This week, PR came back, perhaps fleetingly, and somewhat hesitantly, but nonetheless unambiguously, into its own. Amidst the cacophony of an predictable and dismal baby donation track, coupled with the sadness of having the other baby die, there was still something that lifted one's spirits and warmed the cockles of one's heart.
Then today, PR suddenly reached a high water mark in the best kind of melodrama, the kind that, however hyper and over the top, still manages to wring you inside out in empathy with the characters up there on the TV screen: Purvi, Onir and, as an immanent presence even off stage, hamara bachcha.
Growing gloom😭:I have spent the last several weeks, if not months, lamenting the demise of good sense, logic, and any semblance of coherence in PR and, saddest of all, the disappearance of the magic that had, last year, lit up this always pedestrian narrative. I watched in growing dismay as the characters I had grown to love, and whom I had sought to defend time and again against their detractors - Arjun in the first place, and then Purvi - were taken apart by the CVs and demolished beyond repair.
Recently, I had grown to like the only unsullied and consistently positive character in PR these days, Dr.Onir Dutt. But even his unwavering goodness could not save PR from the morass into which it was sinking deeper and deeper, as absurdity was piled on absurdity, and red herrings flitted across the stage, at times, as when the blackmailer was suddenly neutralized, exploding like fireworks in a shower of dying sparks.
Pathetic new track:Then came the baby donation track, first as a rumour and then, faithfully following past precedents wrt every such unpleasant 'rumoured' track over the past year, materializing on screen as well. There was a collective groan from this forum, uniting the fiercely warring groups in a shared distaste for the latest brainwave of the CVs. We watched the contrived accident, and Onir operating in two patients at the same time without even a surgeon's gown and, at one point, no nurses to assist him, with growing dismay. We spent time speculating about how he would manage, unless he could walk thru walls, to substitute Purvi's baby for Ovi's without being spotted by the nurses, not to speak of Arjun parked in the corridor outside both rooms. Purvi's anticipated decision to give away her baby to Ovi and Arjun was greeted with derision, and ridiculed as intended by the CVs to add another coat of gilt to Purvi's already resplendent halo of mahaanta.
Tyaag once more😡:When Purvi insisted on passing off her baby as Ovi's, during a long, harrowing scene yesterday between her and Onir, and she managed to bring him round to doing what she wants despite the horror with which he reacts at first, it seemed to be business as usual from Balaji. I concluded that this was another round of the periodic tyaags by Purvi, usually performed at the expense of the unfortunate man who happened to be blindly in love with her at that point of time. A man so besotted with her as to be unable to refuse her anything she demands of him.
That frightful day on the hilltop, it was Arjun. Yesterday, in the Hindu Sagar Clinic on the Mumbai-Pune highway, it was Onir. Against his professional code, against his better judgment, against his own deep affection for the child which was not his but was still, for him, hamara bachcha, Onir Dutt bent to the will of the woman he loves beyond reason and without any thought of return, and switched the live baby for the stillborn one.
Purvi & Onir:I watched Purvi's stony face as this track unfolded, cutting back and forth in time, and I could not understand how a mother could take the loss of her child, even if done voluntarily, with such stoicism. I resented the fact that though she knew full well how attached her husband had become to hamara bachcha, the child that she had assured him they would raise together, she gave not even a fleeting thought to the pain her decision would cause him. That just as, when she sacrificed Arjun, she thought of nothing but her aai, now too, when forcing Onir to do what horrified him, she thought of nothing but Ovi and Arjun.
Even when, at the end of yesterday's episode, she suddenly asked Onir to let her see her child, and then crumpled in tears near the incubator, my only feeling was of exasperation at this belated display of mamta, and a conviction that by the time she was done with him, Purvi would have got Onir struck off the medical rolls.
Onir was in top form this week, his expressive eyes reflecting his shifting moods effortlessly, whether it was his acute sense of guilt at not having been able to save Ovi's baby, or his misery at having lost hamara bachcha because he cannot, in the ultimate analysis, refuse his Mishti anything. Always underplaying his expressions, with no high pitched posturing. Instead, a degree of naturalness, a nuanced subtlety that is not often seen on TV, where excess is taken to be a virtue.When he tells Arjun that he has not been able to save hamara bachcha, the very flatness of the delivery speaks volumes, while his eyes dim over with grief. That the grief is not only for the loss of the child that he had come to assume would be his as well, but also at his having failed to keep his word to Arjun and Ovi and save their baby, is a secret between him and the audience.
But even Onir's virtuoso display could not quell the welling irritation I felt at this moronic track, with irresponsible and self-righteous folly masquerading as high virtue.
Redemption and catharsis:Then, today, suddenly, it all came together in a surging tide of genuine emotion that swept all these frustrations away, and drew, I am sure, all of us into a magic circle of shared sorrow and empathy with Purvi and Onir. 👏
Purvi today: Purvi finally brought out the gut-wrenching agony of a mother who cannot come to terms with the fact that she has lost her child, even if she has given it away of her own free will. The very unreasonableness and inconsistency with which she still refers to hamari beti, asks whether the child has been fed, and exclaims against Onir's wanting them to leave - how can they leave the child alone? - tug at one's heart. For it is this very inconsistency that rings true, and mirrors the desperation of maternal love faced with unbearable, if self-inflicted loss.
Purvi's scenes with Onir today were a high point as far as the actress was concerned; it was her best work so far in PR. He face ravaged by grief, her voice cracking under the strain, her heart rebelling against her head, Purvi struggles to cling to the (extremely foolish) step she has taken, or rather forced Onir to take. And we struggle with her. When she talks, in desperation, of wanting to be as strong as her aai, even I felt, for once, no anger at what her folly periodically brings down not only on herself, but on those who have the misfortune to love her more than they love themselves. Her grief was too deep for me to complain that it was all of her own making, and would only end in another disaster.
Onir today: What of Onir? No praise would be too much for him today, and this is for both the character and the actor. Onir has always been a tower of strength for his Mishti, no matter what the odds, but today, he surpassed himself. He is there for her every instant, never letting her sink into despair, but also not letting her stray into forbidden paths that can only lead to exposure and worse misery all round.
He talks to her in coaxing, supportive tones, but he talks more sense than anyone else in the gallery of poseurs that is PR. He is blunt where he needs to be, and he forces Purvi to face the harsh reality of the choice she has made, and which she now needs to learn to live with. But he does this without bruising her spirit or weakening her further, for she knows that he is always there for her no matter what happens. When he cradles her in his arms as he would a weary child, and comforts her ever so gently, one realizes anew the depth of his love and caring for this woman, for which he expects nothing in return.
If anyone from her foolish family had ever talked to Ovi with even half the clear good sense and gentle firmness that Onir showed today when pulling Purvi back to rationality, why then, PR might have been saved long, long ago!
I do not know what else the CVs have in store for us in the weeks to come, except that it is unlikely to be pleasant. It is entirely possible that the emotional high from today's episode will be washed out by a fresh tide of scripting follies and petty melodrama. But for today, one can bask in the warmth of some superlative acting, and the pleasure of watching scenes that, for once, had an immediacy, a genuineness, and a real connect with us, the viewers, despite the high pitched drama and a story track that defied both credibility and commonsense. This is the kind of cleansing emotion that the Greeks called catharsis.
We needed this catharsis. It has, as you see, made me break my own resolution never again to post about PR. I do not regret that, and I do hope you do not either. Even if you do, while I would apologise, I would still do it all over again, while reassuring you that I do not intend to make a habit of it!
Shyamala B.Cowsik
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