. Not at all offended , why should I be ? These r your views and you have every right to express them as feelingly as I did with mine . Besides , dear , these discussions r hundred times more enlivening than the serial right now . That said , I would like to differ with you on certain points here . Although the perspective that u put forward has a point...........it cannot be applicable in Radhika's case anymore as things have gone beyond a certain level now . Yes , what u say can be felt by a normal girl , in a normal kind of love marraige or a perfectly normal kind of love marraige . But nothing about this story is normal . The marraige was not normal , Radhika is not a normal gal but a badly abused one , Dev's love for her is not normal but phenomenal , and the atrocities she endured ...........the switching of brides and now getting burnt are absolutely not normal phenomena. Had she been a normal gal who was pretty before marraige , had a love or arranged marraige with a nice guy and was just finding out about him like they showed in the movie Vivaah ......and she had got badly burnt , these fears , these insecurities arising in her mind that now with her disfigured face and figure she will merely latch on to him and make him miserable are perfectly normal .........they r , in fact , the post trauma reflections of a burnt victim . . But in Radhika's case her love story is an old story . If anything has come clear as water from this love story by now it is the fact that Dev is crazily in love with her and cannot survive without her . The ordeals he did for her were not what any normal engaged guy would do ........neither would a married husband do them , for that matter . The Kshama vrat where he almost died for her..........would even a married man do that ? The blunt answer is NO . Yet , Dev did them , and all through the year , this girl silently stood and watched him give one horrendous test after another for proving his love ............including have the guts to leave his mother inspite of being a RP of a very conservative brahminical society where he would have received a lot of flak for it . After all those tests , his courtship , his vachans in the tempole , most importantly that horrifying Kshama vrat , if you are telling me that this simple message that he loves her soul not just her body has not filtered across in her brain..............even her dad the Shastri has understood it by now and has commented to her that she is very lucky to find that kind of love , if that message has not been comprehended by her , she must be a very dumb girl indeed .
When would this message finally get to her .........if Dev had given up his life ? For that is what this extreme insensitivity and dumbness amounts to ..........understanding only after he dies or something . Which he almost did , btw , in the Kshama Vrat . Kshama vrats r not done by people who have the hots for a body .........one truly has to love the spirit within of his paramour too . This much even the Turbaned Mustachio gang of the Panchayat will figure out inspite of being ignoramuses. And Radhika still doesn't . It is laughable. Even now , if Radhika feels that with her burnt body what sukh , what happiness she will give Dev she really doesn't know Dev , does she ? The Kshama vrat then had no meaning in her eyes..........coz she equated it with Dev doing it all to get her well proportioned , healthy body , capable of bearing kids . And if she inferred this , then her understanding of love always has been pretty shallow , right upto this point .
Everything is not about her her and her alone . Had she died without telling him the truth , he would not just be devastated.........he would live or die with an unecessary guilt on his conscience that he could not fulfil one of the most important vachans that he had given her...........of making her his wife . That is the only thing that mattered to him and she as a lover knew that very well . Would her soul be happy up there , leaving him guilt ridden on the earth ? She made him live guilt ridden during his lifetime [ for being married to Vishakha which had not really happened] and she made him live guilt ridden even after her death would have been the scenario . 50 percent burns means she knew very well she may die . And when faced with that possibility she opts not to tell him the secret and keep him wrought with unecessary guilt for life only because of her shallow comprehension of love that with my burnt body i would be latching on to him...........so either i should shoo him away and make him miserable or die without telling and make him miserable does not really show Radhika in a pretty light , does it ?
Why did this happen in the first place ? This whole burnt thingy ? No , not simply because Amma is evil . It also happened because Radhika constantly shielded that evil . Abetting evil is as big a crime as doing evil itself . Why did Amma get this bold enough to go to the extent of burning a human ? Had she been curbed at the outset this would not have gone to this stage . But what happened was , Radhika , with her stupid , misplaced sense of values went on shielding one atrocity of Amma after the other . Why ? Coz she was her ' Ammaji ' and " Jis ghar ne Aasra diya , Use main kaise dhoka doongi ?" Amma went unchecked because of Radhika alone . She silently watched her getting bolder and bolder by the day , doing one nonsense after the other . Even the acid mehendi cone did not make Radhika speak up . That was warning enough that Amma had begun endangering human lives . That she needed a serious check . But for Radhika evrything is about her alone . She , Radhika , was ready to forgive the cone incident too . Jaane Do , Chod Do . Arre but it is not going to stop here , this evil . She will kill anyone who comes in the way of her Vishakha .......perhaps her bahuriya too . If Radhika dies and goes to heaven without telling the atrocities of Amma , it is perfectly possible that after Radhika
s death she will turn on that person who next is the greatest danger to Vishakha. Like Mrinalni for instance . Amma is perfectly possible of going to PB , plonking herself there with her rosary and chubby face and secretly poisoning Mrinalni's dessert ! Why , she had the guts to go and search that house for the photographs............see her audacity ! And whatever Mrinalni is she doesn't deserve this. Neither does Devki. Nor do any humans who cross Vishakha if at all Radhika dies .
The point of keeping secrets for personal obligatory bonds or personal comprehensions of love is far gone . Letting Amma loose on society is highly irresponsible social behaviour . At this point she should tell Dev how Amma switched brides , forced her and also how Amma burnt her . Both these secrets led to societal harm .and are intertwined , there is no escape now . These secrets should be told not just to obtain Dev's forgiveness [ even that point is far gone now ............whether Dev forgives or not is hardly important any more] .........these secrets should be told due to a moral and societal responsibility of not aiding evil any further in case more damage is done .
Forget being Rajpurohitain and all .........what she needs is to seriously organise her conception of values which is highly misplaced and wrong . Those misplaced sense of values led to this tragedy , not just Amma's evil . If she goes , with the same idiotic set of values to train some young kids who come to her for advice as a Rajpurohit's wife , she will endanger them too , as she will teach them to forgive evil , let it go unchecked , and to ' keep secrets' that cause pain . This is not just ridiculous , it is dangerous too ........look where she herself landed . , Facing the truth , squarely in its face is the true test of a human being ..........once he realises that running away from it will only ensure it following me lifelong , he has to , at a point , turn and face it . If that point does not come even Radhika's death bed , she is unfit to be a Rp's wife . This may sound harsh but she is still keeping secrets from Dev.........both the switching of brides and the arson , only to shield Amma ............not for any other reason , but those same misplaced sense of values that she stubbornly and idiotically believes in .
Anupamaa
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