Alert: This is being posted independently just for more eyeballs (it is not just PR that hs to worry about TRPs!). Those who have already endured the version posted last night on Jyoti's thread can skip directly to the last section, the one below the dotted line.Unless of course you are tearing your hair and exclaiming "A plague on this wretched female!".
My dear Jyoti,
Welcome to the Protect Arjun (now not Arjun Kirloskar) Project (PAP)!
This is a chronically understaffed and forever overworked outfit, and no one is better placed to testify to its endless efforts to explain, argue and otherwise debunk unwarranted attacks on Archana's boy than I. And Archana of course, but then, unlike me, she can be accused of a maternal bias.
However, despite all our eloquence, logic (well, we do not believe in any undue modesty!) and persistence, I doubt whether we have been able to dent the strength of the Critics of Arjun Group (CAG) to any significant extent, even of those who always preface their salvos with " It is not that I do not like AK, but..." (a pronouncement strongly reminiscent of Sir Humphrey Appleby in Yes Minister explaining that he is not against women).
You have made an entry into the PAP in style, with the opening post in In Arjun's defence. Though this latest post of yours is, sensibly, limited to countering the latest salvo against him - that he did not handle Ovi correctly in his chance meeting with her on the road - it is crisp, comprehensive and entirely convincing to all those who keep an open mind on the subject of the bizarre goings on in PR. No wonder you have garnered a unprecedented amount of support.
I used to think, at the beginning of my PAP accreditation, that the persistent hostility to Arjun was directly related to the strength of the pro-Purvi lobby, which can be conservatively placed at about 95% of the forum. Those were the days when Purvi was shrieking (now, after watching Archana in action, I see where she got this high decibel addiction from!) at Arjun every other day for his acts of omission vis a vis both herself and Ovi (who, she affirmed, had loved him since she was 14 - a Goebbelsian pronouncement if ever there was one, of unknown origin and eternal life).
Since Arjun those days was invariably tongue-tied and totally ineffective, as also very stupid in his handling of the triangular mess, my above-mentioned misconception was understandable, and even I could not condone Arjun's follies at times.
But then came his confession of his love for Purvi to Manav and the rest of the Deshmukh clan, followed by his rain-drenched rendezvous with Purvi, where he managed to override all her reservations, and topped off by his bearding Archana in her maternal den and coming off triumphant, with Purvi gazing at him as if to say "My hero!"
I thought that now the pro-Purvi lobby would at last be appeased, and the PAP could be quietly disbanded.
To my surprise, this is not what has happened. The CAG merely shifted ground somewhat, and instead of accusing him of betraying Purvi (a manifest impossibility now), they now accuse him of not just betraying Ovi, but of continuing to mislead her and push her deeper into her world of delusions. Poor Arjun, he can just do nothing right!
The only interludes when he gets a good press are when it is totally unavoidable, as after the three instances mentioned above, or when there is a nice (or even an abysmal, like the Shirt da Button) song that provides a romantic Arjun-Purvi diversion from serious business. However, these interludes are just that, and at the first opportunity, it is open season on Arjun again.
So you see, there is no winning this contest. This latest instance, for example, can be countered with 3 points:
1) If Arjun had told Ovi, out there in the street - as many in this forum have been advocating - that he was doing all this to win Purvi's hand, firstly, there would have been a hysterical scene that might have brought the police down on him for apparently harassing a girl.
2) Secondly, those who complain do not take sufficiently into account what monomania is like. Ovi would have attributed any such statement he made to some "majboori', exactly as she interpreted his confession to Manav. She would, next, have probably gone for Purvi with a kitchen knife a la Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. It was thus wise of Arjun NOT to have told her the true reason for his setting out on his own.
3) Arjun just wanted to get away from her as quietly as possible, and that is what he does. He also thinks that she will not be able to get at him in the future as she won't know where he is, and that makes him even less inclined to upset her and have a scene created on the spot.
Similarly, the idea of either Arjun or DK or both having a 'quiet' talk with and apologizing to Ovi is a non-starter. Ovi is at present in a delusional state of total denial, and if she can persist in believing that Arjun still loves her after he has said, loud and clear, to her face and Manav's, that he does not love her and that he loves Purvi, what can be expected from a 'quiet' meeting with her, except that it likely to be anything but quiet?
Arjun has repeatedly expressed his regret for having, in effect, ditched Ovi. But then this is something that happens all the time in real life, and the person breaking off cannot be hung, drawn and quartered for it. Nor is here any point in saying that he should have broken off with Ovi before he said anything to Purvi. These things just happen, and cannot always be sequenced like a business meeting.
Agreed, Arjun should have told Ovi the truth much earlier, but it is not that he did not try. If DK had not fed all that guff about Arjun loving her to Ovi, she might have been a bit more sane now, but that was not Arjun's fault.
Arjun's bad luck is that Ovi is not the kind of girl who would scream at him for ditching her, perhaps throw a flower pot at his head, and then storm off and rub him out of her life. She will just not let go, and NOTHING that he can say or could have said will change that. Even if he was rough and blunt with her, she will attribute it to some 'majboori' (compulsion), as she does wrt his confession to Manav, and carry on as before. And I suspect that this would have been the same if he had managed to tell her the truth about Purvi that very first morning after his interlude with Aashana.
His worse luck is that he cares genuinely for Ovi, and that he is, above all, an honourable young man, even if impractical and non-savvy in matters of the heart. If he had been a cad or a real two-timer, he would have emerged from this mess spotless and unscathed.
He has made many mistakes, but then who in PR has not, and FAR more destructive ones than he? Archana's collateral damage record would beat that of the US in Afghanistan any day. Of Manav, the less said the better. He is at least ready to make amends for them as best he can.
Arjun's tenacity in fighting for his love, at times with his love herself, and his readiness to give up all that has defined and protected him so far for the sake of his love for her, should normally compel admiration, even if reluctantly given. It is a pity that even if it does so, it is all too fleeting. The PAP is obviously not going to be able to hang up its boots any time soon!
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While I am on the topic, I might as well add my twopennyworth about a couple of other points.
Ovi cannot be brought to see reason by slapping her or scolding her or reasoning with her. She is mentally imbalanced, and while she has always been a spoilt, coddled girl, I do not think her present delusional state is an act. Her family, and Arjun, have always been aware of this mental fragility in Ovi, and have thus sought to shield her from all ill winds. Remember the angry conversation she has with Arjun after she finds out that 'who aurat' is living in the same house as her father? He tells her that he hid that from her because he knew this was how she would react.
Now she is teetering on the edge of a breakdown, and she needs professional help. This said, Shruti Kanwar does an excellent job in that roadside meeting with Arjun. The helpless desperation in her face is heart-wrenching, however ill-considered it might be.
Archana is not going to 'be there' for Purvi. She is as obsessed as Ovi, only in a different way – with Manav's sufferings (the bulk of which is due to her own golddigger act) and with Ovi's. She subconsciously resents the fact that Purvi is the cause of the latter, and when she rejects Arjun so harshly, and seems not just to believe but to actually hope that he will fail in his mission, it is because she does not want Purvi to get what Ovi cannot have.
You , Jyoti, are spot on in your last para about this. As I posted elsewhere, thank heavens Archana does not live in the Karanjkar chawl these days! She would have been busy demoralizing Purvi and trying to hex Arjun into becoming a failure, just so that Manav and Ovi would feel better, and Purvi's happiness be damned.
We have to see how far Purvi stirs herself out of her sanskaari beti stupor, which makes her so totally tongue-tied in front of (or rather, to be precise, behind) her ranting aai that she cannot find the words to tell her that while she will not marry Arjun without Archana's consent, Archana is mistaken in calling Arjun all these names. Instead she stands there like a stone, sniffling occasionally and allowing picturesque tears to trickle photogenically down her cheeks. She seems so much like a goongi gudiya (dumb doll) when Archana is around that it is unbelievable.
If she truly loves Arjun, Purvi has to help him actively, and not just with cups of chai or kanda poha, and this in spite of Archana's minatory pronouncements during her periodic visitations. There have been so many voices calling for people to reason with Ovi. Why are there none (except our Archana's) calling for Purvi to rediscover her backbone and reason with her aai? Archana may have made her what she is, but Purvi is not her property to dispose of as she wishes. Nor should Purvi be made to pay her back her parvarish ki keemat (the price of her upbringing), like the doodh ki keemat (the price of the mother's milk) that mothers in the 1970s films used to demand to whip their errant sons into line.
I see PR treading water for the next few episodes (and this is not a riff on the suddenly introduced water line in front of the Karanjkar chawl), while Manav and the rest continue to stare at Ovi's fits, Archana, in the kitchen uses up her stock of Vicks Vaporub, and Arjun finds out that his handsome mug is not going to be enough to land him a job when he cannot produce any back up documents (as he cannot reveal his full name).
The stasis, with occasional puffs of smoke (it is all a smoke and mirrors act anyway), is likely to continue till the drums roll and the cymbals clash for 'Enter Soham!'
Shyamala
