Folks,
For me, the best part about these episodes came in the precap on Friday, when Hephaestion barges in and informs the shocked and dismayed Alexander : Paurav Rashtra jaate waqt, Chanakya ki laash gayab ho gayee! It was a truly 🤣moment, and I duly chortled with glee.
In fact, I had been expecting another version of this moment earlier, for I thought that Chanakya might emege from the bull looking like a nicely baked potato, with nary a burn mark on his body, and speculated that Alexander ka chehra tab dekhne laayak hoga!😆 But that was an illogical guess of mine, for in that case, Alexander would simply have killed him by more conventional methods. So he had to appear to be really dead, and that is what happened.
This latest twist, however, is the real McCoy, and Chanakya, as pfalcon1949 wrote elsewhere here, has done a Houdini and simply vanished. That too when, by his great good luck, Alexander was actually dispatching him special delivery to Paurav Rashtra, for Porus' edification. Neat, no?😉😉
Not that I ever thought that Chanakya would have died. Not even the GoT enthusiast Mr. Tewary could have carried his passion for remixing history quite so far. As I had written on the episode 173 thread, I agreed with Inlieu's guess that the mud coating would (in defiance of the laws of physics and of the thermal properties of materials, in this case the human skin, but when have such minor issues bothered our CVs?😉) protect him from the scorching heat.
This is exactly what has happened. I had assumed that he would recover consciousness in Paurav Rashtra, but this is even better. His shishyas must have overturned the boat carrying his supposed corpse, and while the Macedonians were struggling in the current of the Jhelum, made off with Chanakya's not-at-all-dead body!!!
Silent subversion: By the Takshashila Rajvaid, that is. When he started taking the pulse of Chanakya's body, he looked very startled at the beginning, and then recovered himself and lied that life was extinct. Alexander could not see his expression as the Rajvaid had his back to Alexander, otherwise he would have spotted the hesitation in an instant. Aur phir Rajvaid aur Chanakya ki to khair nahin!
The Rajvaid's silent subversion - he is clearly no Ambhiraj loyalist - is one in the eye for Sony Alexander and his pronouncements about the deterrent effects of khauff. Fear works only up to a point, and even there, the oppressed soon start opting for subversive tactics that then spread.
The real Alexander was able to rule so smoothly in Egypt and Persia precisely because he did not resort to khauff to control the local populace, and mostly let them carry on as they had always been doing, and retained most of the old local officials.
Mind over body: Vaishnavi asked me a most interesting question, as whether it was at all possible for anyone to survive such brutal heat with only a mud coating for protection.
Now, I don't know about anyone surviving a baking in this fashion, but I have personally seen perfectly ordinary folk, not yoga masters, walk across a bed of burning coals and emerge from that ordeal without a single scorch mark on the soles of their feet . These fire walking ceremonies are common in Tamil Nadu - I am Tamil - and among the Tamil community in Malaysia.
If such untrained persons can, through the sheer power of their faith, do this by making their mind prevail over their body, a trained master yogi should be able to neutralize the effects of even extreme and prolonged heating.
The opposite is also possible. When a hypnotist has you under his hypnotic influence, lays a cold needle on your arm, and tells you that the needle is red hot, the skin will be scorched and there will be a burn mark there. This has been repeatedly demonstrated through experiments.
This said, there was something very odd about the awful screaming. In fact, I didn't expect Chanakya to scream at all.
A master yogi, as I noted above, would have been able to control the reaction of his body to the heat, and so he would not have felt the pain and would not have screamed. However, I have never heard that Chanakya was a great yoga master with such special powers. Whence the screams. It was really spine chilling.
As for his surviving, it must have been just the mud pack. But the mystery of what purpose the potli of extra mud served remains, as of the eventual use of the shawl that Alexander returned to Chanakya. Maybe that was converted by Chanakya into the bag for the mud, though this was not at all clear.
The demolition job: To describe what I felt when the iron bull came into view on the river bank of the Jhelum, I can do no better than repeat what I wrote then, in shock and disgust, on LuckySnow's thread for Episode 172.
I have always said that Olympias is a monster.What she wanted to do to that poor man inside the iron bull was the worst kind of deliberate savagery.
But Sony Alexander was not the same. Not even when he had the Thracian king dragged to his death, though that was awful enough. Or so I believed.
Now the CVs have finally completed the demolition job on Sony Alexander about which I had lamented right from the time when I wrote my first post here in end March last.
He is now well and truly a monster like his mother😡. A sadistic brute who looks forward to hearing the screams of a man being roasted alive. And if he is doing it to please his mother, why, it truly makes them one of a kind.
They have finished Sony Alexander off good and proper. He will never recover from this.
Setting my teeth on edge with his endless babbling of being Zeus ka beta, aaj ka khuda is one thing. Such horrible sadism is quite another. It made me feel sick. 🤢
Since then , I have found no reason to modify my initial reaction. It has been noted elsewhere that when Chanakya's awful screams were being heard. Roxanne smiled. I was not surprised. So did Olympias smile at the end. She is Monster No.1 and Roxanne is Monster No. 2.
Alexander looked petrified for a moment before he lit the fire - so much so that I thought he was going to have a change of heart and abandon the whole thing - and he never smiled. Small mercies.
However, the whole shebang, with the trio of Alexander, Olympias and Roxanne sitting there as if they were at a theatre performance, to watch a man being roasted to death was horrible and disgusting. 😡😡😡
Yes, Alexander would have been fully justified in killing Chanakya, for after all Chanakya had tried to get him killed by deceit. But there was NO need for this ugly display of sadism. I suppose yeh sab Siddharth Tewary ke Games of Thrones ke addiction ka nateeja hai.😡
Rohit's conscientiousness: In all this, I must not forget to give praise where praise is due. Rohit Purohit, saddled with a lousy script that is clearly bent on turning Alexander the Great into a commonplace snarling, scheming, violent, sadistic villain, still sticks to his job manfully and performs superbly, however little his heart might be in it.
His Alexander - his face narrower and sharper than ever, his eyes cold and steely at one time and aflame with anger in another, once voicing his conviction in the power of khauff for keeping a people in submissive subjection, and at another time expressing genuine regret at the need for him to destroy Chanakya in such a horrible manner - is utterly and totally convincing.
One can hate this Sony Alexander, but one has to unreservedly applaud Rohit's dedication, his conscientiousness, and his superb skills as an actor.
Some light relief: One cannot wallow in horror for too long, so here are some entertaining sidelights from this track.
One, it was sheer pleasure watching the faces of Olympias, Hephaestion, and Alexander (Cleitus stuck to his familiar lamp post act 😆 ) while Chanakya was pampering himself with a prolonged mud pack routine. Their attempts to explain his proceedings reminded me of nothing so much as the three blind men trying to describe an elephant. 😆
And does Alexander have to light the fire under the bull himself? What about the prestige of Zeus ka beta, aaj ka khuda?
Two, Alexander's expression of regret at not having had Chanakya on his side was not only heartfelt, but the only truly sensible thing he has said this week. In fact I noted that Alexander has now given Chanakya the formal title of Sansaar ke sabse bade Aalim. Aristotle, if he had got to know of this, would not have been pleased!😉
When he lit the fire under the bull, I felt that what Alexander regretted was not only the loss of such a tremendous intellect at his side, but also, objectively, the loss to the world of someone of such unshakable stoicism and courage even in the face of such a terrible death.
Alexander + Chanakya? : Finally, along with Inlieu and others, I did ruminate about what an Alexander-Chanakya combo would have been like. I think it was in my post about the Great Confrontation between Chanakya and Puru. It sounds splendid, and of course they would, together, have been unbeatable. However, I doubt if it would have lasted, for both of them were unbending autocrats, who would have been at loggerheads very soon!😉
Wife and mother: Now for Part 3 of this post, the one about flawed justice. But before I get to that, I must mention another segment that impressed me considerably. This was the back to back sequence of two conversations in Episode 173, the Laachi- Puru one and then the Anusuya-Puru one (he comes after the ladies both times as he was mostly an object here, not a subject).
Both scenes were surprisingly good. Especially the former, where Laachi displayed impeccable dignity combined with steely resolve. I have always liked the girl, but here she really impressed me with the smooth, non-confrontational, and yet extremely determined technique she used to put Puru right in the firing line. The success of a demarche depends to a large extent on the exit line, and Laachi's was perfect.👏
Anusuya too was excellent, firm and lucid in her statements, and always putting principles first. But that is nothing new where she is concerned!
Flawed justice: I am sure that after having held their breaths overnight in tension about what would happen to Anusuya, many here would have heaved a sigh of relief at the end of the precap on Friday, and rejoiced over the 7 day reprieve extended to Anusuya by Laachi. They would also have praised Maharaja Purushottam lavishly for what they perceive as his Solomonic justice.
I am happy that they, and especially Surbhi, are so happy. Bu this apart, there were things that Puru did last night that left me bemused and disturbed.
Here, I am not going into the rights and wrongs of what Laachi and Anusuya did or didn't do, for that would keep me here till tomorrow, and you would all have run away! 😆I am confining myself to my views of what Puru did on Friday.
First and most important, the whole basis on which Puru conducts the proceedings is wrong. According to the fundamental principles of universal jurisprudence , it is NOT for Anusuya, the accused in these proceedings, to prove herself innocent. It is for the State, in this case Maharaja Purushottam, to prove her guilty.
So what Maharaja Purushottam should have done was to launch a detailed enquiry into the possibility which he (really cleverly) flags to Laachi, viz that Sumer might be guilty. There was no need, no matter what Laachi said, for him to box himself into pronouncing a judgement that very day. It is a very serious matter, not one of deciding whether to buy tomatoes or brinjals at the market, and it should not have been hustled in this manner at all. 😲
Besides this unnecessary rush to judgement, there were other major acts of comission and omission by Puru that need to be flagged.
Three elements : Let us take the three elements in the charges against Anusuya.
One, that she had taken the law into her own hands - a point that I had raised earlier in this forum - and not only attacked Sumer but killed him outright instead of wounding him. Puru has neatly nullified this charge, by demonstrating that in a crisis situation, such things happen.
The manner in which he did this was patently contrived and dicey, for what if the Dasyuraj (who has come to life now all of a sudden and become surprisingly vocal and assertive!😉) had not flared up like that? But such cinematic liberties are permissible, so let us overlook that.
Two, that Anusuya has not been able to provide proof of Sumer's treason. Puru negates this one too by stating that the absence of proof of guilt is NOT automatically proof of innocence. So far so good.
The third charge is that she wrongly assumed Sumer's guilt based on her own interpretation of his actions. This can be negated only by getting the evidence to settle the issue one way or the other.
Here is where Maharaja Purushottam stumbles. He does not state the obvious, that it is HIS job as king to get this enquiry done.
Instead, through the odd decision to leave the judgement - BOTH of Anusuya's culpability and of her consequent punishment - to Laachi, who is the accuser, and hence automatically biased against the accused Anusuya, he in effect abdicates his responsibility as the king to secure justice for the accused.
Now it is left to Anusuya to prove herself innocent, which is a travesty of the fundamental principle of jurisprudence, that is for the State to prove that the accused is guilty.
And that too within such a short time frame for a matter of life and death, for if Anusuya is found guilty, the sentence might well be a capital one ?😲
How, and more important, WHY is Anusuya expected to get this proof with a 7 day deadline, when it is actually Puru's task as the king to do that, of course in an impartial manner? 😲
Secondly, if he wants to avoid any appearance of his being partial towards either his mother or his wife, he should have appointed an impartial, unconcerned outsider as the judge. NOT Laachi.
How can she, the accuser, be trusted to be an impartial judge? And how would any judgement she gives look impartial, and be accepted as such? It is most unconvincing.
So now Maharaja Purushottam has, instead of discharging the responsibility which is his, and his alone, delegated it to the one person to whom he should NOT have delegated it.
What is more, his decision is also unfair to Laachi. She has now been put at the foot of the wall, and saddled with this unexpected responsibility which should never have come to her. She is in a very sticky situation, for any decision she takes will be seen as biased one way or the other.
It is all ludicrous. More to the point, it is downright dangerous, for it exposes Anusuya to risks she should never have had to face. As far as Maharaja Purushottam's notions of kingship go, it was all decidedly disheartening.
OK,folks, this is it. You have all had a 12 episode break from me, and seeing the chaotic way in which things are going in our show, the next break is likely to be as long, if not longer. So relax, and if you liked this one, please do not forget to hit the Like button.
Shyamala Aunty/Di
Cricket
Seher Hone Ko Hai
