"You are more than the labels the world assigns you and have a long way to go to achieve your dreams" Sundar's words to Imlie struck my heart today & made me cry. These words will forever be the bastion for Imlie, to deal with the current situation and forge ahead with her dreams.
From the get go, I was able to see the actual emotions behind each character's reactions to the truth, and their motivations for that reaction. Be it the Tripathis or even AC, today everyone was just dealing with the aftermath of the truth and Adi's choices.
Saturday's statement to Adi by PT was answered by Rupi, who reminded everyone that Malini loves someone else. Now how long that excuse is going to keep the T's from trying to get AM back together, we will have to see. Malini expecting decency from her mother made me laugh. This woman has never given anybody a reason to expect any level of decency in her behavior in the last 200+ episodes, why does her daughter even try, I will never understand.
Today AC's motivations made sense to me from her perspective. She is a vindictive woman who wants to take revenge for her and her daughter's betrayal from the easiest target - Imlie. Is she right? Of course not. But her thought process and stand have always been very clear and consistent, unlike the other people in her family, who still flip flop so much, that it gets my head spinning. AC today asked very pointed questions to Malini, who was trying her best to convince both her mother & herself that everything leading upto this moment were own choices and she was happy with it. While I know she will flip the next second (which she did, I knew I could count on that) she did try to convince her parents (mainly her mom, coz she also has lost all hopes from her father to do anything. Dev just keeps proving that no one should keep any expectations from him, absolutely no one) to allow Adi & Imlie to live their lives peacefully.
At the T house, Radhaji started her "Samaj kya kahega jaap" and Adi was just done. He made it clear that we fall in love with a person and not the samaj. He is the least bothered what other people think of his marriage with Imlie and will not allow anything wrong to happen with her. Aparna tried to start her Malini jaap, which rebutted very well by Adi, who mentioned that he had apologized to Malini multiple times and finally Pallavi who correctly mentioned that just because Malini is wronged, they cannot do the same to Imlie when she is not at fault.
Today I finally understood why Radhaji & BK have had such a successful marriage, as both tend to think the exact same way. When BK tried to go all moral police and tag Imlie's actions as her "gande neeyat", his son came back to remind him of exactly all the actions that Imlie has done and try to understand exactly which one of them have "gande neeyat" attached to them. I am glad that here it was Nishant who tried to make BK understand that he did not misjudge Imlie then and this feeling of betrayal is what is causing them to unsee everything that Imlie has done for this family over this entire period of time. Everything that she has done, was now colored by the fact that she was doing this to phasao Adi in her jaal, just because she hid the truth from them. Radhaji went one step ahead to involve her parents in this as well, which got such a violent reaction from Adi, that even Imlie was surprised.
Aparna started to blame Imlie for doing everything to capture Adi & his family in her web of lies and tried to blame her other for teaching her all of this. Like we all expected, that statement finally broke Imlie's silence. She finally said that coming to the city was never her choice but she had to come out of majboori. How her mother shed tears of blood and how her dadda was ready to shed blood when they sent her away. How she never wanted to stay, but their love and support just made it difficult to go away. She never wanted to hurt anybody, be it Malini or the T family.
Aparna's reaction to her pleas instantly made me connect to Imlie's dialogue to Adi, when in jealousy he asked her to marry Prakash. She tells him that everytime he feels his heart melting for her, he feels guilty of cheating Malini and then lashes out at her to insult her and make her feel bad, so that she steps back & leaves him. Today Aparna did the exact same thing. While Imlie was making her case, Aparna was visibly melting and you could see that she was able to somewhat understand that Imlie was just a little girl stuck in a situation not of her choice. But because she felt that by melting she will do injustice to Mali's memory, she immediately shut down her feelings and insulted Imlie in the worst way she knew, just to push her away. Her anger was her defense mechanism to deal with this unexpected situation that both Adi & Imlie have put her in, just like her son.
Imlie just walks out of there to deal with everything on her own, leaving Adi to contemplate if what happened was a bad dream he could not wake out of. Nishant comes there and reminds Adi that life does not change in an instant and he needs to give the family time to come out of this shock.
Finally we get to see KC after a long time. While DC is not so keen on him, AC is willing to use him to keep Malini away from the T's and Adilie. This one scene showed me just how big of an Adilie shipper AC actually is. Just imagine how all of us were so worried that Malini will get herself involved in this situation to make her presence felt, but looks like AC is doing the heavy lifting to keep Malini away and let Imlie patao her in-laws on her own. Thank you lord for giving us ACđ.
KC & Malini's conversation is again a rinse and repeat of him trying to understand if she wants to move on and singing praises of how big a sacrifice she has made by giving up her pyaar for them. But he said one good thing - finish this naam ka rishta also & all of you move on with your lives. then he finally asked teh million dollar question - "Do you want to move on?" Made me laugh at how he put Malini in a delicate situation with this question, where either answer is going to take her down a path she does not want to go on.đ
Finally we get the best scene of the day. I am glad that out of everyone, Imlie chose to speak to Sundar. While I understand her motivation behind sharing her feelings with Sundar as he will be a neutral third person who can tell her what has been gnawing at her this entire time. Has she tried to go above her aukat by falling in love with and holding on to her relationship with Adi? Is she trying to see dreams beyond her "pay grade"? Sundar so beautifully explains that his advice to her was always mired in what he had learnt from childhood about his own position in society. How while he is happy with his place that society has defined for him, she is not like him in anyway. Meeting her made him understand how a person's status in society is defined by them, their thinking and their choices to make something of themselves. How her being state second and student of the month shows that despite what anyone says, her dreams and ambitions define her, not the labels that everyone wants to assign her to fit her in a box in their mind. He makes her realize now it may seem that she cannot match up to them now, but she will go very ahead in life to go much beyond what anybody expected and that he has full faith on her.
After a very long time Imlie has shown me a scene that really made me emotional. While it may look cliche to people and others may feel ke usne aisa kya kaha that we all already do not know. But what his words did then was apply balm on a very hurt soul. It reminded Imlie that her dreams and ambitions are what define her, not the words and insults that the T family hurled at her today. That no matter what anyone says, she is much more that what she was called today by people she trusted and loved. Reminds me of when a child who goes against their parents to follow their dreams and are constantly put down for following something that may seem trivial to them. How that propels them to stick their guns and do their best to succeed, just to show that their choice to follow through on their dreams was not wrong. Today Imlie is in that situation, and Sundar's words confirmed to her that fighting for Adi & her dreams are not wrong, no matter what anybody says.
The precap shows Aparna & Radhaji asking Imlie to pack up her potli. While it can go either way, my feeling is that they may ask her to move from the kona to a guest room maybe? Let the speculations begin.
Arjun
Cricket
