Posted:
I made a post yesterday on Motherhood.
http://www.india-forums.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=4702810
But then I went and watched the episode again and I was wondering if my previous post was fully accurate. In my previous post, I talked about Motherhood. But I may be wrong.
Dev and Ishwari's relationship seems to me a relationship more of a Caregiver and Responsibility than that of a mother and son.
When Dev was young, Ishwari was the Caregiver and Dev was the responsibility. But unlike family whose care is free, a Caregiver needs to be paid. In this case, devotion for life.
There's a historical similarity. Take Maham Anga and Akbar's relationship. In exchange of caregiving to young king, she won the second highest position in the empire after the king - Chief Advisor.
She could do no wrong in his eyes. He believed, trusted and to a large extent dependent on her more than his mother and she encouraged that dependency because her position of power was due to that dependency.
Now, she hated Jodha because love creates a need for a person that overrides dependency. When Akbar needed to marry Jodha for political alliance, she suggested it. But when he fell in love and she became his centre, that's when Maham Anga started to hate Jodha.
Anyways, I will get back to that analogy.
In our current story, the role reversed as Dev got older. He became the Caregiver and Ishwari and his family his responsibility.
Ishwari raised him with a target set before him - his entire life devoted to his family's comfort and happiness. That was the price of her Caregiving.
Dev had been living with that single mission all his life. He didn't even had a single friend, let alone a life beyond this mission. Like he told Sona, he lost his childhood as a young boy.
But Sona brought it all back. She became the relationship without any obligations except each other's company. A relationship that he didn't have to constantly work on. Just a nice, comfortable blanket which is there to wrap him in warm hug always.
This was new for Dev. He was always on duty for his family. But there's now someone who is there to make him happy. So he kept that sweet, warm, fuzzy blanket to himself as his guilty pleasure.
But Ishwari found out that Dev is not operating as a soldier with a sole mission. Now there is someone else who has become his new aim in life.
That threatened Ishwari's position of power (now refer back to the analogy). She started to hate Sona. The reason she wanted to choose Dev's wife because a. she has no other choice if she wants grandkids b. She knows that Dev is not a love at first sight kind of guy. He needs to engage emotionally first. So the chance of him forming equal devotion to a stranger brought to him through arranged alliance is pretty slim and c. Even if he forms some devotion later on, his wife will know who brought her into the household. Hence will always have second place to Ishwari. Needless to say, she would have chosen a docile, submissive wallflower for Dev, not a firecracker like Sona.
So she used emotional pressure because she knew that the mission is too ingrained in Dev to keep his family happy. And Dev reacted better than what she predicted. He let go of his guilty pleasure, the one thing he did just for himself.
Almost like an artist who gets a job to take care of his responsibilities, to feed his body even though his art feeds his heart and soul.
But can the artist separate art from himself? No. He can't. So he indulges it in secret. Sometimes just casually strolling past a gallery or dipping his fingers in a pot of paint or keeping one of his drawings in his room hidden from prying eyes.
How does that artist feel when the most coveted prize in art world goes to another artist? Not because the other artist is better than him (although he may be), but because he can't compete. He needs to take care of his responsibility. He needs to feed his body.
How does the artist react? Well, see yesterday's episode.
But the point of this post was about Responsibilities.
If the artist now has a family, he would come to them and convince them this is what he needs to do like many others who chose an alternate career (ex. Dhoni) and with his family's support will pursue his happiness because if this makes him happy and his family will understand that. After all, if he can't be honest with his family, then who else can he be honest with?
But if the artist is a Caregiver who is paying for the service provided to him as a child, he will continue on in his responsibilities while slowly killing his own self, his own happiness because he owes a long term debt and an honest person always pays his debt. After all, who is ever honest with debt collector? No one tells their debt collector that he has nothing left to give, that he is bankrupt.
What about the art who was neglected and discarded at the alter of responsibilities? Well, she is art. She doesn't need the world, the world needs her to see beauty, to recognize human emotions, to feed heart and soul. There always will be plenty of starved artists hungry for her. But if she had been given a choice, she would have stayed at our artist's heart. So that when his responsibilities are done, he could snuggle into her warmth and find that elusive thing called happiness.
Cricket
