Folks,
So here I am again! And before you start pulling my leg (the left one, as the right one is kaput!š) about the title, no, "suspended animation" is not the same thing as "treading water". For there to be suspended animation there first has to be animation, ie forward movement, even if it does freeze at some point, like a replay when the recorder jibs and refuses to move!
Having thus protected myself against a charge of self-plagiarism, let me start with the business at hand. It might be best to take up each of the pending issues, and see what has happened about it during this week, a nd what one can expect in the next one.
-The Great Garuda Hunt: No real forward movement here, in that the number of garudas known to us remains static at 5: Shiva, Rudra, Charles, DM Tiwari and Katharine. But there was internal progress, so to speak, in that Shiva confirmed, to his own satisfaction, that Katharine is a garuda, not only because of that sign, but also because of her extraordinary strength, as he notes to himself.
He has also informed the other garudas about this, bar Charles, whose bellow of rage at finding Katharine trussed up and drugged drowns out the last 2 words, the key part of what Shiva is trying to tell him: Katharine par Sir ka shaque bebuniyaad nahin tha..Katharine bhi garud hai..
Charles evidently assumes, given that Prof.Rao has told him about Katharine being the only on of the 23 Interpol suspects not yet investigated, that she is a shady character, which is why he does not ask Shivanand why she has been brought there. I am sure the shadiness he suspects her of constitutes an immediate bond for Charles!š
Now in that whole sequence, many of Shiva's actions were incomprehensible, to put it mildly. But before I start on that, one apprehension that many here had felt, that Shiva did not trust his guru Prof.Rao completely, as he had kept his underground library hideout a secret from him, has now been disproved. Rao clearly knows all about the library since well before, for Shiva does not have to give him directions as to how to get there . It is DM Tiwari, and of course Charles, who are first timers there.
Lack of security consciousness: To revert, why on earth does Shivanand invite the other 3 down to his hideout at all? Charles, in particular,seeing how crassly unconcerned he is about his garudatva? Shiva might not have known about Charles' crush on Katharine, which would make him react as violently as he does, but even so, it was a very ill-judged move.
In fact, while I could understand why Shiva brought Katharine there - as he has no other private place where he could have taken her for what I presume was an intended interrogation - what I could not understand was why, the first time, he tied only her hands, not her feet as well. He should have provided for the chance that she was a garuda, as they suspected she might be, and would thus be exceptionally strong, and he should have taken due precautions. Also why did he not give her the knock out injection straightaway, to last till he had decided what to do with her next?
Most important of all, how does Shivanand believe that she will not betray this hideout to Greyerson? He tells the other two, of whom Tiwari is seriously concerned about the fiasco, and justifiably so: Kucch nahin kahegi. Charles se bhi nahin. Kyonki Katharine bhi ek garud hai..Antar sirf itna hai ki wo hum me se ek hokar bhi hum me se nahin hai..
I felt like shaking him out of his impenetrable calm and yelling at him: Yes, Shiva, par wo abhi kiske saath hai, jaante ho na?The DM and Prof. Rao have known about her being in contact with Greyerson from her phone, and surely they must have told Shivanand about that. Just because she is a garuda, how can he assume that she will not immediately lead Greyerson to this vital secret, as Charles must have taken her out of the baudi entrance and she would have noted the location carefully?
It is as if Shivanand had said to Greyerson & Co.: Do come in, folks, and make yourself comfortable while it insert the rudrakshas and show you how to operate the Garuda Positioning System. Hardly the kind of irresponsibility and lack of security consciousness that someone in his position, the lynchpin of the Save the Amrit project, should display. I would have expected him not to trust his own shadow, not to speak of a girl of whom he knows nothing, especially not whether her garudatva means anything at all to her, or whether she is indeed a Dark Garuda.
Even earlier, while he is lugging Prof. Rao's gizmo down into the Saraswati Kund, Shivanand does not seem to be aware of Katharine following him. I would have expected someone like him, accustomed to constant danger and thus extra wary, to have been on top alert while moving that vital piece of equipment around. Someone in his situation, with the kind of stakes involved, and given his level of spiritual development and the siddhis he surely possesses, should practically have eyes on the back of his head!
But alas, Shiva is reduced to sighting Katharine, behind him, camera in hand, entirely by chance, in in the polished lid of the gizmo container. Pull up your socks, Shiva, this just will not do!
The garudas in waiting: So now we have Thappadiya Mai heading the list of garudas in waiting. Shiva spots Katharine's garuda chinna thanks to the contortions of a martial arts bout. If Thappadiya Mai has it, as I have been assured across this forum, on her ankle, someone will have to fall at her feet to locate it. Who? Rudra for choice, as I cannot imagine Shiva, the DM or Prof. Rao doing that, or even fiddling with Mai's ankle, prettily turned or otherwiseš.
Which leaves the Seventh Garuda, about whom Shruti has been dropping so many mysterious hints that I am almost breathless from anticipation. Shruthi, you are going to find it tough to fulfill all the expectations you have raised with your Delphic pronouncements! I am still rooting for my Polish Kuba, but his chances seems none too bright, alas!š
-Rudra ki aatma pehchaan: This too seems not to have got anywhere much. Shivanand is not your gentle Montessori teacher, he is more like the stern preceptors of ancient gurukuls. Or a drill sergeant. No, not quite, for he does try, time and again, to convince Rudra, patiently and through demonstrative logic, as with the near reading attempt, that he has to rise above the obsessive pull of the parivaar and realise his much higher mission as a rakshak for all humankind.
I cannot help repeating that iconic line of his: Parivaaron ke rakshak hote hain, rakshakon ke parivaar nahin hote. It is pointless to say that he who cannot protect his family cannot protect the world. As Sayanee has pointed out so rightly in another thread, when a soldier is at the front protecting his country, he cannot also protect his family back home. That is the sacrifice he has to make in the line of duty.
But Shivanand is not getting anywhere much, for Rudra - though his argument has its own naive appeal :Rakshak hain, bahut bada daayitva hai.. Kya is daayitva ke daayre mein hamare khudh ka parivaar nahin aata? - is still too caught up with the fear of losing still more of his loved ones, and he cannot see the broad picture.
Shubha (happychappy) has advanced an interesting take on this: that his holding back is due to his small town, smashaan background rather than that of the Brahma Nisht Panth, and his consequent lack of education. While this is true in part, I have my reservations about it.
Rudra is unsophisticated, yes, and introverted to the nth degree. But even if he had been raised in the Brahma Nisht Panth, the odds are that he would not have become a Shivanand. Nor, hopefully, a Daadi clone, though he is showing a dismaying tendency to do just that. He accepts things too readily without questioning, and his mind is, as of now, closed to any idea that seems to threaten the sense of belonging that he has recovered now, but which still seems fragile. In that sense, he seems closer to Daadi's outlook than to that of his patrician, intellectual father.
Earlier, Rudra was like a time bomb ready to go off. Now he is like a damp squib that Shivanand is trying desperately to set off.š
But he has to fire, and soon. And it here that I share MaddyO's idea, that it will be Maya who will, once she gets to know Shivanand, accept his ideas in toto, especially since she is, more than anyone else, aware of just how evil the Veshes are, and to what depths they can fall to achieve their awful goal. If and when she does this, it is she who can, using this intimate knowledge, and also her new found power over Rudra, get him on board for Shivanand. This would be an ironic reversal of roles for Maya; the Veshes want to use her to get Rudra to fall in with their wishes, whereas it could be Shivanand who uses her to further a similar goal, only for the forces of light, not the forces of darkness.
- Saraswati Kund ka rahasya: The campaign to track this down began with a bang, with the Saraswati Tracker gizmo being unveiled in Rao's lab with due, if discreet fanfare, and Shiva being explicitly commissioned by his guru to check under the Kund for any jeevit ansh in the vilupt Saraswati.
Alas, it ended with a whimper, when Shiva was, thanks to Sahadev Malla's chugalkhori to Daadi, formally expelled from the Brahma Nisht Panth premises for good. But that is hardly going to be the end of the matter as far as Shiva is concerned. It might well be, indeed I am convinced, that Shiva has deliberately left the machine tucked away into that cl0sed recess near the stairs leading down into the Kund. I somehow cannot see him getting so affected by his mother's nth diatribe against him that he forgets about something so vital for the mission; so I feel that he intends to return, regardless of Sahadev being on the watch.
In this context, folks,you might like to look thru an annexe to this post, at the very end, with the self explanatory title: The Rao-Shiva Mission Amrit, and what it is NOT! It is an entirely factual and dispassionate attempt to clarify the issue and, hopefully, lay many doubts about it to rest.
Amrit grabbers?: As for the fear that one or both of them might turn out to be amrit-grabbers, about Prof. Rao, I do not know. In any mystery story, one always suspects the least likely person, and this way he might qualify as an amrit grabber, but I am not sure at all. As for Shivanand, I would unhesitatingly answer with a big NO! He is a karmayoddha par excellence. And even if Prof. Rao should change his colours near the end, as in the Le Carre novels, I am sure Shivanand will be able to negate his plotting to seize the amrit for himself.
- Sri Santh Panth ka prapanch: This too is hanging fire. Balivesh, for all his huffing and puffing and glaring at everything and everyone around him - and was I glad he did not think of doing another tandav! š- did very little during the week to advance towards their goals.
The far shrewder Naanu was advising him to get Maya back so as to have a hold on Rudra -that scene of him stringing the broken mala was eerie in its hidden meanings - but Balivesh, for all that he complied eventually, was so consumed by rage that he wanted only immediate, brute vengeance for the death of his Chotu.
If it was not that they needed Rudra till the end of the Mahakumbh, Balivesh would have at least got him jailed for manslaughter, if not murder. And in the last precap, he had lost all control, and had got Ganga shot by way of hitting back at Rudra where it would hurt him the most. What he did not count on was that Ganga is born under a lucky star; she survived the Veshes in 1989, and she will survive Balivesh's fury now too.
As for getting Shivanand back, that is more Greyerson's concern, and Balivesh seems inclined to let him plough that furrow on his own. In contrast with Naanu, whose razor sharp mind can appreciate similar sharpness in Katharine and Greyerson, Balivesh clearly resents Katharine and her contemptuous attitude towards the Veshes, and reacts to her disappearance with ill-concealed satisfaction. The dismissiveness he displays towards Greyerson's anxious complaints about the need to locate her at once is proof of this.
There seems to have been no follow up from the Veshes to what their Guru Maharaj might have told them after his mental sojourn among the stars. Or any move to ascertain when the sapta nagas can be expected at the Mahakumbh. Time might be elastic to some extent, but not indefinitely, and the 2013 Mahakumbh lasted only 55 days, of which at least 15, if not more, must already be over. If Rao-Shivanand seem at times to be dawdling, the Veshes are no better.
-Maya-Rudra-Daadi ki trikon prem kahani: As things stand at present, I begin to think that Rudra, Maya and Daadi are all made for each otherš .They should set up a new kind of menage a trois in the Brahma Nisht Panth and carry on with the amrit-less seva (what precisely that would be one does not yet know) until the 'Veshes collar the amrit and come and evict them all, or kill them.
It was amazing to hear Daadi's delusional comment to Maya that she was the only one who could unite the two Panths!š² In another context, I would have wondered what she had been smoking! It is not as if she does not know what the Veshes did to the Brahma Nisht Panth in 1989, for it is she who tells Rudra about that when he wakes her up from her yoganidra.
I am allergic to bahu lene aayi thi beti le ja rahi hoon and khandaani kangan scenes (though those kangans were very pretty! ) and the Daadi-Maya segment was so sappy most of the time that I began to feel queasy.
And this despite some lovely lines from Daadi: Parivaar ka niyam hai: purush todta hai aur stree jodti hai.. Jab Shiv bhasm karte hain, to Shakti apni maya se sansaar ki punar rachna karti hai..Aur agar maya na ho, to vinaash nishchit hai..
And earlier, to Rudra: In boodhi aankhon ne kayi Kumbh dekhe hain. Lekin amrit ka boond aakhir is Mahakumbh main dikh hi gaya!
So folks, for those of you who felt that when she was snapping at, who else, Shiva: Ek boond amrit bacha hai, use to baksh do! - she was referring to Rudra, a correction is in order. The amrit ka boond is Maya. Of course, after watching Daadi niharofying Maya in the ashram with unconcealed approval, no one could have any doubts on this score!š
I am now waiting for Daadi to trot along to the 'Veshes, and announce, in hopeful tones: Rudra aur Maya ek ho rahe hain, aur aapke aashirwaad ki apeksha rakhte hain!! Topping that off with a flowery reference to Maya's mother, who was like a beti to her, and who had hoped for the same BNP-SSP merger. Naanu will not bat an eyelid - while quietly getting Balivesh to take out a post-Mahakumbh supari for the coupleš, as MaddyO suggested! - but Balivesh will very likely burst a blood vessel!
But with all the shindy about Ganga getting shot ( presumably on Monday but could be any time up to Thursday, judging from past practice re: precaps! ), this momentous scene might well be postponed. Pity, for it would have been so splendid!
Then again, I had taken it for granted that at least in a mytho-thriller, one would escape the normally mandatory scene in front of the ICU. But it seems that even that modest hope is to be belied!
Rudra-Maya: Kamalahaasan used to joke that it did not matter to him who his heroine was, as he could romance even a wooden chair. I was reminded of that quip as I watched Rudra and Maya on Thursday night. The way she looks at him out of the corner of her eyes exasperated me, as did much else, and the jodi does not, to my mind, merit even Arshi's 5/10. Gautam tries his best, but without competent support, he was only partially successful. And Monday promises more of the same, with the bhutta scene heading the list. We bid fair to be drowned in treacle!š
The fleeting instant where Gautam's Rudra was fully back in form was not during these so-called love scenes. It was when he was standing with Daadi, looking with evident contentment and vicarious pride (both set my teeth on edge, but let that passš ) at Maya doing more seva - she has now graduated to hand feeding old ladies who could have polished off the whole plateful without her assistanceš . And of course paavn dabofying her sasumaa to be.
Daadi looks sideways at Rudra, her eyes conveying her abundant satisfaction with the latest and best candidate for membership of the Brahma Nisht Panthš. He looks back at her shyly, and then he ducks his head and smiles ever so little, partly to himself and partly to her. It was delightful.
As was the other moment a little later, when Daadi points out her pota to Maya, who looks across at Rudra in startled recognition. He looks down, sideways, anywhere but back at her, and finally raises his eyes to hers in a half questioning, half hopeful look. It was very quick and very convincing.
Stasis: Coming back to my main thesis, here too, all these lovey-dovey outpourings apart, Rudra is still exactly where he was as far as his mission is concerned, Maya is content that ek bojh utar gaya..mano ek nayi raah mil gayi.., and as for Daadi, she cannot believe her good fortune in having landed such a sanskaari grand daughter in law. None of which gets us any forrader, unless, as noted above, Maya becomes the catalyst that finally activates Rudra the shreshtatam garuda.
An encounter to remember: Folks, this is where I wind up, for with the annexure tacked on, this looks like getting too long as it is. There is no Take 5 this time, for I have covered many of the candidates for that list already, all, that is, bar one. And that is the splendid double martial arts encounter between Shivanand and Katharine.
These days, there is not even the once mandatory weekly or biweekly dishum dishoom scene(s) to cheer me up. I used to love them, and there has been nothing in that genre for 3/4 weeks now, bar the amateurish set to when Rudra and Charles rescued Maya and Katharine from Balivesh's goons. So the marvellous action scenes between Shivanand and Katharine, the best so far, came as manna from heaven!
If the prelude, when Katharine is trying to spot the intruder in her room, was Hitchcockian in its use of light and shade to convey a hidden menace, the end sequence, when Shiva surges up silently behind a wary Katherine, and then disables her with two sharp blows with the flat of his hand and then the pressure on the vital point in her neck, was pure film noir. It could have been out of John Huston's The Maltese Falcon with Humphrey Bogart's tough as nails detective Sam Spade.
Shivanand does not expect so much strength, agility and martial arts skills from her, and so is taken aback at first - the way she gets out of that chair was marvellously conceived and filmed. But he recovers fast, deploying his full, cold concentration on the fight. The whole sequence was extremely well choreographed and enacted, down to every twist, every kick, every bounce back.
It was clear that he lets her apparently knock him out cold, for he wants to see what she will do. The bit where she hears a sound and finds him gone was excellent, as was the ending, especially the cold triumph in his eyes as she subsides in his arms after being disabled by pressure on that point in her neck.
Shivanand's still, dispassionate face, devoid of all expression, no anger, no satisfaction, nothing, like that of a Japanese ninja, heightens the impact of the whole sequence. So does his absolutely minimalist, but focussed, effective use of force, something that I have discussed in an earlier post.
There is a ruthlessness about Shivanand that is both reassuring, in that he will not let a mission fail because he was squeamish about something he had to do, and scary, for it is not clear if he will in fact stop at anything to secure his mission. He is like a very highly trained commando, with all that implies. But one thing is for sure, he would be as ready to sacrifice himself for the cause as he would be to sacrifice one or more others should the need arise.
Hasta la vista, folks, till next Sunday!
Shyamala B.Cowsik
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ANNEXURE
A TAKE ON THE RAO-SHIVA MISSION AMRIT , AND WHAT IT IS NOT!
There have been fears voiced here that in their search for the amrit, even for the best of motives, Shivanand and Prof. Rao are opening a Pandora's box, so to speak. But I do not think it is like that. Let us see the facts as they have been given to us thus far by the script.
Firstly, it seems to be accepted wisdom, as per the ancient books of lore that Greyerson cites when he is briefing Balivesh,
1)that the amrit is real, not a myth, and exists even today.
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2)that the srot of the hidden River Saraswati carries this amrit.
3) that is was a kan of this amrit that was extant in the Saraswati Kund, and gave its water those healing properties
4)that the amrit re-emerges after every 144 years at the special Mahakumbh, when the 7 garudas got together and made it invisible to the dark forces who were out to get it,and thus saved it.
5)that this time, if the dark forces - ie the Secret Society and the SSP gang - could overcome the 2 weaker garudas, this trick of keeping the amrit invisible from them might not work and it could thus be seized by the Secret Society and Naanu-Balivesh (or so the latter hope!š )
So it is not, as seems to be the assumption of those fearing the worst, that Rao-Shiva are somehow forcing the Saraswati to come to the Triveni Sangam and making the amrit emerge. The corollary of this presumption would be that but for their ill-considered intervention, the amrit would never have emerged and would have stayed vilupt and safe from the dark forces coveting it. It is clearly not so, and this as per Greyerson.
The amrit will emerge on its own at every once in 144 years Mahakumbh, this time in the 2013 one. There seems to be nothing Rao-Shiva are doing or can do about that.
Now how can the garudas safeguard it without getting hold of it first and then hiding it? If they let it appear as per schedule, the Secret Society will grab it. So the garudas have to pre-empt them and make the amrit invisible to the bad guys.
Once they manage to do this, as they have done in the past - remember the promo about Rudra, in a previous birth, killing one of the bad guys in an underwater battle and saving the amrit from him? - the amrit will once again be safe for another 144 years. It does not have to be guarded for all eternity. That much was clear from the promo.
So, it is not that Shivanand wants Rudra to be shackled to the post of guardian of the amrit for all time to come. Just for now, during the Mahakumbh, and then his duty in this birth will be done. The task will come up again only in 2157 AD.
Now, Shiva wants the Saraswati Kund to be activated again, and though he presents it to his mother as a fulfillment of her wish, the fact is that he wants it per se.
What he and Prof. Rao are now trying to see is if there is some link between the srot of the Kund and the Sector 53 where the amrit is probably expected, as per the Second Book that Shivanand now has, to emerge. If they can detect this connection, they want to divert a bit of the amrit, which will in any case emerge on the last, 55th day of this Mahakumbh, to the Kund, so as to make its waters healing waters again.
This is ambitious, yes, but neither cunning nor dangerous, nor even new. The amrit is going to come up anyway at the Sangam on the last day. It will then, all going well, disappear again for another 144 years.
It is not as though they are making it appear.Nor is it as though the amrit will hang around for all time to come, at their beck and call!
Secondly, it is not as though this minor osmosis of the amrit into the Saraswati Kund in the Brahma Nisht Panth ashram is anything new. It has been happening traditionally, and the healing waters have been constantly used to heal the sick among the general public. Only, no one seems to have made the connection between the once in 144 years appearance of the amrit at the Mahakumbh and the healing powers of the Kund water.
Now the dark forces have made this connection. But that is not because of Shivanand or his researches. It is clear from Greyerson's account that the knowledge has come from those ancient tomes that the Secret Society has been researching so assiduously.
I hope the above answers all the reservations voiced here, or at least I hope so. The key misconception seems to be that Rao-Shiva are trying to force the amrit to appear at the Sangam and to move it to the Saraswati Kund, all of which is c0ntrary to the facts of the case.
Besides, one has to remember one cardinal point. As far as can be made out now, Shiva & Rao are not trying to get the amrit and use it for anything bar reviving the Saraswati Kund.
What they are mainly trying to do is to keep the amrit out of the wrong hands. If this mission fails, humanity, the script assures us, will be doomed.It is a "prevent Doomsday" kind of scenario, not one of the garudas getting the amrit and then using it judiciously.
Lastly, apart from the fact that Rudra as the garuda pramukh would have, for now, to put the mission to save the amrit ahead of anything else, including his (unconvincing and made to order ) love for Maya, it is not as though he has to abandon her for the whole of their lives.
If she dies or is killed in the process, that of course would be unfortunate, but in such great crusades, there will be some collateral damage. Think of all the thousands of deaths of innocents and all the attendant misery that the world at large would be spared just because Rudra sacrifices his Maya for the sake of the greater good and safeguards the amrit instead of protecting her!
It is a bit like the Rishi Dadichi dying voluntarily so that his bones could be used to make the vajrayudh to kill Vrittrasur, who is a threat to the world at large.
The other point, which Daadi and Rudra refuse to grasp, is that if the garudas fail and the amrit is seized by the dark forces, there will be soon nothing left. Not Daadi's Brahma Nisht Panth nor Rudra's lady love, nor his parivaar, Nothing.They will all be crushed under the heel of the juggernaut that will rule the world.
That is in fact the crux of the matter, and the ultimate argument for Rudra to fulfil the role destined for him. By not grasping this, Daadi and her pota are in fact endangering the world, not saving anything.
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Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi 2
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