-*-Rajat Tokas AT #1- He's back with Bang-*- - Page 55

Originally posted by: Susmita96

really he is the ultimate👏 expression king

Originally posted by: munni_rajatfan

Wonderful pics. Thnks anjali.😊

Originally posted by: harrybird

Originally posted by: munni_rajatfan

waiting for another dhamakedar episode with rajat. he will again rock for sure.⭐️

Originally posted by: sashashyam

A HATKE TAKE ON RAJAT'S LATEST HATKE ROLE

At the outset, I must clarify that I am not a member of this or any other Rajat Tokas AT, though I have written more than per1haps anyone else in the Jodha Akbar forum in praise of his truly splendid Jalal, who reached such heights despite a rapidly deteriorating script. Perhaps this is because I am too old to be anyone's fan. But right from the beginning of Jodha Akbar, when I got my first look at him, I have admired this young man for his tremendous natural talent. It is very rare to find a 22 year old who is such an incredibly subtle actor !

Even so, I was taken aback, and pleasantly surprised, by his latest take as the ichchadaari nevla in Naagin - which, I must confess, is a show I watched only for a few episodes before coming back to it for Rajat's very hatke pseudo-Kabeer. I was initially more shocked than pleased by his choice of this cameo, but I could not have been more wrong!

Just today, I did a relatively short review of his latest role in my last JA forum thread ( which is by now hopelessly off topic😉!) I peeped in here, saw that my delightful young friend Anjali (harrybird) was as active here as she always is, and decided to share this piece with her and those of you who might be interested, for it fits in perfectly with the title of this thread!

To those who are not familiar with my posts, I must add a note of caution. This is not a gushing account of unconditional admiration. It is an analytical piece, and it might not be instantly appealing to members of Rajat's AT. But I hope that after reading thru it, you feel that it is nonetheless a satisfying, if hatke read, as hatke as Rajat's nevla!

Now on to my main subject, Rajat's pseudo-Kabeer, the ichchadaari nevla.

To begin with, one must avoid a common misconception when assessing such characters.

This ichchadaari nevla has been under the curse for so long that he has, for all practical purposes, lost his humanness. When he talks of getting back to his duniya, it seems, unless I got it wrong, that he is referring to the normal world of the nevla, not that of humankind.

Plus, this is not a goody goody nevla of the kind that we find in the Panchatantra, the baby sitter par excellence. This is a creature under a curse for a long, long time, and it will stop at nothing to get out from under the curse. It has no notions of right and wrong, or of the morality that many humans observe only in the breach, witness Rithik's father and his associates.

But I would not call it a psychopath. It does not kill for fun, it kills always with a purpose.

To revert, this is not a human being who can transform into an animal, it is an animal which can transform into a human being, but only on the surface. So, even after this nevla assumes a human form, its basic nature, its body language etc. should stay at least partly the same as before.

The mistake most directors of such films or TV shows make is that they do not keep this in mind. Thus the naagins in this show, especially Shivanya, when they are masquerading as young women, behave exactly like real women. They have none of the characteristics of a snake at all. This is probably, no, surely because they cannot handle the subtleties that would be needed to convey that it is a naagin in human form. For example, there is no sinuousness at all in the way they move. Nor a slight sibilant note in the way they talk.

But our boy Rajat is nothing if not subtle. And imaginative. So, as the pseudo-Kabeer, his ichchadaari nevla retains a lot of the nevla: the restlessness, the body language when he is jumping on and off his bed after he has been invited to stay as long as he wants in that house, the wild abandon of the chase after the naagin and down the side of the building, the gluttonous consumption of the cheese, the bloodlust with which he pounces on his prey, whether it is Tanvi or the real Kabeer Oberoi.

It is to Rajat's great credit that he simply lets himself go, without worrying about whether his handsome face is getting distorted - as when he is first revealed as a nevla and kills the unfortunate Tanvi - or whether he has to scamper around the real Kabeer, almost on all fours, mocking him by mimicking his lines with vicious glee, like a sadistic little boy tormenting a cat.

Then again, he makes sure that the nevla, who would never have had to camouflage his feelings of glee at a killing , is still there under the mask of the grieving Kabeer, whether in the house with all the others or at the pooja later. His pseudo-grief for the dead Tanvi is not a finished product at all - and remember that this is Rajat, who can produce the most subtle and the most wrenching grief, and anything in between, on tap! - . but is almost openly fake. The only reason it passes muster is that the others are too worried and afraid to notice what Kabeer's face is up to!

And he does not even try to put up a show of residual grief when he is later trying to coax Naagin No. 2 Shesha to show him around Mumbai.

It is the same when he is earlier indulging in high speed flirting with her. There is a continual restlessness, and an absence of the tehraav that he is adept at, and both of these are deliberate. I loved his trademark Uff!

To me, all this shows Rajat's ability to think way beyond the script, and invest his ichchadaari nevla with a degree of realism that the director, judging from the rest of this production, would have been incapable of envisaging. If Rajat had been playing an ichchadaari bandar, he would surely have invested it with a while range of subtly simian characteristics!

You cannot have an ichchadaari nevla which is coolly evil, as has been suggested elsewhere, something like Voldemort in Harry Potter. Voldemort was not an animal that was transformed into a human (?) being. He was quintessentially evil, utterly devoid of any identifiably positive trait, but he was never an animal, not even a werewolf. Yes, Fenrir Greyback, the werewolf in Harry Potter, might be a closer fit, but not a perfect one, far from it, for this nevla is not sadistic. He has not so far been shown enjoying the act of killing.

Plus - and this is a major plus! - Rajat is now lean and taut as never before. When he is on all fours in jeans and top outside the real Kabeer's car, he looks like nothing so much as an athlete at the starting block of a 400 metre dash, or a greyhound straining at the leash. It is the same even when he is a suit or in close tailored pyjama-kurta. This is a very good sign, for it means that he is now physically well equipped, for the big screen later, and right now for the torso-baring outfits for Chandragupta Maurya.

To sum up, there is no need to mourn over Rajat "slumming it" in Naagin. I would never have imagined that he could take up something so hatke, and make out of it something way beyond this less than mediocre script.

Yes, this is no Dracula, though when he is shown laughing with his hair let free, he looks like the handsomer versions of the deathless one. The 1970s Louis Jourdain version comes to mind, and I am sure that if and when Rajat gets to play Dracula, he would invest him with the kind of tragic sadness that Louis Jourdain brought to his take. But neither is it a vicious, sadistic werewolf.

We have to wait and see if, in the final episodes of his cameo, as Kabeer loses the battle to the naagin duo, there is any tragedy - of hopes dashed and a soul still in chains - that seeps thru. That will of course be up to the script and the lines Kabeer is given. However weak they are, we can be sure that Rajat will raise them as far as they can be taken and then a bit more.

Oh, oh! I had totally forgotten the CGI nevla! The CGI is pathetic, and so I was counting the seconds before the creature would go away and Kabeer would reappear. I cannot imagine how a CGI animal in 2016 can be this unconvincing!😲


Shyamala B.Cowsik/ Shyamala Aunty