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It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting

- Paulo Coelho

Dreams are not only the images projected by our brain as a reflection of our conscious and subconscious mind; they are also the metaphor we use to channel our strengths, our abilities our imaginations and sometimes even rage. Dreams are the very base of miracles, they are foundation of success and failure and the very reason why instead of having so many technological revolutions, we are a community of humans with fragile beliefs and interesting personalities.There is no published handbook on how to achieve your dreams in a given number of days, but people do love to give a protocol like first comes setting your mind, then determination, focus, hard work followed by  sacrifice and further followed by a pinch of luck. Well as they say luck is also a skill but not everybody can have it.

This is about someone special's dream coming true, someone we love to "hate" ... What inspired this particular dream of that certain someone?

As put by a fellow member of our madhouse to caption the pic showcasing a huge crowd around the shooing spot, "When dreams start coming true" it leaves you nostalgic, as if all the memories are flying before you like the fallen leaves of autumn, asking you to slow down a bit and have a good look at what led you here. Every milestone no matter how big or small it was felt like the destination we have been looking for. All the experiences, even the bad ones made you wiser and added one step to the wall one day you were going to climb...

An artist's earning is measured not in mansions or cars or other luxuries, it is measured in the number of emotions he has lived on the stage, and the number of times those emotions reached the hearts of audience. How many times the words coming out of his mouth were laced with the life of the character living in paper. The art of acting is more than just saying the words from the script, one need to breathe the life into fiction in order to make people feel, to connect and that's not an easy job. Gladly our hero understood it really early, Although the traces of rough edges were seen here and there for a long time and they still make their guest appearance sometimes but hey we have got so many memorable moments to show how far he has come and as they say there is no end point in the quest of getting better, there is always one or the other bar to conquer.

To portray a small town boy who has never seen the blinding light and lesser known morals of city life takes more just a particular accents and dialogues written in order to show that he has got principles. To get people root for a certain NRI who lacks the "cool quotient" but is the backbone of his family and man with true passion of love is really not an easy job. It took more than glycerin to make people cry every time Prem had a break down. I have to mention those because audience absolutely loved them not only because a young guy was being shown tearing apart between carrying the weight of the whole world and his one true love, but because they saw a bit of their own self in Prem. Honestly the script, the direction everything was bang on but at the end all comes back to the actor and whether he is capable to use all the props given to him.

Prem is one fictional character everybody wants to be alive, he was the man every girl wants to come back home to, he was perfection, epitome of everything a girl in love can dream of , and quite frankly too good to be true. So after two magical years with Mr. Perfect we arrived at another address, at Ganguly Mansion to meet Elderly Mr. Ganguly's elder son who was still in his adolescence dealing with problems like first shave, first crush, and best friend yada yada yada. We adored that sweet boy waiting for him to be man he would become after the leap. He sure took his sweet time but that young dapper appeared and everybody lost their senses. The face we knew as Mr. Prem Perfection Juneja was now the identity of emotionally petrified older Anurag Ganguly who was not so perfect. (Offcourse I am not talking about the face because that perfectly crafted piece of art is one of the God's masterpieces)

Coming to Anurag, a young man determined to prove himself to his father after he sent him to exile, who had become cold enough to not come home to his parents for eight years, someone who has moved on from his childhood love but yet values her as a friend, someone who has grown distant from the emotional child that he used to be but hasn't reached the stage where he can be considered a stone-cold man with no feelings. He was basically a child who was forced to grow up before time but couldn't do it and was just lashing out at his parents and at everyone he had while wearing the mask of grown up. He hurt the people he never meant to in his reckless ways but all this time he was dying inside.

Later this kid manned up and gave us one of the lovers we all fantasize about, he loved like crazy ultimately lost his quite talented mind to the girl.(Yes, I refuse to accept what they showed in finale) and I am telling his tale not just because the writer did a splendid job by writing that character but also because a marvelous actor (who makes me wanna jump at him) brought Anurag to life, made us feel like he is a real person who deserve our love and made us cheer for him even when we knew that the guy is being an utter fool.

After rebellious wronged youth came another rebellious, but confused, misguided and king of the castles he made for himself in thin air type of bad boy. Actually he wasn't so bad, his financial problems and his compromised morals made him that way. Or in the words of the man himself "when a person is been suppressed all his life, never tasted freedom, always had a set of rules to follow, that person will definitely bounce off like a spring on being granted his freedom and can go any way" That's what happened to Mohan, a young boy who never even got to choose his breakfast menu had to survive in a whole new world.

His newly found freedom didn't mean he was out of the clutches of responsibilities and expectations of the people left behind. He grew up watching his mother being treated like a second class citizen just for being a woman, he saw his father,his uncle his older siblings bow before an orthodox patriarch just in the name of "sanskar". More than the appeal of bad boy I feel it was the urge of being better than his grandfather was his real drive. That included defiance of the hard core morals he was taught since childhood (offcourse it included sexism, arrogance and refusal to growth and evolution, domestic dictatorship) but it also consisted the manual of how not to self-destruct in your quest. Mohan got a little carried away, he somehow blurred the lines between evolution from old rotten beliefs and wrongness of youth. But our spoiled brat came back from that on his own (yeah contrary to the popular belief of his wife being the light he always needed). Yeah he started rebuilding everything he broke along the way one by one. He never lost his conscience and was more than willing to bury the spoilt child in his past but not ready to go back and rectify his mistakes this was his way to move-on and we can all say in unison, we are proud of you Mohan.

After the rebellious brat we found a renegade knight in black vests and clumsy garage if not in shining armor and glittering castle. Born in a wealthy family, brought up in strict environment but with loads of love, he always found happiness with people, people with problems far bigger than a wrongly placed cushion. He was never meant for the palace walls, he belonged in the fragrance of soil where life thrives. He never accepted the given set of rules and regulations, he preferred to make his own rules, although he had a very strong sense of justice his methods were conventional which unfortunately sometimes caused more damage than good. His entry in the show was perfect representation of his character, a reckless rebel, who didn't give a damn to consequences because I that moment all that mattered was his rage against the eve-teasers and law order's incapability to stop them, He ended up getting arrested which obviously proved that his  methods brings temporary solution. Then he met a girl who was a victim of domestic violence, she was broken without repair. People said she needs a hero to save her, a healer to heal her, a lover to restore her faith in love but Raghav realized that she needs to learn to be her own hero, she needs to learn how to channel her pain into power more than a lover she needs to learn to love herself,and boy did she get lucky. The girl who used to freak out at things like a creepy song, or the torturous memories a blind fold brought stood up not just for herself but for many other women like her with her absolutely gorgeous hero, friend and husband. Despite his rebellious background Raghav never backed down from his responsibilities. Even if it meant giving up his free bird life as his elderly mother was not quite strong to carry the family legacy anymore, or being the father figure to his nephew or being by the side of his comatose wife and being optimistic for her sake for a year. Raghav was and remains to be the most inspirational character played by Harshad so far.

After different shades to rebellious young boys came the brooding, grey shaded most compelling character ever Mr. Sahir Azeem Chaudhary. He was introduced as a ruthless fashion mogul, but what we saw first beneath that tough exterior was a troubled tender soul but you would be a fool to take his tenderness as his weakness because ladies and gentlemen this shark of our's bites and knows how through electric shocks from a mile away at people who would dare glare at him. A lonesome shayar gave a whole new meaning to "pen is mightier than sword". There is this song lyrics I like and it kinda defines Sahir for me..

Babe, there's something tragic about you
something so magic about you

Babe, there's something lonesome about you
something so wholesome about you

The pain, the betrayal, the blood of innocence scattered all over his aura, that lethal scream of power surrounding him,at one glance you would see someone for whom there is no hope left but that's where you are wrong. In the middle of that animalistic rage there was the picture of a fierce artist, hypnotic verses of a poet and a pair of disarming stare that made you think that the moon itself is falling upon your face. A story so tragic gave birth to something so magical, nobody can say that they never got an adrenaline rush when he walked in. Sahir was a real combination of intensity and vulnerability, or in other words every ingredient of a man one want to remember for centuries.

Honey, you're familiar like my mirror years ago
Idealism sits in prison, chivalry fell on its sword

Innocence died screaming, honey, ask me I should know
I slithered here from Eden just to sit outside your door

While I take no pleasure in seeing someone suffer especially when that someone is a hotmess like Sahir but there was something about Sahir's madness for revenge against his muse that made me wanna root for him. From all the flashbacks we got it was like Sahir was reborn after zeenat betrayed him. He lost everything. His principles his beliefs his sunshine personality and all that just to prove zeenat that materialistic gains are not everything in life and what she lost will never be compensated. The way not being able to demand answers for betrayal, that struggle between desire of getting even with the person who destroyed you and willingness to forgive because his heart was too beautiful to house something as ugly as revenge. The urge to destroy himself and him slowly being torn apart over the years behind the void finery that surrounded him, everything about him was so damn epic and magnetic.

Coming back to our sweet little walking waffle menu birthday boy, well he is charismatic and infectious as we all know but the best thing about him is his dedication. Recently I read somewhere (quoting celebrated directed Kevin smith and Tom Cavanaugh) that at the end of the day success means being able to do what we love, some people confuse success with power and stardom and arrogance. Well that's true in our eight years of madness what we have came to appreciate most about Harshad is the happiness and the feeling of being content he gets when he is in his zone preparing for a new character or every time his disappointment when his character gets assassinated onscreen. He likes to be known as a workaholic.