Chemistry is one of the most overused and flippantly used word in today's TV viewing experience.
The stars were aligned and it was meant to be: A show such as Punar Vivah. With such an amazing cast and a crazy set of viewers who all came together, initially for various reasons but ultimately fell in love with the story, the protagonists and every other cast member.
In today's world, the young generation of viewers place so much importance on chemistry. The way the protagonists look at each other, their eye locks, their passionate panting breaths, the way they hold each other and so on. I have enjoyed these moments among various TV couples over the span of the years. Some more beautiful than others. Yet, it is when I watched ArYa that I realized there was something missing in the chemistry of the couples I have seen over the years. Aarti and Yash's chemistry went beyond the physical and that is why they touched me so much. We have jokingly said in KS's AT thread that Aarti and Yash share the most amazing emotional chemistry we have ever seen in a show. They could be in a room of 100 people and yet all they had to do was look at each other and then knew what the other person was going through.
One of my favorite scenes would be the one where Aarti enters the Scidnia house as a bride and Gayatri demands that she puts her handprint over Arpita's. At the time Aarti couldn't stand Yash but even then all she did was take a look at him and she saw a pain in his beautiful eyes that seared her soul. She didn't know anything about him except that she could never add on to that pain by doing something that would have killed him. Now THAT is what I call chemistry.
And who can forget the scene where Yash and Aarti are exiled to the room upstairs and Yash is on the bed with Ansh on top of him and Aarti stands by the bed hugging the girls and Yash looks at Aarti with so much love and reassurance and she takes strength from that look on his beautiful face. Now THAT is chemistry.
Ah! And there were so many more...
In a world where there is so much emphasis placed on the physical love between the protagonists, I thank the writers for showing us a love that went so far beyond the physical being. Thank You for showing us that chemistry is not relegated to just the eye locks and the duppatta catchings. Never have I seen an emotional chemistry between two characters like the way I saw between Yash and Aarti. But then no matter how deeply poignantly you sketch a character if you don't have actors to do justice to the characters then the audience do not connect. And that is what KS and GC gave us. The way they would pick up on each other's acting cues, the way they complemented each other in emotional scenes, the hugs and the touches that were not really sexual but something so beyond that. They made us feel like Yash and Aarti have been so lost in a world of despair that just a touch or a look sparked a life in them.
And even when their physical side of the love was shown, it felt so precious and not in your face. It was subtle and so sensual and it felt all the more poignant because these moments were never out of the blue. Their physical attraction was never the foundation of their relationship. It was the emotional connect that attracted them to each other and attracted us viewers to them. I am sure we will continue to see the run of the mill aesthetically beautiful physical chemistry between couples on TV, yet the poignant, soulful, poetry like emotional chemistry we saw in ArYa- now THAT will come once in a lifetime. I love ArYa like I have loved no other. Will miss AarYa.
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