes as no surprise given the writer and the production house. The direction is spare and striking, and the lines are the more telling for their being so minimal.
So are the actors, and the casting director seems inspired. Not only in the choice of Saraswatichandra to play the adult Rudra, and the very competent Seema Biswas, but also in the real discovery - the teenage Rudra. With his eloquent eyes and his silences that speak more than words, his sombre, brooding persona, like a young Heathcliff out of Wuthering Heights, and his spectacular athleticism. I have never seen such a thrilling rooftop chase as the one where he outruns his pursuers and ends up back with his initial rescuer. No wonder he is, I learnt here, going to play the young Asoka.
I loved the hidden similes in Rudra's escape from captivity- with Samson when he pulls down the pillars in his prison, with the infant Krishna when he drags the broken pillars after him, just as Krishna dragged the mortar to which Yashoda had chained him.
All in all, Mahakumbh is clearly going to be a rare treat for weeks and months to come.
One little carping doubt. The child Rudra looks about 6. 12 years have passed. Then how come the teenage Rudra is no more than 14, if not less? Chronologically, he should have been a much more grown up 18. I can see that the writer was stuck with the 12 year leaps and could do nothing about them. I also see that if the child Rudra had been 2 years old, they could not have shown him remembering what happened to his father on that pontoon in 1989. But there could have been a way out of that for such a clever and resourceful young man like Utkarsh. As it is , the teenage Rudra look 4/5 years too young.
Bar that, he is, to borrow Gen X lingo, mindblowing.
A little footnote about the Amritmanthan. As far as I know, and as the most familiar tradition goes, the halahala vish was swallowed in its entirety by Mahadev, for no one else could have survived it. It was Parvati who placed her hand on his throat and prevented it from descending any further. Whence his blue throat and the name Neelakanta.
As for the amrit, Lord Vishnu as Mohini tried to keep all of it for the Devas, except for Rahu, who disguised himself as a Deva and drank a portion of it. He had his head cut off as a punishment, but he was already immortal, and so we have Rahu, the head, and Ketu, the rest of him, in perpetuity.
Shyamala
Edited by sashashyam - 10 years ago
