Friday 16 December 2016

a precap and an ipk moment



this has never happened to me before. i sat there transfixed, through the quickly ticking minutes, almost not daring to breathe. as the ride ended on the silhouette stilled against the setting sun, i was about to let go and say wow, when the precap (what happened to good old trailer) came on.

he was talking urgently to the unconscious khushi, "khushi, talk to me dammit... this is not FUNNY!" as his voice wobbled dangerously as though he were on a precipice about to plunge, i felt something give way inside me. i put my head in my hands and felt a sob rising within. i had to actually sit still for a few minutes to recover.

i felt something had reached deep within me, a place we keep carefully hidden from the world, and touched raw emotion. can't tell you what that did to me. most of all it told me, i am still alive. zinda hoon mein.

will try to put my thoughts as clearly as possible, hope i make some sense.

three episodes flowed perfectly towards a moment and it stirred deep.



love and lust showed us their extreme opposite faces. shyam raved and ranted at his so called betrayal. khushi flung at him her despise and told him how far she was ready to fall for the man she loved. the devil smiled. so there isn't that much of a difference between us? "zameen aasman ka faraq!" roared back the patni, the lover. "lekin yeh aap nahin samajh sakte!" 


has an aap ever sounded more insulting, more demeaning? just what the hideous lust of his deserves.


 


he bursts out of the godown, mid fight. he hears her voice. he turns as though physically pulled, all actions pause. khushi! the most poignant rabba vey fades up saluting and celebrating what shyam will never understand nor feel in his entire life (and that is perhaps his biggest punishment). love.


the chase was breath taking. this was serious, ipk was struck by a rare passion. it would change the dimensions of its medium. in script, screenplay, dialogue, music, editing, direction, and of course, acting.

there were bloopers, shoes changed mid run, (even in the episode before "what if i lost you" the shoes had done a flip from fake hermes to trainers), goon count was a bit haywire (kitne aadmi the? hume to laga 5 phir 7 phir 6 phir 4,  perhaps there are clues hidden in the numbers hehe), sudden speeding up of shyam's car and leaving the rest far far behind. yeah, little gadbads here and there.

yet in the larger scheme of things, they were really nothing. i have to give major respect to the makers of my daily soap. again i remember: but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for. 


the makers here are going for heaven amid all the earthly struggles of their creative product. they are also hijacking my breath along the way. but please please throw my breath in that black jeep next to that man with the stylishly flying hair and the fabulously determined/worried killer expression.




hold your thoughts. she is lying there right across the path, hands and feet bound, gagged. just look at those eyes speaking. no, screaming! it was her silent scream that made him swerve i'm certain. sanaya irani takes her performance yet another rung higher. how much talent is there in that slight girl with flowing limbs!!

if we sat down to count the number of expressions on barun's face from the time he burst out of his prison to the end of the episode, i fear we'd be here a little longer than forever. during his noreen khan interview he's praised tom hanks with doing stuff that seems undoable, maybe that's his benchmark, don't know. but whoa! never seen anything like this before. the day the boy stepped out of that helicopter, jaw clenched, steel in eyes, you could sense this was going to be a different flight. how different, i am now only beginning to gauge.

fluid, dance like battle with jagged breaks into nasty, street fight. masterfully directed. he must save her, no matter what. can you imagine the same guy let her go so casually from his office to the lower floor that day somewhere last august i think? today i may have finally forgiven arnav singh raizada that extreme callousness of his.


echoing the moves, a haunting medley of music: love and death combine in the rabba vey based background score, he is back sings the sure segue to asr's signature thrills, dhisshum dhishum, "chor de usse, i said let her go," and he watches her at gunpoint, lallan leering next to her. the vultures move in, excruciating pain will be delivered as there's no fear of retaliation. kick, box, slap, he's flung from end to end, she watches helpless, a pleading and pain-filled female voice joins in the entreaty to rabba.

with a furious (gosh what expression) look at the harianvi hazard, khushi frees her arm and runs toward arnav ji, only to be jerked back and lose her balance, falling backward, further backward, toward the precipice.

arnav ji!
a terrified look.
a flutter of blue dupatta.
he turns.
quiet everywhere, a mournful melody haltingly makes its way through a cascade of beautiful scenes from their life.
she falls into his arms that very first time.
she is falling.
he snatches her out of harm's way and hugs her in the rain.
she accidentally bangs against him, earring caught in his jacket.
he winds the bandage round and round on her ring finger before the temple, it is the sacred hour.
dust in her eyes, gently so gently he rubs it away.
payal by the poolside.
her foot goes over the edge... arnav ji!
he puts the mangalsutra around her neck.
the homa fire blazes.
he is putting the sindoor on her parting.
fire.
rabba vey fades in, looking up above the mortal world with a single call of two words from the heart.
he has put the sindoor.
she falls.
the dupatta again.
khushi!

 

 

mesmerised, i watched. so much in that sequence. from hate to love, from romance to passion. from this world to the next. from arnav ji to khushi, and back. the ocean and his shore, both flowing and ebbing toward and away. i feel somewhere along the way he and she have started to become both ocean and shore. and the pearl rests within both. weird thoughts, but had to say it.

the dupatta and the untold stories in its folds, from that very first hour always there. how it knew what they would know slowly ever so slowly, how it lingered over his face in a dargah, got caught in his buttons, fluttered on to his face, got torn and left behind on his car, it was everywhere. even now. now it fell as she disappeared from his sight. rabba vey.



before she leapt that morning of the suicide, the last thought in her mind, him putting mangalsutra and sindoor on her. his wife, she was his wife. no matter how supposedly fake their marriage.

and now again, that is the exact last picture to flash in his mind. my wife, you are my patni, mine.

hamesha is an instant when you love.

ok i am getting carried away, i said as much. and no apologies, this episode deserved nothing less.











......................

this is not FUNNY episodes
fanfiction


this post is edited from something i'd written on the crooner thread in india forums.







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