Originally posted by: Aditii
Ok I see where you are coming from. In that track, I didn't really take sides but felt that it was all a misunderstanding due to the nature of their relationship (neither of them accepting that they were in love like a normal couple). See, I’m not married so I don’t know what are the boundaries regarding spouses being friends with the opposite sex so forgive me if I’m ignorant about that. Plus I’ve grown up in the US watching shows like Private Practice, 9-1-1, Grey’s Anatomy, Friends, and Brooklyn 99 where I’ve seen married people have close friendships with people of the opposite sex so I have a different cultural context.
When Mani entered into the show, we saw Ishu spend lots of time with him. I can understand this because they have met after a long time. She is as comfortable with him as she is with Bala. I found the same kind of comfort level and flirtatious attitude between them. Maybe if they had shown some backstory of Mani and Ishu, then it would have been easier to understand how important or unimportant of a friend he was.
Many are of the opinion that Ishita was neglecting her husband by spending excess time with Mani. But the day that Mani invited her to his house party, she had asked Raman to come along. On the phone she had said that "I haven’t asked for some everlasting love, I’m only asking you to accompany me to my friend’s place like how I accompany you to your friends’ parties." And Raman had said no. I don’t remember what exactly he had said but it was a refusal to come. I know he was going through some inner confusion about his feelings at the time, but from Ishita's point of view, it seemed as though she had wanted to include him but he said no. So she stopped trying to include him as he didn’t like that.
There is also the thing about her running to Mani for every problem she had. That was OTT, I’ll admit. Mani's presence wasn't justified in every situation, like in the hospital cabin with the doctor when Ishu fainted. But many times it wasn’t that Ishu called him and asked for help, it was rather he happened to call or be there and ended up helping (navratri puja, gas cylinder). Her going to Mani to solve Romi-Sarika’s problem was also too much. I understood her reasoning as to why she didn’t tell Raman; she did same thing when she spied on Suraj to get back Raman’s presidentship. At that time she took Mihir and Romi’s help. This time she could have taken Mihir’s help as well or anyone else from the family. But we have to remember certain qualities of Mani that allows him to deal with the situation better than other family members. 1) He was a more powerful businessman at the time; he actually recommended Raman for the Asia business council head position. 2) He was a stranger to Romi and sometimes it takes a stranger to get through to someone when family doesn’t (usually cuz family can get taken for granted sometimes). However, I do not defend Ishu’s secretive behavior with her changing Mani’s name to Manisha and lying to Raman about being in the clinic when she was actually with Mani. That was not right. Even if she needed Mani’s help, she could have included someone with her. Ideally she should have solved the problem with Raman and could have just asked him to not forgo the Asia business council head position. But even if she was going to hide it from Raman, then she should have included someone else from the family.
So in my opinion, I do agree that Ishita did some things that she didn't think through (that I wouldn't do in her place), but they weren't anything too unrelatable for me or too far from her character sketch. Especially when you consider that at this time, Ishita wasn't aware that Raman was in love with her. Maybe she had accepted somewhere in her heart that she was in love with him, but she didn't think so for Raman. She knew that he cared for her and respected her, and maybe even loved her somewhere but as the mother of his child and as a friend/companion. She didn't know that he was in love with her as a husband would be with his wife.
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