my favourite moment this episode, when he turned and told his dadi
the truth as it is, not as we like to make it. a real mensch he was. and
i never tire of watching this scene.
"dadi, inki koi galati nahin, hamari zindagi barbaad karne wali ye nahin thi... aapke bete the..."
dadi, she was not to blame, the person who ruined our lives was not she... it was you son...
"...mere papa... shadi shuda the... phir bhi unhone do auraton ke saath dhoka kiya."
...my father... he was married... even then he went and cheated two women.
"dadi, aap ki soch galat hai aur agar aap apni soch badal nahin sakti toh shayad aapko yahan se chale jana chahiye!"
dadi, your thinking is wrong and if you can't change that, then perhaps you should leave!
"khushi, jaane doh inhen."
khushi, let her go.
i just loved barun's acting. and i was glad writer had chosen khadoos
asr to let the dadi role come to an end. ved raj is back. we need more
arnav singh raizadas on our tv... real men, who don't think egregious
patriarchy is right. if the man is wrong, he is wrong, you got to say it
as it is. you have to be fair... and stop this other woman woh aurat
nonsense.. the man was married. the onus was on him to be faithful.
doesn't matter he was wealthy or belonged to a well established family.
rarely have i seen a tv character speak so plainly and say the truth. in
a deeply patriarchal society, asr has refused to fudge the truth about
his own father, refused to bow down to any pressure, refused his
father's name and fully honoured his mother's making it his own. and he
doesn't believe in god the way his family does. and yet he succeeds, no,
her bhagwan doesn't come and smite him... how did this hero make it
through 398 episodes of a gec daily soap, intact. miracle.
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shaat shomuddur tero nodir paare...
i
wrote this on crooner after first seeing the episode. almost all i
wrote at the time works for me even now. this is an edited version of my
first thoughts on 353. and even though i may have seen something
meaningful here, i still totally disagree with the remarriage idea.
across
seven sees and thirteen rivers... did the prince have to travel to find
the princess's heart trapped in a box in some secret location, in the
bangla fairy tales my grandma told me. it felt as though that distance
and more was journeyed by asr from the moment his unloving, unscrupulous
grandmother said the words and held up a picture. i saw his eyes then
and i could feel him spiraling out of himself toward what heaven knows.
while his bride waited, she'd told him not to be late, not on their
wedding day. yet he had to go away.
i usually avoid journey as a
metaphor for i feel it is overused. but last week what arnav singh
raizada went on was an epic journey, no less. one he was pretty much
pushed into, and where for a while i feared for him as i had the night
he and khushi had a terrible row when he realised she'd left because she
was waiting for the contract to end. "tum aise hone dogi, khushi?"
you'll let our marriage end just like that? i can still hear the agony
in his voice, the numbing pain.
yesterday, as he screamed into
the night and broke furniture, i worried that his customary reflex:
anger, would again destroy everything. yet one part of me held firmly on
to hope: no, it said, this time he will find a way out, khushi is too
much in him to just turn away from, no matter how shattering the
revelations before him, and even if it is about his mother. he was in
her garden and i prayed she would show him the way.
she did. he
heard her. his mother's memory and words played gently through his mind,
calming him, taking away all horror and pain, bringing him back from
the first part of his journey which took him to the edge of disaster, he
felt himself unlock and return. milestone.
when he thinks, he
never goes wrong. he was on the brink, but love helped him come back and
navigate right. his mother's love for him. his love for his mother. and
a new love that had taken the place that an old wound had vitiated for
too long.
once
he took the path, the crossings became easier, yes, many rivers and
seas, but all pointing in the same direction: love, life, khushi. and
the ocean rushed toward its shore. in those fairytales the prince
rescues the princess's heart, but here she was the keeper of his heart,
and that's what the path showed him.
i was fascinated by this
travel through space and time within. the power of an emotion that
guides you from miles and miles away. he could sense her waiting. he
could feel her love, her longing, her trust. it brought him back from
the moment where trust was broken in his life. by the action of a
parent, a father, the one in whom a child puts maximum faith. what a
completely broken place he had inside him. one he'd never spent time
looking at or mourning, because he a boy of fourteen, had to get on with
it, "chhota tha, par himmat dikhai maine." i was young, but i showed
courage.
then the princess touched that broken place with her heart.
"hum
bhi aapse i love you dammit," the culmination of so many clashes,
quarrels, attraction, rejection, hurt, pain, utter madness, tenderness,
faraq padna, chot, doubting, hating, aching, oh endless feelings, but
never ever indifference. for it was always love. even the nafrat was
mohabbat, nothing else.
the tale of this journey was told with
skill and passion by the writers of dialogue and screenplay, by the
directors, and by the actors. i was happy to see ved raj is back. an
awkwardly posed remarriage became vital to story and character growth.
i
was never comfortable about a second marriage. it felt wrong. but i let
it roll, thinking to myself, ipk has always found interesting
solutions, let's see what it brings me to this time. so they made a
mainstream shadi, into a most hatke one. now what do you say to guys
like this. thank you, i suppose.
"khushi aaj main sirf yahan tumhare vajah se khadah hoon, jahan dard, dhokha, aur nafrat ke alawa aur kuch nahin."
khushi, today i stand here only because of you. where there's nothing except pain, treachery, and hate.
oh,
that line could be looked at in so many ways. as he stepped away from
her touch, the princess, for just a moment, feared; and began to falter.
but out he reached as he always had: to hold her, save her, cherish
her. as she looked, so did i into his eyes. his eyes lost their ice and
grew warm, they said so much to her you got lost in a conversation of
love, feeling almost that funny word from my childhood: de trop. she
replied with all her heart.
"khushi, tumne mujhe aaj yahan khada kar ke mere saare sawaalon ke jawab de diye."
khushi, by making me stand here, you've answered all my unanswered questions.
"i'm sorry khushi, aane me thodi der ho gai, par aana toh tha..."
i am sorry, khushi, got a little coming... but come, i had to.
then a married man said to his wife:
"khushi, main tumse shadi karna chahta hoon, apne zindagi ka har pal tumhare saath bitana chahta hoon."
khushi, i want to marry you, i want to spend every moment of my life with you.
my
insides didn't protest and say, how come he's saying that to her now,
he's already her pati. because i'd felt the journey, and i knew it had
brought him to a completely new place. he was standing at a spot where
perhaps khushi stood the night of her submission. when she felt her
vishwas in him and that became bigger than her belief in socially
approved conduct.
he was now at a place where he knew his
greatest truth. no, it wasn't the truth that broke him, but the new one
that restored him, which urged him to leave his past behind and walk
ahead into the future:
"sab se bada sach yeh hai ki main khushi se pyaar karta hoon."
the biggest truth is, i love khushi.
"kaha that na jee nahin paaoonga tumhare bina."
had told you, can't live without you.
and
so arnav told khushi something he never had in so many words. and he
said it as a young man who has not only fallen in love, but has begun to
understand what love is. milestone.
brave and righteous that he
is, he wouldn't have run away from this marriage, not after everything,
but it is a testament to the power of khushi's and his clear pure
feeling that he felt its draw, realised the undeniable nature of it,
sensed this was the way out of pain and past and let himself be
propelled toward tomorrow and its promise. he said all this in those few
simple words from his dil. he asked his wife to marry him. this time
for himself, not for di, not for social custom, not for maa, not even
for khushi.
this time he asked for khushi for himself. perhaps for the first time ever asking for something just for himself.
when
his venom spewing grandmother stopped him, he told her of his mother's
lesson about roses and thorns, he had understood it only today.
milestone. this will lead him into the future, looking to nurture rather
than ruin. he consciously stepped onto this path, he will learn slowly,
but as long as the direction is right, he will surely get there.
the
mention of roses brought to mind a day that khushi, lovely in red,
stood poring over rose buds musing that soon when they'd bloom and di's
child will also arrive. actually, on the same day arrived dadi, ready to
oust khushi and set her descendant's world "right." and today as she
loses power and khushi is given the place she more than deserves, roses
again show the way. (i was not too keen on the roses and the rose/thorn
story as presented through his maa when i saw the episodes recently, the
problem was perhaps more in execution, there was an idea there.)
into
the brave new world, he walked in further and told his dadi, your son
is to blame for everything, for he was married with two children. he
cheated two women who didn't know the truth. i was delighted to hear the
bald, simple, matter of fact words. it was said as it is, minus frills,
and one of the most "male" characters on television, struck fearlessly
at the root of pretense and semantics that keeps our male dominated
society rabid and strong.
bravo, arnav singh raizada, i feel like dedicating the whole of kipling's "if" to you. my most precious poem since childhood.
khushi
was beautiful in her steadfast faith. her love had come to her and
submitted without condition. but her quiet taking in of various nuances
said, she knew her arnav ji better than you thought. she knew this was a
new path for him, and it would take all take time. but i take heart
from steinbeck's words:
"i believe a strong woman may be stronger
than a man, particularly if she happens to have love in her heart. i
guess a loving woman is indestructible."
khushi
kumari gupta singh raizada got her pheras. on the night of their
wedding as the winds tore through the skies, the temple bells swung
hazardously, the havan kund fire glowed fierce, and devi maiyya looked
on, khushi stared terrified and shattered at asr as he tied her
mangalsutra, put her sindoor. he never looked at her, not once. today,
she sat absorbed in prayer, happy and contented and her man couldn't
take his eyes off her.
asr had found his home, it was khushi. only khushi, he didn't need anything else.
and
so it was that we went on to a happy griha pravesh; with a just a
little nastiness from mami ji, a little kala tika, to give slip to buri
nazar. i mean what's a raizada function without barbs and backbiting by
mami ji. but this time payal spoke up. delightful, so the cat returned
her tongue finally. nani ji, the just, the loving, the ultimate in nayi
soch welcomed them in. and then he carried her over the threshold toward
their new life.
"all journeys eventually end in the same place, home."
~~~~ chris geiger
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