Posted:
@Aunty,
Kya boloon? Mera demaag kaam nahin kar raha hai recently.
Puru = pioneer in this show.
He gets credit for every wacko idea the CVs can think of, logical or not. Ok, I get that they want to show him getting that brainwave about using the elephants, but taming them, that too without help from experts? That tug of war scene with the elephant - what can I say? I felt sorry for the elephant. Itni beizzati ki CVs ne uski. Kya fayda haathi hone ka agar Insaan usko aise hi kheench sakta hai? I loved both the Jalal sequences you mentioned in the movie and the show Jodha Akbar. They seemed realistic and natural, without making Jalal look like Superman or Thor.
Khaali haath - this is such an abused term in this show! There is no way Alexander will go khaali haath even if for whatever reason the CVs show him being defeated. Alexander, even with a sword held to his throat by Puru, managed to turn his defeat into victory by trapping Barsine. And history tells us that he did have other victories in India, and not that Puru chased him away forever on his first attempt to conquer India. 😡
I don't understand what to make of the conversations between Alexander and Chanakya, except that the language went over both Alexander and my heads. 😕 I actually felt that Chanakya and Alexander seemed well-matched in terms of their level of cold-bloodedness and never losing sight of the target. I still have no clue what is going on in Chanakya's head and I am going to stop guessing since I seem to be 100% terrible at it.
As for Alexander's statement about not caring about the culture of the land he was interested in ruling, as I've said elsewhere I find this hard to digest. It is just so out of character. Alexander was eying him very carefully when he performed his pre-meal rituals. Any aalem who he felt was esteemed enough to remind him of his ustaad, who had a special place in his life, would be treated with a lot of respect even by Sony Alexander. I would like to believe it was Alexander's way of saying "cut the cr*p and just get straight to the point", but as noted above, I'm 100% terrible at guessing. Perhaps one of the few times I was right was when I predicted that they show him use his brain to play some sort of (harmless) mind game that would end with the Persian royal ladies themselves choosing to stay with him instead of escaping. Which he did, though maybe not in the way we would have expected. 😉
About assimilation, I will also post here an excerpt from my response to your post on The mystery of the missing mother where I had talked about Alexander's attitude towards the Persian culture:
Alexander did not expect cultural assimilation from his subjects, rather he revelled in the diversity of the peoples and lands he ruled over. What better way to harmonize this than to show them that his Persian-Macedonian subjects were, in his eyes, equal to the Macedonians from his birthplace, and that they had the right to be treated equally well?As a lover of philosophy and culture, probably due to his education, he would have wanted to preserve the majesty of the Persian empire, which until then had been the biggest empire in the world. Why would a person as sensible as Alexander want to destroy such an exotic culture and disrupt their social practices by imposing his own?
If he felt this way about a culture that was not foreign to Macedonians, considering the history between Persians and them, how much more intrigued would he have been about the Indian culture that he knew very little of?
The Zeus ka beta rant... I think it all stems from his daddy issues, on which you can expect a post from me very soon. I've been ruminating and the more episodes go by the more material I have to add to my writing. Coming soon. 😉
Your Q&A was fabulous to read through, and I'm sure they echoed what many of us have been wondering about.
Q/A1. How does Alexander actually see Porus in the grand scheme of things? Will we ever know? Alexander's thought process is never revealed so we will just have to wait for the actions the takes in order to figure out what he had been thinking about. 😕
Q/A2. I can't figure out if he knows about the connection between Taxila and Paurav Rashtra. If he does, that would explain his cryptic comment about having a specific reason for wanting a peace treaty with Taxila instead of attacking, which he could have done very easily and won. Bargaining for Puru's head was not part of the deal or message he sent Ambhiraj anyway.
Q/A3. I too was not convinced by how quickly Alexander acknowledged that Porus was the reason. Chanakya could not have known the importance of Porus to Alexander unless he had heard it from someone who knew Alexander. I expect Alexander made the connection there, but let's not forget my 100% terrible guessing abilities.
Chanakya can't be expected to understand Alexander's emotional side and how his dreams have been shaped up since childhood by his mother and his experiences. Ironic that despite all the attempts to degrade Alexander's character, we still care enough about him and his feelings.
Q/A4. I've tried and failed to convince myself that Alexander would be just fine with Ambhiraj betraying their ally Porus, unless he is made to believe that Porus/Paurav Rashtra are enemies of Taxila. Still, it doesn't seem to hold much water when you look at how much time and effort the CVs spend in the Alexandrian segments establishing his hatred and fury at being expected to condone treason by accepting the Bactrians' offer of friendship. Alexander might choose another way to teach Ambhiraj a lesson since he hasn't killed Porus but just wants to hand him over.
It is quite likely, though that they show Alexander over-eager to grab this chance to get hold of Porus and have Taxila under his thumb so easily. Alexander gets everything on his own merit and through his tadbeer, so I am wondering if this word has now been struck out of his dictionary too by the writers so that he can take these borderline sneaky shortcuts to get to Porus. Totally contrary to his introductory scene in this show where he told the Thracian king
Peeth pe waar ka jawaab seene pe dega yeh Alexander.
But that seems like eons away now. I was nodding at your Nero versus Augustus Caesar comparison.
Q/A5. He's always wearing armor nowadays, so when he goes out he puts his helmet on too for additional protection. Or perhaps it's Alexander's equivalent of a tin foil hat to shield himself from Roxanne's barbs. He needs to set up a ticketing system so the women he's been promising Porus' head to can queue up. Sabke number aayenge. For Olympias, I guess he will have more bones to add to that necklace.
Q/A6. I can't tell whose side Chanakya is on now. He has something else in mind that none of us can think of. I hope the CVs do not ruin this character and show him to be shrewd but dignified. I also think that Chanakya will never be caught making decisions on behalf of Ambhiraj or pushing him in a certain direction. He will present the pros and cons and let Ambhiraj and Ambhikumar battle it out with their opposing points of view. The Sony Ambhiraj can be very cruel, but he is, ironically, one of the few consistent characters on this show. His thinking has not changed over the last couple of decades, which means his decision to eventually side with Alexander, whatever the reasons CVs show us, will not be hard for viewers to understand.
I would like to think that Chanakya will try to ensure that rulers avoid direct confrontation with Alexander and the unnecessary loss of lives, but he is also known to take cold-blooded decisions for what he believes is the greater good. He would not hesitate to sacrifice some pawns in the process. The question is, who are the pawns in this case?
We got a Shivdutt break! I guess the actor is physically exhausted from all the venomous dialogues he's had to spit out and his eye muscles need a break after all the bulging they've had to endure.
I am trying to protect my brain by not hoping for too much or trying to think of "creative" ways each track could go. It's too taxing and I prefer my brain not becoming mush over this fictional fiasco.
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