Folks,
After watching Episode 2, I have now discovered what Yudh is really like. Dark chocolate.
Not the 50% cocoa aspirants to that quality, but the real 80% + variety. Very, very dark brown, almost black, like the dim lit, dark scenes that are the norm here, not the exception.
Incidentally, I now understand why Sony has no daytime repeats of the serial. I was rewatching it just now, and with the ambient light, it is very tough to make out what is going on at times. Yudh is clearly a denizen of the nishikaal, the night, both literally and metaphorically!
To revert, bitter to the taste at first, again like most of Yudh; I am yet to see an even mildly happy scene, except when Taruni smiles sunnily at her father, and calls him, with possessive but yet undemanding affection, Dad!
But still, after one has acquired the taste for it, pure delight, as you roll it on your tongue, rich and luscious, and let the bittersweet flavor take over your tastebuds. Just like the bittersweetness of much of Yudh.
Most of all, as I know from personal experience as an aficionada of very dark chocolate, it is addictive. So, I am beginning to feel, is Yudh.
Take 5 for Amitabh's embattled Yudh: I am not sure that just 5 will do, but let us begin.
1)The traumatic scenes when he is battling the weaknesses in his body. At the very beginning, in the hospital, and then far more strongly when he is struggling with Dr. Ganatra and yelling that he does not want to die and will not die. In the latter, he looked so much like the Amitabh of 30 years ago, the throat muscles, in a very tight close up, so taut, and the planes of the face so sharp once again, that it was uncanny. And then, as the narcotic takes effect despite his struggling against it, and consciousness seeps away from him, his breath rattles in his throat and the face changes, moment by moment, from frenzied energy to marbled stillness.
I knew that it was all make believe, and yet the breath caught in my throat and I almost reached out to him. The scene, and the earlier one on Monday night in the collapsing hospital wing when he is no longer able to push the patient in the trolley, reminded me of Majboor in 1976(?), when Amitabh's Ravi, carrying a goldfish bowl, suffers a sudden brain seizure. Those of you who have seen that magisterial take will understand what I mean.
2)The scene where he meets Gauri outside Taruni's room in the hospital. I have never before seen Amitabh Bachchan, always so dominating, plead with anyone for anything, as he does with Gauri, and later with Jeet, for them to let Taruni stay on the top flight, expensive hospital where he has admitted her. The tall frame stoops in supplication, the voice is husky and subdued as he says Yeh achcha hospital hai..aapko chinta karne ki koyi zaroorat nahin hai.. It lasted only a few moments, but it stayed with me. As did his hunched, defeated back as he leaves with Anand.
Incidentally, one layer of the Yudh-Gauri puzzle has been peeled off. She is clearly not his wife, nor his mistress, for she is married to that Jeet. So Yudh is not a do biwiwala unfortunate. Probably Taruni was the outcome of a brief love affair that did not end in bitterness, for Yudh and Gauri are clearly perfectly comfortable with each other. Plus Anand knows about Taruni being Yudh's daughter, as does the girl herself, and that too without any resentment. In fact, the only one in the dark till now is Jeet, who, near the end of the episode, looks with puzzlement at Yudh going away from Taruni's hospital room (it did not look like any sarkari hospital, so one presumes Yudh prevailed against Jeet in the end).
3)The explosive scene between Yudh, Anand and a passive Mona, when the first two are at loggerheads about the mystery CD. It is a fascinating segment, with the power and dominance that we have come to expect from Amitabh Bachchan every single time on full display as he roars Just leave her hand!
But what interested me even more was the equation between Anand and Yudh. Anand is not, as Ranjan notes jeeringly, Yudh's chamcha. He is the comrade who stands by Yudh with fierce and unflinching loyalty and commitment, who has thus earned the right to stand up to Yudh and question his judgment. And Yudh, even when, as here, does not agree with Anand, does not deny his right to do what he does.
Here, they are both correct from their respective points of view. Anand is afraid that the CD might be a fake, a plant meant to get them into worse trouble, and the report in the precap that it was indeed a fake (if the report has not been doctored, that is!) would seem to buttress his stand. Which is why, even as the press conference in beginning, he pushes Mona to make a sketch of her Santa Claus.
Yudh's primary, indeed sole concern, and rightly so, is that his reputation, and that of his firm, should not be sullied. And this for both emotional and practical reasons, the latter being so as not to jeopardise his mining contract bid.
Plus, he is outraged at the loss of life, at the wounded, especially Taruni - which is what Anand means when he advises Yudh not to take things personally, but Yudh turns the argument to the issue of personal and professional honour.
And he will not go in for a pragmatic compromise of the kind advocated by the canny, cautious Anand. In this, the 60+ Yudh is, in his way, as bullheaded and aggressive as the 30 years younger Anuj Malik!
I loved the argument about the ethics of getting round corrupt Ministers for business reasons, overlooking their sleazy goings on. Yudh splits hairs here with aplomb, drawing a somewhat specious distinction between their wrong doings, of which he has only heard rumours, and the pratyaksha villainy of the Anuj Malik kind. This is what is called comparative morality!
The end part, as Anand wants to know what Yudh meant by saying Mujhe zyada waqt nahin hai.. and Yudh fudging the matter as he dodges and feints, pretending forgetfulness (for an instant I thought it was his neurological disorder again), was marvelous. Watching Amitabh's face, taut and drawn with tension, and Anand's, puzzled and worried, as the scene shifts, I realized anew that this is what good cinema should be like: even an odd throwaway bit a little gem.
4)It was exactly the same in the hospital scene between Yudh and Taruni. As she asks him about Dr. Ganatra visiting him, and then again, concern darkening her eyes, if he is ok, there is, both times, a long pause as he gathers himself to answer her convincingly, and his expression is a treat to watch.
This apart, the father-daughter scene was lit up with their her easy, untroubled affection for her dad, and her sunny smile was reflected, though somewhat tentatively, in his. One of the very few happy scenes in Yudh so far.
5)The old shoe, miyan-biwi scene between Nayantara and Yudh. As she goes on and on, in a typical nagging, neglected wife tone, her words wash over him, but he takes in nothing of what she says. Similarly, when she complains that she has no one except her son, his response is so perfunctory as to be almost nothing.
When he is telling her, at long last, about the hospital wing collapse, Sarkari aspatal hai, kayi mareez the, doctor bhi.. his voice involuntarily drops on the last 2 words as his love for Taruni seeps from his heart to his voice.
She is no fool, however, is Nayantara, and I loved her wicked prescription for Yudh to have an affair so as to get some bedrest! Not that an affair is tailor- made for any kind of rest !!😉
Yudh twice begins, unsuccessfully on both occasions, to tell her something, very likely about his illness. Not, I would imagine, about Taruni, which would be both pointless and highly disruptive.
6)Last but definitely not the least, Yudh's repeated encounters with the Joker, clearly a projection of his own subconscious, who thus articulates Yudh's innermost fears, the ones he does not dare to dredge up and face in the light of day.
Thus the Joker appears mostly in Yudh's dreams, which is where the demons lurking in the subconscious mind rear their ugly heads, or when he is dropping off to sleep in Dr. Ganatra's clinic after taking that mild narcotic. The time when he is seen at the press conference, it is a fleeting and insubstantial appearance.
So the Joker is brutally frank - about Yudh's successor issue, about his dream of a Health Sciences Institute that would die with him, about the vultures circling overhead waiting for him to die so that they can grab everything. I could not understand what he was saying about digging for a gaana, or maybe it was slurred pronounciation that I could not make out.
Finally, Yudh is awakened with a start, and starts flexing his cramped feet exactly as he was doing at the beginning of Episode 1. His calvary clearly lies ahead, and he has very little time.
The others: minor delights: It is proof positive of the excellence of the screenplay and the direction, not to speak of the cast selection, that even faced with the overpowering presence of Amitabh Bachchan's Yudh, many of the other characters still manage to make their presence felt, and I am not referring to Anand, who is a lynchpin in the narrative.
-There is the Municipal Commissioner, remarking wickedly to Yudh that when the Enquiry Committee on the hospital collapse got to work, Kisi ka gardan to pakadna padega.. and gesturing to towards his own neck brace.. aur yeh to available nahin hai.. He is decidedly grey, taking bribes from and colluding with the Maliks, and not discouraging the headstrong Anuj Malik in his plans against Yudh, and yet he has genuine respect and admiration for Yudhishtir Shikarwar's professional capability and integrity.
- There is Ranjan, the old reprobate, who wants to cash in on his having recognized the three goons who had planted the bomb in the hospital wing. He does not want to be relegated to the job of supervisor of the Shanti Constructions guest house; he would see it as decidedly beneath him.
Incidentally, the way in which his sister tries some high pressure sales talk to get him to accept the offer was delightful!
But most fascinating of all, Ranjan is clearly his father's son, with the same inchoate rage against the fate that has made him, a ruler born to the purple, a beggar at his jeejaji's door. This surfaces unexpectedly as he sneers at Anand for being Yudh's chamcha, and tells him to keep his advice about family values to himself.
-Nayantara herself, a typical housewife, is still remarkably sharp and practical in her advice to her son, the weak and ineffectual Rishi, to stay aloof from his mama Ranjan and not be sucked into bad company with him. She says as much, very bluntly, to Ranjan to his face, and in fact uses the job he wants so badly as a carrot to get him to leave Rishi alone.
The mystery Santa Claus: He now has a face, thanks to Mona, and the fact that he did not wear a mask when he handed over the CD to her means that he wanted to be found out.
The questions which Yudh does not ask himself are these: How did this man get this CD made? That he did means he must have been privy to Anuj Malik's plans, and to his instructions to his hireling goons. That in turn means that he must be either an insider in the Malik family, or an insider in the gang Anuj Malik hires for this job. In either case, why does he break ranks with his family, or his gang members, and alert Yudh in time about the hospital collapse? Which, in fact, is what Yudh seems to be asking him in the precap.
Let us wait and watch.
Shyamala B.Cowsik
Current Affairs
Advocate Anjali Awasthi
