Originally posted by: sashashyam
Annu and Shruthi,
Where does the fault lie? I would say with everyone, but mainly with the writer.
The kind of maya that Shruti is visualising with such sureness of touch and perception needs both a very gifted writer and an even better communicator to put it across to even an intelligent, non-TRP auntie (why not uncle? I am sure there are some out there, in hiding!😉).
A film or a TV serial is not like an abstract painting, which can say different things to different viewers, or nothing at all, and get away with it. In fact, the more impenetrable its meaning, the better it will very likely sell!😉 But this medium is different.
If Utkarsh had seen Maya the girl as representing maya the universal illusion, which can either elevate Rudra or pull him down, depending on how he handles it, this is not how she should have been shown. As a 111% perfect bahu evam poutravadhu for Ganga and Daadi, full of all the traditional virtues, including all that unbelievably comic seva of the old ladies in the Ashram. In fact, her scenes with both Daadi and Ganga could have been inserted seamlessly into a saas-bahu serial, with the sole novelty that the parsaas and the poutravadhu . are on the same side!😉
Nor is there any explanation of WHY Rudra falls for her, suddenly and totally, like a sack of coals tumbling down the steps to the cellar😉. They need him to do so - and to do so with increasing vehemence, which was equally incomprehensible - and so he did, that was all.
Shyamala aunty, (I am a 90s kid and I hope I can call you aunty😳) I agree to some extent with this. We have been seeing Rudra-Maya in 40+ episodes and yet, we fail to recognize why Rudra has fallen hook, line and sinker for Maya. I don't even mind the WHY aspect to it because when I saw the Shiva-Ganga reunion scene, despite it being very subtle and understated for a couple who are meeting after 25 years, it tells their back story precisely just through their body language - That they must have spent around 6 years of marital bliss before everything falls apart on that fateful day, YET the couple have led a happy life even with the conflict of interest regarding the Amrit. Even when I observe random people, I look at their body language and analyze what sort of a person he or she is, what kind of a relationship they might be having and the like. Creepy as it may sound, but you get what I mean? I do not see that between Rudra and Maya. The body language doesn't show the extent to which Rudra has been taken in by Maya and vice versa. That is where the audience fails to connect with the love story.
This makes it even more difficult for the average viewer to grasp anything of the esoteric hidden meanings that are said to be there.
Where was there even a sotto voce explanation that Maya was not just any girl with irritating sidelong glances, but the mohmaaya of our philosophical treatises? Bar that one confusion between Shiva's reference to maaya, and Rudra's misunderstanding him as meaning Maya the girl, there has not been a single line anywhere till now guiding the viewer to this high faluting concept of Maya as maaya.
Utkarsh cannot expect all the viewers to have a Shruthi on tap, can he? It is his business to make sure that whatever he wants to convey on this matter is duly put across in a manner that any reasonably intelligent viewer can readily grasp it. This has simply not been done, and if very few get what he really means, he has no one to blame but himself.
In the latest version of the Mahabharata, the writers had taken care to bridge this gap thru long explanatory discourses by Lord Krishna. This was done, principally, for Bhishma, Drona, and Karna, but there were any number of mini-pravachans by Krishna at various other points of the narrative, so that no one, neither the characters, nor the viewers, had any excuses for going off track.
There has been nothing of the kind here, and it is the writer's fault that he has not found some way to do it without looking odd or out of place.
No one, not even Daadi, has been shown to have any understanding of Maya except the literal one, of a perfect bride for Rudra. Not even Shiva, who has not uttered a word more on the maaya he was referring to earlier, and linking that up with this Maya. So how can the viewer be expected to grasp this esoteric concept on her/his own?
Like you have mentioned, even I don't think UN is making parallels with the Universal Illusion, so to speak, at least not the concept in its entirety, for I feel Maya herself was living a life of denial until her nanu and mamas used her as a bait to bring Rudra to Prayag. She has lived a life of an orphan in a patriarchial set-up for most of her life, and I am sure the ride hasn't been a good one for her. UN does give the viewer reasons to love or empathize with her but it doesn't make any difference because of the lackluster and inconsistent performance from the actress. The actress is still raw and needs to work A LOT on getting the nuances right. I like Maya as a character: she is very innocent, has a kind-heart, can stand up for herself, put her loved ones over her own self, has a mind of her own. At least she doesn't shy away from her duties and mope around like what Rudra has been doing (She has no idea about this Amrit business yet).
Finally, it is no use trying make a silk purse out of a sow's ear (I have never understood why it has to be a sow's ear😉). To play Maya as more than a person,but as illusion, takes an exceptionally gifted actress, and I doubt if any of the currently available candidates could do it. But one need not have settled for one who seems to specialise in playing a wilting lily and/or a dying duck. I watch this Maya onscreen, and all of Shruthi's delicate concepts are washed away on a swelling tide of irritation. And I am NOT a TRP-auntie!
Yes, absolutely! Oh, there are quite a few actresses who can match GR😳
If the writer cannot lead even a viewer like me into what he wants to put across, the fault is not mine, it is his. And if his TRPs fall thru the bottom, it is not because the viewers are all TRP-aunties. It is because he could not carry even the niche viewers with him. And now he is trying to titillate God knows who with abominably crude violence. He needs a sound spanking!😉
Shyamala Di
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