My dear gals,
I am sure you would all have seen today's PR online, but if you want an extra dose of pure entertainment, do watch the telecast as well. There are some priceless gems that need appropriate resolution (in pixels, not sorting out problems, which never gets done in PR anyway).
To add to the flavour, here is my take on the whole.
I am skipping the scene of Arjun losing the baby, and then mucking things up at the police station by antagonising the inspector with his highhandedness. It is left to Manav to smooth things over and give the details about his poti (I leave it to you to decipher the significance of this statement) to the police.
- The Ds are all sitting around like a congregation at a wake, mourning the disappearance of apni Pari. Now this is a manifestly incorrect statement, as she is a Kirloskar-Karanjkar, or K2, and not a Deshmukh by any manner of means, unless they have all now decided to gather Purvi to their collective bosom. But even Savita sports a double dose of glycerine in her eyes.
- Ovi comes in, looking very hep and with it in a salmon pink outfit, and when she hears the news, she duly registers shock by dropping all her shopping bags. A thali with something on it would have been more effective, as it would have clanged satisfactorily, but she is a practical girl, and makes do with whatever is at hand. After the specified 15 seconds, she coldly voices the hope that Pari's parents will get her back, and retreats to her room, while Savita, by now reinforced by Sulochana, mumbles, in a kind of sotto voce duet with her samdhan, that Ovi really feels very sad about the kidnapping.
- But the best is of course reserved for Ms. Mahaanta. First, she has premonitions that something is wrong with Pari, and to make sure that her patidev does not miss her emotional turmoil, she goes on pouring the tea into the strainer till it overflows.
When Onir, looking a tad exasperated for once, attributes his Mishti's agitation to their travails over the last 2 days, she will have none of it, and reacts as though he had attributed it to acidity and recommended Eno Fruit. No, she insists, you must call Arjun and make sure that all is well with Pari, and then alone will my maternal heart be at rest.
Onir, probably grateful that it was 9 am and not after midnight (as at the time he was similarly forced to call Arjun and babble about a checkup to camouflage his enquiry about the baby), is about to comply, when Arjun himself calls to convey the fell news. He does so, for once, to the patidev, not for reasons of propriety, but because he is afraid to call Purvi directly.
- In this, he is on solid ground. For, after registering shock with eyes open to their widest, Purvi, with her appendage, the hapless no-longer-doctor Onir, hares it to the Ds' place and pounces on the shrinking Arjun like one of the Furies. Summoning up all the reserves of mamta that she had laid by for just such an occasion, she lets Arjun have it with both barrels.
"I gave her to you with poora vishwas", she screams, shaking him by the collar, "and see what you have done now! Can you not look after ever such a small child! If anything happens to Pari", she snarls, "I will never forgive you!"
That she foisted the baby on the hapless Kirloskars without their knowledge is of course of no account.For Purvi, the truth is a foreign land, where she avoids venturing unless it is a case of force majeure.
I was waiting for one of her horsehair wigs to fly off amidst all this vigorous action, but the Balaji hair stylist (?!?) needs to be congratulated, for they held firm.
At this point she also demonstrates that she is Archana's maanaseeka putri, and more like her than her own daughters, by pointing one painted fingernail to within 6 inches of Arjun's face, exactly like Archana did in the dus hazaar rupiye kamaa kar dikhao scene. Arjun must have felt that he was receding into the past, except that Archana was much, much easier on the eyes than this bedraggled harpy who has him by the collar.
He literally cowers, as he tries to explain that he had left Pari only for 2 minutes, when he had gone 'to save the life' of another child (this is phenkna at its best, for all he does is to pick up a little boy who falls off his tricycle).
But the mamta ki moorti facing him will have none of it. "I don't care" she screeches, "I want my Pari back!" So much for the mahaan tyaag of her child, made for the bhalayi of the Kirloskars. It is obviously reversible whenever it suits her.
Meanwhile, Ovi looks on with lip curled fastidiously in faint disgust, and Onir hovers around the amar premis ineffectually, metaphorically flapping his wings. I felt like kicking him in his backside first, and then Arjun. They looked like Tweedledum and Tweedledee today, in their shared lallupan. Only Manav was the saving grace, as he watched the goings on as if it was a circus in action.
I will also omit the herogiri of Soham. and his dramatic entry carrying Pari, whom he has rescued from the clutches of Balan. It was not very interesting, except to prove that the whole purpose of this kidnapping jig was to effect a full scale rehab of Soham, and lead to his being reinstated in the hearts of the Ds and the only K who counts, Sulochana.
The downside of this is that Soham is fast losing all his cheeky charm, and bids fair to become another Sunny (he is goodlooking, so Jignesh is out). There goes one of the very, very few characters who made PR occasionally tolerable!
- Purvi promptly grabs meri beti Pari, smothers her in more kisses than Arjun had been lavishing on her since he found out that she was not the pedestrian progeny of his wife, but that of his sainted beloved. "Mummy will never leave you any more", she gushes significantly, as Manav regards her as he would a caterpillar in his salad.
Onir looks bewildered, very likely wondering how he is going to provide for a baby as well in that kholi, and how many more buckets of water he would have to haul up as a result of this addition to his menage.
Arjun was nowhere in the frame when this momentous announcement was made by Pari's official aai, so I am unable to tell you what he looked like, but I bet his face lit up with a blaze of sudden hope,
- As for the immediate future, the solution that would be for sabki bhalayi would be for Purvi to move into the Kirloskar mansion to mother Pari, while Arjun hovers around hoping for better times, and Onir furnishes the third angle to this menage a trois, since he apparently cannot go back to Kolkatta till the good folks in his neighbourhood have run out of stones.
But this is unlikely to be adopted, as Purvi's sanskaars need all the fig leaves that can be rustled up. This apart, I do not have a clue as to what is to happen next.
- Finally, today's episode made one thing eminently clear.It would be pure folly on Ovi's part to take Pari, and her appendage Arjun back, now that Pari's asli aai has shown precisely how sincere she was in seeking Ovi ki bhalayi. She would be a perennial presence around Pari, sticking to her like a limpet, lecturing Ovi on how to bring up the baby, and alienating the child's affections from Ovi, deliberately or otherwise. Ovi will be left perennially trying to play catch up with Ms. Mahaanta, and being left behind, not only with Arjun, who is a gone case, but also with Pari.
She should pack her bags, send Arjun her divorce papers, and leave town with her pride intact, if nothing else.
Shyamala
Edited by sashashyam - 12 years ago
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