Hey everyone! I am Roop! Been following this show (Meet) on and off since it began (I have never watched Bokul Kotha despite all those billboard ads plastered all over Kolkata š) and I genuinely like this show despite its flaws. I know everyone is quite frustrated right now and everyone wants to know how Meetwa can ever truly love Meety if he "loves" Manushi with all this shiddat, so here's my 2 rupees thoughts about this. š
So, I know ITV has usually dealt with crushes and infatuations prior to this, but they really have (and present) a very very skewed version of what of "passionate" love is supposed to constitute. Usually, it is a teenager-ish version of chahat and stuff which is passed off for love on ITV. And before anyone tries to roast me for saying this, calm down and please listen. Usually ITV tends to pass off "passion" for love. That is one thing that is pretty consistent across most ITV couples. I can only think of a handful of couples who weren't into this madly passionate type of love off the top of my head - Anandi and Shiv from Balika Vadhu 1 (RIP Pratyusha and Siddharth š) were one such couple where love grew pretty organically and realistically where Shiv, despite being smitten with Anandi primarily because of her qualities, was deeply respectful of the fact that Anandi was coming out a child marriage where she had genuinely loved her husband who had cheated and abused her. Anandi, in turn, while took her time to come out of it, but when she did, boy, it was a thing of beauty. I still remember the last scene from the episode where Anandi had thrown away things from her marriage with Jagya which she had stored away in a suitcase. It was a quiet scene, just Anandi sitting on her bed, smiling away as background music played, her looking at the windchimes, then looking at the payal on her feet and playfully clanging her feet together to create a little chamcham noise and then smiling brightly as she thought of Shiv who had put those on her feet, then smiling even more brightly as she sees Shiv's name on her ringing phone. It was a beautiful scene and I remember it to this day. Anyone who has watched BV will know that Anandi loved Jagya to the core, with passion, desire and devotion, waiting for him till years on end, but did this affect the depth of her love for Shiv? No, she loved Shiv a thousand times more. In her marriage with Shiv, you could see that Anandi loved Shiv, far more than she could ever love Jagya, despite her once true feelings for Jagya. The truth was that she had moved on and Jagya was a relic of a past relationship she had herself closed the door on.
In contrast, you have one of the better written shows Kuchh Rang Pyaar Ke Aise Bhi, and their supposed comparative realism, and Dev and Sonakshi being two people who were deeply passionate about each other. But ultimately, they had an extremely turbulent marriage due to the fact that they had absolutely terrible communication skills despite their shiddat, to the point that Dev spent a few years sleeping around with random women (I know this is controversial amongst Devakshi fans but the show implied it plenty of times, and the worst part was that Dev and Sonakshi weren't even legally divorced, they were freaking married when all of this was going on) and Sonakshi ultimately giving birth and raising Sona on her own in the latter's initial years, just because they couldn't communicate like two normal mature people in their 20s and 30s. This is besides all the nonsense their families (specially Dev's) kept creating repeatedly. While Dev and Sonakshi genuinely loved each other passionately, they often didn't know how to communicate and frankly, this is down to lack of maturity and healthy communication patterns. This on and off style is actually emotionally taxing and is honestly quite detrimental to individual heath (emotional, mental and physical). And unfortunately, a lot of ITV shows try to promote this kind of turbulence as sacha pyaar.
Frankly even till a few years ago, I myself believed that shiddat = sachha pyaar.
But
But
And but
Now I am older and more mature, and I realise that there is something called limerence. It is a very very strong form of attraction and emotions - a heady cocktail of strong feelings for a person - it is lust, desire, affection and emotions all put together. Actually, limerence is what psychologists believe is the initial stage of love - the one which makes people experience these strong emotions and allows them to procreate. Google it up if you want to know more. One of my friends is going to be licensed psychologist (her MPhil in Clinical Psychology is going to done soon) and we were discussing this and she says she sees clients like this at the clinic all the time - people who genuinely feel that they are in love because they are unable to stop thinking/desiring/feeling for this one particular person and this is mostly because they have this image of this person which may or may not to be true. The person experiencing limerence thinks that they love this person including all their "flaws" but the truth is usually this is not love. It is limerence. My friend says that usually the easiest way of breaking a person out of their limerence is break this 'image' of the person they desire. Usually, there is denial, strong hatred, self-loathing and even self-destructive behavior as a response, and often this is the point where the patient is referred to therapy. My friend says that despite this breakage of image, the patients experience a lot of attachment and usually keep coming back and often keep talking out their "loved one" and how they still love them and how much they want them back, etc. However, she points out that usually once the initial obsessive period lasting the first 3-4 months from the point of image breaking happens, they start figuring out that this person was not right for them and this process again lasts another 3-4 months and usually by the time of 6-8 months of their first heartbreak, they genuinely start moving on and usually are back to their pre-limerence/infatuation stage by the end of the year. My friend's supervisor had a client who had feelings for her childhood friend for 10 years before realizing that the childhood friend had a (very serious) girlfriend and would possibly never see her as anything more than a sister. Thankfully, she was going through grief counselling at the same time (she lost someone close due to Covid) and could receive help at the time she just got her heartbroken. Apparently, it is been more than a year and a half by now, she has happily moved on and is soon going to be engaged to a wonderful guy whom she likes wholeheartedly and much more than the childhood friend. My friend knows this because the client called up her supervisor and invited her to the engagement ceremony, thanking her for everything.
And I feel that is what forumwasis are experiencing right now regarding Meetwa's Manushi jaap. How can he even love Meety if he is this passionate, with his hands shaking and him crying over her earrings? One thing is clear. Manushi is a manipulator par excellence (Masoom should take classes from her). She is able to give off one image to Meetwa and one to Meety, and while Meety is obviously more clear sighted about this, Meetwa is not. MA is not infatuated with Manushi, he is limerent about her. And Manushi is fully aware of this and using this to her advantage. Manushi's jaadu and that stuff aside, MA is shown to have been thinking about Hathodi since ep 2 and despite that break in friendship thanks to Kunal, it is clear that MA is a lot more affected by MH than should be normal even for a dost-biwi. However, he also had a very strong mental image of what he wanted in a life partner and after rejecting girls after girls and not dating at all till found his "The One", he thought he found her in Manushi - looks, virtues, personality, voice, everything. And despite being cruelly abandoned at the altar, MA definitely is unable to move on, primarily because the image of Manushi he has created in his head. So, this track is more about MA getting over his mental image of Manushi more than anything else.
I have often wondered what this track is trying to do and I think I have some points jotted down.
1. MH is not in love with MA. She is emotionally attached to him - it is both platonic and conjugal - but not romantic. So, while she will be hurt or her trust will be shaken, she will not leave the Ahlawat Haveli. Bring in Tej and she has all the more reason not to (by taking care of him while studying for exams while staying away from MA). However, this track will probably convince her that MA's true love is/was Manushi and MA-MH have no future together, or at least it will convince her that she will always be a compromise, and she will become distant or at least, take on so many things at the same time that she does not have to spend time around MA.
2. MA will be over Manushi. Definitely something will happen. I am not going to talk about the desert BTS because it's way too confusing but something definitely will happen. MA's image of Manushi will break permanently and he will slowly start coming out of his limerence for her by the end of this track. This will hopefully permanently wrap up his Manushi jaap. One thing that had been emphasized repeatedly is that MA wants answers - Why did Manushi leave him at the altar? If she never wanted him in the first place, why did she play with his heart and create these strong feelings for herself? This track will put an end to that. MA will have his answers. After all, all MA wanted for a long while is to meet Manushi so that he can ask her face to face and get his answers. Manushi knows this and is using her two faced personality to her advantage and MA is trying to avoid her becuase of his limerence for Manushi, his growing feelings for Meety plus his trauma. I think MA will come to see Manushi for the snake that she is by the end of this track. I know people are upset about him not moving on regardless of Manushi's personality but given the fact that Meetwa had such a strong mental image of the perfect life partner which he is projecting onto Manushi, this is required. But it is going to be a bumpy ride till that point. I wonder if they will use MH's voice for this breaking of image. I often wondered what was the entire point of giving MH that sweet voice and I think it is ultimately for this. That MH is going to sing (to Tej possibly in this track or the next one) and MA will see and hear this and will definitely know for sure that this is the voice he fell for (This now seems a bit like Little Mermaid).
3. When he will finally be free for his limerence for Manushi and free to finally feel his growing feelings for Meety, she will have built a wall. I don't think she will ignore him but just try to spend as little time with him as possible while he would want more and more. There's also the fact that she feels not completely comfortable with him, in romantic terms while touching physically, will also be explored (see my point 4). Ultimately, however, it is a long journey to love. There are far more subplots and far more plot threads to tie them together.
4. A lot of people have talked about MA's seesawing physical attraction to MH. I think Manushi's re-apperance has dampened that because he has openly admired her twice (the Diwali episode and her first HM dress) prior to that chudail's waapsi. But I don't think he is even aware of it and I think Manushi turning up again has definitely shaken that because he was openly touchy feely with MH prior to this. I think once his Manushi jaap is closed, this attraction will come back in full force. If one pays attention, MA tries to gift MH beauty products or nice clothes and shoes. It is not in a usual ITV taunting way or even his own liking for good looks. I genuinely feel he finds Meety attractive. He is just not aware of it. Dekha nahi, kaise shyly taad ke dekh raha tha chooda rasam ke waqt. Or when he was admiring her wearing his shirt while she was studying. I think he is quite attracted to her, just completely unaware of it. It might be so that while MA might start becoming more and more physically comfortable with MH and at some point, desiring her sexually, MH will be very uncomfortable with that. She will probably need far more time than we can imagine.
5. MA will definitely be the one to fall first. He already is but definitely also be the first to realize it.
6. l want a second jealousy track for MA. This time with him being fully aware of his feelings. Because by god, the Chapri track was hilarious as hell.š¤£
7. Off track but I want MH and MA to have a second wedding, one where they both are happy. š³
Just my 2 rupees thoughts everyone. Thanks for reading this long long post.
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