Originally posted by: MelodiousDreams
Just wanted to stop by and shed some light on this!
In Sanjivani, Shashank was initially shown as a very serious, strict mentor and professional in the hospital. He berated Juhi for being late on her first day, he suspended Rahul for his unprofessional conduct, and told all of his interns that working at Sanjivani wasn’t going to be easy, so they had better be prepared. Juhi initially saw Shashank as an idol, her admiration of him was like hero worship - and that was what irritated Rahul at first. But then as they all started working on more cases, Juhi’s hero worship lessened into a strong sense of respect since she saw the strengths and weaknesses of her mentor and came to regard him as a guru rather than an infallible godlike figure. Shashank and his interns became like colleagues rather than just a senior doctor with his juniors. Shashank became more and more of a father to Juhi as time went on - Anjali used to call her “Juhi Didi” and Shashank/Smriti basically considered Juhi to be their elder daughter, so that’s why they did her kanyadaan after helping to arrange her marriage to Rahul. Juhi and Rahul both worked very closely with Shashank and Smriti - the four of them were a solid team and practically a family.
As for Shashank...he might have seemed like a no-nonsense, closed-off man with an inability to express his emotions...But he was actually quite charming and sweet, with a great sense of humor. All of those aspects of his personality started to slowly be revealed in Sanjivani after Smriti showed up in his life again. They had to sort out a lot of complicated issues related to their marriage and their child(ren)...they had separated but hadn’t officially divorced during their 6 years apart, so when they came face to face at Sanjivani again, all the conflicted emotions and all the history and love between them started to resurface once more. And Shashank loosened up again, he started to express himself more, smile more, be more playful...Shashank was actually very romantic and a bit of an awkwardly adorable dork, too! Smriti was the only one who could really bring that out in him and she was the only one who could render him speechless, too! Shashank and Smriti had this routine of stopping by each other’s cabins for coffee, they’d keep teasing and flirting with each other, subtly or openly, depending on their mood. Literally everyone knew that Shashank and Smriti loved each other immensely, so when they abruptly announced their (re)marriage, it wasn’t really a surprise at all!