Today’s episode was a little less tear-inducing, but it struck a much deeper cord in me than I had expected. The writing surpassed my expectations.
Brotherhood and Camaraderie
The opening scene with Lala was wonderful and I am glad Lala called him out on his behavior towards Babita. I felt so sorry for him when he said he would praise Lala’s tea and asked him to praise his cooking. HS was looking for ways to go back to their previous lifestyle, both knowing that it was not possible no matter how much they wanted to.
I especially felt for him when he said:
Mein bhi na thoda sa stupid aadmi, hoon. Kya hai ki, mhaari auqaad se zyaada zid kar baitha yaar, main.
He knew he couldn’t keep them with him forever, that they were meant to fly away like free birds one day with the wings that he had in large part given them.
Why do I get the feeling that something is going to happen to Lala? The way HS said he wouldn’t let anyone come between their brotherhood sounded alarm bells in my head. I would personally be glad to see more about Lala and his personal life, especially Geeta Kumari, maybe even Laley di shadi. Lala has stood by him like a rock through everything, without questioning or judging him. I love the bonding between these two, such an honest, simple, and pure friendship. They really are brothers. HS takes the concept of dil ka rishta to a new level altogether, all his close bonds are those of the heart, and not because of blood ties.
Second Chances
I am glad that they had Preet voice out what a lot of the audience is thinking - that not everything is guaranteed in life. Sometimes we have to take a chance without overthinking the consequences and be ready to accept the outcome. You can’t live in fear or let bad experiences in the past prevent you from giving yourself and life another chance.
Mickey and Preet might break up one day if things don’t work out, but they might not either. They are looking at the glass half full, each putting his or her best foot forward instead of being dragged down by what-ifs. True friends show you the mirror and they did that today with Minnie. She was being selfish trying to keep the status quo in her gang as friends only, and worrying about a breakup ruining their friendship. It was good to hear Mickey give it to her straight that she was being over-possessive/protective and suffocating her mother. It was good to see Mickey challenge her thinking that Babita might also feel something for HS. I am glad that she became more alert and paid close attention to Babita’s restlessness after HS was cold with her.
Rights and Claims
Babita wanted to exercise the right of friendship that she thought she had on HS but he brutally stripped her of that right, drawing a line of separation between her the kirayedaarni and him the makaan maalik.
Where previously nothing would have delighted him more than seeing her lovely face first thing after he returned home, today he walked about with a terse expression, avoiding her gaze and showing excessive irritation at everything around him. It was strange to see HS acting the total opposite of his normal self, being abrupt, cold and telling her off for asking him about his schedule and whereabouts, or for rearranging his things.
It was only the other day when he was moved to tears as she forced him to eat before going to bed. I don’t think he could have ever imagined in his wildest dreams that he would behave this way with her. Where once he would have jumped up in joy or even become emotional seeing her caring and the embroidery, his first instinct was to reach out for the hanky but then withdraw his hand and say he would not take what was not his (also referring to the fact that she was not his either, and could never be). HS is always very sensitive to other people’s feelings and it was interesting to see how he used this understanding to figure out how to hurt her, what to say that would go against his nature.
Aap logon ka ke hai ji, kiraaye pe rehte ho aap to.
Aaj yahan reh rahe ho, kal kahin aur chale jaoge, hmm.
Mhaara ke, main to reh jaonga akela.
Poor, thing. He was right. Babita never gave him any indication that they were more than friends, that there was something beyond the material need to rent his apartment due to which her daughter and her continued to live in his house. He knew she cared about him as a friend (and also out of gratitude for all his help) but I am not sure he was aware of the change in her feelings.
Abhi aap please mera peecha chodo aap.
Mere emotion ke saath mat khelo aap.
Manne mere haal pe chhodo aap.
He said something after that I couldn’t hear very well, but it was enough to upset Babita, who ran back upstairs in tears, fuming and upset at the same time. HS must have hated himself at that moment. I think something similar would lead to her being annoyed again in future, him pulling her to sit down, and then both of them making the clay pot together as we’ve seen in the promo.
Now Babita wanted to move out of the house but Minnie said she never meant it when she had previously said that. This took me by surprise because I really did think Minnie had meant that, but maybe she was now feeling silly about having made a big deal out of moving out in the first place. I am glad she was troubled by thoughts of HS and wondering how to make it up to him for being so rude.
I think the fact that HS gave Babita the message that he didn’t want to have to deal with their tantrums, despite always being respectful and helpful to them, really got to her. About time - they always take him for granted. Babita acknowledged that he had done a lot for them and did not deserve being unfair to him. Minnie was much more receptive and paid close attention to her mother and how affected she was by HS’ words.
Hanuman Uncle ki baat se itni hurt hai. Hanuman Uncle itna hurt kar sakte hain tujhe, itna farq padta hai tujhe Hanuman Uncle ki baaton se?
When Babita tried to brush it away, her smart daughter was not convinced, and remembered what Mickey had told her earlier.
All of a sudden, the clouds of her doubt had cleared.
Daddy’s Little Girl
The apology scene couldn’t have been done in a better way. It was a throwback to a previous scene where she came to talk to him as he was facing the mirror. Then too, she had come to make up for being rude to him and to thank him for putting the money in the pocket of her jeans - that day she had given him a place in her heart. Can I just say, I love the way the scenes are constructed in this show, the way they use props and angles.
I didn’t think Minnie would apologize so soon, but this is one of the best things about her character. When she realizes her mistake she tries to rectify it immediately. Seeing her mother hurting also got her to that point faster.
She said she was feeling horrible and instead of showing her the concern he felt, he was distant and asked her about her health, asked if she had skipped her medication.
She knew he had deliberately hurt her mother just for her sake and she asked him to tell her the truth.
Main ke hurt karunga chodi, main to khud hi hurt, retired hoon. Injured player hota hai na, ghaayal khilaadi, hmm, waisa.
I was over the moon seeing that instead of acting like a sacrificial lamb, HS was direct with his Veer Balika, as he always is, and said that he was retired hurt, injured. Yes, he was put in a position that he found difficult to handle, yes, he would find a way to deal with it, but no, he didn’t have to act as if it would be smooth sailing.
I don’t think Minnie can ever stand seeing him defeated or incapacitated in any way and just his resigned behavior made her realize what she had turned him into. She knew she made him go against his principles and hurt a lady, not just any lady but the one he was in love with. The whole kirayendaar-makaan malik relationship that she slammed on his face in their previous fight was now hurting her and she regretted ever having said that. The tides of guilt washed over her and she wanted to be rid of this feeling. She wanted things to go back to being the way they were and she wanted her Hanuman Uncle back, this time forever.
Once again, she heard the coach and player reference that had so much significance in their journey together. That did it for her.
She just had to go to and hug her Hanuman Uncle like a little girl, his little girl, but what I noticed this time was the way she was clinging on to him. I think on some deep level she knows that she can’t live without him or ever think of leaving the house, but most importantly, the fact that she knew how much she had hurt him, was hurting her. Aww! ❤️
Where he previously would have hugged her back, he tried to resist her affection, asked her to let go of him and tell him why she was crying. She was adorable as she said:
Aap jo chaahe saza de do, please. Jitna chaahe daant lo, aap chaahe to chaanta bhi maar lo mujhe theek hai, main kha lungi chaanta, lekin main aap ko tab tak nahin chhodungi jab tak aap mujhe maaf nahin kardoge.
He tried to literally pry her off him but she wouldn’t let go. She admitted her mistake, that she had hurt him, hurt her mother, and apologized - HS gave in to hug her back. Aww!!
He did not say she was wrong, but he knew she finally got the point. I am starting to wonder if HS, being the wise man he is, did all this on purpose, because he wanted her to see the effects of him mistreating Babita just to make Minnie happy and drive them away. Maybe he wanted her to understand that yes, she could get her way, but she would have to face the consequences, and that by doing so she was hurting the very person she was trying to protect.
It didn’t take long for HS to wipe her tears, to sit her down and talk to her in a way that she could understand. My heart went out to her when she asked him if he would ever be able to forgive her. She has seen so many extreme situations in life that for her everything was about all or nothing, ever or never. Yes, what she had done was wrong, it hurt everyone, including herself, but it wasn’t the end of the world, or of their bond, which was far too strong to let such incidents break it. Parents do not hold grudges against their children and such simple gestures as a hug are enough to wipe , leaving behind only love and care.
I loved how HS once again demonstrated how in tune he is with her thoughts and feelings, how he pointed out that she had a lot of things on her mind and was upset about things he did not even know about - basically, that she needed to get out of that headspace.
I said this in another post too, that he was only angry with her because of her rudeness that comes from her inability to manage her anger, and not because of what she had been thinking regarding his feelings for her mother. This anger management thing is going somewhere, I am sure the CVs have something lined up for us.
Term of Endearment: Veer Balika
The past few days have been about the father-child bond but now the focus is shifting slightly to mother-child bonds. Naeem Bi and her son Hanuman, Babita and her daughter Minnie, HS and his late mother.
I am now 100% sure the CVs are visiting our forums and paying attention to our tweets. I had always wanted them to dig a bit deeper into HS’ past and family and they did it in a beautiful way today, linking it to present events. Just when you think you’ve learned all there is to know about HS, especially after sealing this father-daughter bonding, the CVs surprise you by peeling off another layer of his character.
I was moved when he referred to their first open conversation, the night he had revealed to Minnie what had happened to his mother. I don’t think he opens up to anyone the way he does to her. As HS talked about it again, you could see that he never fully recovered from two things: the fact that he had lost his mother at such a young age and that he had never had the courage to stop his father from torturing her. As he described the abuse his mother endured, I could actually picture that frightened little boy hiding behind the door worried for his mother’s safety but unable to do anything to help her. I felt something pierce my heart when he called himself a coward, and remembered the incident where Minnie had called him one for not wanting to apologize.
How traumatizing must it have been for that little boy to see his mother lose her life in front of his eyes, and over the years how must he have battled the guilt of not being able to speak up or to take her far away from all her pain and troubles? I am sure he went through some form of PTSD and I suppose his father never paid much attention to him after his mother died. His grandfather would have tried his best but I believe his childhood experience created a great void in his soul, one that only Imarti had filled with her wisdom, love, and free spirit. No wonder he was crazy about her. After today’s episode, I am just wondering how he must have dealt with losing her, along with his unborn child, how he must have spent day after day, night after night enveloped by the darkness in his life. I have a feeling he will talk about it one day but until then we can only guess.
What he said to Lala a few days ago about not being able to bear losing Babita (and Minnie) made sense on an even deeper level today. He could not bear losing this newfound light in his life once again, but he would drive them away if it meant that light could continue to shine independently, forever. So that is what he did, mistreat Babita, go against his moral code, and hurt her deliberately so that she would decide to leave. It must have been extremely difficult for him to be the cause of the very tears he promised he would never let form in his beloved Babita’s eyes. That is why I say that Hanuman Singh is a diamond: beautiful, brilliant, multi-faceted, precious, but still indestructible, not emotion-wise, but character and principles-wise.
When I think back to all the scenes where HS cried when he saw Minnie cry or despair at being unable to help her mother come out of her failed marriage and all its baggage, I now understand what he went through watching his Veer Balika go through that. The Lodhi scene comes to mind when she cried because she was unable to convince Babita to break all ties with her marriage, when she couldn’t stand seeing her mother hurt herself.
The tears in his eyes when Minnie broke down after Ashok humiliated Babita in court were a result of his own repressed pain as well as Minnie's and Babita’s. He was an adult, a policeman backed by the law, yet he had to once again stand by and watch a man be abusive to his wife in front of his child, and not be able to do anything. Babita’s cries that night must have shaken him to the core as it took him back in time to the cries of his mother that he had heard while she was with him. His angst-filled dialogue about the monsters residing in men’s heart was an ode to all the ugliness he had seen in his own home, as well as in others’.
Yes, on that day and many other days he would cry with Minnie when he saw her hurting because he loved her and didn’t want to see her in pain, but now I know that he was seeing his younger self in her too. He was thinking back to all those moments when he could not do anything for his mother and felt the same despair that Minnie did. The difference was that she had the courage to do what he could not.
From his gesture showing the height, I also think he was very young when this happened. What can a little child do after all? I know many kids grow up with this everlasting sense of guilt and shame at being unable to protect their mothers, even though it is not really their responsibility to do so when they are young. As a result they either endure the effects of this trauma all their lives or they overcompensate and do their best to help others, just as HS does. He went from being a scared little mouse, paralyzed by fear and then frozen in speech due to the trauma of losing is mother, to a man who would give up his career, his home, and even his life to protect women in vulnerable situations. I dedicate the title of this post to this journey of his.
Can you imagine how he must have felt when Babita asked him to let Ashok go? Punishing Ashok for the emotional and physical abuse he had unleashed on his wives had been, on some level, Hanuman's way of assuaging some of his own guilt at letting abuse happen to his own mother and letting the abuser, his father, "get away with it". To be asked to let that vile man go must have been the hardest decision he had to make in his life. To what extent must he love Babita and not want to disappoint her, that he did as she asked, going against his stance on crime as an honest cop, and as a man who could not tolerate injustice of this sort?
I had previously written that one of the reasons Minnie and HS bonded was because they both had fathers who were irresponsible, abusive and never contributed to bringing them up properly. Today, they focused on that point but took it to another level. In their first meeting itself, HS admired Minnie’s bravery and he had always appreciated her efforts in supporting her Babes and helping her leave her life of misery. Now we know why, and the whole concept of bravery as well as the emotion behind Hanuman Singh calling her “Veer Balika” and eventually “Mhaari Veer Balika” took on a new significance. Sheer genius on the part of the writers.
Ashnoor was fabulous, but Aniruddh especially outdid himself. Everything he said and everything he left unsaid through his eyes, his voice modulation, the meanings behind his words that finally connected the dots for me, have led me to conclude what that I have written above. I am awestruck by his sheer talent.
Tomorrow the conversation continues and I am curious to see what advice he gives his Veer Balika about handling Babita. This is such a wonderful man who wants his Babita to be happy, whether it’s with him or with someone else, if that’s what her heart desires. I wonder if indeed there will be another man in her life.
I have a feeling that Minnie will warm up to the idea of her mother marrying Hanuman Singh and start to think that love is not the destructive emotion she had always thought it was, but then something will happen that will either result in a lot of pain for Babita and/or HS or maybe even their separation. It might be due to growing differences as Babita wants to soar in the sky of success but Hanuman Singh remains rooted to the ground. Or it might be something else, let’s see.
Special mention: the songs they choose are wonderful. I really liked the one they played when she was sowing. Kuch tune see hai, maine ki hai rafu yeh doriyan, perfectly describing how HS took the first steps and now she was taking one towards him.
Also Naeem Bi was extra adorable today in the way she nudged Babita to make the first move but also teasing her with the whole “serves you right” smiles, all under the guise of getting Babita to reach out to her “friend”. She is a very wise woman, and her son is just as wise.
By the way, usually when we see a lot of HS, he then goes missing for a couple of episodes. I was glad to see him get so much screen time today. I really hope this continues - the PH knows what a hit he is with the audience and that many people tune in just for him. Keep those beautiful scenes and dialogues coming, CVs!
PS I am too tired to proofread so please excuse spelling or grammatical errors. Will come back and fix it later.
Anupamaa
Health and Fitness
Bigg Boss 19
