Folks,
It should actually be "nooses", for there are more than one, and all tightening on Yudh in what seems to be a complex and yet smoothly co-ordinated movement orchestrated by the shaitaani dimaag Anand was mentioning. But the singular sounded better, so I left it that way.
Before we move on to the individual nooses, let us take a look at what was arguably the best scene last night, the heart to heart, not between Yudh and Nayantara, but rather from her to him.
Hidden wounds: She poured her heart out to him for what was probably the first time in 24 years of marriage, and till she began, she did not know she was going to do it. It was Yudh's long explanation - about why she did not have the least reason to resent Taruni or to feel that she was being robbed of something by Taruni - that set it off. And finally, the anguish and the sense of deprivation, nurtured over decades of a marriage that seems to have been dismally short on communication, came out in one rushing stream of frustration and ill suppressed anger.
But it is not just that Yudh does not have in her, his wife of 24 years, the kind of atoot vishwas he has in the daughter who has only recently entered his life. It is also, and perhaps even more so, because suddenly, the 22 year old son who was till now still linked to her , as it were, by the umbilical cord , had broken loose and flown the family coop.
Even after 24 years of marriage, you do not share anything with me.. Main aapke vishwas ke layak nahin hoon.. Even my son does not need me any more.
Then, just before she leaves, comes the clincher. An infinitely sad summing up of the hidden sorrows and wounds of the last 24 years. Main kisi ki nahin ban paayi..
Faced with such a devastating sense of deprivation, Yudh is strangely speechless. I would have expected him to say something reassuring and supportive, to console her and soothe her fears. He does nothing. His face is still and withdrawn, though the helpless regret is there in every feature.
Even later, he fails to speak up when it is is needed. As he tells Dr. Ganatra that Taruni would accompany him for the appointment with the doctor in an hour, Nayantara, in the traditional wifely gesture, brings him his handkerchief. As she hears what he says, her face changes and she goes downstairs, but Yudh does not perceive the need to tell her that Taruni had to be with him to explain her treatment of Yudh during Dr. Ganatra's absence.
It is not that Nayantara is right in her jealousy of Taruni. She is not, but then her resentment is a fact and has to be dealt with. The only way to do so is to demonstrate to her that Taruni is not gaining in importance at her expense. Yudh seems to have not grasped this simple point as yet.
Earlier, there was a funny little scene of a sulking Nayantara sweating it out in bed on a hot evening, and refusing to eat even though uske pet mein chuhe daud rahe hain, something that the amused Yudh knows perfectly well. But even there, he does not seem to know how to manao a roothi huyi biwi.
Or maybe he is tired and just does not care any more. He needs as much of peace and quiet at home as possible, as there is none to be had at work, but then peace and quiet are precisely what seem to be in short supply in the Sikarwar household.
In this respect, as they commiserate with each other man to man, Yudh and Anand are in the same boat!
The Joker: He seemed demented, what with that screwdriver, and his Tumhare dimaag ka darwaza kholna chahte hain. I could not make out what that scene was supposed to mean, other than that the Joker, whether a hallucination or a projection of Yudh's subconscious, was beginning to be very demanding - he insists that Anand be told to leave at once, and Yudh complies. He is also macabre in his repeated insistence that Yudh's associates would feast on his corpse like vultures. Which leads to Yudh affirming, with remarkable dignity: Mein laash nahin hoon..abhi main zinda hoon.
The almost maniacal struggle between Yudh and the Joker was wonderfully done in a physical sense, with Yudh thrashing about and grappling with an opponent who exists only in his own mind, and at one point almost throttling himself after smashing the mirror.
When Nayantara and the staff rush in, Yudh is in a state of wide-eyed confusion, unable to remember anything that he had done (or very likely he is pretending, for he can hardly tell Nayantara about the Joker).
It was odd that no one seemed to notice his bleeding hands.Nor did his wife insist on calling the doctor; it should have been automatic, for even if it had been only a nightmare, Yudh was clearly in bad shape physically as well. So much for the joys of 24 years of matrimony!
Satan looks after his own: It was realistic, but very depressing. There was no vindication of Mona's stand against Kapil, nor justice for young Smriti and punishment for Kapil.
In fact, the sleazebag need never have gone to the trouble and potential expense of getting Smriti Mishra lobotomised. Nor need his companion sleazebags. Dharmendra Malik and Nikhil Pardesi, stock up on heroin or cocaine and plot to grab Smriti once again and inject her with a lethal overdose of hard drugs. Her Post Trauma Stress Disorder was made in Hell for this degraded trio, and while the latter two can now breathe in relief, the worst of the three, the pervert Kapil, is home and free. In fact scot free, for he now need not even worry about the year old child abuse charge.
NB:I must say that I do not understand the inspector's statement to this effect to Mona. I do not believe that there is a one year statue of limitations for this crime. It seems to be one of the rare bloomers in the script.
Though I have a very poor opinion of her good sense and her judgment, still I empathised with the sobbing Mona as she leaves her home bag and baggage, despite her parents wanting to hold her back, but only, it needs to be noted, after she apologises to Kapil!
The noose tightens 1: Anand: Many of my doubts about the attempted encounter killing of Anand, which I had listed in my last post, have been laid to rest now. The police inspector and his subordinates being all fake, no wonder they report directly to the mastermind, our MM, and call him Sir.
And no wonder they want to make it a double by bumping off Anand, for this must have been on the cards from the beginning. They must have been following Anand, and must have timed their knock on Agent Singh's door for a few minutes after Anand had entered the flat. Their boss. MM, is gunning for Yudh's right hand man in order to cripple Yudh, for how can anyone function when suddenly deprived of the right hand?
In the event, once Anand escapes, the plan of action is reworked, very likely as dictated to the fake inspector by MM. Now the plan is to frame Anand for the (assumed) murder of the missing Agent Singh, the absence of the body notwithstanding - supposedly in order to scuttle his testifying against Yudh re: the murder of Anuj Malik - by planting bloodstained clothes, a plier and a broken tooth in the electronically controlled boot of Anand's car, which could not have been opened without the car key.
Question: Why does the real inspector suddenly stop the departing Anand and demand to see what is in the boot of the car? There was no bloodstain or any such thing to alert the cop and draw his attention to the car boot. Unless he too is part of the cabal. But then he would never have told Anand that he had found some witnesses who had seen Anand and Agent Singh being escorted out of Singh's flat by the (fake) cops, and could thus back up Anand's account of what happened. It now remains to be seen what kind of investigation he makes, and how honest he is in presenting his findings.
Anyhow, Anand is now in police custody (after considerately telling his wife Preeti that he is flying out of town), and is telling Yudh (probably basing himself on the car keys angle mentioned above) that the person who is gunning for them is inside their own organisation. In the precap, Yudh seems to have unearthed this mole's identity. I am holding my breath!!
Earlier, as he briefs him about his very narrow escape. Anand tells Yudh that their mysterious enemy seemed to be both very sharp and very powerful.. Uski nazarein and uski pahunch bahut door tak hai. He could not recognise the voice on the phone at all. So, again as noted by me in my last post, it cannot be the Municipal Commissioner.
The noose tightens 2: Rishi: From being a callow, frustrated, irresponsible 22 year old, Hrishikesh Sikarwar is blooming apace, like one of those lush, Bird of Paradise plants.
His meeting with the Home Minister, already chastened a bit after receiving the show cause notice about his dealings with Yudh from the Chief Minister, was a cakewalk. Rishi was smooth without looking slippery, self-assured without looking arrogant, and to the point about what he wanted from the HM, to wit more electricity supply to let him run a night shift in the mine. As this would mean a major step up in production, and thus in the HM's cut, he is more than ready to comply.
Earlier, to watch Rishi as he plans to step up security at the mine by electrifying the fences - warned about power cuts which would nullify an electrified fence, he orders, Get a generator! - and when he delves into the mine blast mystery, and unearths the guilty ones by coopting all his workers, was a delight. I loved the long, level gaze with which he regarded the security guard who had let the criminals in on that fatal day, before asking him Kitne paise mile the us din? He does not raise his voice, or show any overt anger, but the menace is there for all to see.
It is the same when the 2 guilty workers confess and beg him to forgive them and take them back. He is impassive and inscrutable, and in the end, he does not hand them over to the police. But then neither does he take them back, and that was, in hindsight, perhaps a wrong move. They have blood on their hands, but still, it might have been better to let them in and have the others keep a very close watch on them. And if the rest of the workers beat this duo up, so much the better!
In the event, they are desperate and penniless, and after the chaps who recruited them for placing the dynamite in the mine refuse to help them, they go back to the man behind the blast, Gopal the negotiator. He will probably use them to attack Rishi somehow so as to get his revenge on Yudh.
So the noose is tightening around young Rishi from 2 different directions. There is what Gopal is planning with the 2 ex-miners, and then there is the kidnapping being organised by his mama Ranjan with the assistance of the fake police inspector, who is surely reporting to MM. The alacrity with which he popped up, as soon as Ranjan's first choice for the kidnapping threw him over, was decidedly suspicious.
It is of course possible that the two are one and the same, and that Gopal too is working for MM and his cohorts to nab Rishi.
That Ranjan, who had earlier flatly turned down an offer by the same criminal acquaintance to kidnap Rishi and give him 25% of the ransom, is now the prime mover behind this new kidnap plan, is another illustration of the queer ways in which fate works. When Ranjan asks Nayantara for the job of the caretaker at the Shanti Constructions guest house, a post he had shunned when she had offered it to him earlier, she flares up and turns him down brutally. At that time, I had felt that she was unnecessarily harsh towards him. Now, this crime that he is planning is very likely the direct result of that summary brush off, for Ranjan now feels pushed to the wall, and he needs money. He needs it so badly that his earlier scruples have been washed clean away.
The noose tightens 3: Yudh: So what is new here, you might well ask! Well, what seems to be new is that after having studied the contents of Mona's laptop and mobile (he got both, not just the laptop, as had been surmised by a reader on my last thread), Jeet seems to be now getting ready to lower the boom on Yudh. Whence his asking a visibly reluctant Taruni - her brow is furrowed and she looks mulishly obstinate - in the precap, to sever all her ties with Yudh.
This means that Jeet's ongoing enquiry against Gautam Dev, and his new enquiry, based on this electronic treasure trove, against Yudh, are now coalescing into one high profile charge sheet. And he does not want Taruni to be splashed with any of that mud. She has so far brushed off similar cut off requests from her mother and her boyfriend. What she does now remains to be seen.
The precap was as confusing as ever, with 6 snippets of a few seconds each, none of which made much sense. The only thing that was clear was that Rishi was holding his own in a shootout with the kidnappers. The girl with him seemed to be Ms. IB. Good for her, except that this will almost surely blow her cover. But for the moment, I am sure she can shoot far better than Rishi, which should be something to be grateful for!😉
Folks, 13 down, and just 7 to go!
Shyamala B.Cowsik
Arjun
