episode 348 the namak of love

agar aisa hua toh hum bhi arnav ji ko nahin chhorenge...
if that happens, i'm not going to spare (leave) arnav ji.

of course, should the man you have vowed not to "chhoro" say in a crisp voice pointing at a star in your private planetarium, "dekho... woh meri maa hai," look, that's my mother... you'll pause a bit. he never used  to believe in stars you might think and the wonder of it fill your heart as yo look up at the gleaming object on the ceiling.

then should he say, "aur usske bilkul saath, tumhari..." and right close to that, yours... you'll feel a strange deep comfort in your being and turn and throw your arm around him, cuddling up, head on his heart, right there on the floor on that white spread and settle down to asking what only you could ask at this moment.

"aap koh kya lagta hai, kya baatein kar rahe honge?"
what do you think, what are they talking about.

talking, baatein.

i laughed as i heard that question asked in a soft happy curious voice. that was khushi, and so spontaneously so.

of course, stars must not only be your loved ones departed, they must also talk... communicate. after all without "baatein" how can anyone live, even if they're heavenly bodies, right? and naturally, the most uncommunicative person on earth must be asked to think about what those stars are saying to each other.

thing is, he didn't freak out, he held her closer and she answered her own question (not unusual). they must be happy because their kids have found sachcha pyaar, she said. true love.

at this point, you think there might be a heartbreaking slanting smile... instead, a serious question came from the man in smart casuals who looks almost preppy, and yet chilli pepper hot:

"tumhe kaise pata chala ki yeh sachcha pyaar hai?"
how do you know this is true love?

maybe because he was never happy with cliched ideas... he needed always to know things in a way he could make sense of... or because he just knew this was the truest feeling he had ever felt but wondered how she could tell... what made it true for her... just as she'd asked a question only she could, he asked one only he would.

rational examiner and extra rational believer, they had to meet, there had to be...

 

lying beside him our madam in her scintillating black chiffon and glinting silver and diamond jewellery with hot pink nails and glistening lips, dressed to dance and vamp him as per the punishment for breaking up his bachelor party, said, of course she knew, because every tear of hers hurt him a thousand times...

he replied, looking into her trusting hazel eyes... every time. har baar.

true love.

an episode so immersed in it, every moment touched and connected and stayed.

she had come to give him hell of course. having found out a little too late that nanhe ji's kauon ka jalsa and arnav ji's bachelor's party were not exactly an antakshari playing zone with plenty golgappe.

when payal finally got through to her and the vision of chudail came skittering in one dizzy moment, khushi rushed over to claim her man, no question of chhoroing him if he's dared to have "those" sort of girls at the party. none of the soft gentle khushi ji here. while i giggled madly at the ridiculously drunk nk and akash, and the hissing and hauling by payal and thought, really these guys should do a "friends" like show together, khushi got busy snarling and yelling for her man.

poor nk. did you see his horror at the new avatar of his lovely innocent friend...

at last she saw her arnav ji and his chudail... a telltale silhouette on the window.

she went ballistic and whirled into the room. arnav ji however was chilling on the bed, huh? he was surprised apparently...
 
"khushi? tum yahan kya kar rahi ho?"
khushi? what are you doing here?

did she even look at him once? no. she was checking under the bed, here there, every corner...

"kahan hai wo? kahan hai wo chudail?"
where is she, hollered kkgsr, where is that banshee (okay nothing sounds as good as chudail...)

"excuse me? kaun?"
excuse me? he was taken aback, who?

"hatiye! aap chup rahiye..."
move! snapped the sweet girl, you shut up!

see this is true love and it must say what it must, samjhi tum. i guffawed at her state. i bet her lover boy wished he could too. she was funny.

he brought out chudail from behind the counter, her hair as false as khushi's but alas also her heart, and pair haath kandhe... everything. it was a mannequin.

i can imagine khushi's tension and her relief. while the note of this part of episode was comedy, within it you could feel the truth of emotions. it's a horrid feeling isn't it when you think the man you love is anywhere even remotely near another woman... of the chudail kind i mean.



he had to ask her something though,

"khushi, tumhe sach mein lagta hai ki main aisa kar sakta hoon?"
khushi, do you really think i can do something like that?

he needed, it seemed, to know how she really viewed him. it mattered clearly.

"n..nahin..."
no, she stuttered.

it was her fear, the fear of a lover. that was all. i thought of the fear that must have caught him in its death grip when he saw her with shyam that night.

did he really think she could do that? of course not... but he was a lover, and the fear of losing, of not being loved perhaps stalks a true one.

he teased her. he'd been salman for her, said the towel dancer, and now that she has spoiled his party, "sazaa toh milegi!" you'll get punishment. he whispered the penalty in her ear.

she burst out, "n..nahin... hum nahin kar sakte!" no! i can't do that.

oh but she did.

in chiffon and black too.

with skimpy blouse and lots of bare ivory skin, a thin shimmering chain around her svelte waist, highlighting her navel. she had dressed up for the kaua all right.


 
when the black figure appeared at the doorway and asr sat up, a bemused look in his eyes, and a definite feeling of creatures of the night in the frame, i was intrigued. what was going on?



then the figure moved, it was khushi. she sat on the floor, took her position, and lifted her veil... a sultry song began to drench the scene. the girl in the colour of night stood up and began to shimmy forward... and tripped.

the dumbstruck bachelor party boy leapt up and held her to steady her.

 

then came one of the most funny, sexy, gorgeous dance sequences i have ever seen. she was the innocent trying to be sensual, she was filmi enough to want to get it right and yet not adept at exactly this level of raunchiness (oh it was that). and he was amused and slightly shocked, totally tender though... enjoying it and yet kind of falling apart laughing... pretending he wanted to get away, oh but did he.

 

together they had a zing that only they have. how can anything this bizarre be so so arousing... and at the same time utterly sweet too. you could feel the heat in both of them rise, though the laughter tried hard to maintain sanity.

 

namak issq ka. the salt of love... no, true love... this was that and said with an earthy accent too. i thought sanaya was spectacular in this dance. the shading of emotions, corny touched with happy and innocent and just plain sensual. a girl so in love, a girl who wants to do things she never thought she'd want to, a girl who wants to show her man how much he means to her even if she is embarrassed as hell and is trying to not feel the obvious sensuality of the song she dances to. and yes, sanka devi, who every once in a way gets totally carried away with her moves.



i had wanted la to leap out of a cake at this party, khushi stole out of the dark and took the night on a breathless trip instead.



no wonder arnav ji was in such a state. did he ever think such a torrent of craziness would waylay him one day and turn his world upside down.

 
 
i can't imagine any other jodi giving this dance all that sanaya and barun did. maybe shashi kapoor and rakhee could have taken it to a point, but there's a fun in these two, as also an elegance, and an unbridled innocence, a swiftness and a stay... don't think i've seen it anywhere else.

how did they turn what should have been just corny to chaotically lovely.

finally they tumbled onto the bed, and she held his face in her hands, looking up at him...

  

"kya karne aayi thi yahan?
why did you come here, he asked softly.

"aapko yeh batane aayi thi ki aappar sirf hamara huq hai!"
i came to tell you, that only i have a right over you! she was not shy.

"aur agar koi chudail aapke paas aayi to hum usse..."
and if that banshee comes near you, then, i'll...

"usse kya? kya karogi tum?"
you'll what? what will you do? asked the man laughing, wanting to feel her possessiveness, wanting to belong to her.

"usse jaake maar dalenge... lekin usse pehle usske baal noch lenge..."
i'll go and kill her, said khushi without any hesitation... then bared her cat fight fangs, before that she would go pull out her hair. a curiously telling conversation. she had come to tell him at last... he was hers. she had huq on him. at last, what he had wanted her to feel she did feel completely... enough to say it out loud.

chudails have their uses. he was clearly thrilled at being owned by this pagal.

they smiled at each other... a private moment, of pure owning perhaps.

"tumhe kuch dikhana hai..." want to show you something, he said, and led her to the room where he had set up some stars moon and planets for her.

she was perplexed, apprehensive even. what was he up to.

and then she began to understand.

when he said, "mujhe laga ki tumhe jab bhi apni amma babu ji ki yaad aayegi toh..." i though when you miss your parents you can...

i thought of commitment, love, and his plan to make her part of his life as he had promised long back when he had hurt her terribly... "zindagi ka hissa" i think he had said.

they lay in each other's arms, a little aroused, but more really feeling a mad absolute tenderness, a peace. a little time away from everything, all the noise and observances of the days gone by, just by themselves, chatting, saying things, loving.

"aapko pata hai ekbaar hume aise laga tha jaise aapne hume awaz deethi!" she mentioned his kidnap, anguish in her voice, she had thought one day, he had called out to her.

"deethi."
he had, he said.

the stars connected them to that intense absolute emotion they had that made them so "ajeeb" they spoke across distances. i liked the use of stars as an integral part of story telling, again that elegant design of ipk, where nothing was there for no reason. star talk could have easily become a devise to establish khushi's cuteness, her optimism in a syrupy sort of way... but here, the stars wrap around the love story, a part of it. as he pointed up to a star, i was reminded of the day she had soothed his aching heart and shown him those stars in the sky, her amma and babu ji and he had asked surprising even perhaps himself, can my mother see me? does she like what she sees? this scene was a mirror in a way of that scene. their story of love going forward through familiar routes.

"hum dono..."
the two of us... said one

"kitne ajeeb hain..."
are so strange finished the other.

then the stars played a trick. they went off. and she reached out to find the remote... when he stopped her hand.

in an instant, everything changed. into the evening came a longing, a desire, that no one had planned for... perhaps that's why it was so sweet... it had to be fulfilled.

i must give a salaam to the writer, director, and actors for crafting that moment. it was so natural... man woman. in it an innate attraction, a thing between two people that only they feel and they understand. sex is such a general and amorphous term. but really, when two people want each other, sense each other, want to make love to each other, there is something specific to it. every love story and its love making is unique i think.



that moment when she reached and he stopped her and something ignited could have only come to their lives in that way at that moment. there's thankfully, no  heavy handed setting up of story to reach here... it flows naturally from all that has been happening for a while... even that forced separation, he longs to hold her hand and sleep by her, he yearns for her. then there's all that excitement of chudail releasing many things in her... of course the namak dance that leaves the dampness of issk on the skin...

and there's true love.

when he stops himself and says in that killingly decent way, sorry, i know you don't like all this before shadi... she perhaps by then has felt the call of sachcha pyaar in her heart... understood what he was doing even that suhag raat night when she had reacted without understanding some things.

marriage is not just about pheres. and it is certainly not a licence to have sex. that reduces the beauty of both. as she looked at the man who loved her without inhibition, without reservation, and who felt her pain, her dard, every time, she knew what she must do. she leaned forward and held his face and looked him in the eye and said, i understand, i trust you.

trust... the night he told her of his mother's suicide i felt he did it because he  not only loved her, he completely trusted her. for some reason, tonight she felt she had that trust that confidence in him, in his love, in their relationship, to let him go ahead and make love to her.

the first time i had seen this episodes, i'd jumped up in glee and said, she did it, by g she did it... yeah, i was totally upset with khushi's rejection of asr in 318... my problem was not that she said "no" but the manner in which she said it and the reasons she gave.



tonight she grew to another level as she let that need for ritual go and submitted to perhaps one of the highest things human beings encounter... sachcha pyaar.
 

what followed was intoxicating, exhilarating and have i ever seen such a sensuous and elegant execution of love making anywhere. forum always called this consummation, the word reminds me of georgette heyer and the regency and victorian eras. this was saansey ruk jaygi love making of the most beautiful kind.

consumed the viewer it did though.

i am aware that a lot was edited, i can also see that the editors were not too particular about continuity. one minute khushi's arm is bare but for mehendi and his kiss is landing on it, next minute its full of bangles. i was particularly nahiiin about the doubles used in the close up where he takes off a bangle. at one point i even wondered if that fair back in the long shots was it indeed sanaya's... okay all of this wondering made for many repeated viewings and consuming of viewer. 
 


but really, the story barun and sanaya told with every move, act and expression was hypnotic, flawless, and really love should be like that. and your first time together that blessed and innocent and full of pure fire.
 

her body had an ease and an eagerness, his a wonder and a restraint, she kissed him tenderly leaving lipstick stains on his cheeks, his lids, he watched her mesmerised, losing himself in her giving. when he took it to the next caress, taking off her jewellery, kissing the inner side of her arm, where the skin was soft and sensitive and her pulse beat nearby, she watched him her eyes lost in feelings she had never felt before.


 
and when he burying his face in her neck, perhaps kissing her there (i know i know they edited out everything) she was taken aback by her own surge of desire, she had to turn away, losing control slowly, only to return and fling herself against him... he let his hand move up her back to the dori... the one he had snapped mercilessly once, that first time. today, he wanted to untie it again and take her, make her his own.

echoes from all that has been them kept coming and going, making the frame richer, the experience deeper.

 

he knew he had come to a brink, he had to stop... if she.. "khushi, main..." he said trying to tell her that, but she was ready this time... "hum jaante hain," she said clearly... i know.



and at last he moved forward to kiss her on her lips and covered her with his body... his lover, his wife.

a lyrical quality to the entire interlude. like poetry flowing.



indian tv has never seen such an execution of intimacy... even the movies haven't. but more striking for me was the mindset being explored, the thought expressed here. about feelings about the actions led off these, about what's right what's not... about going beyond ritual... har baar.

a true love story is this... sachcha is its namak.


"hum samajhte hain.. hume bharossa hai."
i understand... i have confidence.

"khushi, mujhse vaada karo, ... ki mujhe kabhi chhorkar nahin jaogi... main tumhare bina nahin jee paoonga..."
khushi, promise me that you'll never leave me and go away... i won't be able to live without you.

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aside 

~ by the way, who did the decor of the farmhouse? perhaps mami... her colours everywhere, purple satin on the bed? this has got to be the deadly manorama raizada. 

~ everyone talked about the fish the next day... i hadn't even noticed them. 

~ "okay relax... there's no pressure." how does barun sobti manage to give palpitations with such everyday words. loved the there's no pressure hahaha, asr was being demanding again clearly...

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

sigh, the frown makes an entry in this crucial scene.
 

a beautiful night

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