Posted:
What do i like about Madhubala? Beyond the sizzling hot lead pair and the deliciously wicked rake/gamin that is RK, that is?
I think it has to be the subverting of romance tropes normally seen in Indian soaps and other entertainment media. How, you ask, and rightly so, for is this not another familiar, comfortable offering, like mum's apple pie, of a beautiful, poor girl and her rich, handsome and powerful lover?
On the surface, yes. but not really. This isn't apple pie. It's a mad concoction from a Heston Blumenthal recipe. It looks commonplace, but is anything but.
Because, for once, and perhaps by accident, power and success have been shown to be resident with not the one who has them in abundance in the material realm, but with one who has them in the emotional one. So however much control RK thinks he has over Madhu, he actually knows that he has very little. And she will always have what he wants so desperately and can never have: people who love him unconditionally, without him having to be the hero every time.
And because the power dynamic is reversed, so are the gender roles from the normal tropes of romantic narratives. There is no damsel in distress to be rescued by our dashing hero. The hero, however masculine he may seem, is the one who needs to be rescued, from the brass and ivory tower of his own making. And the heroine, young and unresolved herself, but absolutely and completely certain of her moral and ethical stand, will come to the rescue.
She, with the controlled masterfulness one normally associates with the taciturn tall dark handsome male lead, will take the hero from his tower and ride off into the sunset.
Therefore, i read this tale as a sort of Taming of the Shrew in a modern, feminist redux avatar. and i love it.
It reminds me very strongly, of the dynamic between the leads of Heyer's 'Devil's Cub' in which too the delicious rake Dominic, so headstrong and wilful, powerful man but equally vulnerable little boy ( a fact the heroine recognises very early) is rescued from his own tempestuous affairs by the 'soothing' and very staid Ms Challoner. The similarities are too numerous to enumerate, and i would love to have the views of those who have read this work.
Comments v welcome!
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