5/10 Dragon Club: From the Shadows of the Past

A long time ago we watched as a man who was not ready to let go of his past and acknowledge his present, stirred from an unconscious state during a raging storm, as his wife frantically attempted to bring him back into awareness. He had the name of his beloved on his lips, the name that he thought defined and would continue to define his entire life, even though her physical presence had left it too soon: ARPITA. However, when he awoke, he found in front of him, not the past that he was clinging to, but the present that wouldn't be denied: AARTIJI. Today we see a woman lying unconscious, a woman who refuses to confront her past and wants solely to look at her present, as though that is the only real thing that has happened in her life, and so she calls out to her love, as though he is the only love she ever had: YASHJI. But when she awakes, she will the confronted, not with the present which she clings to, but the past which refuses to be denied: PRASHANT.

What master weavers these writers are and what an absolutely poetic turn of events! Things are going to get very, very interesting in terms of the dynamic that underlies Prashant, Aarti, Ansh and Yash. This is why the Ansh-Yash bond was so strongly forged as the first order of this marriage, this is why Yash had to so firmly establish himself in the little one's heart as his father, his protector and his teammate. Ansh will make many friends and easily, being the outgoing and loving child that he is, but he will have only one father, which is what Yash has come to be since that first meeting. That is not to say that Ansh's mind will not pass through a cloud of confusion the moment he learns of this good samaritan's name and makes the connections in his head... because according to Sunita Aunty in Mumbai, Prashant is his father! I foresee Ansh passing through a similar conflict as Palak did when she struggled to accept Aarti: where was Arpita's place and where did Aarti fit in relation? Ansh too, will be forced to wonder, where is Prashant's place his family? Don't forget that Ansh was the first one who wanted to throw out the member of his family that didn't "fit" his image of them in the family game. In this case, who does he throw out, or contrarily how does he learn to accept this new definition of family?

I predicted this outcome for Prashant yesterday. They say that a mother becomes a mother the moment she finds out she is pregnant, but that a father truly becomes a father the moment he sees his child for the first time. Today was the first time Prashant saw his child, held him and interacted with him. He remembered his harsh words, "how can I even be sure this child is mine?" and now wonders how he could not know that this child was his, so much affinity does he feel when the innocent eyes look up at him with trust, gratitude and admiration. Prashant is a man who has probably gone through life feeling inadequate and unimportant, especially to his impossibly principled and demanding mother. My guess is that Neda saw him as a rising star professionally, and flattered him in all the right ways, which combined with his sense of inadequacy and insecurity made a surefire formula for him to cling to her for approval and ego-stroking. But the moment he fell into financial trouble, she gave him some time and when he didn't rally, deserted him because her love had never been real...she had loved his money, or the prospect of it. And so Prashant is left with no money, no wife and nobody to stroke his ego...in such a condition is it any wonder that Ansh's trusting and accepting demeanour won him over completely?

But this is not love. It is Prashant looking back on his life choices and wanting to feel that for all the terrible things he did, for all the people he hurt, he did something right: he brought this sunshiny little one into the world. And just like that Ansh becomes a burning need for Prashant, the sole means to validate his life and the good choices he made so long ago, only to spurn them for a relationship that came to nothing. And today in the hospital, it must have seemed for a second that he was transported back in time, with the doctor telling him his wife was pregnant, to a moment when he could erase all his previous sins. He may be reformed, and he may be guilty for what he did, but only because it turned out this way. If he was still rich and Neda was still with him, I doubt this change would have occurred.

I found it really interesting that they showed that bit about how well Prashant knows Aarti, about her allergy to penicillin and the rashes it would cause. It made me think, would Yash have known that? And the answer is obviously, probably not. And that is just the beauty of it really, because it shows that Prashant really did care about Aarti once, he knew her inside out and they shared everything. This was not a false love or mere infatuation. It was the real thing, and it just so happens that Prashant left it for something he thought was better. His weakness and insecurity, long fostered and highlighted by Shobha probably, caused him to be vulnerable to flattery, to need a person like Neda there to dole it out constantly. Aarti, though she loved him with all her heart, I imagine, knew him too well for that and being the vivacious and energetic person that she was, finding immediate favour with Shobha (all my speculation) probably only served to increase Prashant's insecurity. It makes me wonder if their marriage might have worked, had they been living alone and not with Shobha and Dubey (mainly Shobha). Point is, this makes Aarti's past all the more poignant because the fact that what she and Prashant had was real, makes it even more wrong to deny completely.

And Yash? Yash has changed so much. At first Ansh was his duty and Aarti his partner in a lucrative and pragmatic deal. But today, after facing the demons of his past, he finds that he needs them, not for himself, to fulfill any desire of his heart or ego, but because he needs them to be happy, and he finally believes that he has the power to make that happen. "How could she think I wouldn't accept our child?" he asks  Shobha. For him, dealing with his past and his his grief was separate from the kids entirely (though of course Palak and Payal felt his general sadness), but for Aarti, Ansh became her crutch after Prashant left, the one symbol of their relationship and the replacement man in her life. As a result she cannot separate the child from the relationship that bore it, which is why she interpreted Yash's rejection of their intimacy as a rejection of the child. Also, Aarti used Yash as her means of standing up to Prashant...by saying that he was Ansh's father, so her tenuous truce with her past was dependent on Yash as well. For Yash on the other hand, their personal relationship, and the demons he dealt with as a result, is separate from his relationship with the kids, and would have been separate from his relationship with this child as well.

To him Aarti's behaviour is baffling because he knows nothing of her past, nothing of the associations he triggered when he said those words, 'this was a mistake," the same words Prashant said about their marraige as well. Today it became even more clear why Aarti is so fuzzy about the line between Prashant and Yash right now. For the second time she was trying to convince her husband that their relationship was not a mistake, it was love. Aarti desperately wants her love to mean something, and more than that, she wants her love to be complete, and divinely blessed.  But she is to scared to express such a desire because her hard life has taught her that it is almost blasphemy for her to want or expect so much happiness. So she masks it as fighting for Yash's happiness and hides her true prayers for fear of them being mocked by destiny.

This whole track is pointing in the direction of Aarti's realisation that validation as a mother and a woman does not have to come from a man. Destiny is shuttling her back and forth between Yash and Prashant, as though encouraging her to break out of the cycle of emotional dependence, not to surrender to the divine and to decide her life for herself, with her man as her equal companion and not her god or saviour.