Folks,
No, of course the title is not about Yudh. It is what I felt after enduring the scene when that slimy creep of a Kapil is gloating at that poor little Smriti, trussed up and bundled into a car, and then comes back to his benefactors, Dharmendra Malik and Nikhil Pardesi, giggling in sleazy delight.
Unbelievable degradation: After they have struck their depraved bargain - Mona's laptop and mobile in exchange for Smriti - Nikhil calls Kapil back. I thought, in my folly, that he was going to lay down some rules about how Kapil was to treat the girl. But no, all Nikhil wants to be sure of is that if Kapil is going to bump off the girl, their names should not come out in the matter. And when Kapil, chortling in glee, informs him that he has quite other plans for his jaan, Nikhil has no qualms or concerns.
He is perfectly ok with what is to happen to the girl, just like the ancient Cretans who used to sacrifice young girls to the Minotaur to save their own lives.
I felt as if I had lifted a stone on a muddy track, and seen a host of creepy crawlies come out from under it. My stomach turned in disgust at the depth of this moral degradation. No, not Kapil's. He is a gone case, and one is not shocked when a perverted sleazebag confirms that he is one. It is Pardesi, and Malik, that I am talking about.
The two of them are not criminals or depraved perverts like Kapil. Nikhil is an ex-IT entrepreneur and now a club owner, and Malik is a relatively decent construction man. How can the two of them, just in order to take revenge on Yudh, sink so low as to kidnap an innocent girl who has never harmed them, and hand her over, literally tied hand and foot, to a sickening pervert like Kapil?
Unbelievable folly: I wanted, in a reaction to this horror, to beat the cause of all this, the idiotic Mona, black and blue with a stout, hobnailed boot. How this woman, whose IQ appears to be about 80, survives as Yudh's media manager is impossible to understand. When she is warning Smriti to be very careful going to and from her college, it does not penetrate Mona's thick head that she should tell the girl that Kapil is back and she should not go anywhere alone, least of all late at night. But for this oversight of hers, Kapil would never have been able to get at Smriti, either directly or thru Malik's goons.
I have already fulminated about Mona's folly in not using the firm's strong arm resources to get her laptop and mobile back from Kapil. Now, it set my teeth on edge to listen to her bleating about how this would never have happened if they had filed a police case against Kapil straightaway the year before. And true to her record of abysmal ineffectiveness in handling l'affaire Kapil, not only does her sister Manju now half suspect her of making passes at her husband, but when Mona starts following Kapil's auto, she loses him because she is stopped by a policeman for interrogation in the Smriti Mishra disappearance case.
Taruni-Yudh: There were 3 scenes between them in this episode, and each of them stood out, though for different reasons.
The first was the delightful little vignette of the two of them at the dinner table, as Taruni launches into a spirited account of her Arju (folks, it is Arjun, after all!), once an anglophile and now rebooted as a true blue desi, thanks to her efforts. I could not quite make out what Yudh said at the end of that scene, as they rose from the table, and this happens all too often. But they looked so comfortable with each other , with so much of easy-going camaraderie, that it warmed one's heart just to look at them together.
The second was just after Yudh's frantic set to with the Joker, when Taruni comes in to check on him and puts him to sleep with an injection. There is so much of protective affection, both in the way she handles him while giving the injection - speaking to him as if he was a little boy who is scared of the needle - and later, when she responds guardedly to Inspector Tiwari, so as not to give Yudh any idea of what is wrong and how badly, before leaving to take charge of the matter after uttering soothing nothings to her already drowsy patient.
Incidentally, the way in which Amitabh sank into mental oblivion as the narcotic started to take effect was like an acting lesson in making even minor gestures stand out.
The third and last one was in the hospital, where the adivasi girl, who has suffered 70% burns in the explosion in the village, is being operated upon. As Yudh comes up to her, Taruni, who is probably too exhausted to rise and greet him, falls asleep as soon as she has informed him about the operation. As Yudh looks at his sleeping daughter, though there is no smile or any other overt expression on his face, the depth of the tenderness and affection he feels for her shows thru clearly. It was a lovely little snippet, embellished further by Yudh's compassionate concern for Mahato, whom he wants to pack off to get some sleep.
Yudh's sudden switching to Bhojpuri or Awadhi while talking to Mahato is a sheer delight, and his exasperated Aaiyaan!, when informed of the government inquiry into the explosion is reminiscent of the many dehati roles that Amitabh Bachchan has played to perfection.
Her father's daughter: Earlier, Taruni demonstrates that she is her father's daughter thru her masterful handling of the scared and recalcitrant Mahato. Watching her throwing her weight around, and emphasizing her standing as the CEO of Shanti Constructions despite her distaste for the job, was very entertaining. For Jodha Akbar viewers, it reminded me forcibly of Jodha, even in the days when she detested her imperial husband, never failing to bulldoze her way to whatever she wanted to achieve by brandishing her status as a Shahi Begum! 😉
In sharp contrast, and again like her father when he handles the turbulent workers at the mine, Taruni is unshakably patient and persuasive with the girl's family, not losing her cool even in the face of accusations that it was the mining company management that had planted the explosives. And she does pull it off in the end, thanks to her iron will and her tenacity in waiting it out even if it took all night. Like Yudh, she is a born winner!
The Joker: He is now apparently clairvoyant on top of everything else, for he seems to be taunting Yudh about the assuredly hostile reactions of those who had died in the village, while Yudh still knows nothing about that explosion in the village of the two boys who had rescued Rishi. The Joker could not have been referring to the mine explosion, as there was only one casualty there, Mohan, and the other injured were recovering, whereas the Joker was clearly speaking of the dead in the plural.
This is a puzzle, for if, as we have been generally assuming thus far, the Joker is a projection of Yudh's subconscious, he cannot possibly know about things that Yudh does not know about at that point of time. It would be the same if the Joker was a hallucination, for why would Yudh hallucinate about an explosion that he knows nothing about? I do not want to slip back to the Joker as an astral presence theory, so what does one do? Do share your takes on this.
It was a remarkable display, Amitabh Bachchan's portrayal of the frantic Yudh, dodging and feinting and shouting all at once, as he seeks to ward off the Joker and his accusations, both verbally and physically.
Yudh & the Minister 1 & 2: These two scenes, that again bookended this episode, could not have been more different in terms of Yudh's approach to each.
In the first, he is all cool defiance. After his response, to the Minister's demand that Yudh do things his way or quit, that he was going nowhere and it was the Minister who would have to do things Yudh's way, he is even more silkily assertive when warned: Is phone call ke baad, bachke rehna!
The arrogant self confidence and refusal to bend is there right from his body language. Lounging in his armchair, head tilted back, eyes smiling in dismissive contempt and the lips curled in barely suppressed laughter.
It is there even more in the words. Sir, aapne wo jo bachnewali baat ki.. main aapko batana chahta hoon ki aapka saamna mujh jaise aadmi ke saath hua hi nahin..Kisi bhi nayi cheez ki shuruat ek baar, pehli baar, hoti hi hai, aur phir wo purani ho jaati hai..There is a first time for every endeavour in life..Main aapko batana chahta hoon ki aapki pehli haar main hi leke aanewala hoon..
It was superb, and allowing for all the obvious differences, Yudh here reminded me forcibly of the Vijay of Deewaar, lounging with the same arrogant self assurance in a chair in the warehouse, assuring the assembled goons that it would be he, and he alone , who would unlock the door. The only thing missing was the beedi dangling from the corner of the mouth!
In the episode end scene with the same man, Yudh displays the other extreme of both his persona and his tactics. He is all reasonableness and humility as he asks the Minister why he is being persecuted in this manner on trumped up charges of having set off the explosion in the village. Why the Minister does not accept Yudh's reasonable request that he be let alone to run his business as he wants, given his commitment that there would be no shortfall in the production from the mine and no revenue loss to the government (and no loss of the under the table revenue for the Minister, of course).
This was very realistic and convincing. Yudh, like the Vijays that Amitabh used to play in the 1970s, reacts very badly to threats, as in the first scene discussed above. But he is also a responsible businessman, and he never forgets the 10000+ employees of his, whose livelihood depends on his keeping the firm prosperous. So when bending is unavoidable, he will bend, a little as possible, but bend he will.
It is this that sets Yudh apart from the angry young, middle aged and old men that are Amitabh Bachchan's specialty. For Yudh cannot afford too much of defiant self indulgence.
An inner stillness: Over and above all this, what strikes me about Yudh as a character is the stillness at the centre of his being, regardless of the whirlpools in which he gets caught. It is like what Lord Krishna says in the Gita, When you move but nothing moves within you.. Yudh's unshakeable calm under most circumstances is like the stillness at the centre of a spinning top.
Rishi is obviously missing his cricketing friends and possibly also his work as the CEO of the mining firm. It is this very longing that brings disaster down on his two young friends, thanks to Gopal's perfidy. But there are hints aplenty that Rishi too is his father's son.
The precap was long, fragmented and unclear. The only positive to be drawn from it was the arrest of Creep No.1, Kapil, on charges unknown. I very much wish that (a) it is for the kidnapping of Smriti and (b) that Mona get at her laptop and mobile before Kapil has handed them over to Malik. As for Taruni being led away for questioning, it furnished an opportunity for a vintage Angry Man threat: Yeh aapko bahut mehangi padegi!
Shyamala B.Cowsik
Fan Fictions
Kabhi Neem Neem Kabhi Shahad Shahad
