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What a brilliant episode this was!! All the drama, pace, punch is back, and how! Wins and losses; pathos and glee; intimidation and fear; threat and counter-threat; thrust and parry and counter thrust and the tables turned before you could catch your breath. A roller-coaster ride that I didn't want to end.
The episode rolled off to sweet start with a shocked Kakisa stalled in the trough, soaked through from the waterfall, her beautifully-laid plans bleeding ink. How could she have guessed that that camel would have the brains to turn the tables on her? Not-so-sneering Sumer examined their sodden state with sudden wisdom. They'd have to finance a wedding for the man for whose shroud they wouldn't beg. One day his mother's ego and over-confidence would really ruin everything!
In Rudra's room, Paro's temper was racing up a dizzying slope. How dared Rudra tell them that they were getting married, she ranted. First he'd killed her husband and now he wanted to take his place. She'd given him the right name - Jallad! Rudra was unruffled, amused, smug. So Paro grabbed his collar. "I'm talking to you. Look at me! Just like you, I want some answers. I can't stand to live under the same roof as you. My body and soul burn when someone calls me your fiance. Then, how did you have the nerve to tell everyone that you'll marry me?"
So Rudra decided to take her on a ride of his own. He strapped her in gently enough: "Can't stand it? Burning up?" Then started the ride with a jerk so that Paro was slammed back in the seat. "Then accept your crime. Accept that that day the baraat didn't bring a groom, but guns. Accept that Tejawat is a gun-running traitor." And as her stomach leaped into her throat, offered her some cotton candy. If she accepted her crime he promised he would free her from this prison, the wedding, the flames. Would she accept? Hands on hips, he demanded an answer.
Paro's stomach roiled. How could anybody fall so low for their own ends? First he killed her husband, threatened her Mamisa, her villagers, and Raja Thakur, and when that wasn't enough, he was now planning to committ such excesses on her!
At this accusation, Rudra rocketed them up the almost perpendicular climb. Couldn't she see anything other than herself? He'd lost his men and the country her soldiers because of her villagers and her Thakur. And today because of her his mission had come under the BSD's scrutiny. And if proved wrong, then the soldiers who'd given their lives for it would not be called martyrs, but fools. But did she care? he yelled at the top. Or were they all gun-toting, uniformed Jallads who'd killed her people?
And while Paro fought to catch her breath and level out, he swung them into a gut-twisting loop, pointing out the personal cost to the mother of the only son, now dead; to the children who would grow up only with memories for a father, perhaps blemished memories if he, Rudra, couldn't prove that Tejawat was a criminal. "And what of him for whom the BSD is family? Whose mother abandoned him in his childhood? Who lost faith in life and himself? What of him who only comes alive when he dons his uniform? For whom the uniform is the only relationship, his life, his breath? What of him?"
And as they pulled out of the loop, both pale and breathing erratically, he was burning metal up to the sun. But what difference did it make to Paro that his loyalty to his uniform, his country and his duty were being questioned? But he wouldn't allow it to happen. Would not let them take from him what he had fought life itself to achieve.
Then, before even her head stopped reeling, Paro was falling, the ground rushing up to meet her, leaving her stomach in the sky. "There are papers on the table. If you sign them, then as I promised, I won't let the marriage take place. But if you don't, then nobody will be able to stop it." Nerveless, he persisted. It was not an empty threat. She had called him low, she should know that for his fallen men he could stoop to any level. "Sign it!" he commanded, and as they finally screamed to a stop, he walked away, leaving Paro all churned up. A Paro whose trembling fingers managed to pick up the pen, but whose stead-fast heart wouldn't let her betray her own, no matter the grief to her.
That's how Dilsher found her when he entered the room moments later - pale, teary-eyed and seeing defeat everywhere she looked, but with the growing conviction that she was right. How then could she do anything so wrong? She wouldn't sign, Paro told the devastated father. And as for the wedding. She'd rather light her own funeral pyre and jump into it!
Rudra may have walked out victorious, but he was still shuddering with the force of his emotions when he held on to the sides of the water tank and gazed into the peaceful depths, hoping to absorb some of its calm, wash some wounds, cleanse the guilt, cool the burn of his fear. Fear that he would fail his men in their death as he had in their life, that he would be stripped of his rank, turned out of the BSD and court-martialled. Fear that coiled round and round in his head like a snake, striking when he least expected it, dripping slow poison into him, paralysing him, leaving him helpless in the face of his destruction. He stared at his distraught face reflected back at him out of the water tank mirroring a melting anguish he couldn't bear to see. So that he was grateful when the surface rippled over. He chopped it up even more with his hands, dashing handfuls of water all over his face, to soothe the acid burn on his cheeks, and drip in one combined much more acceptable stream, unchecked.
Kakisa seeing a funereal, instead of a bridal air about Paro, urged Sumer to find out all there was to about her. He was not to return home until he did. And Sumer, unsmiling and drunk, railed against the fates at the impossibility of his task. For once the fates would smile on him. The solution would find him before he even took a pee.
He'd found the solution, Rudra would tell Aman in the marriage threat. He could see Paro's spirit flagging. She did not fear death as much as she feared being married to a monster like him. He was convinced it would be alright.
Rudra was not to know that the tables were about to be turned on him, with a vengeance. Because if Paro hated the thought of being married to him, so did Rudra abhor the thought of being married at all. And Paro was about to tie that exposed nerve into a knot.
A delicious episode that deserves multiple viewings for sheer viewing pleasure. The CVs took all the characters on a mad, whirlwind roller-coaster ride, elevating them to sudden peaks and then dashing their hopes to the ground, so that it's hard to tell who won and who lost at the end of this episode.
A lot happening today. The four-day deadline was stressed repeatedly, piling on the pressure. The resulting desperation on all fronts made for much drama. Rudra pulling out all the stops to get Paro to sign. Kakisa similarly forcing Sumer to get information with which to kick the in-laws out of the haveli. Paro refusing to bend, and taking Rudra on. The Thakur's men finding Sumer.
Today if the plot was king, then the dialogues were the queen and the acting, just ace! Yesterday's glitches might never have been, so fast-paced, and impactful was today. Plenty of fireworks. Ashish had the lion's share of the lines and a vast range of emotions to portray, and he did them justice, going effortlessly from triumph to rage, to persuasion, to threat, to pathos, ruthlessness, intimidation, tragedy and desperate hope. Sanaya was compelling in her shock, anger, disgust, grief, bitterness, aggression, empathy, fear. Kali Prasad ji was controlled and convincing. Ananya played her defeat as consummately as she does her triumphs. And the actor who plays Sumer, ably supported by some fabulous lines (Pa..Pa..Padukone Deepika 😆), was quite likeable.
Hats off to Team RR for a wild ride. 👏👏👏👏
Can't wait for tomorrow's PaRud bed-time games...😆
Sampoorna
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