Mahakumbh 73-76: Zig-zag;Episode 77:Page 2; Episode 78:Page 6 - Page 3

Originally posted by: sashashyam

Mahakumbh 77: Much of a muchness

Folks,

I might be at odds with many of you about this episode, and especially about the last scene between a horror-struck Rudra and a frantic, terrified, disoriented Shivanand. I see that Manish Wadhwa has been greatly praised for this scene in this forum.  As all my regular readers would know, he is a great favourite of mine,  and his Shivanand was,  till recently, my favourite character in Mahakumbh.

Despite all this, and at the risk of sounding like Ms.Grinch, I must confess that I found the Shiva-Rudra scene way too long at 3 1/2 minutes, and monotonous to boot. Yes, Manish's part must have been difficult to do, but once  such a good  actor gets the hang of  portraying a  man in a nightmare, no more so than the deep hysterics I have seen on TV. There was no need for subtlety in such a high decibel sequence, and as for Rudra , he was stuck with a (literally) single expression of confused horror and helplessness that did not vary a jot throughout those 210 seconds.

Where was the need to stretch  this sequence beyond a minute? A minute is a long time for such scenes, and if it has been just that long, the impact would have been far greater. As it was, I was reminded of Shahrukh Khan's final, long drawn out death scene in Bhansali's 2002 Devdas. I was watching it in The  Hague with a largely Indian audience, and one chap commented audibly Yeh mar kyon nahin jaata, aur hum ghar ja sakte the!  It was almost like that for me last night.

Moreover, I was expecting every moment that Shiva would suddenly turn violent, which would at least have made some sense, but he went on and on and on with the same terrified ranting. I am a great admirer of Manish Wadhwa, but not for this kind of stuff. I am not personally acquainted, unlike some in this forum, with the behaviour pattterns of schizophrenics, nor am I sure that is what Shiva is, but I am sure of one thing. Like the torture scenes and the hallucination scenes, this is something I am not at all keen on watching.

On a lighter note, Aparna has  remarked on Arshi's latest thread about how huge Shivanand's mouth looked.  I agree with her.Last night,  I felt at times that he seemed to be getting ready to have his tonsils examined!😉

I was not surprised that Rudra would not tolerate the standard exorcism techniques for his father, even if it is MB doing it, and seeing that she is convinced it is necessary, a daraar between Rudra and MB seems on the cards. Bas, yahi ek cheez baaki thi, that the  Garud Pramukh  should be at loggerheads with the one fellow garud  who has both the gyaan  and the power to get them where they need to get. If Rudra were to alienate MB, the whole mission would be  sunk as thoroughly as the Titanic was.

Even if MB does not abandon him and them - and I am sure she will not -  if Rudra will not let her treat Shivanand her way  (which does not surprise me, for it looks very harsh, too harsh for  a son to take when the patient is his father ) they will be just as badly off as now, for  no one else will know how to cure Shiva  either.

Unless of course Rudra tries some love and affection therapy with that childhood photo of the two of them  and plays his Baba the gayatri mantra on the keyboard in the underground library, with a bow to bhavanayein!

Folks, I am already sick and tired of the endless travails of the garuds, who are, as of now, precisely nowhere.  I do not know how they are going to be catapulted willy nilly into the last stage of a cohesive, effective rakshak  group, but right now it seems like  a mrigtrishna,  forever receding. And where on earth is Prof.Rao just when he is needed the most??

The only one who seems to know what he needs to  do is Guru Drish, with his plan to tunnel in and possibly thru to Sector 53,  so as to be already on the spot when the amrit kalash surfaces. He has become unusually decisive of late, and has relegated Dansh to staying put at Naga Hqrs while he himself plays the star role of the Naga Mole (pun intended!😉).

Leela seems to be keen on playing a naga Joan of Arc, and contrary to some expectations,  is nowhere near falling on Rudra's neck and promising to resuscitate Maya  by leaching the poison out of her. I think Dansh is planning to plant her in the garud Hqrs., under the pretence of  having expelled her from the naga  tribe, and will want her to undermine the garuds  even more from inside. I now understand what he meant when he exclaimed, sotto voce,  after he had released Shivanand into the wood, that soon all the garuds  would be ek doosre ke khoon ke pyaase.

I do not know why  he bothers when they are doing a pretty  thorough job of it by themselves! 😉

And what was it with Greyerson's new saathi  or boss? He looked like a zombie with blue spects.

I think it will be good if the show wraps up as scheduled with 120 episodes. They have not got anywhere much in 77 episodes, so what can one expect but more of such OTT stuff if they get an extension? Better stick to the original idea and let us go in peace!

Shyamala/Aunty/Akka/Di

PS: I will be back later today to respond to all your interesting comments.

i think bhairavi needs to change the method of curing shivanand's madness, and rudra, why doesn't he man up?

What a scathing commentary.! Loved the title Much of a muchness, indeed! The more I see of these latter-day episodes, the more I'm convinced they've misplaced the original script somewhere and are shooting from the hip these days, sometimes hitting a target but more often, just producing footage to air. Such is the difference in the viewing experience between the initial episodes and now!  Edited by happychappy - 9 years ago

Welcome to 'Creative Writing' is all I will say - I wonder when we will get a really good story, converted into a gripping script and screenplay - and when our media realises that the mediums of TV and Cinema are not to just milk dominant norms but are primarily to make society to stop and think and and bring about the much needed change !!!!!

Thank you so very much, my dear, but would  you believe it, it was such a drag to write! I do not know how I finally stumbled across the finis line.

Today, Jazzy, I was in stitches all thru, and for  two pins I would have given the relentlessly OTT Shivanand a couple of whacks with that lathi myself, for boring me half to death😉 - though not on his head, poor thing! . Here they are with just 42 episodes left, and almost 2/3 rds of  an episode, spread over yesterday and today, has been devoted to a snivelling, weeping Shivanand!

The garuds  seem right now to be a lost case, what with MB having disappeared (with the Books)  and tthe imperious Garuda Pramukh babbling that he stands for insaniyat, ie admitting Dansh's mole Leela into the garud sanctum sanctorum just on Rudra's say so. He might want his fellow garuds (minus MB) + Rao to forget who Leela is and where she has come from, but you can bet your bottom dollar that she will not!

I see that you subscribe to the mantra  beloved of mystery story writers, the least likely person done it!😉 No, I do not think it is Dr. Rao, and in any case the close up in the precap could have been almost anyone!

I do watch Reporters regularly, and I like it a lot.  I am duly flattered that you want me to comment in that  forum, but no thanks, my dear. I have no desire to run into catfights between the fans of Rajeev and those of Kritika, or those of  Krijeev/Rajtika!😉 Plus, it is a nice Mills and Boonish story, and what can there be to analyse there? But if you  should open a thread there, do PM me and I will come and add my tuppennyworth.

Shyamala Aunty

Originally posted by: .Veritaserum

Hi aunty! Gotta dash but I LOVED your take on Rudra's shoddy leadership skills and the never ending break down scene of Shiva from yesterday's episode. I feel the mystery man could be Dr Rao. I am not sure but this genre is such that if someone's too good to be true, they can easily be suspected.

Are you watching Reporters? If so, I would LOVE, LOVE, LOVE to read your takes on it too. It seems to be the best show on ITV right now. 

-Jazzy

My dear Adiana,

You are way out of line when  you lament  a supposed dedication by the writer to an actor or a character!😉

Right now, all we  seem to be dedicated to is  Shivanand's bald head and the garuda  chinna  glowing   a sinister green, his assorted  hallucinations and endless snivelling , and Rudra's uni-expression Garuda Pramukh. And yes,  with Dansh's hissing and sneering thrown in for good measure, though I must say that character-wise he is the most consistent of the lot.

Where  then is the character and/or actor being glorified at the expense of the story?

It seems to me that the story has been mislaid somewhere a while ago,  and soon the  actors will also have mislaid their acting skills. I  think 120 episodes is too much, 100 should do for the accordion finish that is  a dead cert now, mark my words!😲

Shyamala

Originally posted by: adiana12

Welcome to 'Creative Writing' is all I will say - I wonder when we will get a really good story, converted into a gripping script and screenplay - and when our media realises that the mediums of TV and Cinema are not to just milk dominant norms but are primarily to make society to stop and think and and bring about the much needed change !!!!!

I have always said that Television is a writer's medium - and when the writer dedicates himself to the actor and / or character then we are definitely staring at a disastrous plot 

My little Mishti,

Today, like you, I was in stitches all thru, and for  two pins I would have given the relentlessly OTT Shivanand a couple of whacks with that lathi myself, for boring me half to death😉 - though not on his head, poor thing! . Here they are with just 42 episodes left, and almost 2/3 rds of  an episode, spread over yesterday and today, has been devoted to a snivelling, weeping Shivanand!

The garuds  seem right now to be a lost case, what with MB having disappeared (with the Books)  and the imperious Garuda Pramukh babbling that he stands for insaniyat, ie admitting Dansh's mole Leela into the garud sanctum sanctorum just on Rudra's say so.

He might want his fellow garuds (minus MB) + Rao to forget who Leela is and where she has come from, but you can bet your bottom dollar that she will not!

So I was right and Dansh has smuggled her into the garud  camp, after slapping her hard  enough to draw blood and make it convincing for her to pose as a shoshit abla naari,  no, shoshit abla naagin. Now there is a chap who knows what he wants and how to get it. The garuds,  headed by Rudra, know neither.😡

And Drish has started drilling in the Mahakumbh area,  which reminded me of Ocean's Thirteen and the tunnelling under the Las Vegas casinos. Well, we mock our scripts, but there,  they mentioned specifically that they had brought the Chunnel tunnelling drill. Can you imagine that digging under a casino? The whole gaming floor would have collapsed first thing. But they were not at all bothered with that huge bloomer in the script!😉

Shyamala Aunty

Originally posted by: mishtidoi

Today's episode 🤣

Sandhya my dear,

Compared to his  present endless snivelling and distorted face, Shivanand's weeping in the episode you have mentioned was Laurence Olvier class!

The story has clearly been mislaid somewhere  down the road,and  of late, the actors too seem to have mislaid their skills, all bar Seema Biswas. The look in her eyes today as she was weighing Rudra's outrage in her mind,  and thinking how best to coax him into laying off, was wonderful.

Though even she seems to be falling prey to the TV soap mantra, never explain even the simplest things in time,  and instead foment misunderstandings galore.. She does try to explain her modus operandi  to Rudra,  but not  in enough detail to carry conviction when it is his father being thrashed so hard.And then again, how can poison be removed by beating the affected person? 😉

I did enjoy the garud troika been ground into the dust in Shiva's library, however.😉

But as for the rest, apart from what I wrote about last night in this post, today,  as I noted earlier, I was in stitches all thru, and for  two pins I would have given the relentlessly OTT Shivanand a couple of whacks with that lathi myself, for boring me half to death😉 - though not on his head, poor thing!

Here they are with just 42 episodes left, and almost 2/3 rds of  an episode, spread over yesterday and today, has been devoted to a snivelling, weeping Shivanand!

The garuds  seem right now to be a lost case, what with MB having disappeared (with the Books)  and the imperious Garuda Pramukh babbling that he stands for insaniyat, ie admitting Dansh's mole Leela into the garud sanctum sanctorum just on  his  say so.

He might want his fellow garuds (minus MB) + Rao to forget who Leela is and where she has come from, but you can bet your bottom dollar that she will not!

So I was right and Dansh has smuggled her into the garud  camp, after slapping her hard  enough to draw blood and make it convincing for her to pose as a shoshit abla naari,  no, shoshit abla naagin. Now there is a chap who knows what he wants and how to get it. The garuds,  headed by Rudra, know neither.😡

And Drish has started drilling in the Mahakumbh area,  which reminded me of Ocean's Thirteen and the tunnelling under the Las Vegas casinos. Well, we mock our scripts, but there,  they mentioned specifically that they had brought the Chunnel tunnelling drill. Can you imagine that digging under a casino? The whole gaming floor would have collapsed first thing. But they were not at all bothered with that huge bloomer in the script!😉

Shyamala Aunty

Originally posted by: Sandhya.A

I did watch  yesterday's  episode  and Manish  Wadhwa, whatever  else he is good at is awful while crying ( hysterically or otherwise). This is something  i noted way back when we had Rudra and Shivanand  weep in their home on alternate  floors unaware of each other's  presence. Neither  of  them  looked even barely tolerable.  

There is no planning, no focus and no development  on either sides. Sometimes  there is no continuity  or purpose  in their actions. Greyerson  Balivesh  and Co were given so much focus so long. Now they are like mere sidekicks. 

Garuds are the most unorganized  rakshak lot you could  ever come across. 

Originally posted by: sashashyam

Mahakumbh 77: Much of a muchness

Folks,

I might be at odds with many of you about this episode, and especially about the last scene between a horror-struck Rudra and a frantic, terrified, disoriented Shivanand. I see that Manish Wadhwa has been greatly praised for this scene in this forum.  As all my regular readers would know, he is a great favourite of mine,  and his Shivanand was,  till recently, my favourite character in Mahakumbh.

Despite all this, and at the risk of sounding like Ms.Grinch, I must confess that I found the Shiva-Rudra scene way too long at 3 1/2 minutes, and monotonous to boot. Yes, Manish's part must have been difficult to do, but once  such a good  actor gets the hang of  portraying a  man in a nightmare, no more so than the deep hysterics I have seen on TV. There was no need for subtlety in such a high decibel sequence, and as for Rudra , he was stuck with a (literally) single expression of confused horror and helplessness that did not vary a jot throughout those 210 seconds.

Where was the need to stretch  this sequence beyond a minute? A minute is a long time for such scenes, and if it has been just that long, the impact would have been far greater. As it was, I was reminded of Shahrukh Khan's final, long drawn out death scene in Bhansali's 2002 Devdas. I was watching it in The  Hague with a largely Indian audience, and one chap commented audibly Yeh mar kyon nahin jaata, aur hum ghar ja sakte the!  It was almost like that for me last night.

Moreover, I was expecting every moment that Shiva would suddenly turn violent, which would at least have made some sense, but he went on and on and on with the same terrified ranting. I am a great admirer of Manish Wadhwa, but not for this kind of stuff. I am not personally acquainted, unlike some in this forum, with the behaviour pattterns of schizophrenics, nor am I sure that is what Shiva is, but I am sure of one thing. Like the torture scenes and the hallucination scenes, this is something I am not at all keen on watching.

On a lighter note, Aparna has  remarked on Arshi's latest thread about how huge Shivanand's mouth looked.  I agree with her.Last night,  I felt at times that he seemed to be getting ready to have his tonsils examined!😉

I was not surprised that Rudra would not tolerate the standard exorcism techniques for his father, even if it is MB doing it, and seeing that she is convinced it is necessary, a daraar between Rudra and MB seems on the cards. Bas, yahi ek cheez baaki thi, that the  Garud Pramukh  should be at loggerheads with the one fellow garud  who has both the gyaan  and the power to get them where they need to get. If Rudra were to alienate MB, the whole mission would be  sunk as thoroughly as the Titanic was.

Even if MB does not abandon him and them - and I am sure she will not -  if Rudra will not let her treat Shivanand her way  (which does not surprise me, for it looks very harsh, too harsh for  a son to take when the patient is his father ) they will be just as badly off as now, for  no one else will know how to cure Shiva  either.

Unless of course Rudra tries some love and affection therapy with that childhood photo of the two of them  and plays his Baba the gayatri mantra on the keyboard in the underground library, with a bow to bhavanayein!

Folks, I am already sick and tired of the endless travails of the garuds, who are, as of now, precisely nowhere.  I do not know how they are going to be catapulted willy nilly into the last stage of a cohesive, effective rakshak  group, but right now it seems like  a mrigtrishna,  forever receding. And where on earth is Prof.Rao just when he is needed the most??

The only one who seems to know what he needs to  do is Guru Drish, with his plan to tunnel in and possibly thru to Sector 53,  so as to be already on the spot when the amrit kalash surfaces. He has become unusually decisive of late, and has relegated Dansh to staying put at Naga Hqrs while he himself plays the star role of the Naga Mole (pun intended!😉).

Leela seems to be keen on playing a naga Joan of Arc, and contrary to some expectations,  is nowhere near falling on Rudra's neck and promising to resuscitate Maya  by leaching the poison out of her. I think Dansh is planning to plant her in the garud Hqrs., under the pretence of  having expelled her from the naga  tribe, and will want her to undermine the garuds  even more from inside. I now understand what he meant when he exclaimed, sotto voce,  after he had released Shivanand into the wood, that soon all the garuds  would be ek doosre ke khoon ke pyaase.

I do not know why  he bothers when they are doing a pretty  thorough job of it by themselves! 😉

And what was it with Greyerson's new saathi  or boss? He looked like a zombie with blue spects.

I think it will be good if the show wraps up as scheduled with 120 episodes. They have not got anywhere much in 77 episodes, so what can one expect but more of such OTT stuff if they get an extension? Better stick to the original idea and let us go in peace!

Shyamala/Aunty/Akka/Di

PS: I will be back later today to respond to all your interesting comments.

Shubha my dear,

Thanks a lot for liking this one. But if you thought it  was scathing, it is going to be milk and honey compared to what I would like to write for tonight's offering. Only, I was laughing my head off, especially but not exclusively at the goings on in the  library.

You are spot on, Shubha. The story has clearly been mislaid somewhere  down the road, and  of late, the actors too seem to have mislaid their skills, all bar Seema Biswas. The look in her eyes today as she was weighing Rudra's outrage in her mind,  and thinking how best to coax him into laying off, was wonderful.

Though even she seems to be falling prey to the TV soap mantra, never explain even the simplest things in time,  and instead foment misunderstandings galore.. She does try to explain her modus operandi  to Rudra,  but not  in enough detail to carry conviction when it is his father being thrashed so hard.And then again, how can poison be removed by beating the affected person? 😉

 I was in stitches all thru, and for  two pins I would have given the relentlessly OTT Shivanand a couple of whacks with that lathi myself, for boring me half to death😉 - though not on his head, poor thing!

Here they are with just 42 episodes left, and almost 2/3 rds of  an episode, spread over yesterday and today, has been devoted to a snivelling, weeping Shivanand!

The garuds  seem right now to be a lost case, what with MB having disappeared (with the Books)  and the imperious Garuda Pramukh babbling that he stands for insaniyat.

Which, in practice, seems to amount to admitting Dansh's mole Leela into the garud sanctum sanctorum just on  Rudra's  say so. He might want his fellow garuds (minus MB) + Rao to forget who Leela is and where she has come from, but you can bet your bottom dollar that she will not!

So I was right and Dansh has smuggled her into the garud  camp, after slapping her hard  enough to draw blood and make it convincing for her to pose as a shoshit abla naari,  no, shoshit abla naagin. Now there is a chap who knows what he wants and how to get it. The garuds,  headed by Rudra, know neither. The Lord preserve our sanity, for Utkarsh seems  to have altogether other intentions!😉

As for Rudra, grey cells seem to be in very short supply, but surely they can give  him a change of costume?

Shyamala

Originally posted by: happychappy

What a scathing commentary.! Loved the title Much of a muchness, indeed! The more I see of these latter-day episodes, the more I'm convinced they've misplaced the original script somewhere and are shooting from the hip these days, sometimes hitting a target but more often, just producing footage to air. Such is the difference in the viewing experience between the initial episodes and now! 

Hope and pray they find their bearings again. In the mean time, enjoying small pleasures like SB's Maimui-Bhairavi dishing it out to all & sundry. (Edit - I wrote this before today's session of M-B doing pitayi of Sivanand & others - What on earth is going on!!!!) 

Sivanandamardanam has been overdone to death, and they should draw a line under that. 

Would be nice if they gave some grey cells and perhaps even a different outfit to the Maharakshak. That hooded mini-jerkin does not fit in at all...😲

Arijit, the whole thing is nuts. How can one leach poison out of a person's blood by thrashing him  so brutally that he could expire at any time? Plus  Shivanand's blubbering and snivelling is frightful to behold.

As for Rudra, he does not know how to think for himself at all. He never did, the bombs segment being the sole exception to this. He has always been clinging to someone's pallu, the latest being MB. Now she is gone, and Shivanand has no pallu,  so poor Rudra is totally lost😉.

Shyamala B.Cowsik

Originally posted by: Arijit007

i think bhairavi needs to change the method of curing shivanand's madness, and rudra, why doesn't he man up?

Edited by sashashyam - 9 years ago