13/7 Dragon Club :Value of Love and Life

There were so many things going on in today's episode that I have to break it up into parts to discuss it properly.

Vidhi vs. Bua
I am loving this ongoing feud between the two characters here. Bua is determined to out Aarti and Yash and Vidhi is determined to protect them, like the motherly creature she is. I loved her and Aarti's interaction in the kitchen when she sternly asks her if this is her and Yash's doing and Aarti nods like a kid who has been caught stealing candy. And just as it appears that Vidhi is going to reprimand Aarti for her foolishness, a greater danger appears in the form of Bua and Vidhi goes into full protection mode, shouting at Aarti for something completely irrelevant to throw Bua off. I loved what they did with Vidhi's character in that interlude, making her the essential mother, scolding and upbraiding her child one minute, but protecting it fiercely when any external danger threatened.

Prateek and Paridhi
Ouch. Poor Prateek. Paridhi is in her comfort zone, a place where she can say what she feels without being reprimanded or judged and without people constantly ignoring her problems. For the first time since she got married, she is the centre of attention and she gets carried away, venting to her sympathetic maasi, who is the first one to criticise Prateek instead of Paridhi for this issue. In the heat of the moment and the adrenaline rush of purging all her negativity, Paridhi gets carried away and says a thing too many, the thing being her comparison of Prateek and Yash. I have no doubt that Prateek already has a huge inferiority complex when it comes to his perfectionist brother who can do no wrong and today Paridhi rubbed that in his face. Unfortunately for her, this is not going to motivate him to get her job back for her, but drive him further away. When you have been made to feel like absolute crap in front of someone you don't even know that well, it doesn't really make you want to help the person who humiliated you so thoroughly.

Even though Paridhi's approach is totally off, I still can't blame her emotions. She has been holding all this negativity in for so long that it just burst out as soon as her confidant posed the telling question. However, she regretted it almost as soon as she had vented that last negative feeling and tried to justify her words to Prateek by admitting that what she said might have been hurtful but was not untrue; she was deeply unhappy with the way things were going for her. I agree that it might have been harsh but Prateek has not been responding to her other, more subtle and not so subtle hints so I wonder if she thought, what the heck, couldn't hurt to try. But I think it did.

Neelam Speaks
Of course at first I thought that Neelam's speech was hugely corny, I was pleasantly surprised by how this fact was brought to realisation by the writers. Neelam sees how much Yash and Aarti are doing for her and she feels guilty that they have to go against their own family. Subliminally, Aarti tells Neelam about her situation through theirs, that their parents may be angry at first, but that once they see the truth they will be proud of their son. Through out this speech, Yash looks at Aarti with undisguised admiration and fondness. Not only is she assuring Neelam that everything will be alright, she is indirectly assuring Yash as well and he subconsciously picks up on it and cannot help being comforted.

On the other hand, Neelam, sees a completely different picture of Aarti, the devoted, wise and loving wife and a role model. That is when it comes to her attention that it is not this gentle yet strong woman's face that adorns the walls but the face of another and she is perplexed by this. When she cautiously asks who it is, Aarti casually replies that it is Yash's first wife Arpita. Suddenly everything falls into place for Neelam and she realises how she can repay her "brother" for everything he has done for her. The way he brought love back into her restless and repressed life, she can bring love back into his, and so she joins Aarti and Yash's hands and in the innocence of youth (the youth that Aarti explained to Vidhi she was not) tells Yash to love Aarti, as though it were that simple.

It is only when Neelam reminds him of his past and tells him to forget it that Yash forces himself to go through the quick abridged version of his flashbacks and then reiterate his belief that love can only happen once. I will get to Yash in a minute but what Neelam said I thought was really interesting, the advice she gave Yash that love does not only happen once, in fact it doesn't follow any rules at all; it just happens. It made me wonder if perhaps Neelam had not fallen in love with Kunal in a similar manner, being all calculative and strong in her principles at first, but in the end giving into the feelings that had overcome her. She spoke of love with the experience of one who has lived it and I would like to believe that this is the history behind her and Kunal.

It also explains why she is so quick to disbelieve the power of her love in the face of her parents' disapproval and anger. I think she grew up knowing what her parents could do, having grown up with the story of her Bua hanging over her head, so she "decided" not to fall in love and just live peacefully the way her parents told her. But then love happened, just like she told Yash it did and there was nothing she could do about it, but the power of her love did not outweigh the years of fear her parents had inculcated in her, which was not helped by their reaction to news of Kunal. Considering Yash and Neelam come from such similar backgrounds, it really makes me wonder if Neelam didn't see her own conflict in Yash...principles and a desire for complete control holding them back from giving love a chance.

"Hum"
Now to Yash. He was totally delicious in the episode because it could not be clearer that he is completely caving and having a meltdown on the inside that he is being extra calm internally, to mask. Two times he was watching Aarti's interactions with Neelam in total awe and admiration that could not be mistaken. It makes me feel like Yash is falling in love with the kindness of Aarti, her overwhelming kindness to accept others as her own without a doubt, incidentally the same thing she fell for in him since he became Ansh's father. It also probably points to the fact that Yash feels less guilty admiring Aarti as a mother because he feels justified doing so.

Now to that hand hold. I thought it was fascinating that Yash suddenly drew his hand back now when he was the one to extend it to Aarti just a few hours ago. It shows that he is willing to hold Aarti's hand as long as she is willing to hold his, but he is averse to the idea of an external force trying to join them together. As soon as someone tries to verbalise their relationship with words and labels, like marriage and love, he becomes uncomfortable and draws away, preferring to let the truth their relationship rest in a delicate ambiguity. As soon as someone else tries to label it, he has to then reassure himself that this relationship is not encroaching on Arpita's place in his heart and reiterate those principals that hold him to her memory. He is also equally afraid of being invasive to Aarti's personal space with her husband, remember how upset he was when she thought he was a lech, and so he states his terms on no uncertain ground, for what he thinks is both his and Aarti's benefit.

What I found most interesting though was that Yash spoke for both of them when he defined their marriage to Neelam. The number of times he said "hum dono" or "hum" really drove home the fact that he and Aarti are becoming a cohesive unit in his head, even if it is based on their common belief that love cannot happen again and marrying for their children. He may not realise it but Aarti is creeping into the position of his companion very effectively. I hope this reflects on their parenting.

Aarti's Conundrum
Poor Aarti is caught in a web of her own unconscious making because unlike Yash, her feelings since the wedding have changed so drastically with regards to Yash and her past. How can she tell him when for the first time he is referring to them as one, that she can no longer share his belief on love because love itself has changed her mind? He is so happy and peaceful in the knowledge that they are on the same page that she swallows her grief and pushes her budding feelings further down. However, she cannot help looking at him longingly and this is not going unnoticed by him. While his mind is telling him Aarti is still in love with her first husband, his heart is reading signals of a different variety and he is baffled and confused. Aarti was staring at him when they went to sleep yes, but it cannot be denied that Yash also sneaked a glance at her before he shut his eyes for the night.

And finally they used the pending verse of Ye Dil Hain to convey Aarti's turmoil. She has acknowledged her love for him and all she can ask is that one day he say to her that he needs her...every moment...that he loves her. For now all she can do is enjoy her memories of the one who can never be hers, ironically what Yash is doing with Arpita.

I dedicate this lovely quote from Twelfth Night to Aarti today, I think it says it all

I hope Yash realize what Aarthi has to go through and has been going through..as everything is happening in front of him and still if he DOES NOT then these actions will not be justified 😡

My jumbled out thoughts for today's episode.

Context of the episode.

Yash and Arti wants to take Neelam and Arti for court marriage but in the morning the Minister Tiwari's men crash into the Scindia mansion who are going to carry out a pooja. They crash into this event in search of Neelam. The Scindia's come to know this at the last minute when Arti blasts out that Neelam and Kunal is no more.

While Paridhi seems to be on a mission to fight it out with her husband Prateek in regards to her joblessness and not being allowed to do so by sharing all the nitty-gritties of her life in Scindia mansion with her aunt.

My Analysis now

Apart from the unbeilievabilty and silly tactics of Neelam I loved this episode for its broad themes of the consequences of lying vs personal freedom.

Yash should wake up and notice that he is breaking the heart of the one standing in front of him with that mantra of his never falling in love with again. Arti will now know what it is to break her heart a little every day spending the rest of her life with the man she has fallen in love. Neelam's answer to Yash that love can happen anytime and in any situation and it just happens.

Neelam has believed in their rescuers but her happily ever after will never come she feels and she has taken a drastic measure that if she cannot fight for her happily ever after she will take the cowards way out and kill herself along with her helpless spectator boyfriend Kunal.

Arti's courage in this has been revealed. She is going to fight for something that of her husband Yash and the power of love it seems. Her happily ever after I think she will write it for herself and not give it to chance.

Also I believe that she will guard her heart more now with the way Yash has thoroughly refused to acknowledge that she could be in love with him as he has answered on her behalf with regards to falling in love a second time. The control lies within her as she knows the problem to her condition that of one sided love. It is she who has to draw out Yash Scindia out of his dead end mantra just the way she has dragged him out of that car when he had suffocated a few episodes earlier.

Yash thinks that there will be a happily ever after. But for him it is difficult finding that to find for this happily ever after as that destiny also has written something else for him. He is about to find that his heart does not belong to him anymore, I hope he finds out this when all this melodrama is settled and done

Paridhi is lying to her in-laws because she wants personal freedom. The real face of Paridhi has been revealed to Prateek and Paridhi has found out that love is not what really is all that jazz about to be and live happily ever after. Also she is not respecting in her trailblazing to convince Prateek that he is wrong however sweetly she apologizes to him that if he is hurt she is sorry. Her aunt has a modern worldview and believes that Prateek should fight against his parents thought process of traditionalism.

So it also falls under the broad spectrum of control and personal freedom in regards to Paridhi. Many people will agree with Paridhi's that she is not happier because she is more controlled now that she has married Prateek. It is her choice that put her there but instead of working with him to find a solution Prateek and she are fighting out infront of her aunt. Prateek is wordless and held captive in his traditional beliefs of his father. I hope Paridhi's love for Prateek does not fizzle out just as it seems it's about to be patterned after his parents. Paridhi's words may ring true but her tactics here are totally wrong and uncalled for to ambush her husband like that infront of her relatives.

SP had a cool head while the Minister Tiwari's men pulled a gun infront of his face where Gayatri went into full panic mode? She is also a woman who is looking for her happily ever after since her son Yash's first wife died. That is what I felt with the pooja she was trying to carry out to bring good luck and providence.

So to conclude I would like to say, one lie is culminating in the destruction of life while the other is culminating in the destruction of a harmonious marriage. Also these events are now affecting the greater good of the Scindia Pariwar.

My thoughts are in no particular order today.

I get why from a story and character perspective they had Neelam questioning Yash about his love only happens once stance, still, what happened later in the show from her side made those statements seem a little bit out of place. When Neelam's parents show up, she goes into a frantic tizzy saying they will force them apart, never let them marry, but neither of them can be with another. I just found it to be a very weird juxtaposition in Neelam's behavior that at night she can calmly assure Yash that love can happen more than once, but the next morning declare that she can't bare to live without her "only" love Kunal. She's urging Yash to live with his current love, but is not willing to live her life without her love. What is it with Yash and Neelam that they both consider the other's life to be an important thing to live, but are so willing to give up their own at the drop of a hat?

I couldn't say if Neelam actually took poison or not, but I'm sure that neither she or Kunal are dead. First of all, we didn't see Kunal even looking like he took poison, so if Neelam did, Aarti was sure to pack him off to the hospital with Neelam to save her life. I'm sure that Aarti intends to get Neelam's parents to realize the folly of their actions with her terrible declaration. I also hope that Yash will get a clue from this action of Neelam's about what it feels like when someone who you've put your life on the line for, continues to disregard the importance of your sacrifice by throwing their life away. Then maybe he will start to understand Aarti's perspective towards him and stop being so reckless. Also, though I know it's going to be a slow process, I am waiting with baited breath for the day that Yash admits that Aarti doesn't need to take Arpita's place because she has her own place, and that both women can be special to him without taking anything away from the other.

When the whole drama is finally over next week, I wonder what will be the fallout for AarYa from the Scindia family, especially Casanova and Bua.

Not even going to talk about Paridhi and Prateek. AarYa are so much more interesting to me right now.

The action to start in less than 10 min, I hope Yash speaks up on her behalf.