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So I thought I would do my take a little differently today and highlight all the ways this new track sort of weaves itself into the existing themes and plot lines of the show. Some links may be more farfetched than others, but then they are all open for discussion, of course.
SP and Prashant
This was mostly the case in yesterday's episode. SP said the same things to that woman that Prashant said to Aarti when he was accusing her of poor character. After we have seen the Prashant side of the coin, how can we do anything but assume the worst of SP and believe this woman's words. And yet, Yash's question to her resonates. Why did she keep quiet all these years? I have a feeling she was trying to prove that she didn't need SP, didn't need a man to help raise her son and this revelation came as an accident when SP was maligning Akash's blood.
SP and Paridhi
So this is pretty obvious and we discussed it yesterday. Paridhi will realise, hopefully, that she cannot keep her uss raat a secret forever. As long as it remains a secret it always has the potential to ruin her married life and her family's happiness. Hopefully they do not forget about this and weave it into the grander narrative here.
Akash's Mother [AM] and Aarti
Both of them share the trait in common of not sharing information of their sons' birth fathers with them and trying to fill the place of both mother and father. AM's dialogue asking Akash whether she didn't give him both a mother and a father's love resonated with me in this respect. There is an echo of the beginning of the story when Aarti was reluctant to get married again because she loved Prashant and couldn't think of being with someone else. She insisted to Shobha that she could give Ansh the love of both a mother and a father, making herself believe it by fulfilling all the material desires he penned in those letters to his father.
However, the difference at this point between Aarti and AM is she put her son's happiness before her own and got married so that he could have a father. We are yet to see if AM did not marry again because of her own stubborn loyalty to what she considered her relationship to SP, or because nobody would marry her, thanks to the social stigma attached to an unwed mother. That brings us to another crucial difference: Aarti had the Dubeys to push her into this marriage with Yash. Left on her own terms, she would have waited uncomplainingly for Prashant till the end of her days, in denial of the growing angst within Ansh at the absence of his father. It is entirely possible that AM did not have someone to fight for her happiness, lie for her and get her the kind of life she deserved. Yet, she seems like a proud woman in a way that Aarti never was; Aarti never felt it beneath her to ask/beg Prashant to come back and be Ansh's father, even if she knew he didn't love her, but AM would not go to SP until he called her, and he would never call her because of his own pride and status at stake. So she lives defiantly alone, unfortunately in denial of the fire that has been growing within Akash.
Akash and Ansh
Naturally the previous parallel leads to this one. If we go back to the beginning of the show, Ansh always asked for things in his letters to his father, jalebi, a football, video games etc. Though I am sure Ansh wanted those things, it was more about this connection with his father and demanding what he thought was his due. He saw all the other children with their fathers playing, going for drives and having fun and he too wanted such a presence in his life. I think the things he asked for were symbolic of those aspects of the father-son bond that he missed. I said then that this was not a very sustainable model. It was fine when Ansh was asking for toys and baby clothes, but what happened when he got older and wanted a car or expensive, designer wear? At some point, Aarti would have to deny him these things because of financial restrictions and I think that something similar happened to Akash. Of course, it is a little more dire in his case because the material things that he couldn't have started right from food.
Ansh was lucky because he found a father in Yash before he could fully grow into the resentment for which the seed had been sown in his feeling of non-belonging with the other boys his age who had fathers. As Aarti told Shobha, Yash fulfills Ansh's desires before he even has to ask, showing that Yash has a pulse on what Ansh needs; he takes the responsibility off Ansh entirely to negotiate the difference between what he wants and what he needs, given that Ansh is too small to understand the difference. To him a car ride is equal to attention, winning a race is equal to unconditional support, a gift is equal to love and a the secret zipping of a pant is equal to emotional security and protection from any kind of humiliation. Yash knows he is fulfilling the more abstract needs, but he also knows how to do that in Ansh's present language which is material, and Ansh no longer feels the need to demand material things because he senses the fulfillment of these very abstract needs. Akash has/had nobody to make that distinction for him and so he still articulates his need for belonging and acceptance in material terms. This is where I feel Ishita might play a huge role.
Akash and Ishita as a mirror to Yash and Aarti
I think this is going to be one of the most interesting aspects of the track because Akash and Ishita are sort of the binary opposites of Yash and Aarti. Here, Ishita comes from the home of privilege where she was given every material comfort but nobody could help her deal with her delicate emotional condition, given her physical challenge. This reminds me so much of Yash's story where his challenge was his grief over losing Arpita. SP was primarily concerned with his family being perfect, and the grieving widower Yash was an aberration in this picture of domestic, moral and religious perfection that SP was trying to create. That is why he was so desperate for Yash to give up on Arpita and accept another wife... otherwise his family portrait would not be perfect! It is the same with Ishita's parents. They care so much about their social standing that they thought nothing of stomping their daughter's self worth into the ground so that they could hold their heads up high in society. The common thread between Yash and Ishita, however, is that they have minds of their own... a desire to be something more and to aim for something more than their parents. Both of them want acceptance for who they are rather than who they are expected to be... enter Aarti and Akash!
Akash, and more importantly, his mother, accepted Ishita for exactly who she was without once bringing up the fact that they were doing her a favour by making her a suhagan. I realise it is not exactly the same as what Aarti did for Yash, but I am saying that it made Ishita feel he same way. For the first time in her life she must have felt free to just be herself in an environment where she was celebrated as the new bahu by her mother in law, not because she was bringing them a huge dowry or because she was marrying an invalid son, but simply because she was the bahu of the house; that was enough to make her special, loved and part of the family. Just as Aarti drew out the strong man in Yash with unconditional acceptance of exactly who he was, Arpita-obsession and all, I think the acceptance and the respect that Ishita gets with Akash's mother for now, and later possibly Akash himself, will bring out the strong woman in her, the one that does not want to merely submit to her parents' every order and knows where her own happiness lies.
Akash and Yash are similar in that they are so wrapped up in their personal tragedies that they don't see how lucky they are to have what they do. Just as Aarti showed Yash that his peace of mind lay in making the loved ones around him happy rather than grieving the one who was gone, I hope Ishita can somehow show Akash that his bliss lies not in claiming his rightful fortune, but in the integrity his mother has preserved all these years, refusing to ask SP for anything, and the unconditional, non-judgmental home she has built for them. It could be very interesting if these angles are explored.
Anupamaa
Cricket
Health and Fitness
