Folks, let us discuss the conundrum posed by the scene yesterday between Purvi and Archana, and do it dispassionately, setting aside our justified exasperation at Purvi's strange comments about Vishnu. Let us forget all this fooling around about Arjun's ma and his mausis in the forum and their counterparts on Purvi's side, and analyse the matter solely in the light of the facts of the case, and the text of Purvi's statements.
What exactly does she say to Archana, who sits her down at the table and assures her that she has nothing to fear as they were all there for her? Arjun also tells both of them, before he takes his leave, that the police had their eyes on Vishnu, and they would not allow anything to happen to any of them.
Purvi's words: Purvi begins by saying that he (Vishnu) was a strange man, frightening in a way, but still very odd. She then recounts the slapping incident, with the comment that Vishnu has fought with the others for her sake.
Interestingly enough, in the flashback they showed then, after the slap, the whole of Vishnu saying that there was no need to hit her as her father was ready to pay the 3 crores, and that if Manav had not been ready to do so, he imself would have said that they should put a bullet thru her head, has been edited out. All that is left are Vishnu's closing words, that it is his responsibility and they should leave it to him. So, for a viewer who had not seen the original scene, the impression given would be the same as what Purvi says, that Vishnu fell out with the others and protected her from further slaps. But the truth is completely different, and Purvi KNOWS it. Why then is she shown as having this kind of selective memory?
Vishnu the protector: Next, she says that Vishnu assured her that she would come to no harm, and they show the scene where she is trying to open the locked door with the key he gives her, while he says that he is a follower of ahimsa (!!!) and so would not do anything (to her), but his comrades were kameeney and he could not be responsible for what they would do her if she escaped.
Now, this is a kind of subtle terrorization, like a cat playing with a mouse, for HOW would the other three, who were all fast asleep, know about her escape soon enough to catch her and wreak unholy vengeance on her unless Vishnu woke them up and told them what had happened? He never has the slightest intention of letting her escape and any girl with an ounce of brains would have understood that at once. Purvi not only seems to have taken him at face value, but given him brownie points for that.
Next, she says that he made her eat, in effect praising him for caring about her. When they show the clip for that, they again leave out his accompanying comments that if she looked wan and as if she had been ill-treated, Manav Deshmukh would not pay the 3 crores. He says that twice, once about the food, that he eats himself and praises with lip-smacking relish, and again about the tea in the morning. Purvi was there, and she heard all that. Why then is she now shown as if she had forgotten these key remarks?
Finally, she says that after he told her that she would not be harmed, she felt "safe'" in her captivity. Fair enough. Then why did she look half mad with fear when Arjun appeared at the door of the van in which she was being held while Vishnu was engaging in a game of one upmanship with Manav outside? She was literally gibbering in panic when Arjun took off the plaster on her mouth. Her behaviour then is not consistent with what she NOW says.
Purvi is deeply moved that he did not do anything to her , or let the others do anything , this being an euphemism for criminal assault on her modesty, to use my old fashioned terminology, or a brutal beating, or both. She refuses to buy Archana's entirely logical argument that he did not do anything because he wanted to get the ransom money with no problems, though, as noted above, Vishnu's OWN comments to her bear this out completely.
Achchi Mayee ka achcha bachcha: She then goes on and on about his assertion (at the meeting at the foot of the temple steps) that he would never break his kasam to his mother, after which, she states, she no longer felt afraid of him. It is another matter that she continue d to look as scared as at the beginning of that scene, and was trying to drag Arjun away.
She couples the maa ki kasam ka kissa with what she had heard Vishnu say to Krishna while she was being held in the van with her mouth taped (when Vishnu, in one of his typically sadistic fits of humour, asks her to smile for a photo he takes of her on his moblile, to show Manav, knowing full well that she cannot smile as her mouth is taped shut). He had then not taken Varsha's call, saying that she would scold him for an hour about his dhanda, which she had never liked. From this Purvi apparently concludes that his mayee is a good woman.
From a good mayee to a good beta being but a step, Purvi's conclusion from all this is that Vishnu is an "achcha bachcha" who listens to his aai, and thus that he is "one of us".
The Stockholm Syndrome: Archana's somewhat incoherent speech, accusing Vishnu's mother of having failed to instill the proper sanskaars in him when he was young, falls on deaf ears. Purvi, brushing Archana's words aside with the comment that she does not know what kind of upbringing his mother had given him, ends with the breathtaking statement that regardless of that, there are, in Vishnu, the kind of sanskaars that keep from doing anything galat (wrong).
One does not know what her definition of galat includes, but obviously it does not include:
1) Kidnapping her, or Ovi, as he had originally tried to do, or her Manav baba, as he had originally intended;
2) Asking for 3 crores ransom, and holding first her and then Manav at gunpoint to get it even after the police have him covered with their guns;
3) Shooting Arjun twice, the second just for kicks, when he had NO chance of escaping.
All of this just because she has gathered, from what he said, that he is very close to his mother and that he listens to her. She does not bother her pretty head about how many other unfortunates this achcha bachcha might have kidnapped earlier, or what such a trigger happy character might have done to them if things had gone wrong. She has nothing to say about such activities being criminal, not just galat.
Of course, as she is talking to Archana, Purvi does not know anything about Vishnu having stood outside their house when her saakarpuda was getting under way, swearing that he would make first Purvi and then Arjun rue the day they had deprived him of those 3 crores. But going by the above, one cannot but conclude that if she had known it, she would probably have been even more impressed at his having abandoned his plans and his desire for revenge on her and Arjun just to obey his mother.
She does not know why she is thinking and feeling like this, she says at the end, but what she had felt (about the hidden sanskaars in Vishnu keeping him from doing any galat thing) was so strange that she had NOT said anything to Arjun about it.
Archana, who has just finished pontificating about it always being the mother's fault if the children go wrong (a ridiculous statement that can be disproved a million times over), does not think it necessary to drill some sense into Purvi's head after listening to these ramblings, more is the pity.
Any reasonably competent psychiatrist would have instantly diagnosed Purvi's views on Vishnu as a case of the Stockholm Syndrome, which makes victims of kidnapping develop an empathy for their kidnappers and sometimes fall in love with them.
Conclusions: What should we, the viewers and well wishers of Arjun-Purvi, make of all this? Well, all these convoluted and bizarre goings on seem, to me, to be a rather disturbing development. It is clear that the CVs are planning to do a Valmiki on Vishnu and metamorphosise him into an achcha bachcha as fast as they can. They have made a beginning by bringing the maa ka pujari image of Vishnu up front and centre, but this is obviously not enough, given that Varsha comes in very low in the PR popularity stakes.
So now they are fashioning Purvi into Vishnu's advocate, the victim sympathizing and empathizing with her kidnapper. We are supposed to feel that if his victim herself feels that there is hidden good in him, sanskaars that keep from doing galat deeds, that he deserves credit for obeying his mother "like one of us", he cannot be all bad, can he?
What if he has earned crores for Balan from the terrified parents and relatives of the unfortunates he has kidnapped in the past, and what if Manav had to risk his life and pledge a chunk of his fortune to save herself, the girl who was his latest trophy? After all, he did not starve her, did he, or assault her or let her be assaulted? He was a misled youth, that is all, and if the Indian Penal Code has to be junked to get him a pardon and back into his real parivaar, why not?
This bending and distorting of the character of the hitherto staunchly independent and intensely moral Purvi to suit this "twist' in the tale is going to do her a lot of harm. It has done so already, and worse might be in store if she begins to act on these new convictions of hers and try to get Vishnu off one way or the other.
What of Arjun? Purvi's keeping her feelings about Vishnu from him is not just wrong, it is stupid. Arjun HATES Vishnu with a vengeance. He can hardly be expected, when he learns, as he will, about all this, to take kindly to Purvi going soft on the villain of the piece.
It has also to be kept in mind that Purvi does not know that Vishnu is Soham. Indeed it is likely that she does not even know of Soham's existence. So there is no alibi of an instinctive fraternal affection that she can offer to explain her behavior. What then might Arjun conclude from her trying to help Vishnu in the days ahead? He loves her deeply and blindly, but love is based on trust, and if this trust fails, so can love, no matter how deep it is, or perhaps precisely because it was so deep.
Parallels with PR I: This brings me to the constant parallels between PR I and PR II. These are too many to be listed out here, and in any case, you all know them by heart. Some time ago, I had written that there was no possibility of creating a conflict between Arjun and Purvi. Perhaps I was wrong about that; I often am in second guessing the CVs.
I would remind you of the chawl demolition issue, which was the real cause for the Manav-Archana relationship, time-tested and of so many years standing, hitting the rocks. The loss of Soham was only the final nail in the coffin, it was not the sole or the major cause of the break. Archana had then let Manav down, just when he needed her the most, for the sake of the chawl residents, who had framed him in a false chawl demolition case. (For a detailed run down of that disaster, please see my post in the When did Archana support Manav? thread).
Now Purvi might be letting Arjun down by supporting the man who had put his life and that of Manav in danger. How then might Arjun react?
The above might seem farfetched, and I naturally do not know if this dismal prediction will come true. In fact I devoutly hope it does not. But the way in which Purvi's character is being bent out of shape does not augur well for the future. In any case, I never believed that Arjun and Purvi would get married so easily in just 10 days. Then where would PR go? If their marriage is to be stymied, the rumour that Vishnu would be the cause of that happening might come true, but not in the way that we would have imagined it. If the plot develops as surmised above, this might well be the CVs' idea of a 'surprise' twist!
Shyamala B.Cowsik
