Minnie's curious expression turned to a smile as she saw her mother race to open the door, to find HS standing at the doorstep. Babita greeted him with a smile, and his eyes went to the jhumke that she had put on for him, bringing a slight smile to his face in turn. He slowly but shyly walked in and Babita and he stood in awkward silence for a bit as Minnie watched them from the balcony, finally understanding why her mother had been behaving so.
Babita tapped on one jhumka to ask for his opinion.
How did they look on her?
Perfect, he gestured with his hands a nod.
Minnie was impressed by how romantic her father had been in sending her mother this gift. He was being the hero that she had wanted for her mother. As they both stood there shyly, Minnie decided to give them their privacy. Goodness knows how many such moments she will walk in on in future.
Just as the two were about to sit and talk, in walked the elder Khuranas. Minnie realized that there could be an awkward situation if they realized that Babita had not even been aware of their gift, let alone put it on.
Senior citizen, aap is waqt? asked HS, trying to be welcoming but not quite feeling welcome towards this kabab mein haddi. He felt very awkward as they expressed their happiness about this alliance.
HS' expressions were priceless as the Khuranas announced they would take charge of the wedding preparations and call a priest to fix a date. All this when a wedding had never been discussed between them or a timeframe. It had barely been a few hours since he had proposed and Babita had accepted! And who were they to put themselves in the place of his parents? They were Babita's ex-in-laws not, for goodness sake. Of course, he was too polite to say anything but you could tell he was feeling uncomfortable about the whole thing.
The Khuranas had indeed come at the wrong time. Beeji asked Babita if she had liked her gift, and Minnie used her presence of mind to prevent any awkwardness by putting on the earrings herself and pretending as if she hand pinched them from her mother. She did not want her grandparents to be hurt, nor her mother to be put in an awkward position.
Wanting to give her parents some privacy, she took her grandparents to each ice cream. As she went to close the door behind, she overheard HS telling here mother that the senior citizens had bad timing. I loved how they connected this scene with the one a few weeks ago when he had been unable to eat the mango ice cream she had made because Dadu had come in between.
Aisa mat kahiye, fikar karte hain woh humaari.
Na. Ji fikar karna achhi baat hai.
Lekin woh, pyaar karne waalon ke dushman bhi to ban jaate hain, he shyly said to her, leaning in from behind.
Minnie felt a little bad hearing this but she knew where HS was coming from. I really do hope the senior Khuranas do not interfere in their marital life. I am not sure HS will tolerate it and Babita will have to break free from the hold they still have over her. As Minnie's grandparents, they would also be connected to mother-daughter, but through this marriage, they would move into a new sphere that included HS and his relations. Quite an interesting way to show the gradual changes in dynamics that comes with remarriage.
Minnie realized that she would have to pay a bit more attention to her grandparents so that they would not feel lonely or left out as Babita and she moved on. As she realized that her grandparents were rushing the wedding and recalled what HS had said about their bad timing, she asked them to leave the planning to her parents. Beeji was quick to mention she would fulfill her dreams when Minnie got married. The three of them were very happy to see Babita so happy, but Beeji, from experience voiced her fear that Babita may not be able to handle so much happiness all of a sudden, and that both HS and Babita had pasts and wounds to deal with.
Kahin ghaon bharte hain, kahin ghao riste hain. Aasaan nahin hota.
This was probably the only sensible thing I have heard Beeji say on the show!
----------
Ego vs pride, Self-respect vs Self-preservation.
Meanwhile, Babita and HS stood next to each other with an awkward silence until she turned to face him. The gentle smile on her face was immediately mirrored on his. As she suddenly remembered his harsh words from the other night, her smile slowly faded, and seeing this, so did his. As she turned to go upstairs without a word, HS puzzled over what had changed in that split-second and climbed the stairs behind her.
She stopped on the stairs to ask him why he was following her. It might have surprised her to see him do that without hesitation or invitation. In his mind, the insurmountable gap of the staircase had been closed when she had accepted his proposal, so he felt no such barrier. Slightly taken aback by her terse tone, he asked her if she had liked the earrings.
She remained silent and continued upstairs. This time he followed her but at a much slower pace, feeling as though something had gone wrong.
In her response, Babita removed the jhumke and put them on the table in the kitchen, then walked into her room without looking at him. Unsure as to why she would do such a thing, when she had clearly said before that she would like anything he sent her, he wondered why her demeanor had suddenly changed. He picked the earrings up from the table. Did she not like them, after all? She did not seem the kind to reject a gift in this way, that too when she had seemed happy to wear them when she had greeted him at the door.
He wanted to find out so he went to her room and cautiously approached her with questions.
Ji yeh achhe na lage jhumkiyan? Hmm? he asked, as he stood behind her, holding them up in his palm.
Achhe to lage lekin pehen nahin sakti hoon main.
Kyun ji? Aap ek dum se aise kyun?
Peheni thi maine jhumkiyan par abhi aap ko dekha to woh saari baatein yaad aayi jo aapne mujhse kahi thi, ke maine apni maryada todi hai.
HS was shocked to hear this, and quickly tried to reassure her.
Aap ko to pata hai ji ke mhaara woh matlab na tha.
Matlab jo bhi tha, kaha to tha na aap ne?
Socha bhi nahin ke mujhe kitna bura laga hoga, kitna hurt feel kiya tha maine.
Was she still upset over that? HS had thought her acceptance of the proposal meant that they were both starting with a clean slate, that she was over all that. Apparently not.
Ji, aapne na socha ke aap ne kitna hurt kiya hai manne, kitni baar.
Manne to bura na laga.
Anyways, mhaari galati hogi, chaloon mein maafi maang leta hoon, he said, starting to become emotional.
Maaf kar do mujhe.
Maafi nahin hai yeh, maafi maangne ka ehsaan jata rahe hain, aur mujhe ehsaan nahin chahiye.
HS realized where this was going. He had seen this before with her, but had not expected it to happen, not today, and not in this way. Still, he was going to see it through. He knew what was going on in her mind but went ahead and asked.
To phir ke chahiye? Nahin batao manne.
Aap jaante hain.
She knew that he knew exactly what she was thinking at that moment, what she wanted from him and why. She did not even try to hide it. All this time she stood with her back to him, not even looking him in the eyes as she made her demands.
Her words burst the bubble of happiness he had been in since the morning, their sharpness stung his heart as his tears stung his eyes. She could not see it but we as the audience could feel the shift in him.
Ji itna ghussa. Itna santaap.
Main maafi maang loonga to peeda shaant ho jayegi aap ki. Ego satisfy ho jayega?
Rather than answer his questions that challenged her stance, she flipped it around to challenged him instead.
Mere ego ke peechhe chhipne se achha hai, isse mere pyar ka imtihaan samajh lijiye, she said, stunning him into silence, breaking his heart. He could not believe she was testing his love after everything that they had been though together.
Kya hua? Aapki ego aapke pyaar se badi hai?
Na ji, mhaara ego itna bada na hai ke uske liye main apne pyar ko daon pe laga doon, he replied, with a mix of hurt and sarcasm in his voice as he wiped a tear. Oh the irony of ironies - he was clearly not the one putting his ego above his love. He tried to steady his emotions and put on a face as normal as possible in those circumstances, not letting her see his hurt.
Deciding to end the matter there and put them both out of their misery, he finally stepped forward and faced her, folding his hands in front of her.
Ji, haath jod ke aap se maafi maang leta hoon. Apni ghalati svikar leta hoon. My mistake. Sorry.
Babita knew what she had done and was completely insensitive to his feelings. I understand the source of her hurt and humiliation. She had the right to ask for an apology if she wanted, but not in this way, not by making him bend over and not by testing or questioning his love for her in a way that insulted it.
Why did I feel as though he was not just saying sorry to appease her but also potentially considering if he had made a mistake in the way he had handled things earlier in the day, if he had been wrong to be floating in air after her acceptance of her proposal, when the truth of her thought process had been heavier than lead? She had not said yes with a clear mind and heart, he realized. There was clearly a lot of insecurity and emotional baggage that she had come into this relationship with and they were far from gone. Babita almost looked vindictive to me. She knew that she was putting her ego above all else in that instant, and even he realized that she had chosen to go ahead with her demand and make him bow down to it.
HS, being the more mature of the two, did what he thought was best in that situation. It was a different matter that she continued to misunderstand him, rather she had not tried to understand him at all, but he did not want her to continue to be upset on what should have been a special day for them both. She thought she was challenging the importance of his ego, when in fact it was his pride that she had hurt badly too. His pride in her, and in his immense love and respect for her.
It is no secret that I have wanted HS to apologize for his harsh words since the court case had been sorted out. I understood his intentions but the end did not justify the means. It did not matter if Babita had asked or expected him to apologize. I would have wanted him to do it for his own principles on respecting women, for his decency. Not in the way he ended up doing, though, insulted by the woman he loved, and faced with the knowledge that she had not understood him, that she had placed her ego above all else and had not even tried to see his point of view. Even when he had mentioned that she had hurt him too, she did not react or reflect upon it. She was very determined to get him to choose her over his ego so that she could lay her insecurities to rest once and for all.
It was such a shame that this was the first time they had actually used the word pyaar out loud to refer to their feelings for each other, and that it had come to this.
HS did not know the significance of the jhumke, the backstory involving Ashok, and how instead of marking the start of a new journey with her beloved, it had brought back some of the bitterness from her past. All the more reason for her to explain her point of view and express her insecurities about her position in his life. With Ashok, they had been a generic item he had bought for others too, but with HS she wanted to be sure that like the earrings, everything else he did for her would be hers exclusively, that he was hers, and only hers.
Rather than acknowledge his apology, she put her palm out to ask for her earrings.
Meri jhumkiyan.
Like many of you, I was royally ticked off at her gall to ask for them back. I felt she did not deserve them anymore with the emotions that HS had attached to them when buying them for her.
She was, in essence, asking him to give her rights to her, rights that I felt she had no right to demand after what she had just done, but maybe I was too annoyed with her for ruining her own project through her actions. He looked at the earrings once again before slowly placing them on her palm, the special feeling he had associated with them now gone. They no longer felt like hers in the way he had intended them to be. It was quite a contrast from the feeling he had had when handing over the keys to the house to her. Crying happy tears at her victory, Babita closed her fist around them, much as she had the keys he had handed her earlier. This time, though, the mask had been removed, and he could see her, really see her.
As he stood there and watched her put the earrings, he observed that she had no remorse or sensitivity to what she had just made him do. She was in her own world, and he felt like an outsider there. Her accepting his gift and putting them back on should have made him happy but he felt no such thing. HS did not say a word, but my goodness his eyes showed us every emotion that he was experiencing in that moment, some of which cannot even be expressed in words.
As she asked him, kaisi lag rahi hai? he could only manage a nod and a ghost of a smile, and he tilted his head to say ok.
It was a great way for the CVs to show that where moments ago he had been excited to see her wearing his gift, and had thought they looked beautiful on her and she in them, he could now only manage an "ok". Babita and the jhumke did not look perfect to him anymore, the vision and the meaning tainted by her actions. They had lost their appeal, as had she in that moment. Where once he would have cherished this alone time with her, the chance to spend some romantic moments together, now he could not bear to be in the same space or even breathe in the same air as her. He also did not want to do or say anything to upset her further, and neither did he want her to see just how much she had hurt him then. The moment, the jhumke, and the Babita standing in front of him right then, all had lost their beauty.
Feeling suffocated and ill at ease, he excused himself with the pretense of an urgent matter. Babita, nodding with a smile, basking in the glory of her recent victory, was oblivious to his now changed demeanor. We had another one of HS' fantastic exits as the half-smile on his face turned into a frown and then a look of despair as he left her room. Pausing briefly at the top of the staircase to look back at her as she smiled to herself, he could not believe what he had just experienced. How could a day that had begun with so much promise have gone so bad? He had known of Babita's ego issues, but had never imagined they would come out this way, that too with him. She had left him when he had needed her most, she had needed Minnie to convince her to come back, and even upon their arrival he had asked them both to stay away, saying he was a bad man. Had it not been clear why he had tried to push them both away? Minnie had understood without any explanation, but clearly Babita had not.
Was this the same Babita who had interpreted Imarti's letter and understood the actual meaning behind her words? Was she still wanting to punish him after everything he had been through? Was she so inclined to establish her position of power that she had ended up defeating him, and in a way, defeating his pride in her? She had fallen from grace slightly today, something he had not thought possible.
Aniruddh was just something else. His expression when her back was turned to him, the way he wiped his tears and tried to be normal, and the changing expression on his face as she demanded her earrings back and put them on, to when he felt so suffocated that the last thing he wanted was to be in the same space as her, and finally the look on his face as he climbed down the stairs.
Lost in thought, and wanting to get out of there as fast as possible, he hurried out, as though the devil were on his tail, bumping into Minnie, who was surprised to see him leaving so early. He had not needed to say anything but she had immediately noticed that he something was bothering him. She did not buy his explanation of having to return to work on some urgent matter. He tried to pretend he was alright, but as usual, failed to hide his emotions completely from his daughter.
Aapne mujhe promise kiya hai na, aap Babes ko hamesha khush rakhoge? she reminded him.
Kiya tha promise, iss liye to... Was it because of his promise to Minnie that he had given in to Babita's demand instead of having an all-out fight with her? Had he been willing to swallow his pride just because of Minnie?
Iss liye to? she asked.
Not wanting to elaborate, he sent her to see her mother as he headed back to the police station.
The contrast between mother and daughter's perceptiveness could not have been greater, and the resulting differences in the level of stability and closeness in their respective relationships with HS were there for us to see.
Minnie hurried upstairs to check on her mother, feeling as though something had gone wrong. Her mother seemed to be distracted by looking for lehengas. She was full of excitement, choosing clothes for her wedding, wanting to fulfill all her dreams. This time, everything would be of her choice.
Tu jiss cheez pe haath rakhegi, sab kuch tujhe milega, everything.
There it was, that sense of entitlement both mother and daughter had, that somehow they were owed the best. This was a dangerous sentiment that had the potential to burn their loved ones and themselves.
Jo cheez aap ki haq ki hoti hai na, woh chheenni padti hai. Koi haath me laa ke nahin deta hai.
This is where Babita had gone wrong. You could try and seize your rights if you felt you were being deprived, but you could not seize people's emotions by forcing your own ideologies upon them. Babita still had a very long way to go before she understood the difference between ego and self-respect. It would be part of her journey.
As if to prove her point, she proudly told Minnie that Poonam had been wrong, that she had made HS apologize to her, had ensured he had picked her over his ego, and had not damaged her project in the process. Her ego had not gotten in the way. Minnie was alarmed.
Hanuman Uncle ne tujh se maafi maangi?
Haan Minnie, maine tere Hanuman Uncle ke saamne apni sharth rakhi, ke ya to woh mere liye apne pyaar ko chunein, ya phir unki ego ko.
Aur pata hai tere Hanuman Uncle ne kisse chuna?
Mujhe! she said, victoriously, while Minnie was horrified, immediately understanding the impact of Babita's actions and what her father must have gone through. Her mother had gotten her father to choose her over his self-respect and pride, but at what cost? She knew the backstory of the earrings, but she also knew HS had no idea about what had driven her mother to behave so. And even if he didn't, Minnie knew her mother had been unjust with him, punishing him for the mistakes that Ashok had made, her insecurity causing her to drop her mask and expose to HS what exactly she expected of him, no matter if it was right or wrong.
I felt Paridhi did a great job showing Babita's state of mind very convincingly in this scene, as did Ashnoor on showing Minnie's realization of the big blunder her mother had made.
I hope they revisit the jhumke incident in future. It would be good to see how Babita reflects upon her words. Just like she had had some realization based on Poonam's words about her ego, she needs a harder jolt so that she can go beyond the superficial. She had clearly not understood Poonam's words and it was as though she had been trying to disprove them.
Babita had obviously not been paying close enough attention to what Naeem Bi had tried to explain to her about not wanting to hold on tightly to sunlight, that it was never going to work. That was exactly what she was trying to do, reach out and grasp the sunlight, in the process losing out on experiencing its warmth.
I think Babita has always enjoyed being in a position of power in this 'relationship' knowing that HS pined for her and that she had the ability to say yes or no and decide their future. She has also always known what kind of man he is, that he would wait for a lifetime for her to open up if he needed to. Meeta coming in made her insecure as did the whole Imarti episode, because his memories of her hadn't just faded away or buried somewhere, they were still very much breathing and living.
By asking her to go away from his life through his harsh words, and then putting Imarti's photo on the wall to show her place in his life, HS had, in Babita's view, effectively put Imarti first. He had tried to drive Babita away because of Imarti and the case, she had come second for him then even though she had finally decided by that time that she would make him come first in her life.
By putting a condition like that she made it clear that she wanted him to always choose her as his first option, even over Imarti, even over the hurtful words he had spoken to her because of Imarti. Her pride and jealousy would not let her even think of being second on his list. HS realized it and understood but his heart was wounded nonetheless, as was his daughter's when she realized what her mother had done to him.
Pre-cap
HS tells Lala that he would have to handle this relationship in future and that Babita's ego could very well make her destroy their relationship, even if it meant she would be hurting herself.
Current Affairs
