Prologue
As he recounts to the anxious Chanakya and Helena what it was that he had learnt in Pataliputra about kaun hoon main, mera astitva kya hai, Chandragupta's face quivers and trembles , shaking with raw emotion.When he comes to the murder of his father by naapit Nand, and the imprisonment of his mother for so many years, his lips are drawn back in a snarl, his voice thickens, his teeth are clenched in barely suppressed fury.
Main wahan gaya tha ki kis tarah apne shatru ko parajit kia jai, kintu ab main taan ke aaya hoon ki main Nand vansh ka vinash karoonga! His head moves in savage, staccato gestures and rage hoarsens his voice even further.
Sach to yeh hai, Acharya, ki is baar, chahe paristithi kuch bhi ho, is baar yeh yudh main hi jeetoonga! Kyonki mera janma hi Nand vansh ke vinaash ke liye hua hai!.. Chandragupta's eyes are fixed in a fanatic glare, and he looks up, as if to seek divine endorsement for his pronouncement...
After he hears Nand's challenge, he continues: To yeh yudh lada jaayega, ek baar nahin, do baar nahin, sau baar yudh lada jaayega..Tab tak yudh lada jaayega jab tak main Nand vansh ka vinaash nahin kar sakta!
In unprecedented defiance, and his first ever negation of his guru's warning - which at this point is not to get swept away on the tide of his pain and his emotions, which might sweep away his victory - Chandragupta retorts: To baadh aa jaane dijiye, Acharya! Kyonki yeh baadh poore Magadh ko baha le jaayegi! His eyes are set in a near demented glare.
Is baar meri durbalta meri shakti banegi! Is baar mere aansoo mere pita ki lahoo kar smaran karayenge, is baar meri peedha wo peedha banegi jo meri maa ne varshon se saha hai! Aapne sikhaya tha na, ki maathrubhoomi ke prem se badhkar kuch bhi nahin hai? Kintu is baar yadi main ladoonga to apni maa ke aatmasammaan, uski nishta, uski swatantrata ke liye !
Is baar main yudh ladoonga aur jeetoonga, kyonki is baar yudh ladega CHANDRAGUPTA MAURYA!!
The handsome, square face now looks thin and peaked, like that of an eager bloodhound out for the chase and the kill. It also reflects - in the over bright eyes and the almost feline look in them, in the almost wolfish smile that twists his lips - the pride of birth, the exultation in his royal lineage, that now surges thru Chandragupta's whole being.
_______________________________________________________________
Folks,
The above scene was, for me, the essence and the summation of this whole triptych, as also the reason for the title. For the Bible says "Vengeance is mine, I will repay it, saith the Lord". However, Chandragupta is not willing to wait for divine retribution to catch up with Nand. Instead, having now become - once he has learnt the full truth about his birth and the fate of his parents - a force of nature, as Mishti (mishtidoi) put it, he is out to accomplish the task - Nand vansh ka vinaash, as he states repeatedly with a kind of savage glee - on his own. In effect, to make himself the instrument of divine justice.
Tour de force: It was also a very difficult scene for an actor, given the unrelentingly high pitch of fury and emotion that had to be maintained from start to finish, and this without letting it slip into OTT melodrama. It is greatly to Rajat's credit that he pulled it off flawlessly.
His voice rises and falls. It trembles on the edge of tears, but he does not weep, for his tears have been dried in the heat of his rage. It becomes hoarse and almost suspended at times, as his features are contorted by extreme emotion. But in the end, his voice, his eyes, his face, all come together in a triumphant affirmation of why his success is predestined, and who he is, Chandragupta Maurya!!!
This extended scene could not have been done in bits and pieces, for then the emotional pitch could not have been maintained. So such a long take, that too after the rehearsals, must have been very stressful for him. But it was all worth it in the end, and Rajat should be rightly proud, very proud of his performance. 👏👏👏
Chanakya and Helena provided perfect foils for the volcanic Chandragupta.
The latter's eyes glaze over with unshed tears, and her whole face melts in empathy as Chandragupta talks of the terrible fate that befell his parents, especially his mother. This is so especially when he curses his lack of courage to face his mother and confess that he had failed twice to defeat uska aparadhi and secure justice for her.
Even Chanakya's voice, normally peremptory and almost harsh, is for once softened by worry and concern for his shishya, and his eyes betray his deep empathy for what his boy is going thru.
Splendid catharsis: A little earlier, when Chandragupta is seeking, through extreme physical stress, to exorcise the demons of guilt and grief that haunt him after seeing the condition of his mother, the whole, splendid display of unbridled masculine oomph - that too shot with loving attention to the best angles😉😉 - was manna from heaven for the legions of Rajat's young and not so young admirers!
As it came right at the end of Episode 27, I am sure most of them must have gone to bed and dreamed of him, without having to look for retelecasts! 😉However, since more than 36 hours have passed since then, I can harbour reasonable hopes that all of them would be sufficiently restored to normalcy to be able to pay attention to this post. Those who are still in a daze, I am herewith e-shaking them Bas, bahut ho gaya! Chalo, utho!!😆
Amidst this terrible outpouring of helpless misery that was wracking him, it was heartwarming to see the two who care the most for him right now, Chanakya and Helena, rush to the side of a visibly broken Chandra and help him carefully back to the tent, wrapped up in Helena's shawl, which she instantly whips off and puts around him in a quick, protective gesture.
This snippet summed up their joint standing in Chandra's life, the unfailing source of moral and physical support for him whenever he is in need of it.
The warning from Nemesis: Nemesis has not quite caught up with Nand and his family as yet, but in Episode 27, she delivered a savage warning to Nandini thru Chandragupta. Not that it had the slightest effect on the benighted girl, but I suppose the goddess had to fulfil divine regulations and issue this mandatory last verbal notice!
Chandragupta knew the location of Nandini's room from his last reconnaissance of the palace, and it seems that Amatya Rakshas had not bothered to shift her, as he had insisted on doing with Padmanand. In the event, having beaten her easily in the dash she makes for her sword (kept too far away to be of any use in a real emergency!), and locked her into a vice-like grip from behind, he lets her have it with both barrels, so to speak.
When he recounts the enmity between their two families since before he was even born, adding tum nahin jaanti ho, he gives her the benefit of the doubt (though a little earlier, he blames her for the arrest of his foster parents. Wrongly, but how would he know that? He would assume that she had been playing the same role that she had played during the swayamwar.)
When he moves on to the murder of his father by hers, and the imprisonment and the sufferings inflicted on his mother - about which, he notes, mujhe abhi gyat hua hai - there is no reaction but wide-eyed anger on Nandini's face. Not even a hint of perplexity at these unexpected revelations or, as she would see it, claims. Not that I expected anything else of either the character or the actress.
Even when he announces, with pride bubbling over in his voice: Main koyi bahuroopiya nahin hoon! Main Surygupta Maurya ki santaan, Mura ka beta, Chandragupta Maurya hoon! - Nandini's eyes merely widen a bit more. I suppose she had just about reached the end of her repertoire of expressions.😉
His conditions for the absence of hostilities are such as to invite an instant rejection, and he must have known that. He is, like Nemesis, merely going thru the motions, and is in fact straining at the bit to get at once to the punishment part.
When he does that, every line is dripping in venom and savage hatred for her father and now, by extension, for her as well. It is as if telling her about what he has in store for her provides a kind of instant satisfaction, of catharsis, for him.
Jeevan bhar pitaheen rahogi.. Ek bhi kalayi nahin bachegi jis par tum sutra baand sako..Vachan deta hoon main, ki tumhare pita ke apradh ka dand tumhein bhi milega.. Tumhara dand hoga ki tum swayam, apni aankhon se, apne pita, apne bhaiyon ka vadh hote dekhogi..
When she manages to break free and retorts that he will not be able to touch her father, Chandragupta's mirthless smile is terrifying. He calls her a moorkh for not realizing the truth about her father, noting that she would realise it some day.
What he then adds is far more menacing, though Nandini is unlikely to realise that at this point. Ab tak meri shatruta tumhare pita se thi, par ab tum bhi apne pita ke apradh mein bhagi ban gayi ho. She will thus have to pay for her father's sins, for every tear his mother has shed, for every whiplash she has suffered. Follows a series of lurid threats about her father being forced to beg for his life, and the unyielding vachan: Main uske pran tumhari aankhon ke saamne loonga!
Rajat can do these kinds of scenes in his sleep, and he is entirely competent here. It was from Shweta that I expected something special - not just glares of anger, but a dawning puzzlement amidst the anger, and at least close attention to what he says about his family history which has just then been revealed to him. This was the least that one would expect from an intelligent, enquiring mind.
But there was not the slightest trace of any of this. In fact, when her father rushes in, Nandini only mentions that Chandra is us Mura ka beta, completely leaving out his father's name and his lineage. It seems to have barely registered with her.
The essence of royalty: I was fascinated by the sharp difference between the reactions of Chandra's foster mother and Mura to the idea of his coming there to rescue them.
The former, being a commoner, that too one from a very low social level, is merely afraid for his life, and prays that he should not come there at all. But Mura is a queen, and for her, the concept of the duties of a royal is paramount. And for her son, this would mean, above all, taking revenge on Nand for all the crimes he had committed againts the Piplivan royal family and the citizens of that kingdom.
Whence her tireless refrain: Wo aayega! Avashya aayega! Apni maa ke apmaan aur apne pita ki hatya ka pratishodh lene aayega wo! Nand ka ant karne aayega! Yeh uski niyati hai, use aana hoga! Then the vachan a la Draupadi: Jis din wo Nand ka vadh karega, us din main apne pair ki bediyaan nikaloongi. Us se pehle use apna putra kehkar gale nahin lagaaongi!
Chandra, listening to his long lost mother from below, his whole being taut with the anticipation of being with her at last, stops in his tracks and then, slowly, retreats. When he stops in the palace corridor a little later, and laughs silently, the welling bitterness in that laughter sears the screen.
Mura's unwavering courage in the face of the direst threats from Nand has been repeatedly on display in the past. But this time, she outdid herself, facing down - with cool disdain, and a litany of all his recent failures against Chandra - his assertion that her son would meet the same fate as her husband. To cap it all, she noted that once he had been killed by Chandra, there would be no one to perform his last rites (as his sons would all have been killed before him). So she takes it upon herself to chant the appropriate mantras and complete the last rites for him in advance.
I was struck by the look in Mura's eyes as she completes the recital. Thus might the Pythia, the Oracle of Delphi in ancient Greece, have looked at a petitioner for whom she had announced a particularly dire fate.👏
Her father's daughter: It has often been noted here that Nandini, because of her low social origins on her father's side, is found lacking in the kind of behaviour expected of royalty. Last night, she proved this in spades, as she suddenly landed up on Mura, and proceeded, for no visible reason, to taunt her about, as she asserted again and again, the impending death of her son in the next battle.
Is ranbhoomi mein uski bali chadegi! Her voice rising another notch, and pushing her face even closer to Mura's, Uski bali chadegi!! She is practically snarling the words out, her lips drawn back from her teeth in rage.
Now Nandini has never been a favorite of mine. But that was because she seemed to be a silly girl for the most part, devoid of any impressive qualities, and exasperating in her behaviour towards her pitamaharaj and her whole environment, which, as I have noted before, bears a closed resemblance to Gandhiji's Three Monkeys all rolled into one. In all else, I took her to be a pleasant, kind-hearted and good-natured young woman, standard issue, conventional heroine material. I never suspected her of being nasty or even overtly negative.
After watching her with Mura last night, my assessment of her was drastically altered for the worse. Nandini blackened her character comprehensively in that ugly, unnecessary scene.
It does not occur to her - especially after listening to what Chandra had told her a little earlier - to question herself, if not her father, as to why this poor, tormented, helpless woman has been kept chained like a dog on a leash for years on end, not to speak of having any pity for her. Instead, she goes and taunts her, with shocking and vengeful malice, about her son being made a bali.
I hated Nandini last night. It will now be tough even for those hitherto well disposed towards her to explain how their kind, gentle, compassionate Nandini could behave in such a vicious, crude manner towards a hapless prisoner in chains.
If I was Chandra, I would have chained Nandini up in the same spot in the same way, and made Nand watch that before decapitating him in front of her.
It sounds harsh, but that is how I feel after watching her in action last night. She will need to go thru hellfire to redeem herself. - doing not mere pashchataap, but severe prayaschit. And when Mura becomes the Queen Mother, she will never forget, or forgive, Nandini for what she did last night.
One correction. I was wrong when I said, after watching this scene, that Nandini is her father's daughter. She is her mother's as well. Remember Avantika, immediately after Mura has been captured and jailed by Padmanand after she rebuffs him, going to Mura and indulging in the same kind of spiteful, vicious taunts as Nandini did last night? Avantika too spoke of the 39 newborns Nand had had killed, like Kamsa, and gloated that Mura's son too must have been among them. So like mother, like daughter as well.
What horrible genes the poor girl has inherited!
Another point. Whereas Nandini could do nothing more than snarl at Mura with her eyes at the widest possible - this being her all purpose solution to the varied demands on her in a single scene !- the closing shots of Mura's face and eyes were a treat for the viewer, a class act in emoting. Amusement crept slowly across her visage like an incoming tide, as her eyes lit up with secret gladness.
As she tells Nandini, with total, rock-like conviction and utter calm: Tu ja keh de apne pita se, uske paap ka ghadabhar chuka hai. Is bar uske poore parivaar ka vinaash tai hai! , the faraway look in her eyes is like that of a seer who can see into the future, and what she sees is justice being done at last.
In short, Papiya Sengupta acts her young colleague clean off the screen!👏
Light relief: Durdhara-Chandra 1: This was pure fun and games, after the heavy duty scene in the prologue. I loved the brisk, clever Durdhara here, especially during and after her coaching session with Chandra. Sar ooncha, swar mein tez, aankhon mein vishwas, aur seena chaudi karke baat karna!
He too was delightful in his unusual light-heartedness, especially when he listens to her instructions with mock seriousness, and pays obeisance to his guruma at the end.
This scene reaffirmed a cardinal point: that Durdhara is the only person with whom Chandra can be, even if only for a brief while, free of care and relaxed.
Not so light relief: Durdhara-Chandra 2: What I loved here was the sense of honour, and the affection towards his mitra, that keeps Chandragupta, no matter how pressing his needs of the moment, from agreeing to a marriage of convenience with her that would at one go negate all her hopes for a caring, accommodating husband.
That he comes round in the end is to solely to oblige her, and protect her from being pushed into a disastrous marriage to a much older, and twice married nagarseth, notorious for following Manu's maxim that wives, like drums, benefit from beatings. 😡
The promise that she gives never to demand any rights as a wife from him, and his own solemn warning to her Ab jo tune kaha, use jeevan bhar smaran rakhna! A finger wagging at her to emphasise this point, Aur mujhse bhi ek pati banne ki aastha mat rakhna! , come jointly under the category of "Famous last words"! 😆
Intriguing possibility: I am not very sure about Durdhara here, or about her tale of the deplorable bridegroom her father has allegedly chosen for her. What possible financial benefit can her father secure from this kind of marriage? This is not Africa, where an aging tribal chief might be ready to pay a much larger bride price than usual for a young third or fourth wife. In India, a wedding is always expensive for the girl's father.
How do we know she is telling the truth about that unpleasant groom ? I found that spiel of hers odd and difficult to believe. It might just as well be an astute lie - made up on the spur of the moment once she saw the chance of getting Chandra opening up in front of her - meant to force Chandra's hand and get him to agree to marry her.
I should add that if this was indeed the case, I would not blame Durdhara for her little trick. A girl has to look after herself! 😉 It would in fact make her more interesting as a character.
The lost hriday: Oh, I almost forgot! The hriday that, Chandra now insists, he does not have, because he extracted it from his chest cavity and crushed it under his heel. That implies two things.
One, that there was a 4th century BC successor of Sushruta ( the first known surgeon in ancient India,who is placed around 600 BC) around in Patalgram who performed this extraction for our hero.😆
And two, since the aforesaid cardiac apparatus has been destroyed, there will be nothing for our heroine No.1, Nandini, to discover in due course. She will have to manufacture it from scratch!😉
Durdhara-Chandra-Helena: Chandra is fast developing a comfortable equation with his wife. Witness the way in which he takes her to meet his childhood friend, Durdhara, and announces, with placid amusement,that he has married her!
Helena does look curious, though not inquisitorial, and why not? She knows nothing of Chandra's past, especially about any women in his life. Now, she may not be emotionally involved with him, but she is his wife and a degree of possessiveness goes with that position. Of course she will try and assess Chandra's chummy relationship with this new girl.
It is to her credit that when Durdhara falls on Chandra's neck - which was rather odd in that era, even if they had been childhood friends - Helena does not frown. She merely looks a little startled, as well she might!
Later, at the Chandragupta-Durdhara marriage, Helena is shown standing there and showering flowers on the couple. Her face is still and unreadable. It is not to be expected that she would like this sudden addition to their menage. But she is above all a pragmatist, and she must have realized that this was unavoidable for purely practical reasons.
This said, given that Chandra and Durdhara will get on very easily and light-heartedly with each other, as they have always done, Helena might start feeling left out. It remains to be seen how Chandragupta handles this, or indeed if he understands this at all.
Chanakya: Less than impressive: Our generally infallible Acharya was not in top form in these episodes.
For one thing, I was dismayed when he confessed that he had noted the morpankh chinna, the sign of the Mauryan royal family, on young Chandra's arm, but had done nothing at all to investigate the matter. It was a major faux pas on the part of such a master of intrigue.
Next, while he has always been stressing the need for a final, decisive victory over Magadha, one would have expected him to have identified all the roadblocks to such a campaign well in advance. But he seems to be unearthing problems one after another just after Chandragupta has announced his irrevocable decision to wage war against Padmanand and destroy him and his whole race.
One, he says the Magadha army is very large and they do not have the numbers to stand against them But what then about the last two times? What has changed so badly for the worse since then? In fact the Nands seem to feel the same about Chandra's army, and surely Chanakya's spies should have been able to pick that up?
Well, this objection is met when Helena announces that the Macedonian contingent would be arriving the same night.
So next Chanakya brings up the question of funds. Was this too something he has just realized? Why did he not mention this earlier, before he sent Chandra off to spy in Pataliputra as if finding out Nand's key weak point was the key to victory for them?
In short, our guruvar here resembles nothing so much as a brood hen laying eggs one after the other.😆 No wonder that Chandra reacts with some exasperation, and responds to Chanakya's last gripe with ab prashna ka samadhaan bhi aap hi batayiye!
Bizarre expedition: Then again, WHAT is Chandra expected to discover during that very risky venture into Pataliputra on which Chanakya sends him, over-ruling his strong and logical protests? That Nandini is the apple of her father's eye, the one he loves more than himself? He could have guessed that during his last outing, when he kidnapped her, for if this was not so, he could never have got away because he had her as a hostage.
OK, let us suppose that he is still not sure of this. What then? How is a priest expected to discover whom the king loves the most by sitting in the pooja sthal - and the ceremony is clearly one of the preliminaries to the marriage, not the main marriage ceremony itself? How far can he wander around the palace, and what will he do there anyway?
This is all total flummery, and the way in which it develops from here on is bizarre. A pooja is in progress for the var-vadhu, and a couple of prisoners are dragged into the pooja sthal, interrupting the ceremony, and Padmanand promptly abandons the pooja meant for the Devi to bless his darling daughter to take on the role of the Grand Inquisitor? What happened to the ceremony thereafter is left in a limbo.
Why not wait till the pooja was over? And what was the tearing hurry to interrogate that duo right there and then, in front of the whole assemblage?
It makes no sense at all, but then it has only one purpose, as I had noted on my last thread ( one of the exceedingly few occasions when I got a plot prediction right!) for Chandra to learn the truth about his parentage. Partly right there, in the negative sense - which is why the prisoners have to be dragged in while the priest is there - plus he then knows where to go to try and dig out the rest. To the prison, to try and interrogate them, but then he finds all the missing pieces at one go. That is it!
Just as Tun Tun bhabhi's stumbling had only one purpose, for the holy water to fall not on Malayaketu's hand but on Chandra's. To wit, khoon bhari maang part 2.
But Chanakya was not in the know of any of this. So the fact remains that his decision to send his ace of trumps into the lion's den, to very little visible purpose, was dangerous and foolish, to put it mildly. As I had noted once before, Chanakya is not infallible. He is merely far wiser than the rest of mankind.
OK, folks, this is it for now, and about time too ! Please do not forget to hit the Like button if you think that is warranted.
See you over the coming weekend. I devoutly hope that this battle is a victory for Chandra. I for one cannot stand any more gut-wrenching scenes of him crushed and heartbroken.
Shyamala/Aunty/Akka/Di
PS: Both the photos of Chandra working out are courtesy my dear young friend Anjali. The choice is obviously hers, and for entirely obvious reasons!😆 Well, young people will be young people,but I needed a few more photos. So I have taken the liberty of borrowing them from Mahesh (maheshbedant) whose comprehensive written updates are a labour of love. I hope he will not mind that I have not taken his prior permission.
Cricket
Kumkum Bhagya
Tum Se Tum Tak
Sampoorna
