Happy Birthday, Sahil Mehta!

The scion of the Birla family, Yuvraj was introduced in Suhani si Ek Ladki as a vintage-car-loving, white-horse-loving snooty b**tard, good-looking and privileged, with no purpose in life besides listening to music or fiddling with his mobile/Gameboy in between doing absolutely nothing. He was a boychild, obsessed with an outdated idea of beauty and what beauty weighs in a person's total make-up (haha.) Inveigled into marriage with a girl he found most unappealing, the titular Suhani (played by Rajshri Rani) while in love with her best friend, he managed to balance the negative aspects of his character by tempering it with an almost childlike brattishness mixed with the sense of his outrage at his miserable fate. He could be mean, but we knew he wasn't, not really. As we groaned at his grandmother (the root of his beauty-obsessed nature) and the often sickening favouritism and unnatural bonding between her and Yuvraj, sidelining his (then) much better-looking older brother and much cuter younger brother, we enjoyed the nice Yuvraj we saw with his mum and his cousin, Sharad. Actually, enjoyed Yuvraj anyway.

Yuvraj's first love was --no, not the crush on Saumya, but his eternal devotion to dadi. Forgive me, not going to post pic. I wonder why he and dadi never went to a shrink.

Sahil played Yuvraj as an offshoot of himself, bringing to the character the casual insouciance mixed with hints of deep feeling. As his graph changed from resentment and dislike to caring and friendship, Yuvraj became an almost iconic character. His OCD, his discomfort with displays of affection, his basic honesty and the goodness that Suhani tapped changed him slowly, but (thankfully) not tooo much. As love happened, we sat waiting in endless anticipation for the goof to finally stop acting like the wife was just the best pal ever, but man, he tried our patience.

Eventually, he got there. It took another guy, misunderstandings of mammoth proportions, a separation, an intended second marriage before the wounded (in both senses, emotional and physical) Yuvraj croaked out the 'I love you" to Suhani that paved the way for the start of a love story that had been waiting to happen, but never really did. It was restricted to MOMENTS, incidents, bits and pieces, rather than organically being the main story. But that's not the actor's fault. Most of the time he does his job very well indeed (yeah, he falls asleep sometimes, but so would anyone who was not challenged enough.

I think Sahil reached the epitome of acting in at least 2 scenes. One was the day he got drunk. Not only did he look hot as hell, his acting was superb. The look, the expressions, the body language...A1.

The second, to my mind, was his confession speech at Suhani's intended wedding to Rohan. Again he looked sooo appealing, he showed vulnerability that made one almost forget Yuvraj's sins, and he wrung his heart out in public. He carried the day.

As an aside, I think the general consensus is Yuvraj looks best in white. And white shirt and wet Yuvraj rock. Some sadists also would like him permanently injured--i.e., in bandages, as above. Sahil's favourite colour is black, and he looks great in that too. Also in red, blue, yellow. (some pics courtesy Sahil's FB page)

I don't know where Yuvraj's character goes from here. Apparently he's going to be a dad soon (on the show). If the show doesn't end, let's see where this new dimension takes Yuvraj.

hAPPY Birthday Sahil