Great thread 👍🏼 and I agree with a lot of the posts here, so I'll just summarize my thoughts (and probably rehash most of what others have already said) since I feel the same way.
Gunyal is one of my favorite characters on this show because you can see her purity of heart and goodness throughout. She knew Saras came to reject her daughter but never made him feel unwelcome and did her utmost to care for him (recall the scenes after the Saras-Kumud argument in the fields and in general the way she looks at him with kind eyes). Yes my heart pined for Saras when she told him to leave today because I know Saras never intended to hurt anyone... but Gunyal knows that too! She wasn't blaming him, but rather the
situation that he unknowingly created. She was simply pointing out his errors as a mother has the right to do.
As a mother trying to respect the relationship between a father and daughter (knowing the Kumud-VC relationship is deeper than the Kumud-Gunyal relationship) and as a woman concerned about the health and well-being of her husband, Gunyal's repeated interjections about delaying the news to VC until a better time is completely natural. But there were also many times where Gunyal encouraged Kumud to go and tell VC everything right away. The flip-flop occured as circumstances changed and the circumstances aren't completely in anyone's hands. We can be idealistic and say she had multiple opportunities to tell VC, but when you think about you own life, you can come up with personal examples of times when you just couldn't tell someone something. Not because you didn't want to, but because you didn't want to hurt them. Gunyal's "stuck-in-the-middle" position was portrayed very realistically IMO.
Of course Gunyal erred (as did Kumud and Saras
and LN for marrying Guman in the first place) since we all know hiding the truth rarely results in good consequences. But as the initial post in this topic points out, she paid her price through her daughter's and husband's heartbreaks and the blemish that has now formed on a relationship so deeply rooted in trust. Those we love have the power to hurt us the most and when our loved ones break our trust, it kills.
Edited by AfsaraZ - 12 years ago