Originally posted by: sashashyam
Never mind, my dear Devki. These kinds of controversies are bound to arise as these are great historical characters about whom folks have strong feelings, and this irrespective of the fact that what is being discussed is not history but only the screenplay here. Part of this was also because you were equating Chanakya and Helena and tarring them with the same brush, which is simply not tenable.
I do not come to any threads other than my own here, mainly because my rheumatic fingers will not stand for the kind of extended discussions you and I used to have in the old days😉. Shailaja had flagged her post on this thread for me and so here I am.But if you will listen to me patiently, may I add my tuppence, using up part of my typing quota for the day?😉
Neki aur pooch pooch? And that is exactly why I said that it was a privilege. I know that you are in a lot of pain but you still took the effort to write here.
Taking the screenplay as it is, I think that if the 7 sons had fought on the battlefield, Chandra would have killed them there one by one, as Bhima does with the sons of Dhritharashtra. There is the same bloodlust in him as there was in Bhima, and that is emphasised on the first day of the battle. But they run away, and he cannot, out of political considerations, let them live and, say, imprison them because they are not as guilty as Nand. It is what they call raison d'etat.
I completely understand the need to kill all of them. Not opposed to that at all. the only thing for me was killing someone's children right in front of the parent. For me, no crime befits that punishment. I know these are brutal times we are speaking of and worse things have been done. I don't know if you have watched the "Tudors". That show is pretty graphic in showing all this. Do watch it if you have not already.
The historical Chanakya would have done exactly the same. He did many more things which you would have rated even worse in the interests of the Mauryan empire and his Akhanda Bharat. It was necessary, it served the greater good, and he did not do anything for his personal gain.
That is true.
What he would not have done is to leave Padmanand half dead to be rescued and revived by the Star Trekkie Rakshas ( this Amatya Rakshas is an insult to that great historical character whom even Chanakya respected so much that he made Katyayan , his real name, the Emperor Chandragupta's Prime Minister, while he himself went off to compile the Arthashastra). Or have lost track of Dhananand altogether. These two bloopers quite took my breath away.
At this point, for all that Chanakya gets the 7 Nandputra rounded up there for him, the fact is that Chandra kills them gleefully. His personal hatred is so great that only destroying them like that, in front of Nand, will assuage it.
The Greeks would have understood it. I understand it perfectly too. For what Nand has done to his family, especially keeping Mura chained like a dog for 20 years, whipping her and tormenting her, this punishment is nothing. The historical Chandragupta had, as far as one knows, no such personal hatred towards the Nands, but he did the same for purely political reasons.
I would not brand the way in which he killed them sadistic. Sadistic would have been if he had tied them to poles and set fire to them, or had them flayed alive, as they used to do till the times of the Tudors in 16th century England, or had them buried up to the neck and had their heads crushed under the feet of an elephant (but the Balaji budget would never have run to elephants in any case, so that was out!😆)
Or base either . It is an execution, and how else could 7 of them have been disposed off speedily? (I hope none of them has survived and walked off. Seeing the way this Chanakya operates, anything is possible😉).
But the same collective hatred does not operate in the same Chandra when it comes to that mentally challenged Nandputra. I think that was very well shown. That is the basic difference between a Chandra and a Nand.
Absolutely. I wouldn't have expected anything less from him.
Chanakya does what he does both for personal reasons and because of his love for his mathrubhoomi, but the former too is linked to the latter. The insult that rankles in his psyche for so long is tied to his love for his motherland, and the two elements are fused into one. He was one of the greatest strategic thinkers the world has ever seen and one of our greatest visionary patriots, so how can he be even thought of as vicious? But as Chairman Mao used to say, you cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs, and the 7 sons were the eggs, for now,that is.
I think you got carried away in the extent to which you were condemning him, and also in equating him with Helena. The two are totally different in their motivations, and also in the fact that Chanakya's moves are never only for satisfying his ego. After his pran has been fulfilled, the ego angle has been subsumed into purely strategic and tactical considerations.
Come to think about it I do think I got carried away to a certain extent. And maybe you have hit the right spot as to why this post might've upset some.
Not that I do not find Helena fascinating . I do, for she is in the Greek tradition of fierce, driven, terrible women, like Medea or Clytemnestra. But one cannot place her in the same slot as Chanakya, no way, for all that, as I wrote in my latest post, he is a terrible old man himself.
As for Chandra's implicit obedience towards him, I can do no better than to refer you to my Extended finale post, which I think you have not yet seen. There is a section there that explains this. Do take a look at it.
I started to read it but have to finish it and will comment soon. Your posts need by 100% attention.😊As for Nandini, my disappointment in Shweta's monochromatic performance thus far is directly proportional to the expectations I had of her as a National Award winner, even if of over a decade ago and as a child artist. She has been saddled with a poorly written character, but even so, she has brought nothing special to it till now. And the tirades she indulged in against poor Mura and then against Chandra in the battlefield were awful, and made me detest her, something that I had not done till then.
I would have forgiven her even that if she had only shown some spunk when she was imprisoned, instead of collapsing like a punctured balloon after just one night there, wailing and falling at Chandra's feet. Contrast that with Mura's steely resilience. I was so shocked and dismayed that I did not know what to make of this warrior princess.
Nandini right now is a character of little interest to me. She is pampered, she is spoiled, self centered. She was downright nasty in her interaction with Moora. The groveling at Chandra's feet was done by a very scared young girl who has just seen her fathers and brothers killed. She has been isolated from the rest of her relatives and probably does not know what kind of torture is in store for her. But she should've shown a little more grit instead of prostrating herself at his feet.😕
You right about Shweta. Especially her voice when screaming is close to unbearable. She definitely needs some "screaming" lessons to begin with.
But never mind, I think Mura is, to my considerable dismay, going to go one up on Hamida Bano, who had never been chained to a pillar for 20 years. 😉She will have Vaishali and Dhurdhara as her accompanists in empathising with Nandini. Chandragupta seems to have been liberated overnight from his aseem ghrina against this girl, and is already moved to telepathic, empathetic agony by the sounds of Nandini's vedana. He has also begun weeping , and Dhurdhara will soon need the largest brass pot in the palace for storing his ashru. 😆
All this is good news, for I see my liberation from this show beckoning all too soon!😉 My fingers will surely rejoice!
No Aunty, don't say that. I am sure the show will get more interesting. I have hope.
There, I have tried your patience long enough, and I shall now go off and get myself an ayurvedic oil massage for my fingers. Take care, my dear.
You too Aunty. 
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