A cat's cradle is the tangle of knitting wool left after a kitten has been playing with it, probably because it can then snuggle down into its soft warmth, like a baby in a snug cradle. But alas, there is no snuggling down for us with our particular cat's cradle, with its myriad tangled threads. We have, we know , to locate the one thread that, when we pull at it gently, will smoothly unravel the whole mess and bring out the original wool in one long, clean strand. But that, by definition, will come only 2 episodes short of the end, ie around Episode 118!
Nightly shock treatment: Right now, we are being subjected to soccer punches every night, beginning with Maya's Mamaji!, which was the curtain raiser for the Season of Shocks. That at least was a known devil.
But, in the Thursday precap, we learn that the suffering, weary, affectionate Naanu, apparently so loyal to the memory of his old friend, Rudra's grandfather, and concerned about his father, Shivanand. is just as much of a dyed in the wool villain as his elder son. In fact more, for he goes one further than Balivesh, and tells the horrified Maya that while she is about it, she should also tell Rudra that it was the Naanu-Mama duo that got rid of Udiya Baba as well. Now that is a claim that is not easy to swallow (more of this later), but the fact that the patriarch of the family makes it without batting an eyelid knocks one for a six. But perhaps, given the longstanding enemity between the Naanu's Shri Santh Panth and that of Rudra's grandfather, this was only to be expected.
Mahakumbh is, more and more, beginning to resemble a Le Carresque hall of distorting mirrors, a world where no one, but no one, is what he or she seems. A place where our main protagonist, Rudra, cannot trust even his own shadow. Bar Udiya Baba and, even more so, Maimuyi, but then they are gone for good (I do not count Rudra's anguished flashbacks), and of course Shivanand, who is not yet back in Rudra's life. At this rate, one cannot even be sure of the Daadi to come! But perhaps, since she would belong to the Brahma Nisht Panth, there is hope after all that she might be what she seems and claims to be.
Adieu, my hopes for a Dark Maya!: Then there is, for me at least, the major disappointment of having my hopes for an interesting Dark Maya dashed to the ground in no uncertain manner.
Instead we have a copy of a film heroine of old, bleating at Rudra that he should abandon the idea of revenge. Pray who says that Rudra is wild and uncontrolled? He was, and if he had stayed the same, he would have throttled her at this point, as he almost did after stalking out of the police station!
Next, when that does not work, Maya babbles that he should not kill Pandey but hand him over to the police. Now she will be spouting shocked, boilerplate filmi lines at her unashamedly black-hearted Naanu and Mama : Aap logon ki asaliyat batane ja rahi hoon! All that it missing from the 1980s film template if for her to wave an incriminating cassette tape or, later, a DVD in their face!😉
There is practically no change of expression on her face no matter what she is supposed to be portraying.
I do not hold it against her that she tries to coquette with Rudra. But her attempts at getting up close and personal with him, be it the sudden fake scream and the hug at the mela ( which young girl in Banaras would hug a young man like that in public, even in 2013?), or the Trip-and Be-Held stunt on the stairs, complete with her making eyes at the startled target, are patently pseudo and corny. She would have been served right if he had failed to hold her and let her take a well deserved tumble down the stairs!😉
I suppose, however, that we should be grateful to have been spared the RK Films logo stunt so beloved of directors to this day. It is where the man holds the girl, who is bent over backwards as far as she can go, over his left arm, exactly as in that film company logo. I detest this over-used and corny gimmick, and I used to joke that when this was used, the girl must have been constantly worried that he might let her fall, and the man must have been muttering to himself, Lord, I had no idea she would weigh so much!😉
To revert, Maya, for a modern and supposedly bright young woman, is curiously reluctant to use her grey cells. She sits there and listens to her Bade Mama promise that Hum uske aas paas aisi paristhitiyaan bana denge jisse tumhara use yahan laana aasaan ho jayega. She sees that Rudra is violently opposed to any idea of his going with her to Prayag, and yet , given the above, when Maimuyi is murdered so opportunely, it never even occurs to Maya to dot the i's and cross the t's and conclude that this was the main element of "aisi paristhitiyaan".
I suppose that when Naanu-Mama decide to take the gloves off with Maya (more likely, given past practice in this respect, to be on Wednesday next or even Thursday than, as indicated in the latest precap, on Monday), they will tell her so, but she fails signally to make that connection on her own. But she had been so clever, how could she have parroted these standard lines at the villains in her family?😉
To sum up, Maya right now is very disappointing for a contemporary leading lady, and Arshi is being kind in deducting just one point from her score for the show on account of her dismal showing.
Incidentally, the clarification this last week, that Maya was told by her Naanu and her Bade Mama to get Rudra to Allahabad by hook or by crook, explains something that was earlier incomprehensible, why she jumped to his aid out of the blue when he was arrested, and then stuck to him even after he had half strangled her.
This does not of course rule out her falling head over heels for him, which she is clearly doing. At least so it seems from her actions, for her face generally holds the same expression, and is thus inscrutable!
Ok, folks that is enough of cribbing (I can practically see Gargi bearing down on me, bristling with arguments in defence of the beleaguered female!). Let us move on to the plot, which is abstruse enough to puzzle even a veteran of the mystery genre.
After watching all 4 episodes at a stretch (thank Heavens Life OK is not, for this one, adopting the 6 times a week pattern of the parent channel Star Plus, for if it had, our brains would be like scrambled eggs come Sunday!😉), I felt that the simplest would be to try to sum up the state of play in a series of questions that I am sure have occurred to all of you, and a few answers.
Question Hour: 1) The Sinister Swami's shortcomings: It is clear from the Balivesh-Grierson telecon that the Swami is in the dark about a lot of vital information and material that the Polish gang possesses: the garuda rahasya volume, the knowledge of the existence of the two Books, the knowledge of the concept of the seven rakshaks and of Rudra's pre-eminent role among them, and finally, from Shivanand, knowledge about the link between the second book and the emergence of the amrit, and the vital importance of the Gulabo Mehndi Shop as the location of the second Book.
If not, he would not be trying to bully and threaten the hitherto arrogant Grierson into coming clean on the reasons for his sudden descent on Allahabad for the Mahakumbh, and his eagerness to get hold of Rudra.
Why is this so, given that Balivesh, with his Shri Santh Panth, is deeply entrenched in the mythos of the amrit and the Mahahkumbh, and is moreover, situated right on Ground Zero, not half the world away in Poland, in an alien cultural matrix?
One might argue that he actually knows it all, and is merely pretending not to, in order to try and make his Polish partners/collaborators confess their real agenda. But if that was the case, he would not confront Grierson. He would fake co-operation and then trip him up at the key moment. Moreover, he is clearly in the dark about the significance of the Gulabo Mehndi Shop, and knows it only as Pandey's residence.
So it seems likely that the Swami's database is really far from up to date.
Next, what exactly is Balivesh's goal, and what is his game plan for achieving it? To get the monopoly of the amrit, one presumes, or, as his father puts it, to revive the all-healing Saraswati Kund (the Naanu seems to have leprosy, the disease of choice for angry gods to inflict on mortals who rubbed them the wrong way!) at the ashram of Rudra's grandfather, the mahant of the Brahma Nisht Panth. But the way he has gone about it is higgledy piggledy at best.
For Balivesh knows that to achieve this goal, he needs to influence and control Rudra at the crucial time of the Mahakumbh. He knows that the amrit should re-emerge at this Mahakumbh, the first in 144 years, whence his oblique mention of it in his address to the faithful. But the key to the unlocking of the secret of the emergence of the amrit is not just Rudra, but Shivanand as well. Yet the Swami, though he had Shivanand kidnapped 24 years ago at the 1989 Mahakumbh, let him be packed off to Poland, instead of keeping him here, under his own control. Why did he hand over this trump card to his potential competitors? They might be working with him at the present, but no one knows better than the Sinister Swami that there is no honour among thieves, and the Polish gang would throw him over the instant they felt they could afford to do so.
2) Balivesh vs Grierson: Why does Balivesh personally hand Pandey over to Rudra, and why is he so keen on having Rudra kill Pandey in his presence?
It is of course partly to gain Rudra's confidence and trust, but clearly he also wants to set Rudra off, like a heat seeking missile targeted against Grierson, for he orders Pandey identify Grierson as the prime mover in the murders of Maimuyi and even Udiya Baba. So he wants to be on the spot to make sure, thru his killer glares, that Pandey toes the line on this.
But what does Balivesh seek to gain from thus plotting Grierson's demise at Rudra's hands, given that this would, at one stroke, cut off his Polish connection and his chances of unearthing their game plan here at the Mahakumbh?
3) Canny Shivanand?: Is Shivanand really under the influence of the scopolamine, the so-called truth drug, injected into him by the Grierson gang, and is his revelation about the second Book being at the Gulabo Mehndi Shop genuine? Given that this place is not some ashram, but the Pandey residence, and as it is equally clear that Pandey knows nothing about the supposed presence of this treasure under his roof, this revelation by Shivanand sounds odd, to say the least.
Shivanand has very great spiritual powers. He can shut out ear-shattering sounds, and withstand sustained torture for years on end, without any permanent, or even any damage to his system. Given this, though this might be wishful thinking on my part, it is possible that his "revelation" of the location of the second book, the Gulabo Mehndi Shop, might just be a choice red herring, to send the pack off on this false scent and thus gain himself some time to plan and effect his escape and then rejoin Rudra.
It also seemed almost too pat when he made a throwaway reference to a second Book that would give the positions of the key stars in the firmament when the amrit would emerge, adding that he would tell them all only after they had produced Rudra before him. Methinks Shivanand is faking it all, and making a fool of Grierson & Co., which is a delightful prospect!
4) Rao & Charles vs Katharine: What is it with Professor Rao, his chela the DM with his bank of CCTV monitoring screens covering the Mahakumbh, and their focus on Katharine?
My pat answer would be that she is a Rakshak, but presuming that the good professor is not on the Dark Side, why does he want a back up of her cellphone? Should he rather not be trying to get confirmation, of course thru Charles😉, about whether she too has the garuda chinna on her back, like Charles? Does his interest in her cell phone mean that he suspects Katharine of being up to no good, and so he wants to track down her contacts in Prayag and eleswhere?
Interestingly, Prof. Rao seems to have no idea about Rudra being the No.1 Rakshak, for when Charles mentions that Rudra is standing next to Katharine, there is no reaction from him. So as far he is concerned, there are 6 more rakshaks to be located, and next to no time in which to do this. But he hardly seems bothered about this!
So far, all that the Katharine-Charles combo has furnished is some corny, out of date comedy. As for the DM, at any Mahakumbh, he would have not a moment to spare for anything but monitoring the myriad arrangements. You would not find him hanging around his former guru or trying to straighten out the aforesaid guru's grandson!😉
The Rudra conundrum, or Rudra ko itna gussa kyon aata hai?: Looking thru the forum, I am struck by the number of posts dealing with variations on the above subject, especially Arshi's very comprehensive, bullet points take on this theme. They are all trying to (a) make sense of the abrupt transition from Rudra at 16 to Rudra at 28, and (b) get the director and/or the writer to amplify on and explain this transition.
My take on this is that all these logical and well-meant efforts will be largely pointless. I do not expect any official rationalization for the emergence of Rudra 28, for what can really be offered under this head but a lot of glib psychologists' patter, some of which I have dished out myself in earlier posts? He is "like that only".
The makers clearly intended, maybe targeting a new audience composed of young men in their late teens and early twenties, to keep the adult Rudra hyper and dangerous, like a wire stretched to breaking point cum a missile about to take off. Inchoate anger thus bubbles and seethes in him, just under the surface, ever ready to explode into bone crunching action against the bad guys he spots at that time. To drive this point home, the director makes Gautam adhere to a template of not just an Angry Young Man but a Furious Young Man: brows knitted, jaw clenched, eyes narrowed, nostrils distended, head lowered as if he was about to charge. I do not like it, but who am I to complain if the PH's research indicated, with some justification going by some posts here, that this avatar will catch on with a new audience?
The emotional variations: But there are compensations, and I am not just referring to the fights in which Rudra makes mincemeat of his hapless opponents, the latest in this category being the saat saale of khoye paaye Pandey, fights which, I confess, I enjoy thoroughly and unashamedly!😉
Or the bright, angry-eyed look, face twitching with suppressed fury, with which Rudra faces Balivesh and demands to know the how, the why and the by whom of the blast at the 1989 Mahakumbh.
Or the expression in his eyes as he listens to Balivesh promising that he will have Pandey before him withing 72 hours. It was perhaps the most striking shot of Rudra's eyes seen so far; they are lit up with a fierce inner joy that is more telling, more evocative, than any seen before in Mahakumbh.
The compensations I referred to are the intensely moving passages when Rudra mourns the loss of his substitute family in Banaras, and, when he gets to their old house, the loss of the halcyon days of his childhood. The Schwarzenegger-Bruce Willis style revenge-seeking killing machine has little room in it for deeply felt emotions. Our Rudra does, and I could not be more thankful for this.
These segments are not maudlin, far from it. But they are full of grief and longing so deep and so tragic that they are almost palpable.
The one in which Rudra gets to see the photo of himself with his parents, for the first time in 24 years. As his fingers caress the faces in the photo, both then and later in his room, it is as if he is trying, by his touch, to bring them to life again. As he realises anew what all he has lost, his eyes are empty.
Gautam, in these passages, puts his face, which can at times look like that of a saint in a Serbian icon, and his eloquent eyes to full use. The eyes, looking not at the space around him but inwards into the recesses of his heart, brim over with the bitterness of lost memories, seeking what he knows he can never recover. As he sits on the floor of his room, clutching Maimuyi's dupatta around him as if it could bring back the warmth of her embrace, and with the group photo of the three of them in the car cutout on the ground next to him, he could have been a sculptor's concept of loss and mourning.
But it is the segment when Rudra revisits his childhood home that Gautam's Rudra pulls out all the stops. It is a very long passage by any cinematic standards, 12 minutes and 6 seconds from the time he enters the house to the time he leaves it.
His face looks haunted in its sense of abandonment, as the ghosts of his lost childhood dance and race around him. The cobwebs that festoon the windows of his ancestral mansion mirror the state of his mind. As he reaches out to a giant blow up of a family photo, his eyes look almost curious and questioning: Was it really like this?
All the suppressed longings of the past 24 years crowd in on him as he opens his arms to his mother, only to give way to desperation as she vanishes, still chasing his 4 year old self, and the realization of his loneliness, of having no one who cares for him, grips him afresh.
It is the same with Shivanand when he kneels, and opens his arms to the wraith of the child Rudra. Like a phantasm that mocks his yearning to hold his child in his arms, the vision runs thru him, leaving him bereft and alone.
Rudra and his father have a simultaneous vision of the rocking horse scene, proof of the unseen bond that links them. As Rudra looks down at that happy family scene, there is, first, a slow, tentative joy that spreads over his face, only to give way to fear as the scene vanishes, and the eyes widen with apprehension. The tears, never too far below the surface, brim over, as the face dissolves into grief.
It was a beautiful, incredibly moving passage. And, in terms of technique, a very difficult one, which could have so easily degenerated into faux sentiment. In less capable hands, it could have been a long drawn out infliction. As it was, it was a long overdue catharsis, both for Rudra-Shivanand and for us.
So, to get back to my original point, we need not fret too much about the director's idea of what the Angry Rudra should be like, though I myself do not like it at all. We can always seek refuge in such emotional scenes which offer welcome relief, for to hope for anything light-hearted involving Rudra is to ask for the moon! 😉
An atavistic impulse: I am not doing a Take 5 this time, for I have already described the scenes l loved in the passage above about Rudra.
The only one left would be the snappy telecon between Grierson and Balivesh, when the latter, now sure of his ground after having corralled Pandey, puts Grierson in his place with undisguised relish. When he makes it clear that Ab to Pandey ke Bhagwan hum hain, that his control over humara sheher is complete, and that if Grierson wanted to get something from this city, he would have to approach him, Balivesh, with samarpan ki bhavana, forcing the chastened Grierson, driven back against the ropes, to mumble OK, I almost cheered.
Not that I was pleased to see the evil Balivesh score a victory. It was more that I was delighted, exactly as when I listened to Shivanand snubbing Grierson when the latter complains about Indians neither taking calls nor calling back, to see an arrogant foreigner, who is contemptuous of Indians, shown where he gets off!
Humorous odds and ends:
- The politician who lends his haveli to Grierson during the latter's stay in Prayag, noting that he used it only once in 5 years, during election time. This is the standard complaint against many MPs, that once they have been elected, they are hardly seen in their constituencies till the next election comes around!
- Pandey's wife exclaiming more about the disappearance of the money than about the disappearance of her patidev!
Question of the week: This is about the last precap. How does Maya's Naanu apparently claim that it was he and Balivesh who got Udiya Baba murdered as well? It hardly holds water, this boast. Udiya Baba's death occurred because he was trying to save Rudra from the blast in Lord Rama's chariot, and he was badly burned by the debris of the burning Ravana effigy. And the bomb was placed solely at the instance of Pandey, to murder not Udiya but Rudra. Balivesh never wanted any harm to come to Rudra, and Pandey's punishment for this transgression was the loss of his right eye. So how come Maya's Naanu aise phenk rahe hain? Any why, for Heaven's sake?
A request: Ok, folks, I will let you off now, and high time too!😉 I would only request those who have lasted out till this point, and still feel that they like this post, to hit the Like button without fail. I make it a point to keep note of those who enjoyed each of my standalone posts, and I would not like to miss out on any of you!
Shyamala B.Cowsik
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