Aparna Dixit enters Porus as Roxanne - Page 3

This is only about @bold, which is an interesting point of view. But there is one major problem with it. 

Does Shivdutt feature in the montage with equal space with Porus the way Alexander does? No, he does not. So there is no point in equating Alexander  and Shivdutt.

Secondly, it is the makers who  are constantly dragging in  the so-called link of niyati between Porus and Alexander at every possible moment, after first having created the  major fiction that they are both of the same age, whereas the real Porus had grown up sons, both of whom died in the battle of the Hydaspes, and a daughter, Kalyani, who was married to Abhi, the king of Takshashila (the  present Ambhikumar). It is as  if the CVs  see this karmic connection, as they put it, between Porus and Alexander,  as a kind of  umbilical cord!

They do it because without the Alexander connection, their script will lose its  vazan. Most Indians know of Porus, or Purushottam, only because he was brave enough, and was devoted enough to his land and its people,   to face up to Alexander when no one else was willing to do so, and Alexander is still world famous after 23 centuries. Without Alexander, no one would have specially remembered Porus. He is not a Chandragupta Maurya or a Chanakya or an Ashoka, who are immortalised on their own steam. 

How many Indians know   anything of Skandagupta, the Gupta emperor of the  first half   of the 5th century AD?  He saved the whole of north India by fighting off the Huns, who were descending on our northwest frontier like locusts. But the Huns are not as glamorous as Alexander the Great, so no one  bothers to even remember Skandagupta. 

Puru or Porus is the protagonist of this show, and Alexander in the antagonist. That is why they  are given equal space in the montage, glowering across at each other. And this is also why  at least 20% of the screen time, and so many excellent scenes, including all his major battles to date, are devoted to Alexander and  the Macedonian part. Without this  Alexander connection, Porus  would be just another raja rani fiction show, like Prithvi Vallabh. 

Apart from this,  I could never understand why such an opulent production was entrusted to Sony, which is mostly the graveyard of good TV, and which  singlehandedly drove Yashraj TV out of business thought most of their productions were very good. Sony also sank Anurag Kashyap's   Yudh, though, as Amitabh Bachchan's first fiction show on TV,  it should have done very well. The channel is manhoos.  

Shyamala  Cowsik