The latest 'Madhubala' promo shows Madhu tormented by even the memory of RK being shot, and a depth of concern that she understands she dare not show and yet cannot avoid. Madhu is going further yet on the path of junooni ishq without even realizing it, and RK's reaction shows brusque concern for her tinged with uneasiness for what exactly is causing her anguish.
The Rishbala separation is likely to fall in one of many scenarios associated with Shamsher's current moonlighting as an incompletely informed and murderously protective father in somewhat tarnished armour.
RK and Madhu have not even acknowledged their feelings to themselves yet, let alone to each other.😕
So the separation is definitely not something to be looked forward to, but one longs to see it done with just to see the couple drawn closer together.😳 Whether Madhu becomes estranged from the Mallicks and especially Shamsher or not, this separation and the revelation of the attacker's identity will be yet another step in her placing RK above all else in her life, making that relationship the one most important to her, and increasingly detaching her from all other relationships to bind Rishbala together in a bond that may perhaps make space for Bittuji and Padmini on the peripheries but will hold all else at a distance.😳😃
The one thing that might have rather worse ramifications for the Rishbala relationship than the Shamsher situation is the somewhat worrying possibility that in trying to keep her feelings from being obvious, Madhu may make yet another rash and disastrous decision and try to claim RK's mother as the reason for what she herself has done for him. Desperately hope she confounds her past track record and does nothing so ill-judged as saying anything of the sort, not to RK, and not to anyone with RK around to hear.
Supposedly coming to RK's party at Radha's request earned a waitress stint. Claiming to have saved RK's life for Radha's sake... Madhu would have unknowingly lit a bomb fuse, and RK's reactions would hurt both himself and Madhu.
He is likely to react badly enough the more he suspects Madhu's depth of feelings for him. Radha would just be an additional complication that would do no good even through implication.
The more RK directly works through the fact that he is loved absolutely and without reason, logic, conditions or demands by such a pure-hearted gem of a person as is his wife, the sooner he will be brought round to acknowledging the gentle and total hold Madhu already has on his heart, mind and soul.😳
RK's glance at Madhu in the 19th Oct. ep when Bittuji revealed that she had walked barefoot to the Siddhivinayak temple to pray for his recovery showed clearly that he was not only getting a very good inkling of feelings she might be developing but also that he was not pleased with that possibility.
It is not that RK lacks the capacity to love or appreciate being loved, nor is it that Madhu possesses no capacity for shrewdness. Rather, neither of them has had cause or opportunity to further develop these traits within themselves.
In Madhu's case, shrewdness is a trait that has been barely even been nascent, while RK's loving temperament froze quite effectively - perhaps not with his mother's second marriage - but assuredly with her taking her contemptible second husband's word and thinking ill of her own son.
RK may have set his more tender emotions aside to an extent that it's unlikely that even his relationship with Dipali ever had any depth though her betrayal embittered him. Certainly his usual astute understanding of character, at least in gauging what people might and might not do, seems to have been quite absent in recognizing Dipali.
And then there's Madhu whose life and understanding were nothing if not clear-cut.😊
Her understanding has had to encompass greater shades because of RK, especially as she started to see beyond his facade.😃
It is *now* that she will have to develop the trait of shrewdness that her sheltered life never necessitated - not just to deal with RK, but rather in his defence against his and her family - for they rather than outsiders are the ones he is going to stumble in dealing with simply through not wishing to deal with them.
Radha has failed him as a mother for 17 years, and yet the desire to avoid absolutely ending his relationship with her through a confrontation where she is sure to stand against him has forced RK to endure the malice, freeloading and manipulations of Kukku, Sikky and Dipali.
Madhu has been his wife only a short while, and yet even at the heights of rancour and hostility, she repeatedly took a stand to protect or help him. Even in striking against him, she never knowingly went too far.
Had RK not reacted emotionally in the matter of the blackmail, he could have simply told Madhu at the outset what those photos meant to him. Not only would it have been an end to Madhu's blackmailing, but she would have been on the backfoot from guilt at almost committing an ethical solecism she would despise in anyone and find unforgivable in herself. And with Madhu withdrawing from the battlefield, Kukku would not have been able to publish the photos in the security of knowing she would bear the brunt.
Now, for a wife who has earned his regard, loyalty, trust, and care, will RK do less than he has for the mother who has earned none of these?
He may let off Shamsher or strike against him, but he is unlikely to unleash again the ruthless calculating deviousness that he last wielded against Madhu, Shamsher and the Mallicks.
And for that reason, just as Kukku, Sikky and Dipali have time and again struck against him and emerged pretty much unscathed, just so the Mallicks (not including Padmini though she is very much part of that family, surname notwithstanding) too may now emerge from facing RK without being sufficiently struck down to prevent an immediate next attack.
Radha has only ever been the Bhatias' shield in their guerrilla skirmishes against her son.
But Madhu - with the proven ability to see and understand in a short while what her saasuma hasn't in 17 years - will *need* shrewdness both to understand the threats RK will now face on two fronts that he will himself no longer be able to effectively deal with, and - perhaps even more importantly - to prevent or at least handle the repeated outbreaks of defensive panic and volatile reaction her husband is going to be afflicted by until he finally surrenders and accept his feelings for her.😆😳