"what the hell do you mean by aise hi...!!" arnav singh erupted, the pitch of emotion just right in his voice.
"aise hi..." just like that, mumbled his wife khushi kumari looking lost and woebegone, and part guilty, part anguished.
"are you out of your mind, khushi? tumhe lagta hai aarav mera beta hai..." are you out of your mind, khushi, he rasped, you think aarav is my son.
she didn't know what to say.
"khushi, tumhe bharosa nahi hai mujhpar..." khushi, you don't have faith in me? you think i am lying?
i have never liked watching these episodes, yet i just couldn't suddenly stop watching ipk. i always hoped things would get better. we'd go back to what made the show dear and precious and obsessively loved.
this time as i watched, especially when khushi was going crazy in the store room, her mind in a mess, her suspicions plaguing her, not being able to stand by that "bhabook" decision of hers to rip the dna test without seeing the results, filling up with angst, her mind careening to unthinkable possibilities like a bevy of not so beauties with their sons all called asr...
i thought, this might have been a great moment to look at if they had executed it well.
when you love someone deeply and with every bit of you, when you know you won't live if they are not a part of you, your life, things are not as simple as it seems... or as we want it to be.
love expresses itself in strange mysterious, sometimes terrifying ways. it's not always moonlight and magic, though there is that too. especially by certain poolsides.
that night when arnav singh saw khushi kumari in the arms of shyam manohar jha, he was incredulous at first, then so terribly struck, he could not distinguish right from wrong, the man who pondered sahi and galat so often had no clue what he was about to do was galat.
and while part of it was because of his protective instinct toward his sister, part also because of how he had seen his mother suffer and perhaps he felt her pain suddenly standing there looking at what he thought was betrayal,
but really that error of judgement was to do with the emotion... the faraq he had started to feel and that was so so precious, that had hold over him in a way he had still not fathomed... for that he had to be away and face the moment that he may never see khushi again.
writers must have pondered that terrace situation deeply. directors must have cogitated long. they knew this would take the pitch to another level, the story would spin chaotically suddenly and then have to find a way to settle down. so they prepared carefully i get the feeling. some of the most intense and magnificent episodes in a serial came along, including the scream in the dark 15 february episode. maa.
it took us to the vortex of the romance, the eye of the storm, tying past and present and instant together and hurling us into the future.
no matter how terrible his action and suffocatingly real her bewilderment, her horror, her heartbreak, it set off a quake in me, made me want to stay on and watch it all... till what... till what.. who knew.
just that, yes. you could sense this was love. nothing else but that unfathomable thing.
had the creatives really gotten into khushi's mind and its seemingly nonsensical reaction to the fact that a little boy has mannerisms like her husband's and his mother was an ex girlfriend of his, we might have had a great trip into obsession.
an obsessive fear. not because khushi is mad or stupid or naturally a possessive jealous wife, but because she has such a feeling for her arnav ji... her entire sense of vishwas is somewhere given to him. she is a human being, not a devi, she can jump to a bizarre conclusion and then not be able to let it go. not be able to control it as it begins to take over and propel her into dizzying activity, interminable action, ridiculous moves... if you've been chased by a baseless but obsessive worry, you'd know what i mean.
i watched her doing one silly thing after another. talk to her devil and angel, decide she can blow on the pages of a diary and read, somehow that would make her act of intrusion and sheer wrong mindedness less ugly. she ran into the store room and started yelping about his purana chakkar... the look on her face made me pause.
there was real tension and frenzy there.
khushi has not had an entirely smooth life. yes, she laughs, jokes, makes jalebis, loves deeply, is willing to do anything for her family, even get engaged to shyam, even marry a man who openly threatens her, gives her no choice... but there is perhaps a vulnerable side to her, an inner bit that always worries about things going wrong, especially with those she loves. she can't bear to hear babu ji may have to mortgage his shop, she can't let her jiji cry without running out to fix things, she loves with all of herself, holding nothing back... not even something to fall back on, in case things go wrong.
she has never fallen in love before and never has anyone given her the sense that she has complete right over him... her huq. arnav ji is not a substitute family, not her dil ka rishtey. he is her dil.
he is everything to her at one level. this kind of relationship is brand new to her. perhaps given the loss she has faced early in life, makes her fear just a bit, even if unconsciously. and when something involves arnav ji, she is not really rational about it.
this can happen. in fact, this does happen with lovers. they can't think straight in certain situations, any hint of threat to their world and the mind starts drawing all sorts of bizarre pictures.
what if ... what if... what if... shrieks through the mind the heart the gut.
you can't just shake it off.
khushi is in that state.
sanaya is a consummate actress and when she acts with barun she is even better than that. i understand that khushi would express her obsessive fear in her own unique way... there will be signs of sanka in it.
sanka... not slapstick.
and there would be a crazily beautiful tenderness too, a nuttiness... not silliness.
in episode two when she returns to gomti sadan, the look on her face... so so real. she is sorry, she is tired, she is beaten by the whole thing, she is scared, she is aghast that she couldn't solve jiji's problem, and she is so damn innocent and brave. i bet if you asked her then would she do it again, she'd say yes, she wouldn't change a thing. that was a mad charge too.
here an obsession sparked mad charge.
if only they had written it with care. i am sure there would be no peon scene, no every member of the family yelling aarav is mini asr, no madhura naik as sheetal, no basketball (he raised the level of mercury to levels pretty dangerous, but even then, it was just not him), no hey big guy cutie pie conversations from asr,
and if there were indeed a dna test, an extreme action in itself, it would have come about differently.
"wahi toh, wahi toh, humare muhalle mein fancy dress pratiyogita hai..."
that's it, that's it, there's a fancy dress competition in our neighbourhood, said khushi to aarav in her full peon gear, mustache in place... and i thought of the first episode, that thing about fancy dress, khushi always willing to play with the truth a bit, her life constantly pushing some fancy dress on her... only one man who loves her as she is... what if this little fellow is really his son... what if he takes arnav ji away from her... what if... what if...
yes, these episodes are impossible and they could have been unforgettable.
......................
fanfiction
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