A rather sweet scene - Page 5

Hey Sam,

Now that you have given me food for thought, I would definitely like to reply to some of the points you have mentioned :) Please gimme time till evening.

Also have you watched yesterday's episode? I would love to know your take on how the epi unfolded.

Originally posted by: Samanalyse

Ha, welcome to my world! I am famous for writing essays 😆

Look, I am not trying to absolve Kunal and Kuhu of responsibility. My point is that while the writing holds them responsible for their actions (and then some), Mishti and Abir never face consequences for their bad decisions or shortcomings (a lot of which you have mentioned above) and on the rare occasion they do, it's treated like some great crime is being done against them. Kuhu and Kunal have made all the mistakes you point out and rightfully, they find themselves in a terrible position right now as a result, paying for them. This makes sense to me, and makes for good storytelling.

What doesn't make sense, for example, is how Mishti (and everyone on this forum, apparently) is surprised that people like Varsha, Jasmeet, and Kuhu are still mad at her for what she did at the haldi when she hasn't even explained why she did it. I mean, forget Kuhu, she probably dredged up Varsha's worst memories with that stunt and then not only did she show up for the bidai, she made herself the center of attention with the joote, and then *nobody* addressed it. Also undaddressed is her penchant for riding off in the middle of the night -- how many times have we seen Kuhu cover for her so the family doesn't find out? Granted, Kuhu did this for selfish motives but the message I'm getting here is that Mishti is less accountable because she is better at lying/image management, which is totally fine by me if the character owns it. But Mishti is sold as this paragon of truth, and that creates an inconsistency between what I see and what I'm told I should see.

As for Abir, he has shown his manipulative side several times, right from the beginning when he tried to make Mishti and the Maheshwaris believe that Kunal had saved her. If he cared about girls' feelings that much, he wouldn't have catfished one or blackmailed a runaway groom into marrying a girl he had doubts about without giving the bride all the information. With Abir, I feel like they took his awarapan and bindass attitude really far without giving it enough emotional weight (it was balanced way better in the beginning with his grief and confusion over his papa, but that just disappeared). Now he just feels like a guy who's happy to do his own thing while he leaves the burden of the household squarely on his brothers' shoulders. He loves Kunal, but doesn't respect him or his experiences, which is why he never let him get his own closure with Shweta.

But again my point is, nothing Mishti has done can be equated to the kind of stuff Kuhu has said/done either at her own behest/at the behest of Kunal out of sheer insecurity or her desperation to please Kunal. Yes Mishti runs away in the night and Kuhu covers up for it. While Kuhu, on the other hand, runs away, gets drunk and attempts to commit suicide just because she cant get Kunal and Mishti covers up for it. Or worse Kuhu sends an e-mail using Mishti's account to frame her and get her insulted in front of everyone and Mishti still covers up for it. What Mishti did/does is very tame compared to all that Kuhu has pulled off. And Mishti hasn't intentionally plotted till date to pull down Kuhu unlike the later which is why it is very easy to not blame Mishti or hold her accountable for Kuhu's situation

Yes, Mishti was at fault to pull off that haldi stunt and Varsha is probably justified in disliking her till the entire truth is out. But what we are forgetting here is that Kuhu and Jasmeet have been horrible to Mishti even before she pulled the haldi stunt. Last I checked, Kuhu called Mishti a puppy and a charity case and has been really mean to her and expected her to stay away from Abir and pulled off that e-mail stunt much much before Mishti messed up in the haldi sequence.

Coming to Abir, yes Abir is manipulative but he never manipulates for harming someone. Not even his mom whom he has a million issues with. Abir was wrong in pushing Kunal into the marriage/ for not making a big deal out of Kunal running away and still pushing him into the marriage but I would still not hold him responsible for Kunal's situation. Kunal was not drugged/at gun point and got into the silly plan knowing fully well that it could have drastic consequences. At the risk of repeating myself, it was Kunal who convinced Abir that he loves Kuhu and wants to marry her. And if Abir believes it because he doesn't think Kunal is capable of lying about something this important or using a girl for some stupid agenda of his, it is not really his fault, right? Maybe Kunal should have told him 'you are wrong bhai. I dont love Kuhu. I used this situation just to separate you from Mishti but now that it backfired, I want to back out because I never had the intention to marry Kuhu'. Its that simple. It sounds disgusting because the plan was disgusting. Maybe Kunal should not have been a coward and given Abir a reality check about all his misconceptions and backed off from the shaadi.

@bold- Again, why is it made to look like Abir did not give Kunal a choice or an opportunity at closure? Yes Abir was over-enthusiastic about the marriage and ignored the red flags but is Kunal a baby? Why couldn't he ask Abir to shut up? Why couldn't he make it clear that he is hurting and not ready for marriage? Why did he give the impression that he is dying to marry Kuhu and will even go against his beloved mother for her? He does everything he can to convince Abir about his love and need to get married and the fact that he has moved on and he will still give silly excuses for running away from the shaadi but Abir is still somehow supposed to understand that he is not ready for it? And will still be blamed for Kunal's inability to accept his mistake or own up to it and take a stand for himself?

I don't deny Abir and Mishti's flaws. I just think they are not in any way responsible for Kunal or Kuhu's mess of a marriage and whatever their faults, at least they don't manipulate/plot to harm those around them (unlike Kunal or Kuhu who have done it several times in the guise of majboori or pyaar or whatever other lame excuses).

Originally posted by: Samanalyse

Thank you all for the responses! More than supporting any particular character, I am always a fan of good writing and that is what I see slipping away on the show. I am just really disappointed that they are falling back to pitting women against each other to move the story along. As a viewer, I need to understand the motivations of characters and for me, the writing of Abir and Mishti has been wildly inconsistent ever since Kunal and Mishti's rishta broke. I think it's completely justified that some people disagree with me on Mishti and Abir but I see that more as the gaps in the writing -- you fill them depending on your feelings for the characters. If you feel for Mishti, you might see her as helpless but what I see is a girl who made decisions and has not been held responsible for them; in fact, for the most part, the writing foists the consequences on Kuhu and justifies it by having her say some OTT mean things to Mishti, so you continue to sympathise with the latter. As someone who has liked Kuhu a little bit better from the beginning, I feel betrayed by the writers when this happens. Why can't they both be fleshed out characters with their own important plots? Isn't that better for the show overall?

Similarly, Abir has never faced consequences for pushing Kunal into a rishta and now a wedding that he was clearly not interested in. Why is Abir allowed the freedom not to marry but Kunal isn't? The fact that Kunal ran away from the wedding sends a pretty clear signal to me -- in fact, even Kuhu is asking him now why he bothered to come back, because logically she might have been better off left at the mandap. So if I analyse Abir's motivations with that in mind, I see less concern for Kuhu and more desperation not to lose his access to Mishti. And @EtTu, you are right. Abir doesn't hold Kunal responsible for anything, but to me, that is exactly the problem. Kunal is expected to be an adult when it comes to managing their mom and the entire business, but as soon as he does something Abir doesn't approve of, he's a clueless kid who needs to be managed: I find it hard to stomach that Abir is basically saying, "do as I say, not as I do." Is it any wonder that Kunal is trying to micromanage Abir in the Mishti issue? He is just following the precedent his bhai set with Shweta.

When the show started, I was really excited about the potential for both couples. I saw them as mirror-images of each other and I thought there was so much that could be done with that. But ever since the rishta swap ended, Abir and Mishti have been stripped of everything that made their characters interesting and their only plotline other than their romance has been to play god for Kuhu and Kunal, and this is where the leads are losing me.

@beguiling: Likewise! I have been in hiding for a long time but your recent posts drew me out because I wanted to talk about Kuhu, and you were doing such a beautiful job. I loved her from the start because she was so honest and so in love with herself, something we never get to see with Indian female leads. I completely agree that the writers have really made her characterisation a matter of convenience, and it irritates me to no end. On Indian TV, either a sister has to be a devoted minion who thinks no end of the lead, or she has to be jealous and scheming. With Kuhu, they really had the potential to break the mould and what is bothering me is that despite this, despite writing an incredibly compelling character, they are throwing her under the bus because they are too lazy to write real depth into Mishti's character.

I did some reading about the parent show a few weeks back, just to know more about Kuhu's backstory, and realised that Kuhu wasn't exactly a baby when she came to live with the Maheshwaris. She was at least four or five, which means that she remembers her birth mother and the experience at least vaguely. Heck, even if she doesn't remember, the experience would have had a huge impact on her. She has a past that is equally traumatic, and her abandonment issues should be equally deep so why does the show treat her like the brat who grew up without a care in the world, and Mishti like the only one with trauma? This is why Kuhu's resentment makes so much sense to me -- she learned to embrace life and be positive despite her trauma but her cheerfulness gets red as shallowness by her family and she is treated like a brat. Meanwhile, it must seem to her like Mishti is rewarded for being broody and quiet -- while Kuhu gets labels like jhalli and nadan; Mishti is gambhir or samajdar.

For the most part the family is responsible for this, but the worst part is probably that Mishti totally buys into that labelling and treats Kuhu accordingly. I think Kuhu and Mishti summed up their respective stances perfectly -- when Kuhu called them #frenemies, Mishti responded with #family. To me that meant that Kuhu at least saw them having an independent relationship outside the family that forced them together; Mishti didn't. This is why we never get to see Kuhu's loving side when it comes to Mishti -- she knows that Mishti's priority is the family (particularly BM and BP) and not her, and she doesn't want to be hurt and rejected yet again. Every time Kuhu starts to open up, Mishti proves this to be the case when instead of talking to Kuhu as an equal, she just makes decisions because she knows what's best for the family. Nobody wants to share their innermost secrets with someone who, instead of sharing back or listening, just wants to "fix" everything and take credit for it.

In all this, is it any wonder then that Kuhu really fell hard for Kunal? He saw her in a way that nobody in her family did (except Varsha, bless her). He recognised her sense of humour as her strength and not a sign of her shallowness, and he appreciated how sorted she was in the Shweta issue. All this was before any plotting began. Even when Kuhu was threatened with a new rishta, she didn't cry or make a fuss; she went straight to Kunal, told him how she felt, and asked him what he wanted to do. If he had turned her down, she probably would have been open to the new rishta. That kind of drama-free straightforwardness is something you so rarely see in young women on Indian TV.

Lol, apparently my love for this character is endless so I'll stop here for now. I absolutely second your message to the writers and the PH. Kuhu is incredibly relatable and a beautifully fleshed out character with real flaws and strengths. Please pull up your socks and find more interesting ways to make Mishti relatable than constantly positioning her as a victim for sympathy; this is is lazy and tired writing. You have two potentially great female characters on your hands -- instead of pitting them against each other, wouldn't you get double the views, fans etc, if you gave both of them convincing, parallel plots?

Hey mate,

Am sharing here the below two threads which were my small attempts at understanding Kuhu. Re-reading it now I don't think I did justice to explaining about the character as well as you did, but still I hope the two threads make some sense and you find these interesting to read ;)

https://twitter.com/just_being_self/status/1166404945295237120?s=19

https://twitter.com/just_being_self/status/1168802847825096710?s=19

@EtTu: What I hear from your post is: I'm defending Abir and Mishti's poor decisions because Kuhu and Kunal's are so much worse. This exactly mirrors my issues with the writing of the show, and probably explains why the leads are working for you and not for me. I think Mishti and Abir have a lot to do with their siblings' bitterness (not directly, but built up over years) because they accept the favouritism in their families without question. I would ideally like each character to be held individually responsible, but I've watched enough ITV to see that I'm not going to get that with this show. It might be time to shrug my shoulders and move on. 🤷

@beguiling: I haven't watched any of these week's episodes because what they are doing with Kuhu became too apparent to me. Everytime they give her a strong storyline (like how she's handling Kunal), and the audience starts to like her, they make her do something horrible so Mishti looks like the victim again. And because Mishti is getting flatter and flatter, Kuhu has to do worse and worse things to make the story interesting.

My hope after the Kunal-Kuhu marriage was that the stories would run parallel for a while -- Kunal's anger cools down, Kuhu reminds him that they were friends and says, please just be my friend and help me keep our families happy. In this phase, because she makes him so comfortable, his feelings start to resurface but she is totally oblivious. Meanwhile, let Abir and Mishti search for Abir and Kunal's father. Or if you want to save that drama, give them another NGO-related track like Champaner, where they have something substantial to do outside of their scheming families.

When I see so much potential for all four, I don't really want to strap myself in for the endless torture of them constantly being pitted against one another. It's gotten too exhausting.

Originally posted by: Samanalyse

I think Mishti and Abir have a lot to do with their siblings' bitterness (not directly, but built up over years) because they accept the favouritism in their families without question.

...

Everytime they give her a strong storyline (like how she's handling Kunal), and the audience starts to like her, they make her do something horrible so Mishti looks like the victim again. And because Mishti is getting flatter and flatter, Kuhu has to do worse and worse things to make the story interesting.

Sam, this pretty much sums the last couple of months. The writing is having the exact effect that its intended to - make the leads unaccountable for everything they do. The ginormous chip that the leads carry on their shoulders, their double standards and lack of ownership are my biggest issues.

Originally posted by: Samanalyse

@EtTu: What I hear from your post is: I'm defending Abir and Mishti's poor decisions because Kuhu and Kunal's are so much worse. This exactly mirrors my issues with the writing of the show, and probably explains why the leads are working for you and not for me. I think Mishti and Abir have a lot to do with their siblings' bitterness (not directly, but built up over years) because they accept the favouritism in their families without question. I would ideally like each character to be held individually responsible, but I've watched enough ITV to see that I'm not going to get that with this show. It might be time to shrug my shoulders and move on. 🤷

@beguiling: I haven't watched any of these week's episodes because what they are doing with Kuhu became too apparent to me. Everytime they give her a strong storyline (like how she's handling Kunal), and the audience starts to like her, they make her do something horrible so Mishti looks like the victim again. And because Mishti is getting flatter and flatter, Kuhu has to do worse and worse things to make the story interesting.

My hope after the Kunal-Kuhu marriage was that the stories would run parallel for a while -- Kunal's anger cools down, Kuhu reminds him that they were friends and says, please just be my friend and help me keep our families happy. In this phase, because she makes him so comfortable, his feelings start to resurface but she is totally oblivious. Meanwhile, let Abir and Mishti search for Abir and Kunal's father. Or if you want to save that drama, give them another NGO-related track like Champaner, where they have something substantial to do outside of their scheming families.

When I see so much potential for all four, I don't really want to strap myself in for the endless torture of them constantly being pitted against one another. It's gotten too exhausting.

I would recommend you do give this week's episodes a chance :) I had apprehensions too but that scene didn't turn out to be anything like it was projected to be. I had dreaded that scene would serve the purpose of villifying Kuhu but on the contrary it has given the character a chance to introspect wrt where she was going with her dislike/hatred for Mishti. I feel instead of villifying the character they have only made the character feel more humane (or atleast that is how I felt after watching the last two episodes)

EDIT: Guess the above response unwittingly gives the impression that I feel your concern was just a particular scene when actually it is certainly not so. It's the whole cycle of making Kuhu do something horrible everytime the audience is beginning to root for or grow a liking for the character and the fact that only Kuhu is shown to be consistently wrong whereas nothing wrongful is considered about MishBir's actions both of whom did wrong her in certain ways (one by hiding the truth about what mom-in-law to be was upto and another by hiding the fact that his brother was actually dragged to the mandap for the marriage)

Still I would suggest that this week's episodes are quite worth a watch as they do somewhat depict Kuhu's character progression. I for one as a viewer really liked watching her character deal with the internal conflict and then dawning upon of the realization that where she was going wrong. Not sure what they would show in the further episodes tho, but the last two episodes have given me the hope that she would start dealing with certain things a lil differently.

@beguiling: I appreciate the recommendation but the problem is already too fargone. I wanted to see Mishti and Kuhu meet each other halfway, and for Mishti to address her insensitivity to Kuhu when she realised she could have prevented Kuhu from being trapped in this sham marriage. Before we got even an inkling of that, they went and made Kuhu do something so unforgiveable that Mishti will never have to repent for anything ever. Unfortunately, this is the end of the line for me. I'm glad you're enjoying though and I hope the show is worth it!