I understand and agree with everything that you have stated here. There is a section of the audience who will only blame women, no matter what. Some of the extremely vile comments that I have seen here and elsewhere, is proof of that. It's almost as if they get some kind of perverted pleasure out of it. And trying to make them see sense is akin to banging your head on a brick wall.
But as mentioned in your post, there is a section of the audience, or if I may say, the majority of the audience who are simply ignoring this abuse ; they are not wishing abuse for her, but they are simply ignoring that aspect of her life and concentrating their energies completely on the EMA part of it. I believe this mindset, is all thanks to the makers of not only this show, but of all those shows and movies (sadly majority) where in sexual abuse, incidents of sexual violence, harassment, eve-teasing etc of women are used as mere plot points to get the story moving or to glorify the hero.
For example, the heroine being harassed or eve-teased, just so that the hero can jump in, beat up the villains and become a hero in the eyes of the heroine and the audience, is a an age old technique, that I am sure we all are quite acquainted with. We have seen different versions of this playing out on our TV screens. Of late, it is used to show, that the hero who is otherwise extremely rude and hating the heroine, has a compassionate side or is even harboring secret feelings for her, which will be revealed post such an incident. What is ignored here is the hereoine's trauma of being touched inappropriately or manhandled, because the audience are already gushing (especially women) over how hot' the hero looks while he is angry and the intensity of his anger is always seen as being directly proportionate to the depth of his feelings for her. This scene is immediately followed by the hero trying to calm the heroine down and they engage in long eye-locks or long hugs with romantic background music. People have been consuming this shit for so long, that they themselves (shockingly or not so shockingly women too) wish for the villain to harass the heroine because they want to see the hero fighting for her and then afterwards caring for her. One can go to any of the show forums here on IF, and I guarantee, that there will be at least one comment where the viewer wishes for a scene like this.
In reality though, how many of us women here would want to be touched inappropriately or harassed in the presence of our love interest, so that it will illicit a response from him? It is absurd to even think about it. So then, why are we so unaffected when we watch this on TV? It is only because the makers do not want us to focus on that trauma. They only want to move their story forward using this incident. And that is what is happening on this show as well. Here, we are not even taking about one off incidents, but about repeated, persistent physical abuse and trauma.
While I was watching the last two episodes of this show with a few of my family members, I got varied reactions to the abuse scenes. The moment Nandini entered her house, and she was pushed forward, the first response from a family member, much to my shock was "she deserves it (while that led to a shouting match, that is a different story😆) The other response - Arre kuch nahin hoga, he will come and save her, spoken in a casual tone, which when enquired about, I was told (and agreed to by others as well) that the whole point of showing this now was to somehow get Nandini and Kunal together, where he will be seen saving her and consoling her. To me this mindset is not hard to understand (not agree or accept) because a little experience in Indian TV watching is enough for people to think in this direction. However, the brutuality of the scene did make all of us flinch, including the person who actually said Nandini deserves it.
Now, let's look at what happened on the show after this horrible incident. The makers as expected did not focus on the trauma that was natural for a person to go through after facing something like this. Nandini's best friend who is otherwise always going out of her way to help her, neither forced Nandini to go along with them nor was adamant about staying back at her place. And the focus itself shifted from Nandini to Kunal and Mauli, where Kunal was seething in silent anger ( the supposedly hot wala) and Mauli was expressing her shock and disgust. How did Nandini survive that night , all alone at that very place where a rape attempt was made on her ? Where was her trauma? Yes, there was a mention of it when she went to meet Kunal the next day. She said, it was only the thought of him, that helped her keep her sanity or something along those lines. But don't you think showing us that trauma would have helped some of the viewers feel for her more deeply?
This attack on her would have brought back bitter memories of all those times he had forced himself on her, of all those abuses that he would have subjected her to in those years. Why couldn't the makers spare a few moments to show us this? I am not saying that Nandini should always be shown as suffering. I am all for Nandini fighting her own battles. In fact I was amazed by her courage to fight him and to actually talk back to him. But her fight is not just physical here, her fight is also mental and emotional irrespective of his presence or absence. She has to fight those horrible memories , which would be threatening to pull her down again and again, even when Rajdeep is not physically present. Have the makers shown us any of this? No. Have they shown Kunal and Mauli, the supposedly kindhearted and amazing doctors at least considering counselling for Nandini? No. After every such incident, Nandini is either shown as too taken in by what Kunal is doing for her or just completely normal. So am I to believe that Nandini is out of her trauma? Her journey to normalcy was not shown. When I say normalcy, I mean her journey to a state of mind, where she sees hope, where she feels liberated. A rain dance is too symbolic a way to show it, and it was more about her breaking free from the marriage/bondage and it was also used as a starting point to Kunal's physical attraction towards her. And we have seen how the viewers have failed to connect with it. Like Angels said in her post, now they are showing us two Nandinis here. One that goes through all the abuse and the other who is cheating on her friend with a conviction that amazes me. It feels so disjointed actually.
Now, Rajdeep is trying scare tactics to traumatize her, but the viewers already know where that is leading to. I may be able to imagine all of her trauma and feel bad for her, but not all the viewers would do that. Because the makers themselves are ignoring it. They are actually softening/ignoring the abuse and trauma to get their story going. In my opinion instead of dedicating screen space to fresh incidents of brutual violence, they can show us Nandini fighting the memories of those past incidents in her everyday life, which would have helped viewers connect with her trauma better and not view them as mere plot points.
Sometimes I wish abuse wasn't part of Nandini's story. A bad marriage/ failed marriage would have been fine. Because abuse will never get it's due, where the central theme of the show is EMA, and especially when that EMA is portrayed as divine and destined.
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