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Credit for this gorgeous banner goes to Maham (Allbut1)!
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Okay so I myself have many a time defended the CVs decision not to show much intimacy between Aarti and the girls, assuming that they are saving that for another moment. However, it is getting a little too obvious and the lack of affection from her can in fact be jarring at times. Today Aarti was all over Ansh, and Palak was just sitting there, very close to ignored, until Yash came along. I know this was not intentional and the idea was that Aarti had already gotten Palak ready before, but one affectionate touch of the face, or stroke of the head, or straightening a lose hair would have made a huge difference to the scene. It honestly looked like Aarti and Ansh were in their own world and Palak was just a bystander.
I don't know what the reason for this is, storyline, the fact that Kratika is closer to Divyam than the girls, or what, but it needs to be fixed. I know as audience we can assume that Aarti showed affection in a scene we didn't witness, but what we actually get to see is equally important! Today I felt like Palak was neglected, either by Aarti or by the director... I can only hope this was on purpose to set the stage for something more. Otherwise, please take this as a criticism of the execution. I can understand why Palak and Payal may have less screen time, for various logistical reasons that we might not understand, but what is the excuse when they are onscreen?
The glee-ing is back, oh god forbid! Please let the truth come out soon because I am not sure how much more of this Aarti I can take! It is also precisely why I am happy Yash is not confessing his feelings just yet. It is not time, not when Aarti already knows and is projecting the heck out of what she thinks Yash wants to see. She is under the impression that she has been controlling herself very strictly when it comes to what she shows Yash and what she doesn't, and so remains completely oblivious of the fact that he has fallen in love with her, not for the part she is projecting but for the whole she actually is. And so she is being cocky and teasing him as he fumbles, because she needs to feel that moment of strength and power in order to deal with her helplessness when it comes to the lie.
The beautiful thing is that Yash's patience never seems to wear thin for Aarti's antics, in fact he enjoys every moment of being lorded over and fumbling and bumbling through his questions and feelings. He loved it in Mumbai, and he loves it here, as long as he is safe in the knowledge that Aarti's intentions are pure. And he knows now, much better than Mumbai, that behind Aarti's silliness and her sometimes stubbornness is a desperate need to be strong, "just in case." He saw this clearly when she ran away. When they had that huge fight and Yash said he hated Aarti, you could tell that even he knew this was going to blow over eventually. He said awful things, but the fact that he never stopped imagining and thinking about Ansh in the process, going so far as to save Aarti's honour in front of his family, showed that he didn't mean them. They were just things he said in anguish and he expected Aarti to take that for granted, that this was just a fit of anger, and once it blew over things could go back to normal. After all, this is just how families work, right?
It was only after she ran away that Yash realised that Aarti didn't take these things for granted the way he had, being raised in such a secure and tight-knit family. Nothing was a given for her, and that is why after she ran away and he found her, he started to rectify his mistake by verbalising every good thing he thought and felt about her. When he was entertained and provoked by Aarti's teasing in Mumbai, it was all about him. He liked the feeling of tasting life, romance and fun again, in the minimal pressure space that Aarti provided. She was willing to show apnapan without having to talk about it or define it as "getting over Arpita" and that is exactly what Yash needed, to be able to feel safe and happy enough to put down the burden of Arpita's memory.
Now things are different. Now everytime Aarti teases him like this and takes his patience for granted, it is another sign post of his success on the road to making her feel like she really belongs, and that there are no conditions on that. That is what all the KC speeches were setting the foundation for, the ones about fighting and making up but never leaving each other, etc. These are all the basics of what family means, something that most people, most certainly the Scindias, take for granted. They will be angry, they will fight, but they always stick together. Wasn't Paridhi's situation proof enough of that? But it is only after Lalitpur that Yash realised Aarti does not and could not take these things for granted because any notion of family she has had in her life has been hard-fought and won, and precarious at best. It struck me today that since he realised this, Yash has been making extra efforts to verbalise what would otherwise be taken for granted in the context of marriage, love and family... and that really made me feel warm and fuzzy inside.
In addition, he is enjoying the assertion of the right to take care of Aarti, to disarm her from this defensive, vigilant stance she seems to constantly occupy. That is why the shawl scene was so beautiful today in its simplicity. Aarti said specifically that she felt suffocated by woolens. Suffocated is just another way of saying trapped and helpless, isn't it? Essentially, Aarti does not want to give up her independence and her ability to brave the big, bad world without any help. And Yash's mission is to show her that she can drop her natural defenses and rely on him. He doesn't ask her or offer the shawl, but drapes it around her shoulders... because he realises that that is what he needs to do to get the message across. What's more, he doesn't scold her for being irresponsible, but instead talks gently to the baby, evoking the sense of responsibility in Aarti, while also establishing his own connection with the baby and reinforcing the idea of them as a connected unit. And for some reason, his hand laying protectively on her back was just the icing on the cake.
With all this subliminal healing and soothing going on, those three words seem like just that, three silly words whose presence or absence is totally superfluous in the face of the bigger picture. Of course Yash will be truly tested soon enough, by the extreme form which Aarti's lack of familial belonging took, just as she was tested by his assumption that it was a given, no matter how crazy he got. And again, I just have to say that this is such a beautiful story of two very different people, with such different pasts and different sets of baggage finding their place in each others' worlds, and their place as a family in the world at large.
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