Folks,
Now don't start racking your memories to try and remember where in the last week there were two tables in our tale! I am quoting the late Raj Kapoor, one of the greats of Indian cinema. He used to say that a film was made on just two tables, the writing table and the editing table, and none of the rest in between mattered much. It was of course a typical made-for-effect declaration, because Raj Kapoor directed all his films, and like another great of cinema, Alfred Hitchcock, he probably believed that actors were mere puppets in the hands of the writer and the director (Hitchcock actually said actors were like cattle, but he meant the same thing!). However, the core idea is true, for it is, in the first place, the script that makes or breaks the film, and its final look is decided at least 40% by the editing.
The script of our Mahakumbh has been maintaining such a frenetic pace that I am sure the screenplay and the storyboard are the same, and the editor has a cakewalk, as the innumerable, mostly short scenes, like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, probably do not need much editing at all. And never was this more in evidence than in this last week. There were only two meltingly emotional scenes in all, which practically bookended the whole week's goings on - or perhaps 2 1/2 if you count the one between Rudra and Thappadiya Mai - while the script galloped on at a dizzying pace, as revelations tumbled out of closets right up to the startling precap (which, going by past precedent, is unlikely to be actually shown till Feb 5, if not Feb 9!š)
My Takes for this week: Maybe it might be better to get the Take 2 1/2 out of the way first, before we delve into the why, the wherefore and the how of the script.
It was curious that the two big scenes, of course both with Rudra, were dominated by two different, but equally doughty old ladies.Not that Gautam's Rudra was in any way lacking in either, far from it, and he played off both of them wonderfully, but the golden oldies brooked no competition. It was a rare treat to see them in action, and since Surekha Sikri's daadi is likely to be around for a while, and Maimuyi's spirit has said only au revoir and not adieu, I am more than content, and so, I am sure, are all of you, for happy times are here again!
Maimuyi ka pallu: The tone for this exquisite, intensely moving scene is set, first, by the haunting Kuchch bhi na kaho.. and then by the smoky blue ambience and the stretches of bare, dull yellow sand at the Sangam, the perfect interface between the world of mortals and the world of those who have passed on.
When Maimuyi hobbles up to her bachuwa, curled up, embryo fashion, in the sand, the first thing she does is to tuck him into a blanket that she is carrying. There could be no more telling symbol of maternal protectiveness than that.
And when Rudra gets up and moves close to her, the first thing he does is to catch hold of her pallu, which for him symbolises a haven of peace and safety, and snuggles with sudden relief into the warmth of her embrace. Thus does a child cling to his mother as his sanctuary from the world outside. His reaction as she stands up to leave reflects the same visceral dependence. He is still grasping her pallu like a demanding child, and he looks up at her with his heart in his eyes.
Maimuyi's homily for her beloved bachuwa, heavy with parable - as in a rock eventually being reduced to a grain of sand - and hoary myth - that of the Shiv Neelkant who swallowed the halahala vish in order to save the world - seems to be centred on just two points.
-First, that Rudra must understand himself, unravel the abujh rahasya of his own being. Maimuyi does not go further down this road, and perhaps she does not know anything of Rudra's real identity and mission. But the matter is cleared up in the new promo, where Shivanand acquaints Rudra with his real mission in life,to safeguard the Amrit when it emerges during this Mahakumbh. This will mesh in neatly with what Maimuyi tells him in this scene, that he will, like Lord Shiva in his Neelkant roop, have to consume the poison that comes before the Amrit when the samudra manthan takes place, in order to save the world.
Rudra will now no longer be clueless and confused; he knows who he is and what he has to do.
- And next, that he must learn to face life on his own terms, judge it and cope with it, instead of allowing bitterness to corrode and destroy him from inside. Chhod de, bhool jaa.. Mazaa chakhaaya kar duniya ko.. Duniya ko thenge par rakha kar, zyada sar pe mat chadaaya kar..
Though the contexts are very different, I was reminded of WB Yeats' famous poem, By the Salley Gardens, the part that goes:
She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs,
But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.
Not that I think Maya is a Dark Lady, not any more, merely that she is, as things stand and as she is at present, unlikely to be of any practical use to Rudra.
Maimuyi's body language, the arthritic hobbling, the crouching in front of the fire ( a clear contradiction, for no one with arthritis in the knees can possibly crouch like that, and I should know!), the abundant love for Rudra and the equally abundant and assertive advice for him, the parting comment that the hapless Chandrabhan must be waiting for her (he must be by now resigned to his fate!š) they all ring so true that watching her is an unalloyed delight. Delight probably doubled by the sudden pleasure of having her turn up again against all our expectations.
Rudra meshes perfectly into her take on the scene, the little boy lost who has, however temporarily, regained Elysium. Got back the one person who cares for him above all else, the one to whom he can unburden himself of his doubts and his despair.
Dastaan-e-daadi: Clubbing together the two halves of this passage, Rudra's discovery of his daadi in the underground ruins of the Brahma Nisht Panth ashram, and the part in the hospital with the hapless doctor and then Rudra himself, what we get is a tour de force. Not just of scripting, not just of the perfect lines, but of the performances.
Rudra is home once more.
As she tells him about the murderous attack on their ashram by the Vesh Trio, for no reason that she can understand, it is noteworthy that Rudra does not trot out his nostril flaring, eyes glaring take on rage, but settles for a cold, icy anger that is contained and deadly.
It is the same at the hospital, the depth of the emotional connect between grandmother and grandson. As her wrinkled fingers caress his face and he leans over her and smooths her hair , it is as if a current of love, of healing warmth, is passing from this old lady - this siddha yogini who has mastered her indriya , her senses, so totally, and has slowed her metabolism down to nearly zero, that she was able to subsist without food for 24 years - to the husky lad who is her grandson, Mera Rudra! The tired old eyes are lit up, and so many nuances cross them as she looks her fill of his face.
The same affection, the same abundance of caring, is mirrored in Rudra's face. More, in fact, as for him she represents something even more precious, a sense of belonging, of finally finding one of his own, of trying to fill the aching void left by Maimuyi's passing. As Rudra holds his daadi close and makes her drink the milk, there is a curious reversal of roles between the daadi and the pota, for as a child, he must surely have made her run after him ever so often with milk that he would not drink! š
I was waiting for him to ask her Maa kahan hai? , and he does, the whole of his desperate hope against hope shining in his eyes and in his tremulous voice. There is no clear answer,but it does seem that as she was not in the ashram when it was attacked, she might have survived.
But what about his dada? Another question that is still up in the air. His daadi does not wear a red bindi now, and surely she has not changed her look after the day of the attack, so perhaps he had died before that fatal day.
And perhaps it was the fact of his no longer being there to protect the ashram and the Saraswati Kund that triggered the attack. For as Devesh Naanu tells Balivesh, he wanted to locate the entry point of the hidden river Saraswati, with that drop of the healing amrit, into that Saraswati Kund, and so he got rid of the whole family of Shivanand (or so he thinks), so that he could investigate the matter at leisure. But his acolytes were unable to find anything.
NB: Rudra's daadi is wearing a red bindi in the flashback shot of her and the kid Rudra, so her husband, the Mahant of the Brahma Nisht Panth, was alive then. Was that scene from somewhat before the day of the 1989 attack on the ashram?
Question:How does Rudra, who has no money of his own, manage to get his daadi admitted to this hospital, and how come Balivesh has not learnt of this yet? This might be answered next week, like the one about how the daadi had survived in that wasteland, or it might never be answered, like the one about the complete absence of police action on Maimuyi's murder in the middle of Banaras in broad daylight.
The Patanjali Yoga Sutra: I was in stitches as I watched the imperious old woman put the doctor firmly in his place with the aforesaid quotation - all the more easily as he could not understand a word of it!š - and an even more emphatic assertion : Yeh mera shareer hai, 24 saal se tapaya hai maine...Yeh siddhiyaan kalpanik nahin hai.. Kabhi janam se milti hain, kabhi aushadi, mantra, tap, samadhi se prapt kar lete hain.. Bas apoorva poojan ko sampoorna karna aana chahiye..Yadi santulan ke saath jiyein to dawa ki aavashyakta hi nahin rahegi.. No wonder he retreats quietly, probably to mull over how to deal with this unprecedented patient! Probably that is why he has not yet leaked the matter to the press. š
Surekha Sikri was in top form in this part. Only her head showed over the sheet, she never raised her voice, nor did she indulge in any showy histrionics. And yet one could not take one's eyes off her weary, lined face and those amazingly vivid eyes.
Rudra gets yet another Mai: This one is not going to slap him, not after he retrieved her potli! And Rudra, fresh from an all too brief encounter with his Maimuyi, which has left him emotionally drained and looking for another mother-figure, is ready to adopt the much abused Thappadiya Mai. The scene when he holds her close and pats her head, murmuring over and over again Shant ho ja Mai.. is very moving, as if the one where she vividly recounts the horrors she has endured at the hands of her vile son and daughter in law. I was pleased to see that she had taken such revenge as she could by running away with the latter's jewellery.
I hear that she too is to be a Rakshak. Well, she will make a good one, with her surface looniness furnishing excellent camouflage.
Now for the plot and the plotters.
Rudra-Maya: Whatever Maimuyi's stout defence of Maya, Rudra does not stop being suspicious of her.Which is understandable, for he distrusts her from day 1, and he identifies her completely with her family.
Rudra, always doubtful of the oily Balivesh, begins to suspect him from the time when Pandey dies, for it is clear to him that Pandey was looking to Balivesh for directions as to what to tell Rudra. Moreover, a careful second viewing of Pandey's last moments shows him trying to signal to Rudra with his eye that the ringmaster was none other than Balivesh. Though Rudra does not quite catch on, the suspicion in his eyes as he looks back at Balivesh was all too clear.
He does not trust Naanu either, right from their first meeting, and now he has complete confirmation from his daadi that Naanu Devesh and his horrible sons were solely responsible for the destruction of Rudra's whole family.
So what would be more natural than for him to believe that Maya was in cahoots with her Naanu & Maamu to lure him to their lair? In his place, if a girl literally threw herself at me and did not seem to resent even my half strangling her, and had a one point agenda, to get me to Prayag, I would feel the same, no matter what my beloved Maimuyi insisted on.
But this new Rudra has, to my huge relief, switched from OTT raging to smooth deviousness. He begins by suddenly lavishing come hither looks on the gullible Maya, and enticing her into hugging him in full view of all those who might have then entered the rasoi. Finally, he turns the poor girl's brains, such as they areš, to mush with his Tum hi hamari kismet ho, Maya...Hum apne pyaar ko pehchan nahin paaye, apni Maya ko pehchan nahin paaye...Hum wapas aa gaye hain, sab kuch bhulakar..
Of course Maya cannot see the very different, decidedly sinister look he shows us, for his head is on her shoulder. Even so, and though I never rated Maya's intelligence highly, her ability to swallow such a 180 degrees change in Rudra wihout blinking an eye quite took my breath away. She clearly believes what she wants to believe, and plausibility be damned!
Maya kaun hai? :There have been various very interesting speculations and interpretations in the forum about Maya, about what she is, and what her relationship with Rudra will lead to. Shruthi sees her as Yogamaya, the child who was born to Nand and Yashoda, who replaced Krishna in Kamsa's dungeon, and who escaped Kamsa's clutches and foretold his end. Arshi sees her as a possible Sati, who has to die so that she can return as Parvati and support Shiva.
I do not know if Utkarsh, given his earlier assignment as the writer for Devon ke Dev Mahadev, is going to import the Shiv Purana so literally into Mahakumbh. Moreover, this Maya, though she is shown as lovelorn, is no alluring Sati. And then there is the new promo. My take on that is the following.
Maya is illusion, something that ties the seeker down and distracts him from the path laid down for him. So too here, Maya, though she genuinely loves Rudra, will be a distraction and maybe a roadblock in Rudra's path when he has to fulfil his mission to save the Amrit.
It was clear in the extended promo that it was Balivesh who was throwing her off the cliff. Incidentally, I do not think the "throwing Maya off the cliff" need be taken literally. It is very likely a symbolism for getting her out of Rudra's life, maybe by kidnapping and threatening to kill her, which would fit in with Balivesh's modus operandi.
Regardless of this, Rudra. will be torn between his personal need to save her and the competing need for him to save the Amrit. This dilemma will be the key element of Mahakumbh, as Balivesh, Grierson & Co. will surely try to use Maya to keep Rudra from his real mission, so that they can seize the Amrit for their own nefarious purposes.
Grierson-Balivesh: Double-cross doubled: The tango of deception that this duo engages in is fascinating.
The key point is that both of them need Shivanand and Rudra together.
Grierson, especially now that Pandey has gone to Ishwar as per Balivesh ( some hope that! I do not think even Dante's seventh circle of hell would be enough for Pandey, Balivesh & Co.š”), needs help during the Mahakumbh, and an antagonistic Balivesh could cut him off from all support, not just his own, and sabotage the Cardinal's big project.
Moreover, Balivesh has Rudra. That is why the Cardinal advises Grierson to make friends with the enemy if need be, and that is what he does. It is a case of force majeure.
On the other side. Balivesh needs Shivanand, whom he had thoughtlessly and greedily handed over to the Cardinal's men 24 years ago. Yes, Balivesh promises Grierson Rudra, but that is not what he means. Balivesh wants to get at Shivanand thru Grierson, and then cheat Grierson out of the amrit at the last moment. Remember that he also lies to Grierson that he has the second Book, because he wants to have Grierson feel that he cannot do without Balivesh.
They are thus yoked together, this unlikely pair, and each is feigning camaraderie and actually planning to double cross the other once the amrit has been obtained.
Note that there has been no discussion of the division of the spoils. This is because neither intends to share anything with the other. So even though each is salivating at the prospect of getting hold of even one drop of the amrit and thus dominating the world ( I never understand how this second point follows from the first, but let that pass!) they fudge the question of how they can both dominate the whole world! At least the Cardinal talks, if nothing else, of getting the amrit to benefit mankind, but Balivesh does not bother to do even that.
Incidentally, one wonders where precisely the second Book is, given that the Gulabo Mehndi Shop has turned out to be the Pandey residence, now naturally deserted.
Grierson's account of how the first Book landed up with the Secret Society reminded me of The Raiders of the Lost Ark, where the Nazis had the Ark of the Covenant in a crate that they were carting off to Berlin. Did you folks notice Grierson's off the cuff remark about the Nazi efforts to collect such ancient treasures from all over the world, "Sadly, they lost". No question of where friend Grierson's sympathies lay! š
The kalpavaas: It is very revealing, how even a self-professed agnostic or atheist like Grierson (remember the Cardinal saying at one of their meetings that they believed in no religion?) readily turns to a self-purificatory ritual like the kalpavaas in order to ensure the success of his undertaking, and even informs the Cardinal (whom he always addresses as Boss, like a Mafia underling, not as Your Eminenceš) about it. And astonishing, how he can kid himself that God will aid him in such a nefarious enterprise just because he observes a fast during the day for 25 days!
NB: Grierson seems to have a very clever tailor, who knows how to fit a huge pocket, big enough to take the first Book, into his flowing gerua vastraš.
The weak Rakshaks: I think the weakness Grierson is hoping for concerns the mental resilience of the 2 rakshaks in the face of constant psychological pressure to co-operate in getting the amrit rather than protecting it and keeping it incognito.
I am sure Rudra is NOT one of the 2 weaker rakshaks. He is going to be the deux ex machina, the linchpin and the moving spirit, as far as safeguarding the amrit and preventing it from becoming visible to the bad guys, is concerned. Yes, they show him with Charles, each sporting the garuda chinna, but that is not in the context of any weakness, but only because they are the only revealed Rakshaks.
But I also feel that Balivesh thinks Rudra is one the 2 weaklings, and so wants him under his eye and his control.
There is no point speculating about the other 5. After Katharine's towel show, her back at least is clearly garuda chinn-free (that was very likely the purpose of that whole, long drawn out farcical scene), but one never knows about the hidden portions of her shapely anatomyš. I think Thappadiya Mai might be the next likely candidate, she is as nutty as Charles, but I like her better despite all her OTT posturings. But my candidate of choice would be the grown up Kuba from Poland.
Katharine-Charles: The only other revealed Rakshak besides Rudra, Charles, continues to get on my nerves. Arshi's crack, on her thread, about the towel having been Katharine's rakshak was spot on and very funny, as was her sage advice to Rudra to concentrate less on accumulating Mais and more on collecting girlfriends! Delightful.
This apart, I watched bemused as our wannabe Rakshak, la belle Katharine, stood there like a lamp post in front of the capering faux Swami, instead of diving back into the bathroom with her clothes. And apparently the Sinister Swami (Balivesh) 's residential amenities for his guests run to bathtubs!š
The scene itself, complete with the Thappadiya Mai's sudden irruption into the proceedings, looked straight out a bad 1960s Hindi film. Someone in the writing department for Mahakumbh seems to have a yen for such corny stuff; Charles as a whole is of a piece with that scene. I do not know when he is going to get his act together, but till now it has been frightful, constantly striving for broad comedy and achieving only the opposite.
Miscellany: Who is Devesh Naanu's Guru Maharaj, who has been observing a maun vrat for the last 22 years (not 24, like most other things here) ?
A special round of applause for Utkarsh for a revolutionary change in the prescribed format for TV serials.š When Maya hears her Naanu asserting that if need be, they could bump off one of the two, herself and Rudra, any normal TV show heroine should have dropped the thali she is holding with a loud clang. Not our girl. She staggers but holds on to it. Remarkable!šš
A request: Ok, folks, I will call a halt to this! I would only request those who have lasted out till this point, and still feel that they like this post, to hit the Like button without fail. I make it a point to keep note of those who enjoyed each of my standalone posts, and I would not like to miss out on any of you!
Shyamala B.Cowsik
PS: Because of some goof-up, the link I had given in my PMs was not live, as it usually is. My apologies, and I will take more care next time.
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