Here I am at last, only two days late, which, seeing the distractions to which all of you must have been subject this last week, would have been hardly noticeable!😉 My eyes have also changed colour from that of a ripe tomato to a pale pink, so if I blink often enough, I should be able to manage the length of this post (as yet indefinite!) and get these 3 chapters out of our way.
The plot of our show bears a marked resemblance to the gravy we make for special festival dishes. There are two main kinds of gravy: the smooth one, which is uniform thru and thru, and the Thousand Islands variety, full of odd, mysterious lumps on and below the surface, which add to the fun of tasting it, for one never knows what one is going to bite into. Our Chandra Nandini is, right now, definitely of the second kind. Which is what made this triptych so interesting.
There are again two main strands in the narrative: the political and the personal. The catch is that these two do not stay in clearly demarcated compartments, they twist and turn and tangle themselves (howzzat for alliteration?) into each other, making four blends, each with distinct ingredients.
-The purely political: This is the choicest of single malts, outdoing even the best Glenfiddich ( a prized unblended whisky) in its purity and its fiery taste.
To wit, the duo of Chandragupta and Chanakya, with their unflagging zeal and their commitment to their mathrubhoomi, and their logical, daring yojana for ousting both the videshis and the desi villain, Padmanand, and seizing the throne of Magadha for Chandragupta. Zeal, and a ferocious loyalty to their cause, unsullied by any personal feelings of the debilitating kind.
-The purely personal: This is Padmanand and his fierce love for his daughter Nandini. This love governs all that he does, and the vulnerability that is the inevitable concomitant of love clouds his judgement, especially as regards Malayaketu, so that he does not even recognize his own kind of philanderer who can respect no woman.
-The political operating thru the personal: This is Malayaketu, with his dream of dominating all of Bharat, not by his valour or his talents, but thru the back door, by seducing power (Helena) or marrying into power (Nandini), in the hope of then using that power to get Magadha first, and the whole of Bharat later.
-The personal that has now become political: This is Helena, whose blind love for a foreigner leads her to disgrace (happily secret) and heartbreak. These are then transformed, with discreet but very effective encouragement from Chandragupta, into a raging flame of hatred that will now seek revenge on Malayaketu (and on Nandini as well) through political, and perhaps military means as well.
Everything of significance that we have been shown in these 3 episodes fits into one or the other of these compartments, and it is these 4 distinct forces that govern all the inter se relationships between the principal dramatis personae. And produce the best scenes! It is also these forces that will determine the developments in the immediate future as well.
Nandini? : You might be wondering where Nandini is in all of this. The short answer to that is: nowhere much at the moment.
She is, as of now, more of an object than a subject, the motive for the actions of others rather than a force of her own. She also appears at times to be extraordinarily self-centred, dense, and constitutionally incapable of perceiving what the other person is feeling. Witness her strange conversation with a visibly distraught Helena. It was surreal, her mindless chirpiness. She goes on and on without even, apparently, looking at the other woman's face, which speaks volumes, and should have revealed to even the most casual observer that Helena was being torn apart from inside.
It is thus hardly surprising that Nandini extends this all round blindness to her daily life, especially as far as daddy dearest is concerned. Given the abundant love that he lavishes on her, this last is, one has to concede, but natural.
This trait of Nandini's is, however, a downright dangerous one, above all for herself. But she remains stubbornly stuck in her role of the ingenue, warm-hearted, affectionate and above all simple, and thus limited in her understanding of the goings on around her.
Let us now take our four elements one by one.
The two Cs: The Chandragupta-Chanakya scenes were, this time, more businesslike than soaring to lofty heights of idealism.
The duo are extremely methodical, with some secret, reliable means of communication for setting up their rendezvous, and fallback plans for coping with unexpected dangers, as from the spying mercenary soldiers, and disposing of them with ruthless efficiency. This, I now realized,was why Chanakya was shown doubling up as Chandra's fencing master, for he needs to know how to cut throats in an emergency!😉
Their systematic reporting and assessing system is also admirable.
Chandragupta's body language, eyes lowered as usual in respect most of the time and hands crossed in front, is perfect, as is the implicit obedience in his Ji, Acharya! But he is now surer of himself, and does not hesitate, after having provided the situation brief on Alexander's troops, to speak up in favour of an immediate attack when the Macedonian's troop strength is at its lowest. That he is, here as earlier, more rash and enthusiastic than wise - which is but natural in one so young, a mere fledgling - is made clear to him at once by Chanakya, and he assimilates the new tasks assigned to him, to be performed simultaneously, with silent acceptance.
Chanakya - who, in his disguises, reminds me, oddly enough, of Nana Patekar 😊- is not just strict with his shishya, curbing his unwise enthusiasm and giving him precise and detailed instructions, but also demanding. As when, after being informed by Chandragupta that Maha Padmanand and his whole family were there for the yuvarajyabhishek, his question is sharp and almost angry: To use maarne ka avasar prapt nahin hua?
But his affectionate admiration for Chandragupta still peeks thru, though the latter does not see it. When Chandragupta is taking leave of his guru after their first meeting, a freeze shot of Chanakya's face and eyes is remarkably revealing. They brim over with proprietary pride and joy in his protege.
Chandra's army: The way in which Chanakya bullies the reluctant king of an unnamed kingdom into merging his forces with the ragtag medley of gwalas, dakus, kabilewaale aur vidrohi ( patriots who hate the foreign invaders, and who have thus rebelled and abandoned the armies of Ambhi of Takshashila and Porus of Kekeya, both now satraps of Alexander) who constitute Chandra's army, might have seemed highly unconvincing. But there is a reason for it.
As Prem (myviewprem) has correctly pointed out in my last thread, it actually took Chandragupta and Chanakya 7/8 years to conquer the Punjab, and then another 2/3 years to attack and conquer Magadha. In between, there were battles lost, after which Chandragupta had to flee to save his life. It was only after nearly a decade and a half that, even with the combo of Chandragupta's military genius and Chanakya's unrivalled strategic and tactical genius, the two of them were able to prevail.
If the CVs had started showing all those machinations and failures, and the slow progress of the Chandragupta-Chanakya combine, the TRPs would fall below 1 very soon, threatening the show's continued existence! 😉The present TV viewing public lacks the attention span demanded by such long drawn out and painstaking narratives.
Chandraprakash Dwivedi showed all this in meticulous detail in his 1991 Chanakya - the sections on the C&C's handling of Porus and how, while claiming to be stabilising his hold on his former kingdom of Kekeya, they actually took it over bit by bit by winning over the people, were magisterial. In fact most of Chandragupta's army was recruited on the basis of conviction - hostility towards the foreign rulers and their Indian supporters - not thru bribery with looted money.
But that was in 1991 on Doordarshan. Not in 2016 and on Star Plus. So if that was a longhand narrative, this one has to be in shorthand! Still, the detailing shown thus far is impressive by the standards of a commercial show.
Rishyasaringa: I am sure that all the certified romantics in this forum would have been on tenterhooks, their breath held in almost unbearable anticipation, as Chandragupta, saddled (pun intended!) with the unenviable task of conveying the unconscious Nandini back to her quarters, rides back with her in front of him, cradled in his arms, her (corkscrew) curls blowing across his face and her body slipping in his grip, forcing him to hold her even tighter. 😉
By the time he carries her to her bed, intending to lay her down and leave, but has to struggle with her recalcitrant necklace that seems intent on holding him back, leading to an extremely close close-up (of their noses, to be precise😉) things must have reached fever point.😆😆
Alas for these dashed expectations of some garama garam romantic action! For our boy wonder is - right from the moment when he stands looking down at Nandini in a resigned, weary fashion, preparatory to lugging her on to his horse, till the very end, when, after finally extricating himself from her necklace and his arm from under her head, he leaves without even bothering to pull the coverlet over her - nothing if not detached.
He brushes her wayward curls off his face, and keeps her from slipping off the horse with unfailing patience, but without the slightest sign of emotion. Even when his face is less than three inches from hers, with her breath mingling with his, there is no sign of his feeling any attraction, even involuntary, towards her, nor the least hint of longing in his eyes.
If at all he feels anything, it is only, as his parting soliloquy reveals, regretful wonder about the vagaries of fate that had forced him to help the daughter of his enemy because she was, at that moment, asahaay, helpless.
As I watched Chandragupta in this sequence, he reminded me of no one so much as Rishyasaringa, a young rishi celebrated for being well above the common run of humanity. So detached from all personal emotions, and so pure of heart was Rishyasaringa that when he entered a desert, the rain instantly came down in torrents and the barren land bloomed anew.
So too - bar the rainmaking power, which would have hardly helped him, leading as it would to a muddy, slippery battlefield!😉 - is our Chandragupta, who is, as of now, immune to all temptations, especially those of the feminine kind, and is worried only about how he is to fulfil his guru's aadesh. His various despairing soliloquies on this all absorbing subject are delightful!
Chanakya's child: He is not merely admirably detached, is our Chandragupta, but he is also devious with a capital D. Nowhere is this revealed more clearly than in his handling of the haughty, autocratic Helena. In their 3 scenes together, it is fascinating to watch him manoeuvre himself from the position of a useful minion to that of a confidante, and a pillar of support to her in her darkest hour.
Their first scene is in the same pattern as Chandragupta's encounter with Alexander in his tent, where, as I had discussed in my last post, he manages to catch the attention of the Macedonian, and to secure all that he could have wished for: the chance to get as close as can be managed to Helena, with opportunities ahead for capitalizing on this opening. Here, by sounding like an almost foolishly candid loudmouth, who thus need not be feared in any way, even while reassuring her of his discretion regarding her liaison with Malayaketu, he gains entry into the Greek army, with his goal of learning Greek battle tactics now well within reach.
But it is in the second scene,with a distraught Helena who is hysterical and close to an emotional breakdown, that the true genius of Chanakya's brilliant pupil becomes evident.
The steady, strong protectiveness that he extends to her in her darkest hour, and his concern for her reputation.
His sensible advice: Abhi jitna rona hai ro lijiye, par aaj ke baad, kabhi kisi ko apne aansoon ko na dekhne dijiye.
The perceptive wisdom of what follows: Bahut chand hain jo aapko rota dekhkar royenge, anyataa sab aap par hansenge. Aur dosh aapka nahin hai, dosh prem ka hota hai jo insaan ko durbal bana deta hai. Jeevan mein agar jeetna hai to swayam to prem se kabhi na haarne dein.. Aaj prem ghrina mein parivartit hua hai. Kal usi ghrina ko aap apni shakti banayein, aur uska upayog karein.
He says all this with an absolutely deadpan face, his eyes still and unemotional. He does not offer sympathy or empathy, for that is not what she needs at this moment.
Nor does he try to diminish the social distance between them in the least. He maintains his distance from her even as he helps her climb out of the slough of despond into which she was sinking helplessly.
This last is essential to ensure that once she has recovered her composure, she does not resent the fact that he was a witness to her moment of shameful weakness, and ends up distancing him, and the memory of those moments, from herself, which would have been disastrous for the plans of the 2 Cs.
It was a high wire act, as they would say in the circus, and Chandragupta pulls it off with admirable panache, like a seasoned artist tackling a delicate role. For the truth is, contrary to the facile conclusion by some that he helps Helena out of the sheer goodness of his heart, Chandra does not console her out of sympathy. He sees her emotional breakdown as a golden opportunity to gain her confidence, which is his real goal.
In their third scene together, when she is bitterly remarking Koyi bharose ke laayak nahin hai!, Chandragupta, with admirable presence of mind, seizes the opportunity thus offered him by the forelock, with a low key but rock solid assurance of loyalty.
Kintu main hoon. Yadi aap chahein to aap mujhe apna vishwas paatra samajh sakti hain..Main kabhi aapko dhoka nahin doonga..Maine aapka namak khaya hai, uska rin sada mere sar par rahega..
Here, when he says that he will never betray her, Chandragupta is lying, for that is precisely what he is going to do once he has learnt all that there is to learn about the Unani yuddha shaili. But he is lying in a greater cause, and as Lord Krishna says in the Gita, such a lie is better than a hundred truths.
In this situation, where gaining Helena's total confidence is the key to the success of his guru's plans, Chandragupta cannot afford the luxury of narrow-minded moralizing. I was very glad to see what he was doing and why, and delighted when he pulls it off perfectly.
In fact, he plays Helena like a violin - a Stradivarius for choice!- right thru.👏
Padmanand: Love without limits: No other term would be adequate to describe what the ruthless Maha Padmanand feels for mera hriday, mera jeevan, mera sammaan, his beloved Nandini. This has been dinned into the viewers from the moment of her birth, but nowhere has this obsessive, all encompassing love been more tellingly depicted than in these episodes.
And it is Arpit Ranka's magisterial performance in his scenes with Nandini here that makes us forget, if only for a brief while, the ugly truth of what Padmanand really is - a heartless, evil tyrant who knows nothing but what he wants, and seizes it without the least qualms of conscience, which is in any case an appendage he is not burdened with.
Instead, we see him only as a father who loves his daughter more than he loves himself. A father who has been made vulnerable by this very love, and the fear that he might not be able to ensure the best possible life for the apple of his eye. A father who does not hesitate, when he realises that his daughter does not want the bridegroom he has chosen for her, to bear the humiliation of having to bend before a weaker man, and break his word to that man by cancelling the marriage decision. A father who openly threatens his would be son in law with total destruction should his daughter be unhappy in this marriage. A father who demands the assurance from his jamaata that he would love Nandini more than her father loves her.
This is, in itself, a huge triumph, and for the actor more than for the CVs.
Despite his rough and tough features, Arpit manages to project such melting tenderness, such anguished protectiveness, such overwhelming and unquestioning love for this daughter of his that I for one could no longer recall the Padmanand who cut a defaulting taxpayer's throat with his own ustari. Oh, not for long, and the evil Magadha Samrat will be back soon enough when Nandini cannot see him, but for now, the impassioned, all encompassing affection of the father carries all before it. Bravo!!👏
Malayaketu: Insane ambition: Malayaketu is a far less complex character than Padmanand, being almost two dimensional, like a cardboard cut out. Nor is the actor playing him such as to be able to go beyond the script and invest his role with shades that the CVs might not have envisaged. So we have a standard issue, cheating philanderer, a brutish thug who slanders and manhandles a woman when she becomes a nuisance.
But more interesting is Malayaketu the opportunist, looking to gain power through the back door. Either by seducing power, as with Helena, whom he sees as a conduit to his securing Alexander's help to conquer Magadha, or by marrying into power, as with Nandini.
The most fascinating part of what one could call his vision is that he too, like Chanakya and Chandragupta, seeks to drive Alexander and his forces out of Bharatvarsha. Of course what he plans to do with this newly liberated Bharatbhoomi is different from what they want. He would enslave Bharatmaata all over again, and end up as a worse version of Padmanand.
What escapes me, in all of Malayaketu's drunken babblings about Nand ka Magadh aur Nand ki beti donon meri mutthi mein honge!, was how, given that Nandini is not an only child of her father, but has not one, not two, but fully nine brothers, who would be Padmanand's natural successors on the throne of Magadha, the Yuvaraj of Parvatak hopes to gain control of Magadha for himself. If he imagines that despite Padmanand's overt threat, and his follow up line, Meri baat ko halke se mat lena!, he can ill-treat Nandini and thus blackmail her father into submission, he needs to have his head examined!
It make no sense at all, whence the title of this section.
Helena: A woman scorned: I must confess that I was disappointed in the way Helena behaved, both during the stormy encounter with Malayaketu and afterwards.
I would have expected such a headstrong - for she has been pampered too, both by Alexander and by her father - proud woman like her to react with icy but dignified, private rage, and plans for revenge. I would not have expected her to behave like a fishwife, and end up being physically, verbally and emotionally abused by Malayaketu. What she did is precisely what always makes me angry with such women who, facing deception in love, first react like a vengeful fury, and when that does not work, collapse in tears.
But I must also add that Helena was surprisingly convincing, and she managed the last segment with Chandragupta very well, with seething rage twisting her features as she vows revenge.
Helena is luckier than most such women, in that she has Chandragupta, aka Dushyant, to help her pick up the pieces of her shattered self-esteem and regain a measure of at least outward composure. But her innate tendency to depend on another for succour, and to believe in his assurances - whether those of Malayaketu earlier or of Dushyant now - will persist. She will now switch all her faith from her deceitful lover to this new, unassuming, undemanding tower of strength, and she will use her influence to promote him in Alexander's army as much as she can. Chandragupta ki to chandi lag jaayegi!
It does seem unfair that Helena is now vowing revenge not just against Malayaketu but also against Nandini, who is not in the least at fault in the whole matter. If Helena had told her whom she was going to meet, Nandini would have insisted on turning the marriage proposal down bluntly, even if she could not have told her father the truth about Helena. But then, as President John F. Kennedy once said, Who says that life is fair?
Pot pourri:
-You might be surprised at this, but I enjoyed the kissa paanwale bhooth ka. Especially because of the despairing look on Chandragupta's face as disaster strikes out of the blue and, as he believes, his whole masquerade has been exposed because of a shining plate that is as good as a metal mirror😉. Tun Tun Bhabhi was also priceless.
- I was, as I wrote in my last post, highly irritated by the use of Urdu words in a 4th century BC tale, but now I have located the source of most of them: Helena. Of the rest of the characters, the only anachronistic word I can remember them using is shaadi instead of vivah. But these days, they are saying jaldi even in Siya ke Ram!
As for Helena, she speaks almost pure Urdu, which is of course derived from Persian. So, If one can presume so much of logic on the part of the CVs , they could attribute the kind of language she uses to the years she must have spent in Persia before Alexander began moving on towards India.
-Why on earth does Dushyant, a servitor of the Macedonian commander, go about with assorted trays of drinks, paan etc. serving the visiting potentates, and constantly exposing himself the risk of being recognized? It is for the servants of the host, Raja Parvatak, to render these kinds of services, not for the servitor of an honoured guest. It is bizarre.
-It remains to be seen what would be the precise, practical significance of Padmanand taking off his suraksha kavach, that had changed his fortunes, and fastening it on Nandini's wrist. These soapy scripts being what they are, it has to mean that Padmanand has now made himself vulnerable. Let us see.
OK, folks, I am tired out, and by the time you have waded thru this posts, so will you be! Please do not forget to hit the Like button if you think that is warranted.
See you on Wednesday.
Shyamala/Aunty/Akka/Di
