I was tempted to start this thread yesterday but had to let everything sink in as I had up to now been torn about Kala the sociopath, Kala, the psychopath or Kala, the unfortunate little eight years old who grew up to be the malignant narcissist obsessed by the idea of love/hatred and attachment/abandonment. Several members have attempted to decipher her character which in actuality combined to a certain degree all the traits mentioned above. The one thing that I was not expecting so soon from CVs, though, was revealing Kala as an abuser who has initiated her own abandonment because of her fear of losing control of her perceived codependent in the form of Dutta who she admits to abusing since childhood. During the past week, some on the forum have hinted at a possible Oedipus's complex or worse, her nurturing of some incestuous feelings for her cousin. Thankfully, none of that seems to be the case (just imagine how Nakusha's complications would have compounded), or, maybe the CVs may have found it too daunting to unleash on an audience still delving deep in the rural areas of India (No offence meant).
The mask of sanity came off to reveal a deranged woman who craved for total attention but just could not find words to verbalise her needs and slowly/perversely created a world of ideal beauty (as reflected in her own quest for personal physical beauty, incomparable yet imaginary achievements, wealth, brilliance and unmitigated success, that sadly did not belong to her but belonged to Dutta, the one person she hated most. The narcissist in Kala may deny this reality constantly but the abyss between her sense of entitlement to Patil Niwas/Patil Wadi and her inflated grandiose fantasies clashed with the incommensurate reality and achievements of the cousin who she feels was aided by her own mother and worshipped by her two younger sisters who may have loved D for real but quickly realised that they should play the game for the material benefits that they would derive. A sin both Leela and Roops will pay dearly for in the coming episodes as they have failed Kala a second time and Dutta ever since they attained some form of self-realisation as to the latter's importance in ensuring that they have the life of leisure they crave for. Thankfully, Dutta is going to prove his magnanimousness once again and forgive them their digression when he takes full stock of Kala's degree of moral depravity.
Kala, finally, confessed to her sins which find roots in what she perceived as her own mother's abandonment of her own flesh and blood in favour of Dutta, the cousin left at the mercy of nature by an abusive father who was also the cause of her own father's death. From a completely neutral point of view, I have to concede that her anger/hatred is justified to a certain extent and the main culprit should in fact be Ayi Saheb who just did not gauge the immense trauma that her eldest would have suffered seeing the father that she must have idolised, accidentally, pushed to death by an insensitive and reckless Damodar Patil. From there on starts the journey of the innocuous little girl whose emotions slowly become a buffer that evolve in a dangerous form of malignant self-love as witnessed with the caricature of Dutta on the iconic mirror that has been the long suffering companion of our very own version of The Silence of the Lambs.
There have been discussions before on the forum that Kala was never shown grieving for Shriram Patil and that has never been a fair assumption to make as it is not necessary for every human being to cry their grief on top of the roof. She was but a small girl still in a state of shock when she was probably forced to help her heavily pregnant mum take care of Leela and the newly adopted brother. Surely, the eight years old Kala, had to forsake all the little luxuries, the dolls, the toys (hence her adult fascination with the same) that her dad provided for because her Mum, besides her bereavement had no resources to ensure a simple, yet, balanced lifestyle. That alone would have unhinged that part of her brain which would have found contentment otherwise. That would have triggered off the nascent narcissist who slowly grew up. She was again short-changed as soon as she reached the age of marriage and found herself as the wife of the erudite yet penniless Kishore who was unable to see that side of a woman who craved for money, for obsessive love to the point of worship, for power. It was unfortunate but she could not have the best, the most glamorous, stunning, talented, head turning, mind-boggling spouse in the world. For the narcissist, nothing short of this fantasy would have done especially when she was witnessing Dutta's rise as the all powerful Don who could have anything on the face of this earth, or, at least a perception of everything that had been denied to her because of a choice that her mother made years ago. She found herself reverting to the devaluation of the erudite Kishore who must have been so wrapped up in his own world seeking for higher wisdom through books that the one chance for healing was lost once again. Her behaviour turned on a dime and became threatening, demeaning, contemptuous, berating, reprimanding, destructively critical and sadistic to the point of being clinically cold. She made sure that the poor Kishore was punished for not living up to her standards as personified yesterday in her contemptuous rejection of Kishore's Rs10 worth of sindoor.
Kala became a mother by which time Dutta must have had embraced the criminal world and started his ascent as the undisputed King of Patil Wadi. His sense of generosity would have naturally got him to have his whole family in the grandeur surroundings of Patil Niwas where the sense of worship and probable sense of sycophancy from the whole village and Kala's own family flared up the embers of hatred and jealousy that she had been shielding for years. Even worse was her own mother's elevation as the generous benefactor of Patil Wadi through Dutta when her own father (through whom that elevation would have happened) had been robbed of the prominent public status that his role as the representative of the workers 25 years ago was snatched by Damodar Patil. To a certain extent, Ayi Sahib must have passed on her own narcissism to her eldest daughter. How would one otherwise explain the fact that she never read the signs that her daughter was near an edge or even if she sensed it chose to ignore it for a false sense of peace. (Remember the first time she tried to stop Kala from uprooting the past. Had she at least measured the consequences of that hatred then, she would not have reached the point of no return for her clearly disturbed daughter)
God knows if Shriram Patil would have been able to provide all that Dutta ended giving to his adopted sisters and Ayi Sahib but it was too late as Kala had, knowingly/unknowingly, transformed into the malignant narcissist for whom life needed to revolve around the axis called Kala Tai who played the wrathful and demanding God in the guise of the "ever-caring" sister, daughter "full of solicitude" and the figurehead that she had always wanted to be in the absence of her father. Dutta, in her mind, became the source of narcissistic supply, almost an instrument, and an extension of herself that she perceived as a threat and an insult to her own existence but still the vehicle necessary for her perception of power over every living being in PN. And, unfortunately for Dutta, he did give her the impression that she had an upper hand in his life until Nakusha became the focal point of his life. For the sake of brevity, I am not going to dwell on this aspect as it has been documented enough on the forum. Had Dutta never "invested" his emotions and love elsewhere, the malignant narcissist would never have assumed such monstrous proportions as we saw over the course of the last eleven months in LTL ever since Dutta agreed to first marry Supriya and ended up marrying Nakusha for all the right reasons.
And it was by no means because of any incestuous feelings (strictly my POV, she hates Dutta too much for that) but because she considered Dutta's very existence as sufficiently but sickeningly nourishing and sustaining for her obsession. She felt entitled to the best he represented without investing in maintaining relationships or in catering to the well being of the adopted brother whom she attempted to pathologise through an insidious but very intricate mechanism of projective identification. She, almost, succeeded in compelling Dutta to play an emergent role of "the weak" or "the naive" brother who needed to be protected against all odds and what she denied in herself, what she was terrified of facing in her own personality - she attributed to others and moulded them to conform to her prejudices against themselves. She spared no one in this process, be it Dutta, her primary target, hers sisters, Leela and Roops, her husband Kishore, son Anay, brother-in-law, Sudarshan (who might prove to be an issue soon), Baaji, Nakusha or Ayi Saheb.
Sociopathic or narcissistic obsessions may last as long as one is not afraid of losing one's sources of hatred and hence trigger an unconscious process of emotional damage which was what happened in Kala's case. Nakusha's open challenges forced Kala to initiate her own abandonment and the terrible fear of getting unmasked. The strategist who would rather control, master, and direct the potentially destabilising situation (getting to know about Dutta being alive despite her almost "successful attempt") had failed because of what she perceived as Dutta's good fortune in having an unshakeable support system represented by Nakusha/Baaji/AS. And rather than confront its effects and attempt damage limitations which could have still been possible, the narcissist with a low level of organization (as seen in her umpteenth failed attempts to separate Dutta and Nakusha), she chose to inflict a narcissistic injury so grave that the whole edifice that was Kala came crumbling down. Narcissists, as per experts in the field, usually, entertain suicidal ideation but, the narcissist who initiated his/her own abandonment as in Kala's case where she directed the scenes, abandonment is finally perceived to be a goal she sets herself to achieve. And it no longer mattered who came in the fray, family members, her own flesh and blood or husband as she had gone too far. And Kala's closing scene with that lone tear that she wipes away when her mother decides to rejoin everyone in confinement may be telling of her immense sense of loss but the Kala who is left on the PN centre stage hates happiness, joy, ebullience and vivaciousness - in short, she hates life itself, almost a soul with no footprints. All the relationships she had, ended up one-sided, twenty-five years of a wisp of a life that will leave no trail as her perception of love and attachment went unrequited in the end,
I would have loved to go further into the roots of Kala's bizarre propensity and attempt to decipher further the psychological dynamics that operated concurrently in Kala as it is very confusing to be a narcissist who could have chosen to enjoy the best by being the wondrous sociopath but chose to end it all because of the unchecked and grave injuries she sustained when she was a kid. That is better left to a professional and I would be grateful if anyone on the forum with the necessary qualifications came forward. What we got to see on Saturday with Kala was a first on Indian TV or shall I go further and state that the depth with which the destructive narcissist was depicted, may not have even been attempted on Indian Cinema. Hats off to the CVs, hats off to Aashka Goradia who joins the select few actors who would have portrayed with such finesse and power the deranged narcissist that we end up feeling pity for and want to embrace and help wipe off the many years of hurt that Kala would have let fester into intense/burning hatred. We may never have the courage to admit it but a bit of Kala resides in many people we come across in day to day life but just ignore because we are either not aware of such afflictions or because we are too ashamed to concede to the fact that human frailties come in all guises.
Would love to hear your comments. 😳
PS: Dear friends, I may not really get a chance to reply to your posts straight away but please do not let this stop you from commenting on this thread as I feel that Kala will remain very much the subject of many discussions this week.
Itti Si Khushi Sab TV
Udne Ki Aasha
