it's
hard to articulate what i felt as i watched the last three episodes of
ipk. nobody had told me it would ever end. and that too this soon.

did
he just say, "main chahta hoon ki tum mujhe abhi kiss karo"? i want you
to kiss me right now... in that asr order giving way? i stopped
breathing practically. i had forgotten where this went. i rarely watch
these episodes.
so i was unprepared. i watched rapt, a part of my
mind said silently... these are the last few shots of asr and khushi in
the same frame. barun and sanaya together. these are so precious
really. worth archiving, worth keeping in a safe place hamesha.
in
episode 396, we have this sequence and in episode 398, we have the last
kiss on the cheek. apart from these, i don't think there's any place
where the two are together in these three episodes. doubles everywhere
instead. sometimes both the doubles together in the same scene. khushi's
double in a different earring... asr's double minus ring on his right
hand. and in general, both of these stand ins nothing like the
originals.
i wondered if ipk deserved this lack of care...
even
as my mind worked and told me, nothing here was good or intelligent or
funny or even watchable... it also said in a whispered layer that always
played in me, just sit there and watch... this is asr and khushi... the
beauty of that never diminishes. only the physical aspects of it, what
can be touched, seen, heard does... but never what is felt.
they tried to make asr angry, get his gussa in. they tried to make khushi batty and bring in the sanka.
i felt like saying, "enough!" i felt like screaming, "koi matlab nahin."
these
scenes were shot at a chaotic point in time, as fans raged, production
house tried to absolve itself of all responsibility, channel confirmed
nothing and tried to shut fans up with banks of telephone operators who
gave the most ridiculous answers (my favourite: i also like barun sobti
so much, i am also a fan, ma'am), and we all knew with a sense of
deathly certainty, it's over. we would not be seeing barun and sanaya,
asr and khushi ever again.
i had certainly not planned to let a
show matter so much to me. any show, hindi, english, swahili, klingon.
okay, the klingons have this way of staying in the memory and making me
miss vulcans... but that apart.
really, how could a show matter so much?
sometimes hows have no answers. nor whys. nor what thes.

in
those very few shots of the two of them together, i again felt their
power. it's as if the rest of the ridiculousness just fades away, all
you see feel touch hear know imbibe is these two.
a lithe young
man, not too tall... but always that dominance in his frame, that stance
which made you look and made looking away difficult.
a slim
almost waif like girl with not the largest eyes or most perfect face... a
bit too thin maybe and not exactly short, who was lovely and genuinely
dotty and you had to shake your head and grin with her.

now they were quarreling and kissing.
no.
they were not kissing. asr was on a trip... he was going to teach
khushi how to say "no." ah these reaching out in frenzy and grabbing
whatever one can get to get an episode going, some yarn, some tattered
threads... if you have to grab, i say, do it like asr... be focused even
in disarray...
my poor teep taap bootiphool: lauki??? me-too khushi move tch tch.
not
this: mami with lauki doing an almost acceptance speech,
mami/nk/nani/di all begging to go with khushi, natasha being the
misunderstood good girl who finds her way again thanks to khushi (oh how
wonderfully saas bahu serial), amrita the good girl turning out to be
oh so bad (remember shyam? he too was friend who had that foe-ish
smile), and of course ria and jay a couple in a mess, which khushi just
might have fixed, but i guess they ran short of time...
or maybe they were planning for more time, since asr was going to die.
he says it to her somewhere again, should she be alone, she should know how to handle things.
maybe 398 was not supposed to be the end... till the very last minute.
i
really don't know... i often feel, it was all about the beginning with
them. that first episode. a man with an attitude. a girl with a dori...
a rush toward each other. arnav singh raizada whose name means ocean. khushi kumari gupta whose name signifies happiness.
it
is unfortunate that these two were not allowed to even have a last shot
together at the end... flashbacks had to suffice. many of which are
sitting pretty or striding tall and angry through me right now.

"main chahta hoon ki tum mujhe abhi kiss karo!"
haw, how can you say that, arnav ji.
"arnav ji, agar aap nahin hote... toh kaise pata chalta ke pyaar kya hota hai..."
arnav ji, if you weren't there... how would i have known what love is.
what
love is... after a long long time a simple serial on television came
along to show us what that is... how powerful that is... how that is all
that we really want in life... how that is more important than
everything, certainly money... and it is perhaps faith and worship
itself. in
a language we all got... and minus any of the usual soupy heavy
pontificating which does such disservice to this mad bad super essential
feeling...
a terrible sadness as it all moved relentlessly toward the last frame.
"paas nahin toh usska yeh matlab nahin ki saath nahin..."
not
near doesn't mean not with you, said asr from behind ghastly wings in
red and yellow, looking pretty scruffy. i wanted to rush to him with a
comb and yell at him for not looking his smashing dapper self... i
wanted to stalk up to khushi on that ramp and tie her hair in an off
centre plait, remove the bump and heavy make up, then march them up to
each other and say, go on, fall... fall into his arms right now, samjhi
tum.
this weird love (i believe that's what ipk is called in
turkey) thank g, no one knows how to give it a name... otherwise how
would we have an iss pyaar ko kya naam doon?
over and out... indi.
................................
fanfiction