Aww thank you so much for the warm welcome🤗
Haha yes, I've only been posting in the CG cuz I was avoiding spoilers and I was gif-ing as I went alone.....lol....finally caught up to all the epis today so felt like I could join the main discussions :)
Babita's guilt is universal....especially for women....we all feel it to different degrees because society has been designed precisely to make a woman feel guilty for being anything less than a model of silent suffering....she is constantly berated for speaking her mind.
Babita's case especially speaks to the difference between a beti and a bahu.....no matter how "modern", how "evolved" society gets, that difference persists.....a DIL is generally expected to suck it up no matter how wronged she is....for the sake of the "greater good". Babita too did this...for many years....because that is what she was taught by her own mom, by society, then by her MIL.....it's social conditioning that Babita is struggling with on an elemental level.....many women do....but their situations generally don't turn as dire as Babita's so they spend their entire life reconciling and making peace with this status quo.....Babita's circumstances took her off the beaten path....turned her world upside down....and she was forced to confront these emotions within herself....question the status quo that has conditioned her to strive to be a perfect beti, bahu, woman who can do no wrong, think no wrong. No wonder she feels so fragmented inside....and struggles with guilt if she finds herself lacking in living up to the ideal of "goodness" that is expected from a good bahu/woman in general.
My heart went out to her in this scene as she repeated again and again, "I'm not as good as you think I am"....how low must a self-esteem be, how low her self-worth must be after being battered for so many years that she feels GUILTY about wanting to answer back to the people who've berated her for so many years.....
Anger is a destructive emotion, true....but it should not cause a person to start questioning their very self-worth if they feel anger in some moments....and that is why I just loved the way Hanuman so sweetly told her that being angry doesn't mean she isn't a good person....I wish that convo could have continued....sigh....lol
I feel it's very cathartic as a viewer to travel this journey with Babita.....there's some degree of emotion we can all connect to....especially as women....especially those moments that aren't considered "likeable" to show on a woman.....where she can be hurtful to people....but I feel it is so very necessary to show those scenes too in this evolution for Babita.....for how will the impact come through if we don't first address those very human emotions.....
Babita is the epitome of the repressed Indian woman in many ways....a woman who was married off very early and expected to make her husband and in-laws her world....which she did....and lost herself somewhere along the way.....so how can it ever be easy for a woman who spent 17 years losing herself to find herself, her emotions, her sense of reality back so easily? There are bound to be scars....ugly scars that are hard to look at....but must be faced....you can't heal if you don't even face your scars first.
LOLL, I went through the CG and got teary eyed after looking at some of them. It's true a testament to the CVs when gifs alone are able to move a person to tears.
Yeahh, and the thing is if we try to break out of this conditioning then we're presented in a negative light. Arrogance, modernity and other such words then come to define us instead.
Again, I'm not a bahu and I don't think I'm qualified to speak about myself as a beti since everything is subjective in my lens. But honestly, kudos to Babita for keeping her mouth shut for 17 years. I have no idea how she did it but I seriously applaud that resilience. If it were me, I would have snapped a long time ago. I understand the whole notion of keeping peace in the family, respecting one another and living harmoniously but that job doesn't belong to the bahu alone. It's a whole team effort.
Mine did as well. This is why I'm so happy that she has someone like HS in her life. He's giving her the space to let out all her frustrations and grievances without having to fear any sort of judgment. I wished the conversation had gone longer too. Not just for the characters, but for myself. 
I really felt like I was learning a lot from them. At times, I felt like I was Babita.
The one thing I appreciated the most about HS is when he told Babita that he didn't like her because she's good or bad. He just likes her. I was reflecting my previous opinion on her where I was constantly wondering why he likes her. What did he see in Babita, that made him fall in love with her? But then, that was the whole point wasn't it? He didn't fall in love with a singular quality of hers. Neither did she do something so magnanimous that will make everyone go head over heels for her. No, she was just Babita living her life, one day at a time. And in these small moments, whatever glimpses he was able to have, he just fell in love.
Anupamaa
Naagin 7
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