she was in a state... and who wouldn't be after a man had walked up to you with that loping animal stride and promised in husky smooth voice that there would be a suhag raat... a wedding night. tomorrow. and now tomorrow had arrived.
she poured water into nani's milk and apologised to dadi, she wore her kurta the other way round, she made jalebi instead of kheer. everyone was mystified, surprised. dadi was grimmer still.
somewhere in the middle of all that, at a precise moment in fact, he realised what this was all about.
"yeh ladki bilkul pagal hai!"
this girl is completely mad.
that playfulness in his voice when he made the connection and yes, again his falling in love with sanka. that crazy element in khushi kumari gupta (now very singh raizada) was always his undoing. he could never resist it and it pulled him more and more in... deep sunk gone drowning in love. poor fellow... hard hearted shatir arrogant mean nasty khadoos rakshas laad governor tycoon paisa is power man, and he had this chink in his armour... couldn't resist lunacy. even nk gets away with things. but khushi's brand of sanka... just slayed him. he had to stalk her, he had to be her smitten callow lover too. he is delighted she is truly pagal.
at one point he pounced on her from behind a pillar and we had another scene of flower shower and the two of them together. at preeto's wedding the scenes had reminded me of suhag raat in fact. here, krishna was getting decked for janmashtami just on the other side of the pillar. all elements leading to dhakdhak were in place.
i should have loved all these scenes, but something, sigh, never ever did gel here.
the writing didn't feel right for some reason. would khushi pray to devi maiyya because he had mentioned suhag raat, and that too in that cutesie pie way? would he have said to her dar toh nahin lag raha hai... you're not scared, are you?
what was it about these scenes that sort of felt stilted. done up... and just aimless time pass.
pitted against the pyaar, the love, and its rise was the taqraar, the clash, and its rage.
here story may have had something, but an essential went missing.
chemistry.
i suddenly realised what it was about dadi that totally riled me. it was perhaps not her character... it was really the acting. many said swati chitnis was a good actor... i had never seen her before. but here, she just felt wooden and loud. and she and barun just did not connect at all... or so i felt.
i recall his phenomenal clashes with nani in the beginning... each one memorable. established character. both characters. showed generation issues, but more, the issue of love, especially between two strong people who were stubborn and had their own opinions, their fabulous will. who were right in their own way.. sometimes wrong too.
nani and chhotey.
they were deadly together. possible because jayashree t and barun sobti, beside being smart strong actors, had chemistry.
when dadi mentioned, he used to sleep on her lap and follow her around, i thought, yeah, so he did love her. that first walk up to dadi from the door had shown so many emotions, i had felt i was looking at a little boy who perhaps once loved this woman. dadi's dialogue established that... writers were underscoring everything... including her patriarchal attitude, her belief the problem lay with her daughter in law and her son was not to blame.
they exchanged bitter words about shyam, the past, many things... dadi said, "aaj phir ek baar aap galat paksh ka saath de rahe hain..." today, once again you are taking the wrong side. i wondered if that was the start of a story... a door opening that would lead us further into sheesh mahal.
he said "stop it, dadi!" in the way he does. he even said, "enough, dadi!"
and yet... i couldn't get into it.
i was thinking... not losing myself. because something was just not their in the asr-dadi equation, the body language, the pitch.
when i saw it the fist time, i really didn't believe shyam had engineered dadi's return... and even when i did, i felt it was too un-ipk... too ordinary hindi soap.
anyway, i did feel asr's mind and pain and struggle at certain points in the long scene. and barun's expressions at moments were devastating again.
"waqt insan ko bahut kuch sikha deta hai, dadi..."
time teaches human beings many things, dadi.
barun took you to the heart of desolation and helplessness... and grim battle with reality.
"main apne pita ke bina bada hua kyunki unhone khudkushi kar li thi!"
i grew up without my father because he committed suicide!
he whipped around and spat out that libne... did asr have a longing for his father at times? an unresolved love there? where he knew his father was wrong but yet a little boy found it so very hard to let him go... and yet an adult knew how very irresponsible the same man was.
"meri maa ko bhi mujhse cheen liya..."
stole my mother from me...
how clearly a son he is here, a son who adored his mother. it was not her fault... his father was the perpetrator, hers was a mere reaction...
"bikhar gaya tha..."
our lives were torn asunder... whenever he says "bikhar" i see the pearls scattering on the floor, dancing, their rat ta tat sound hits some spot inside... that snap of a string. his mother's death almost that in his life, in all their lives. harsh, sudden, irreversible.
perhaps with khushi, having found the will to look at happiness once more, he was trying to carefully put back those pearls onto a string... but life seemed determined to interfere.
why do you keep reminding me of those terrible days, the past... he asked his grandmother.
the humongous struggle of a human being to overcome his circumstances... isn't that what the essence of heroism is?
"mera faisla tab bhi sahi tha... aur aaj bhi sahi hai."
my decision was right even then... and so is it today.
i just like the way this character always take ownership of his action, and to be sahi is a terribly important thing. here that vis a vis with an essentially galat person... his father. archetypes in this construct no doubt, but somehow asr stands apart as an individual.
"tab galti dad ki thi... aur aaj shyam ki hai!
then it was dad's fault... now it's shyam's
shallow me loved the way he did away with pita ji and called his father, dad. maybe he called him that even?
oh how i wish i knew a little more about the story of sheesh mahal. maybe in the next season?
......................
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