Rishbala - Selflessness in shades so bright it appears anything but.
We have seen the promo of RK catching Shamsher in the act of trying to murder him yet again.
We do not know what will happen next. Will RK throw Shamsher to the cops, or choose not to do so for lack of evidence? Will he send Madhu back to the Mallicks, with a challenge of some sort to Shamsher or otherwise? Will he tell Madhu her father was the attacker? If he does, will Shamsher deny it? Either way, what degrees of denial and support will Madhu's reaction encompass?
But what is certain is that none of it will matter.😊
Just as being in love - without knowing it as of now, though knowing it will not change the basics of the equation - does not keep RK and Madhu from sniping teasingly or abrasively at each other, just so being apart geographically or just estranged will not keep them from dwelling in each other's every heartbeat.😳
If we ever want these two to stop fighting for a while, then one or the other will have to *believe* the other is in immediate and extreme peril - physical, emotional, judicial or financial. That one will immediately set aside all hostility, and browbeat the other into accepting assistance - as if accepting assistance is a favour rather than the other way round. After all, accepting assistance to ease your difficulty *is* a favour to the person who is more affected by your difficulty than his/her own.😳😆
What primal hold binds these two - Rishabh and Madhu - together where they increasingly embody "can't live without you" far more than "can't live with you"?
They have increasingly gentled even in their most fraught confrontations.
It is not love that binds them - not yet, though love has them by the heels already. But if there is some kind of primal metaphysical glue that binds two souls together as soulmates, then that must surely be such.
The Friday, 26th Oct. ep invoked rather intemperate reactions (me very much included😆). Perhaps it was because Madhu's strange intransigence came on the heels of so many scenes in which she skilfully and successfully handled RK in so many situations with understanding and sensitivity and a dash of humour.
Madhu and RK are both stubborn, but when it comes to the matter of his wife borrowing his ex's sari, his insistence that Madhu change into another sari was understandable.
But Madhu's refusal to do so? Certainly ego was part of her reaction.
But was it the *only* reason? Hardly.
Recall again, in the 17th Oct ep, the scene in which RK - regaining partial consciousness and finding himself clinging to Madhu's arm - flung her away, and tried unsuccessfully and with increasing desperation to get up despite being too weak and injured and not even fully conscious or awake. Madhu struggled to restrain him, her empathy and understanding absolute of what the devastating combination of physical helplessness and emotional vulnerability would mean for him.
And as he slipped back into unconsciousness, continuing to hold onto her arm in a position that was unlikely to be comfortable, Madhu was heedless of her own discomfort and pain, her entire being focussed on soothing him and watching over him.
After they came home, he gave her two gifts that may have been priceless to her - opening up to her unasked about a childhood memory and an unreasonable guilt, and refusing to thank her outright while spending much more time and effort on that exercise than the simple phrase would have cost.
Madhu's reaction when he said that he *should* thank her for what she had done, and then her reaction when he said that would *not* thank her, were both a study in the exquisite undertone of this relationship. Her knowledge of just how roundabout a way he had gone to express gratitude without thanking her was clearly visible in the warmth and understanding of her soft smile.
The two eps which mark Rishbala's current equation were the 24th Oct. and 26th Oct. eps.
Until the 24th Oct. ep, the only glimpses we had seen of warmth in RK were of his hurts and the wounds of his heart, memories that still anguished him.
But in this ep, for the first time we saw his laughter. Startled, carefree, without restraint or calculation. And more importantly even than that, he did not go immediately on the defensive and retreat from the happiness of the moment. It was a trivial, frivolous reason - Madhu tricking him into having a spoonful of food. But perhaps it may be through such little things that she will completely thaw the ice around his heart.😃
And then came the confounding 26th Oct. ep.
Madhu seemed determined on the strangest of points to provoke RK into abandoning his newfound tender attitude.
Her behaviour made no sense. If RK were the sort to explain, he would have explained what the photographs meant to him when she first blackmailed him. If not then, then why would he explain for what must surely be less volatile a matter than his last happy memories with his father?😕
She was guaranteed to lose in this situation. RK never makes a threat he won't be willing to carry out. She knew her parents were coming on a visit. She had to be down there for them.
He said he wouldn't let her go unless she changed the sari, which meant that was exactly the only way she would get to go. Since she couldn't not go to meet her parents downstairs, she had no option but to change the sari.
So why then was she fighting on a point so unworthy of her efforts as Dipali's sari?
Perhaps for a little of three reasons...
At the base and probably the most unconscious and powerful of all of all may be a desire to pretend for a while that things are the way they were before the life-peril. The two of them sniping and jibing at each other, challenging and rubbing each other the wrong way. He would again stand as her opponent, and she would for a while not have her breath and heartbeat beat and skip only in empathetic founding for an emotion she has not yet properly comprehended in herself.
On the surface and yet probably the least important motivation of all - their constant ego-clash. Madhu had gotten used to RK being more tender, so she thought he would be more amenable. It was a need to have her capitulation conditional rather than unilateral.
And what may perhaps be the second reason in order of importance - the knowledge that RK opening up to her tends to heal his emotional wounds, and the more topics he opens up to her on, the more his emotional hurts will be healed. The problem is that she is trying to speed up that process. She once called him a 'jaanwar'. But she needs to understand that in this matter of opening up and trusting her, he is like a wild animal. He will decide when and how much to trust her and open up to her. The more she pushes and provokes, the more defensive and furious he will get. RK has opened up both times to her so far only when he has nothing to gain from doing so. Otherwise, he considers explaining himself to be like begging the other person for understanding. Right now, if he explains the sari to Madhu, he *does* gain from it if the *explanation* makes Madhu do what he wants and not wear that sari. And if RK ends up explaining to Madhu about Dipali's sari to convince her to change out of it, it will taint the two times he did open up to her.
In both RK and Madhu, neither virtues nor flaws are necessarily what they appear to be. The Rishbala pairing is right for each other despite not seeming to be, confounding every understanding of what they might be as a whole - because neither is quite what they seem.😊
Madhu - so simple, gentle, sweet and so very open about how much her relationships matter to her. And yet, her Achilles heel is not her righteousness, but the point at which it becomes self-righteousness, driven by her vanity to be the one making a difference. It is a strange sweet vanity, selfless even in the one thing which should be selfishness.😳
This has happened twice before, and each time was a turning point in her life.
First, in the matter of Mukund. His injury would soon be healed, but the settlement would have solved many of his family's difficulties. But Madhu wanted to fight to see the powerful rich brat superstar either humbled or punished.
And then the second time, when she wanted to be the good bahu. She wanted RK to reconcile with his friend Bappa, but that altruistic noble intent became tinged by her desire to be proven right. RK must hurry up and come round, so that she could get praise not only from her mother-in-law but perhaps even from RK as well. She started out with patience and exceptional good sense, but in overenthusiastic insensitivity, she tried to hasten matters rather than be content to have RK and Bappa in the same house and trust Bappa to take it from there.
And it says much about Madhu as a person that even her character flaws are so innocent in their ambitions and so wholly focussed on benefiting others.😳
And this time again, the unconscious goad appears to have been her saasuma's praise and implied reminder that she has healed some of her husband's hurts but not all.
And on the other hand is RK - Rishabh. So contemptuous of relationships, and yet selflessly giving without receiving anything in return in every relationship in his life. Badmouthed, betrayed and harmed by those who shamelessly live off him and always expect more, and he is yet to say even years later "Enough!". So apparently ruthless, and yet so guaranteed to be passive to his loving but untiringly disloyal mother.
RK tends not to remember the favours he himself does unless they are specifically a deal.
In the studio, he saved Madhu's life twice - from being electrocuted, and from falling forward into the bonfire while sleeping. And he just forgot that easily.
But Madhu saving him, he remembers.
Both Rishabh and Madhu have the ability to absorb in each other the hurts which tear at their very souls. They can and indeed have already started to be each other's panacea and solace. The other facets of the best of relationships will follow whensoever, but soulmates under the Lord's rather determined aegis they already are.😳
For both RK and Madhu, love will surely come to mean devotion, trust, protectiveness and loyalty. But there will be one additional quality, and that is already evident as being quite different for each of the two.
In Madhu, it is the ease with which she can, when necessary, absent all thought of self and do whatever he needs her to do. 'Needs', not 'wants'. She will do what he does not *want* as and when she thinks he *needs* such. Her judgments may not always be judicious or correct, but as a character trait, it is formidable. It is that facet of selflessness that is present in the best of parents, teachers and friends.
In RK, it is a different facet of selflessness, combined with a streak of possessiveness that has the potential to act as slow though never fatal poison to their relationship.
His facet of selflessness has already been evident far too clearly vis-a-vis his mother. It will emerge a thousandfold stronger for Madhu, both an irritant and a guarantee of permanence in their relationship.
A selflessness that does *not* absent thought of self, but rather preserves that person's wellbeing even at cost to oneself.
RK's is the selflessness that is harder to recognize as such because it is very much both grounded and ambitious. He considers it his prerogative to provide for that person, a duty rather than a favour, a responsibility rather than a choice.
That person being materially benefited is worth any hurt or harm he himself may suffer, and yet he cannot and will not consider emotional benefit or hurt for himself or that other.
And it is in this trait of his character that may lie the seed of Madhu's enforced rise to stardom.
So long as RK and Madhu are not established in mutual recognition of their love for each other, that trait may not be as unrestrained.
But once that point and phase is established in their relationship, once he is sure that his love is reciprocated, that he has her loyalty...
The man who cannot think of being indebted in any matter without some grudging and bitterness will never consider such absolute love and loyalty as anything less than the greatest of debts.
It would never be enough for him that he reciprocates that love and loyalty in equal measure.
But if he can raise the woman he loves to that height where she would be feted by the world at large, his cherishing and adoration for her reflected in the world's gaze, that would be some measure of thanks in his mind for the happiness their relationship will have brought him.
And for Madhu, who has never had any vanity of self, her priority may be a different sort of tribute in return. Not as her husband may have it for her - where others must adore her because he cannot consider his own love truly enough. But rather, for him, a healing of wounds and a fulfilling of dreams that he won't ask but that already matter greatly to her for his sake and may someday be what matters most.
Two people in whom selflessness has always been nearly obsessive and will be even more so when burnished with love.
Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi 2
