Folks,
I am back again after a gap of a fortnight, largely for reasons of health, but also because this last week left me feeling drained and depressed by the onscreen goings on. Whence the title of this post, mrigtrishna, or a mirage.
That is exactly what it felt like to me at least, to have all this junk dumped on me after the high expectations stirred up by an unexpectedly charming interlude at the Takshashila ashram , followed by two incredibly beautiful scenes between our lead pair, of a quality rarely seen on TV. Well, quality is probably not what makes for high TRPs, and show business runs on TRPs. I can understand that. But this logical explanation for the sudden degradation of the script did not make things any more bearable for me.
When one sits down to a meal, there is always a debate as to which to eat first, what one likes the best, or what one likes the least, to get that over and done with before moving on one's favourites. I choose the former, for unpalatable fare spoils the taste of even the most delicious offerings that follow. So let us begin with Episodes 61-63, in fact till the beginning of Episode 64, to see what it was that was so refreshing all thru, and enchanting in parts, that contributed so much to my bitter disappointment when it turned out to be a mrigtrishna after all.
Part 1: Promise abounding
Episodes 61-62
DDLJ rebooted: This was pure joy, especially Rajat's Chandra in an extended leg pulling spree that has him mouthing such side-splitting lines as Mujhe to kehte hue bhi lajja aa rahi hai!...Aise baath mat karo nahin to main kisi ko muh dikhane yogya nahin rahoonga! He went to town in style, with perfect comic timing that had me laughing non stop. It was equally delightful to see the way his teasing comes to an abrupt halt and his face melts in sudden regret when Nandini starts weeping. Or the comic half smile that twists his mouth as she storms off in the end.
New found camaraderie: A very important point for this show is that Chandra and Nandini now make a strikingly handsome pair.Plus they are by now completely at ease with each other, and she has developed an instinctive dependence on his presence as something to which she can hold on no matter how sticky the situation might be.
Thus, at several points during the final round of the exam and the award ceremony, Nandini turns back repeatedly towards Chandra seeking support, reassurance, and appreciation, which he provides unfailingly.
She does that just after Jayant's name is announced as the third selected candidate, and she moves to take her place between the other two. Chandra lifts his hand in the abhaya mudra, as if to bless her and assure her not to worry, that she will pull it off. Again after she is declared the winner, she looks across at him, exactly like a child coming first in class and looking to the parent for his reaction, and smiles broadly when he nods in silent approbation.
There was also a very subtle shift in Chandra's expression when Jayant is declared the winner by Chanakya. His mouth relaxes very, very slightly in a trace of a smile, and the eyes reflect the same feeling. It was fascinating.
I am not going into the other happenings at the award ceremony, where the only noteworthy points were Chandra's abundant pride in Nandini's excellent showing, and the way in which her face lights up when he argues eloquently against the ban on women being educated at Takshashila, with the reference to Maa Saraswathi being the clincher. It is clear that his strong defence of equality for women in general, and for her in particular, in educational matters is the point that weighs the most with her when she begins to reassess her attitude towards Chandra.
Then there is the lovely little snippet where he offers Nandini his hands as a stirrup to help her get on to the horse. It was a very unusual, yet not at all a lover-like gesture, more one of a friend to another. I loved the way in which she looks at his linked hands very seriously, then places her hand in his and guides his hand to the neck of the horse, so that he can help her get on to its back. Chandra is clearly taken aback, but his expression is hard to read. I never expected such an imaginative bit to pop up out of the blue!š
Finally, I loved Nandini's extended internal debate about the ethics of her supporting her pita maharaj's ambush scheme. It is not clouded by any romantic sentiment, but it is dispassionate, fair towards Chandra,and is finally decided on the basis of her personal code of honour as a yoddha. That her own rather amateurish attempts to kill him earlier were all underhand is something else altogether! As Shreya had pointed out, Nandini was here most likely trying to rationalize her going against her father and saving Chandra.
Incidentally, she fights well, with strong, horizontal slashing strokes.
The real purpose of this sequence, apart from inaugurating a series of failed attempts by Malayaketu to assassinate Chandragupta, was of course to make Nandini realise that regardless of her determination to secure pratishodh for the killings of her brothers, when push comes to shove, she does not really want Chandra to die.
Episode 63
After I had digested Chandra's being shot (pun intended!) upwards in a gravity defying manner that would have sent Isaac Newton scurrying back to re-research his law of gravity, š I focussed on the way in which Nandini set about trying to save him.
She does it very competently, both in terms of the scripting, and that of her performance, which reflects the panic that is now gripping her when she spots the kalakoot vish, but also her ability to think clearly even when in a very tight corner. Their horses had presumably been stolen by Malayaketu's bandits who survived and made good their escape, but her luck holds and she finds a timely bullock cart. All thru the ride, she keeps her head, trying to prevent Chandra from slipping into a coma, and applying a tourniquet from a torn strip of her dupatta to block the spread of the poison. She is clearly a very courageous, reliable and resourceful helpmate when the going gets rough.
In her constant calls to him to try and get him to recover consciousness, Chandra! Chandra!, as his head lolls in her lap, one can feel her desperate determination to make sure that no matter what, he does not succumb. What a 180 degrees change this is from what she wanted just days earlier!
The rest of the episode is nice and smooth and predictable, including the inexplicable way in which Nandini, instead of insisting in digging out the antidote as soon as she gets into the palace, lets herself be bullied by Helena and booted into the open air jail to begin with, till Mura extricates her from it just in time.
Then there is Malayaketu, ruminating hopefully about Chandra's imminent demise, with his satisfaction showing in such a stupid and overt manner that it sets one's teeth on edge. The fellow has clearly never heard of putting on an act. š”
Apaama is back at last, to become her frantic daughter's puppetmaster (mistress?). I hope the quality of her lines is as unchanged as her blue dress!š
Magic in the air: We now come to the highlight of the whole episode. A segment of less than a minute, that nonetheless managed to create pure magic.
I am sure you all truly loved this sequence much as I did, for it was so beautiful and so expressive. That too made so not by the lines, which were all spoken by others, but solely, and silently, by the two principals.
Chandra, assailed by alternating eulogies to Nandini from the rajvaid and from Mura, too bone weary to turn his head, turns his eyes and looks at Nandini. There is a sort of confusion in the look, but also an unspoken question - Why did you do all this for me? And a dim, dawning light - of gladness? I am not sure. He seems too tired for that.
While Chandra's expression does not change during this whole sequence, Nandini - who earlier seems literally lit up from inside, her sheer relief and gladness bubbling out in the tone of her Chandra! - first drops her eyes, and then looks down and away, as if downplaying all the praise being lavished on her. But by the end, she raises her eyes and looks Chandra full in the face for a long, long moment. There is no shyness in those eyes, no reticence, no overt rejoicing as earlier.There is only a stillness, and something else.
A kind of silent communion. Her gaze is steady and it never wavers. It is as if her eyes were clinging to his. As if, for those 30 seconds, the two of them are in a bubble all of their own, from which the external world has been shut out.
Quite extraordinary. There is nothing like a near death situation for clarifying confused feelings! The bonus: Nandini, her face seeming more soft and rounded and young than ever before, was just perfect.
Telling snippet: The patent disapproval on Sunanda's face as she watches Nandini s eyes light up with joy when Chandra begins to stir, and her gladness bubble over in her Chandra! This is a clue to much that is to follow, though the Roopa stunt would have been in the works in any case.
Episode 64a
Magic renewed: The opening scene is delightfully comic to begin with, with Chandra's decidedly alarmed expression as Nandini bears down on him seeking the explanation' for a difficult sloka, and then the fake insouciance with which he tries to bluff his way thru that sticky patch, vying for top honoursš. A deadpan Nandini plays along perfectly with her mock seriousness.
The way in which Chandra's eyes follow her as she goes to the other side of the bed to get his aushadi is charmingly revealing, something that he does again when she is leaving the room later, regardless of Helena literally looming over him at that moment!
Then the mood changes abruptly, and there follows one of the most unusual and moving interactions I have ever seen between the leads in a serial. It is not so much romantic as exploratory: an attempt on Nandini's part to share with Chandra her deep felt loss and grief at having had to give up her love for adhayayan and the acquisition of gyaan, as also to explain why even that loss could be suffered gladly because of her love for her father.
But of course she has to be ambiguous - nahin to apni kahaani yahin rukh nahin jaati? - and so there is, on Chandra's part , a confused but persistent effort to understand where she is coming from. He has as yet no idea whose sneh she is referring to, and he does not ask her outright about that, which too would have shortcircuited the tale by at least another 20 acutely irritating episodes. Par hamare aise bhagya kahaan? š
The argument for and against prem is all too familiar, though it leaves one wondering which will be the sabse priya vastu that Chandra will eventually sacrifice for the love of his life.
But not so the look in Chandra's eyes as he listens to Nandini hold forth on the lifesaving properties of pain. It is not the entranced gaze of a lover, nor even the concerned, empathetic look of one friend supporting another. It is a questing, half curious, half impressed expression, the look of a debater listening with total attention and trying to get at the nub of what the opponent's line of argument is, while at the same time remaining open to being convinced by it if it can carry conviction.
It is noteworthy that Nandini does not contradict Chandra's assertion Mere anusaar, prem jeevan mein kasht ke alaava aur kuch nahin deta hai. Instead she proceeds by the demonstration route, climbing across the bed and coming right next to him, and then placing her hand lightly on his wound.
She then begins a physically pragmatic but emotionally questionable disquisition that is so high falutin' that it sweeps us, and most likely Chandra as well, along on the tide of its eloquence. That its emotional logic is questionable never occurs to us till later!
Dard (sic) ho raha hai? Yadi peedha nahin hoti to pata hai kya hota? Koyi tumhare ghaav ko aur kured deta, aur gehra kar deta, aur tumhein pata bhi nahin chalta. Peedha ne hi to humein sambhala hai..humein mehsoos (sic) karwaaya hai ki peedha hai, jiske kaaran hum apne ghaav ko aur gehra hone se rokh paate hain..Peedha hi humein jeevit rakhta hai.. aur isi peedha ke kaaran hi main aaj tak jeevit hoon..
Her eyes, clouded with the memory of loss and pain, cling to his for a long, unbroken moment, while Chandra, his own gaze fixed unblinkingly on her face and her eyes, strives to grasp what exactly it is that she is trying to tell him. Once again, as on the previous occasion, one has the sense that for these two, time is standing still , and the rest of the world has receded and left them in a gossamer cocoon of their own making.
It was such a mesmerizing scene that I was entranced all over again, and my hopes for what lay ahead soared in proportion. As things turned out, they soared all too high, and all too soon. For right then, Helena and her mother make a sudden entrance , Nandini draws her hand back in haste, and time starts moving once again.
Seeing what followed, which was nothing but a deliberate trashing of this magic, I was reminded of the Lady of Shalott, and Tennyson's lovely, sad lines:
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror cracked from side to side;
'The curse is come upon me' cried
The Lady of Shalott.
For with this sudden break in that entrancing interlude, the curse descended on not just Chandra and Nandini, but on us the viewers as well, as the script descended, with lip smacking gusto, into all the worst excesses of TV soap operas.š” It has already been a full six and a half episodes of this junk, and who knows how long this is going to drag on before even a modicum of good sense and good taste make a reappearance onscreen?
In any case, it is going to be a long, long while before we get back to anything approximating the sheer beauty of these two scenes, so we should rejoice in them while we can.
But one thing is for sure. As and when they get the opportunity, this jodi can create the illusion of true love. Already, they are able to project that air of total, mesmerized absorption in each other that lies at the core of the divine passion. We can thus hope to (eventually) see something very special.
Part 2: Promise belied
Episodes 64b to 70
I do not propose to take these up sequentially, or to go into any of the plot detail. The material is not worth it, and I would not be able to do so much in any case, as even Part 1 has had to be done by instalments. I shall thus discuss only two aspects: the characters of Chandra and of Nandini in these episodes and the performances of the actors, and then one standout scene. Standout from my point of view, that is , which might or might not coincide with yours, but please do bear with me!
Chandra 1 and Chandra 2: This sudden attack of schizophrenia, almost like the onset of a split personality disorder, or The Two Faces of Chandra ( a riff on the title of the classic film, The Three Faces of Eve) in Chandragupta Maurya is by far the worst aspect of the dumbing down of the script over this period.
There is , till Episode 64a, a thoughtful, considerate, intelligent (well, at least from time to time, as when he solved the mystery of Durdhara's fall by himselfš) and fair-minded ruler and man, whom I have named Chandra 1. I shall here assess and rate him basically on his behaviour vis a vis Nandini, for as for the rest, he remains effectively unchanged.
Chandra 1 is someone who can value Nandini's qualities of head and heart and declare, without any false ego, that she had all the attributes of a sampoorna naari, one for whom he could have sammaan. Who does not rage and storm at the emotional weak point in his make up that makes him unable to tolerate the sight of Nandini in tears, no matter that he considers her the daughter of his worst enemy and thus an enemy herself. Who works round that problem by seeking to divert her mind by making her compete in the Takshashila gurukul exam, so that she is no longer grief stricken.
Who exerts himself so far as to coach her, and to accompany her, togged out as a most unconvincing youth, to Takshashila, exposing himself to all the attendant risks of travelling incognito without an escort. Who protects her during their stay in the ashram. Who rejoices in Nandini's outstanding performance in the exams as the triumph of his protegee, and argues successfully with his own Acharya to get her the upaadhi she had earned rightfully.
Who, though he does not voice it, recognizes and is grateful to her for having saved his life, in such an unexpected and inexplicable fashion. In fact, it is a mystery to me why he does not ask her straightaway the next morning why she did so. Perhaps he was working his way round to posing that loaded question when he was summarily ousted from the scene by his alter ego Chandra 2. And with that everything that made sense earlier goes out of the window.
For Chandra 2 is stupid, clueless, egotistic, and almost sadistic in his treatment of Nandini. Such grey cells as he still possesses seem to be in a state of permanent hibernation. š”
Chandra 2 and Chandra 1 (courtesy Saraswathi Akka aka karkuzhali)
Just consider the following examples of these sterling qualities of hisš.
Helena and Aapama hold forth at length to him about how deeply Nandini is still in love with Malayaketu. Aapama barely knows Nandini, and Helena not much more. It never occurs to Chandra 2 to ask them how on earth did the two of them manage to read Nandini's heart and mind in such detail. They can hardly claim that Malayaketu told Helena that, for that would raise the question of how and why Helena was confabulating with her ex-boyfriend!
In fact at a later point Helena is foolish enough to say that Malayaketu said that to her about Nandini, but this barely registers in Chandra 2's consciousness. She also waxes eloquent about how Nandini was hellbent on marrying Malayaketu, which was why he had ditched her , Helena, but she is never pinned down and asked how she knows all this.
Instead, Chandra 2 blows his very short fuse and asserts that he does not care whom Nandini loves, as he married her only to be able to take revenge on her father. Whereupon, Helena makes the technically correct, but unwise remark that Nandini too had married him only to take revenge on him.
At this point, any man with an ounce of commonsense would have asked Helena why then did Nandini save his life just the other day, when she could very easily have let him die? It would have brought Helena up short, and would have spiked her guns for a while at least. But this simple question never occurs to our Chandra 2.
Endless folly: From then on, he goes from one benighted instance of crude behaviour towards Nandini to another.
When Nandini, driven by a fit of girlish anticipation in the idea of pleasing him - the sudden lighting up of her eyes at the very thought is delightful ! - trots across to his room with an armful of books, and very unaffectedly and sweetly offers to read them to him if he so wishes, he rebuffs her with a fury that makes her recoil in shock and almost paralyses her.
He has just then been injected with yet another dose of venom against Nandini by Helena, and having no powers of independent thought or judgement, he reacts like the male equivalent of a fishwife. The language he uses is so gross and uncalled for that it made me feel ashamed of him. Even so, Nandini maintains her dignity and her composure, and responds only with Jaise tumhari ichcha, before leaving the books here and quietly exiting the room.
The Chandra 2 parade of folly then proceeds apace.
There is a succession of scenes in which he rages at Nandini with and without justification, but in a uniformly and insupportably OTT manner, as the stupid, childish drama of his BP shooting up over Nandini's supposed love for Malayaketu takes over and, feeding on itself, simply will not let go of him. And it is clear that we are even now nowhere near the end of this nonsense.
It is tough to decide who, between Helena and Malayaketu, is the more obnoxious and in your face in rubbing Chandra 2's already red and puffed up nose in this ugly canard about Nandini, but they run each other a close race. Helena is insufferable, both in the vulgarity of her boasts to Nandini about her closeness to Chandra, and in her endless, crass insinuations to Chandra about Nandini and Malay, and the "evidence" of the letter she fabricates, and plants in such an absurdly crude manner, to crucify Nandini in Chandra's eyes.
No one but Chandra 2 would have been taken in by this last piece of chicanery. Why on earth would Nandini, who could have sent that letter to Malay at any time thru a daasi, be so stupid as to plant it in a bowl of laddus from where it could have fallen into anyone's hands and exposed her in a disastrous fashion? But of course this simple piece of reasoning would never occur to Chandra 2.
As for Malayaketu, if any man had said to another about the latter's wife what he says to Chandra about Nandini, he would have ended up with a black eye and a bleeding lip. But apna Chandra 2 swallows that arrant impertinence without any reaction, and only charges faster than before towards Nandini's rooms. It was unbelievable!š”
OTT ranting: Once he gets there, things go from bad to worse, though Nandini handles herself with calm good sense even in the face of Chandra's angry accusation about the raj ghoshana, and denies it quietly and without any sign of embarrassment.
At this juncture, Chandra's reaction is fascinating: his eyes glow almost like coals, and he regards her with a terrible fixity, almost as if he would drag a confession out of her. But this is the sole good snippet in his take on this scene, for the rest is pure OTT hamming.
When she asks him that piercingly pertinent question, as to what is actually making him so angry, the raj ghoshana or the Malayaketu angle, he loses it completely, and rants like there is no tomorrow, going so far as to disown her as his wife.
It never even enters his mind to question why, if Nandini loves Malayaketu, she did not simultaneously secure both her own love and her father's interests by simply letting Chandra die on the forest floor on the way back from Takshashila, but instead exerted every resource she could muster to save his life.
Instead, when faced with her angry, despairing retort : Phir se? Yeh baar baar ek hi baat phir se?, he does not sense anything amiss. Instead, he becomes the judge, the jury and the jailor all rolled into one, and declares that he knows that what he is saying is the truth.
He made me feel sick. If I had been in Nandini's place, faced with such a gross insult to her honour as a woman, I would have slapped Chandra twice as hard as Roopa slaps Helena. š”Unfortunately, Nandini is not the slapping kind.
Yes, Chandra is, without realising it more than dimly, blind with jealous rage, and I could even accept the lines he uses here, for all their excess, for they actually mean the opposite of what he says.
But I could not admire the way in which those lines were delivered, not even in the snippet where he himself wonders at his own behaviour. I set very high standards for Rajat as an actor, and this scene just does not pass muster. Even his body language, always impeccable, is wonky here as he waves his arms about like a windmill.š²
The sole exception to this is the way is which, when Nandini, driven to the wall, reacts to his disowning her as his wife by asserting that in that case, she too has no husband, Chandra responds with a loud, fake casual Bahut achchi baat hai!, where his frustration and fury, both at her and at himself, come thru convincingly.
As you all know, I adore Rajat as a performer. Right from June 30, 2013, when I wrote my first post about his Jalal, I have never tired of pointing out the excellent work he does almost 95% of the time, and have expended more eloquence in praise of him that anyone else here.
But I am not a fan of his, in the sense that I would admire him regardless of how he performs. And for me, almost all thru these episodes , his takes on Chandra 2 fell, sadly, in the last 5 %. I do not know if it was the director who insisted on this kind of stuff from Rajat, but if so, it was unfortunate that he should have to shortchange himself like this. If on the contrary it was his own idea, he had better look sharp and change his style.
Right from the scene where Chanakya comes to berate him over the royal announcement of a pardon for Nand, Chandra huffs and puffs and glares and snarls in a manner that is not in Rajat's style at all. When he sets his jaw in a square line, bunches up his nose, and hisses NANDINI! , it seems like the Mauryan equivalent of Jalal's bull with head lowered and about to charge stance for expressing fury, which I have critiqued so often in my Jodha Akbar posts. It simply does not suit Rajat, who can handle icy fury so well when he wants to, and it does nothing for Chandra as a character, to put it mildly.
Mukut farce and its conclusion: At the end of this, one thing is clear, that Chandra 2 is a champion ullu. And not just for his ranting at Nandini, but also, and even more so for the incomprehensibly extravagant, over the top promises he makes Helena - including that not just all the powers of running the palace, but he himself would, from now on, be all hers - within Nandini's earshot purely in order to make her jealous. He set my teeth on edge with all that insane babbling.š”
It is very unfair on his part to lead Helena on so far - not that I have any sympathy for this greedy, scheming, ruthless changeling of a Helena - when I look at what has happened to the girl whom I praised so much in my Helen 2.0 post, it is enough to make me weep! - who does not love Chandra at all, but only wants to own him to the exclusion of everyone else, and to dominate him if she can.
More important, what earthly sense does Chandra's Make Nandini Jealous campaign make when he also clings to the belief that Nandini loves Malayaketu? If that is so, why would she care whom Chandra hangs around with? It is plain nuts, and it makes Chandra look extra foolish, while poor Rajat seems to be risking a case of lockjaw with all that snarling.š
Plus, Chandra 2 does not have the smarts to guess at the real significance of Nandini's repeated references to her unhappiness about the so-called love marks on Helena's arm, or her despairing, almost involuntary exclamation: Tumhein kya antar padta hai main kya sochti hoon, kya karti hoon? Tumhein kyon chinta hai meri?
Nor do I feel Chandra 2 is clever enough to have any notion of Helena's convoluted plotting against Nandini. For one thing, she does it rather well, thru clever insinuations that leave an opening for subsequent denials, as in the case of the room allocation, and she is helped by Durdhara's failure to mention the one key point to Chandra, ie that the whole mukut idea was hers.
Descent into near sadism:The affair of the sej was one segment where, having by now got used to Chandra 2's unrelenting stupidity and crassness, which has here descended into something perilously close to pure sadism, the person I felt like clouting was not him but Nandini. š”
Any self-respecting woman in her place would have told him to get lost, adding that the mukut idea was Durdhara's, not hers, that she had been inveigled into it by Helena, and that she was not a daasi, thank you, to go about decorating her souten's sej. But Nandini does no such thing, and goes about completing the humiliating task like a bond slave.
So masochistic had she become at the hands of her (unacknowledged) prem for Chandra that she then stands at the door of the room looking back at Chandra, who stares at her with arrogance in every line of his face and in his body language. š”š”
She looked so much like a lost little girl that despite my acute irritation, my heart went out to the poor thing.
Poorna tyaag: OK, I am beginning to flag badly, so let us get to the last significant Chandra-Nandini scene, the one that immediately follows that lovely, heartwarming one between a tearful Nandini and a motherly, affectionate, accommodating Mura.
In fact, in all the scenes of this kind that Nandini does, whether with Mura or with Chhaya, she comes across exceedingly well, whether it is a question of her expressions, of her voice, or of her body language. Her troubled eyes, the sob in her voice, the softness and respect with which she greets Mura, all are most convincing.
When Mura rescues her from the humiliation of being overlooked as his queen by Chandra, and declares that she is like a daughter for her, the slight smile of glad triumph on Nandini's face is more in her eyes than on her lips. A very subtle take.š
And Mura's take on love is exceedingly beautiful, and curiously enough, it echoes the lines of Aapama in her introductory scene. Great minds think alike!š
Prem bahut vichitra hai.Uske chaal bade mayaavi hain.Wo kab hamare man mein bas jaata hai, humein gyaat bhi nahin hota.Aur jab gyaat hota hai, tab hum uske vash mein hote hain!
Enter Chandra 2. His opening assertion of his version of satya manages to drive Nandini into making the one move she has avoided till then, a self-condemnatory confession that yes, she loves Malayaketu. It is exactly like the time when she makes a false confession that it was she who had engineered Durdhara's fall on the stairs.
There is something in her make up which makes her snap at a point when she can take no more of humiliation, and just wants out, even if this is by falsely incriminating herself in order to put an end to the torture. It is stupid, and she shortchanges herself to no purpose, but that is just the way she is.
The rest of the scene is on predictable lines, including Chandra's total failure to grasp the open expression of Nandini's misery at his favouring Helena. Pata nahin kyon, par yeh sab dekh kar mera man bahut dukhta hai.. How much clearer can a girl get?
Or of her loaded reference to herself: Jiske vishay mein tumhein lagta hai ki main Chhaya ka grahast jeevan nasht kar rahi hoon.., which hardly jells with her earlier "confession".
The end of the scene needs no comment, except that Nandini's expression when she cuts Chandra short , saying that she has to pack for her departure, is marvellous.
As for Chandra's final outburst in response to her cutting comment about it being the greatest apmaan of her life to be his wife, logic is hardly its strong point. It is he who has declared that he will never acknowledge her as his wife. So how does he then become her pati, and where does the issue of a husband's humiliation arise?
In fact, here he behaves exactly like a small boy having a violent tantrum, unheeding of what he is saying and what it means in reality. He has married Nandini of his own free will, for his own reasons, with all the proper rites, and her safety is henceforth his responsibility.
What can one think of a man, not to speak of a king, who is so uncaring about his own solemn commitments that he orders his legally wedded wife to leave the palace that very night, knowing full well that she has nowhere to go, as her mayka no longer exists? What if something goes horribly wrong with her once she is outside the palace, as could happen very easily? š”
To sum things up bluntly, I had looked forward to Chandra doing an Othello in his jealous rage, or a Jalal in his Shakespearian heights sequence at the end of the Sujamal track, when he turned himself inside out in uncontrollable, self-destructive agony. I do not know about you folks, but what I got was a Shashi Kapoor take on a suspicious husband from a 1970s film! Poor Rajat, and even more so, poor me!
Generous touches: Despite all this, it is revealing, and touching, that Nandini can still find it in her to wish Chandra a happy life with Helena, and that she still has enough confidence in his integrity and sense of honour to be sure that he will continue to look after her mother and the other Nand family ladies.
And her grief at this departure is open and moving, as is the earlier scene of her emotional near collapse after her stormy encounter with Chandra in the corridor.
In fact, Shweta's Nandini, despite her evident determination to outdo Niobe in the weeping department,š is impressive almost throughout in her helpless misery, triggered by an emotional upheaval she does not quite understand.
A peek ahead: OK, we need a bit of light relief! My track record in such matters is dismal, š but here is my (hopeful!) prediction for the next week.
Chandra, riddled by guilt, will now go looking for Nandini. The precap itself should have put paid to the hopeful theory that he drives her out deliberately hoping that she will lead him to Nand. It is no such thing.
To revert, Nandini, even though she is not weighed down by anything as substantial as Jodha Begum's bronze Kanhašš , would have collapsed artistically under the load of her grief, somewhere outside the palace, still hugging that potli. I would like to know what is inside it. š
The spoiler about Malayaketu's molesting her and her fainting can fit neatly into this scenario. For Chandra will miraculously spot her despite having no idea in which direction she has wandered off.š
He will then lug her back to the palace in his patented style, in his arms. He must be a tad out of practice, not having had to do that for days now, not since the exam days at the gurukul in Takshashila, so it will do him some good to get back into carrying form!š
Next, he will start hanging around her rooms monitoring her recovery while Helena damages her tooth enamel by grinding her teeth in rage!š
Standout scene: Chandra-Chanakya: It is in this marvellous segment that I got back my Rajat, and I rejoiced! His dissolving into a puddle of helpless regret , the inimitable expression in his eyes and face as he exclaims, almost involuntarily, Aur waise bhi, wo Malay ko chahti hai!, were a tour de force.š
His justification for pardoning Avantika is pure nonsense - at this rate all married women could get away with murder ! - but by the end of it, his eyes are brimming over with misery, and Chanakya spots that at once. He canes Chandra not to punish him but to test him, and his experiment succeeds, whence his parting warning to his shishya to take himself in hand while there is still time.
I would not blame Chanakya for that. He sees his life's mission of creating an Akhand Bharat endangered because of his star pupil's dangerous obsession, and naturally he moves to nip this threat in the bud if he can. It is another matter that he cannot pull it off.
It is in the ending snippet that Rajat is at his very best. As he exclaimes in confusion, Kya ho raha hai mujhe?, and wonders if perhaps his Acharya was not right after all, his face is a study in helpless indecision and misery.
His features suddenly seems blurred, in an odd reflection of his inner chaos, as he repeats, with increasing emphasis, as if to convince himself: Nahin!! Shatru hai wo meri, main use pasand nahin kar sakta! And the near roar dies away to a despairing whisper as he repeats: Main use pasand nahin kar sakta...By now he is almost weeping.
It was a remarkable performance; something to remember for a long time.šš
As for the Chandra-Chanakya-Malayaketu scene which ends with the main accused dead courtesy Malay, I would like to believe that the whole was a smart ploy by C & C to confirm their suspicions of Malay. But going by past experience, I am not setting my hopes too high!š
Well, folks, I am dished, and so, I suspect will you be if you make it till here! ššPlease do not forget to hit the Like button if you think it is warranted.
See you again as soon as I can make it.
Shyamala/Aunty/Akka/Di
Cricket
Mannat Har Khushi Paane Ki
Bigg Boss 19
