Nirupa Roy, the archtype of the sanskaari film mother (Yash Chopra did not know the word then, alas!), upbraids her son Vijay (Amitabh) for having become a gangster. He retorts that before blaming him, she should first blame all those who had made their family's life a living hell all these years. Her reply to that is a classic: Woh log mere kaun the? Koyi nahin. Tum to mere apne bete ho. Phir tumne yeh kaise kiya? (Who were those people to me? Nothing. But you are my own son. How then did you do this?).
Many of us have blamed others for Arjun's present fate even more than the prime mover, Purvi, Punni & Ovi being the candidates of choice. But neither was apni for Arjun. Par Purvi toh uski poori tarah se apni thi. So phir usne Arjun ke saath aise kyon kiya? (But Purvi was completely Arjun's. Then why did she do this to him?)
Then I did a rethink, and I suddenly saw the light. I realized that there was no reason for anyone to blame Purvi, come to think of it. As one of us put it so well, "she tried her best to get what she wants." And Purvi wanted one and only one thing - that her aai should be fully accepted by her parivaar, and should get "all she deserves".
How to achieve this? She was at a dead end till Ovi Ma'am descended on her with the "deal": Arjun for herself in return for Archana's being accepted by the Deshmukhs. After the initial shock, and a good bit of dithering, including making promises to that besotted fool that she never intended to keep, Purvi finally deploys all the skills that made her such a good businesswoman earlier.
She must have decided to, in effect, sell Arjun to Ovi in return for Archana's "happiness" well before the wedding evening, for she had to make so many administrative arrangements: the mandir, the priest, the jayamalas, the cloth, the saree for Ovi, the works, AND keep all this a secret in the middle of her own wedding. Truly admirable organisational skills.
Now for the bakra. Purvi knows full well that the boy is completely under her thumb, and that if she pushes the right buttons, he might rave and rant for a bit, but in the end he will give in and do whatever she wants, even if it means destroying his own life. He has always loved her obsessively and beyond reason, whereas though she says she loves him, he has always been far down on her list of priorities: even No.4 would be perhaps too high.
Still, she takes no risks. She does not tell him ahead of time, not at all. She drags him to a weird spot at the very last minute, and bludgeons him emotionally till he caves in. With a more normal lover, her plans would have collapsed in the face of his obdurate refusal, but where she is concerned, Arjun is like a marshmallow put out in the sun.
One of our members, in a hopeful take on the future happiness of (the second) Mr. and Mrs.Arjun Kirloskar-that-could-be, noted, inter alia, that "If Purvi gives some more kasam then it will get delayed. But even if she does give, Arjun isn't going to listen to her. He will dump that kasam in the nearest trash-can". I presume that Arjun could not find any trash cans on that hilltop, and that is why he caved in and married Ovi. And this without Purvi even having to bother to dig up a kasam and explain its significance to him (he did not know what the saat phere was, so a kasam would surely be beyond him!).
Then she stays all thru the Arjun-Ovi wedding, not so much out of masochism (or to impress us with her fortitude), but to make sure he does not bolt. I have NO sympathy for her, no matter how many tears she sheds, then or later. She destroys Arjun's life deliberately for her own ends; that she is doing it for her beloved aai out of gratitude changes nothing in this. Nor does the fact that she too suffers too, for her suffering is self inflicted.
Purvi is going to find out pretty soon that for her, the chickens are coming home to roost, and much too early at that. It seems almost clear that Ovi is now going to renege on the deal, though she did make a tentative beginning with it when she touched Archana's feet. When Purvi calls her, very hesitantly, to remind her of the promise, Ovi sounds more than a little off putting already, though she does say she will do it (timeframe indefinite!).
As matters suddenly worsen at that point, with Arjun finding out that Ovi had struck a bargain with Purvi for him, and turning totally negative towards her, Ovi might now tell Purvi that she had sold her defective goods, and so the deal was off. Purvi might then push Arjun further to get him to treat Ovi well, so that she in turn gets Archana "all that she deserves". I am sure he would comply! Has he not promised her that he would "do anything to keep her happy" ?
I wrote once that in marrying Purvi, Arjun was buying a house with a triple mortgage on it, and he is now finding this out the hard way. Not that he is going to be any less of a fool, for when he accidentally learns of the deal between Purvi and Ovi, he is not at all angry at the way in which Purvi has, in effect, sold him to Ovi. He is only angry with Ovi for having treated him like a commodity.
But what else has Purvi done? She has done exactly the same thing when she struck a deal with Ovi, with Arjun as the item on sale.Why is it mahaan in her but devious in Ovi? Because she did it for Archana while Ovi did it for herself? But a deal is a deal, whatever the motives, and both girls treat Arjun as a commodity, to be bartered for getting what each wants, and that is the plain and simple truth.
As for Arjun, he deserves every bit of what is coming to him. No wonder DK turns away from him in sheer disgust; he obviously cannot comprehend how he has had such a wimpish son, who actually says, in his own defence, that Purvi gave him no time to contact DK!!! But the coup de resistance was a pathetic (in the sense of being stupid) Arjun explaining that he had "abandoned his love as the price of his love". Even Barbara Cartland at her mushiest would have jibbed at such a line!
Right now, what seems to me likely is that Purvi will end up looking, willy nilly, like the other woman, the woh in the triangle of Arjun-Ovi-Purvi. After all, Arjun is married to Ovi and she is not, and if he keeps calling Purvi and trying to meet her, it is going to get very messy.
She had better latch on to Soham dada and Varsha mausi, go with them to Bihar, and acquire another halo by reforming him.
At the end of the episode, Arjun kneels in the rain, throws his head back, and screams in anger and frustration, obviously trying to do a Hrithik Roshan (in Mission Kashmir). But of course he is NOT Hrithik.
On the Karanjkar side, there is that MOST fatiguing double crying jag by the mother-daughter duo, with a lot of talk of tyaag and mahaanta. I could barely survive it. In fact, when the pair of them (with Sulochana in a supporting role) opened the taps full force, I felt like running away. A feeling that was intensified when Purvi, after having wreaked all this havoc, watches the rain and cries some more before (and after) she enters the house and shuts the door.
I can see that many of you are once again getting ready to weep along with and over Purvi (and Arjun), so be forewarned; there is going to be a lot more of the same in the days and weeks ahead. So get yourselves plenty of Kleenex , both for the office and for the home. You are going to need it.
As for me, I feel disgusted with Purvi, and almost equally disgusted with Arjun, for I have no sympathy or empathy for either a manipulative, self-centred and self-destructive fool, or a besotted saphead.
Moreover, I do NOT feel that all will be hunky dory if and when they get together again at some point in the misty future. Marriage is not a game of musical chairs, and moreover, when you sell something or someone, it is gone for good.
Arjun might not feel that Purvi has used him for her own ends, but I do, very strongly. In fact, what struck me in the weepfest of Archana and Purvi, with all that talk of Purvi's mahaan tyaag , was that neither of them had even a passing thought for what Purvi had done to Arjun and how he would suffer.Their total self-centredness was awesome.
Well, bee5, you had better look around for a special deal on bulk purchases of the Sintex tanks you had so kindly offered to get for the Karanjkar household. Meanwhile, I am planning to relax with the triple mahaepisode today; at least no one is likely to cry bucketfuls there.
Shyamala B.Cowsik
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