"kaisa taofa, bua ji?" what sort of gift, bua ji, asked khushi and out came a red bundle that had khushi practically choking.
bua ji has decided in her fit of love and sudden memories of her wonder days that her favourite niece is going to don her wedding lehenga for payal's wedding, after all, she was about the same size as sanka debi when she was her age.
a hilarious sequence handled adroitly by all four actors, the little looks exchanged between payal and garima were just right, while khushi and bua ji took the lead in bringing the house down.
my favourite dialogue: dekha, sanka debi kaise nissabd hui gayo hai...
see, how sanka debi has become speechless.
she has. and she never is otherwise, is she...
the one who can't stop talking was rendered silent by this red lehenga, an aunt's wedding dress. in almost a mirroring of this, a favourite ipk technique i keep thinking, she was speechless both literally and in her heart when another red lehenga became her wedding dress, in reality. then too she was forced. only that time talk of nand kissore couldn't deflect the approaching peril.
an episode touched by wedding time fun and that extra dazzle in the air, also a sense of evil as snake plotted ways to use his over dependent wife's lack of faith in herself against her. creepy scene that falling suitcase one. how he assessed the situation, saw the opportunity and moved in. another mirror this. there is that asr like fleetness of thought in him, a sharp ability to quickly assess, but their essential characters are at hundred and eighty degrees from each others, so the same abilities find completely different uses and expressions.
life partners seemed to be the key to this episode. all the nuances and feelings around a wedding from love and joy to the heartache and sorrow of bidaai were here. i liked the way the story teller connected new year to meeting one's partner for life as well.
at shantivan, a scene unlike any in a hindi serial. three young men... very different men they, are in the drawing room. one immersed in love, the other in his packet of chips, the third sitting still at his laptop.
as the fun and games got underway and akash pined, while nk who had started the whole thing off with his talk of new year and the first face you see, etc., lounged on a sofa, munching noisily and being goofy chilled out cousin, a furious one glowered silently. everything about nk irritated him, not that he could ever be seriously jealous of this chap, but that familiarity he enjoyed with khushi certainly irked.
there was an easy urbane classic silly yet really funny intelligent air about the scene. yes, a bit reminiscent of joey, ross and chandler the three were, but they were indisputably nk, akash, asr... i have not seen this sort of thing pulled off in a serial hindi. they do try, but somewhere along the way i find myself just switching off. there's just no vibe, no understanding of what's going on, more often than not the acting is loud, trying to be funny.
here even when fairly cliched stuff happened, like nk stalking akash while he spoke to payal, there was a clean lightness, a genuine mirth and that all male robust energy, something was always sharp and right. if you weren't careful, your dil may take a liking to all three men.
interestingly, and i really wonder why, akash with payal was faultlessly boring but when he was with asr or nk, even in that hapless contour of his, something felt exciting. he felt real. could simply be that deadly thing called "kaamistry" heard of in episode 154.
then there was chemistry which doesn't even need the reagents to meet in a test tube.
the moment bua ji mentioned a gift had to be bought for payaliya's jeth ji, a happy face jerked into a frown.
"unhe kuch dene ki kya zaroorat hai?" what's the need to give him anything, exclaimed khushi meanly. something almost physical in the way she did the unhe... felt as though he was part of her.
"hum bataye? wo jo daftar mein aag bujha ne ke liye chhota cylinder aata hai na, wahi de dijiye..." she advised giving him a small fire extinguisher since he was always angry... others breathed, he just got gussa.
yes, asr was angry deep within, there was a fire burning him for far too long; and perhaps the "chhota cylinder" that would douse that fire that pain and burning, had already arrived, a gift for payliya's jeth ji. that same payaliya would be used to make sure his gift never ever left his side.
when talk went to how payal would soon belong to another family, my hackles rose. we really need to stop passing down this notion of a girl being a commodity, to be passed on to another family the moment she marries... almost all cultures have had these ideas and treated a woman as a thing. not right. definitely wrong. we are our own person, we grow up around our family, when we marry we accept into our lives our partner's fam just as he does ours... no beti becomes paraya.
i want to hug the writers of khushi for making her say that.
whether we accept it or not, what we see and hear and like, influences us... time to show women with a bit of respect for us as individuals and also to unburden the man of his always got to be right with beatific smile, providing material stuff as if that is all he's here to do image. that sentence may be hard to understand, but you know what i mean.
ipk experimented a lot with set stereotypes... i liked that. there was healthy irreverence there and genuine spark. an empathy, a sense of character and story.
sometimes a simple line said so much about someone. here khushi said something that gave us a clear view into her character. "aur jiss baat se man dukhi hota hai, usske baare mein socho hi mat..." and what makes you unhappy, don't even think about it, was her simple advise to payal who was feeling the onset of sadness at the thought of bidaai.
if asr's tragedy blighted his heart, his innermost, tenderest part... if he put up a fort to make sure nothing ever got him like that again; and in the bargain became the gussa spewing, seemingly hardhearted, incapable of joy, arrogant young man; khushi did equally her own thing with her share of rain.
she decided to look away from it... and look at what made her happy instead. she created her own reasons to be happy, almost a make believe world at one level, her sapno ki duniya. her stars, her relationship with dm, her eating, her talking, she did all it took to never look at misery. splendid magnificent effort. because maybe she knew you can't change a thing about what hurt her, made her feel terrible. she came out sunny, mirth filled, ready to slay dragons, yet inside her there remained a part that hid from harsh reality. never faced it.
perhaps that's why she had to meet the man who had never ever run away from looking at reality even when it made him sad, made him ache, made him angry.
man at laptop. i must as always pause to gawk.
pacing desperate akash... must meet payal. nk eats chips. asr finds this dithering by akash and nonchalance of nk, the whole thing... irritating. once in a way an impatient look at the cousins.
and then just like khushi had done, the seething at the mention of khushi by nk.
i fell for "so what, akash..." when the sweet man was all tongue tied and couldn't speak to bua ji.
nk's "mard ban!" be a a man, was funny.
but what became the episode's aaargh point was that walk by an irate man in brown waist coat and slim fitting trousers from the sofa to the stuttering cousin past the piece of furniture in the way. he is the shortest and slimmest among the three, he is also in sombre colours... but of course he commands all one's attention.
the word swag just enters the scene and stays put. the brain stops functioning.
"hello, bua ji" says the man as akash gapes.
a topsy turvy comic conversation gets going. they will not meet this episode. but they will rant/seethe at the mention of the other. they will also take turns to snatch the phone away from others to hurl anger and insults at each other. who's going to tell them that's how people who give a faraq behave, not otherwise.
payal's anxiety at not being allowed to talk to akash ji thanks to flakepot sis in deep conversation about dance moves with nk was funny. especially because nk was trying to flirt and get khushi ji time while khushi ji was totally oblivious of this. he said "round round" and one had to think of lavanya... thus pulling me back to interesting places and people in the tale i like.
finally payaliya's jeth ji had to snatch the phone from nk and caustically say, "na ki tum nanhe ke saath intelligent baatein kar sako," you called so payal and akash could speak, not so that you can say intelligent things to nk.
intelligent.
took me straight to the future this one. tum kitni intelligent ho.
the dialogue was gorgeous, brought out everything, including that grazing irritated fed up angry faraq. he adores her sanka, her silly prattle, her crazy gene.
intelligent man, knows what will save him.
okay before i go, why was that voice at the end dubbed later? and it definitely wasn't shyam. maybe someone felt we wouldn't understand shyam is plotting away, so... say it to the masses. we are not so intelligent after all.
this one had to be done.
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