Deconstructing the suicide attempt, and deconstructing Ishita Bhalla

Ishita finally let her guard down with Raman. She let herself be vulnerable with the the man she loved. And that's why I think Raman for all intents and purposes managed to do what no one else could. He killed her. When others questioned her motherhood, it hurt. Of course it did. But we have seen even after Ishita fully accepts she is in love with Raman her guard is still up. She is still the woman who cannot be a biological mother to his children. She cannot physically herself provide Raman an heir. He tells her he doesn't give a damn about that. He constantly reassures her all he wants from her, is her. He loves her. He cannot live without her. She is his strength. She is everything. Here, someone, unlike subbu loves Ishita for who she is, not what she can give him. She isn't treated like a bad investment with Raman unlike subbu. 

And then Raman, in the span of a few minutes, brings this security she so difficulty came to trust crashing down. The man himself, who claims she is the love of his life, hurls abuse at her. And her life once again returns to what it was before Ruhi. Rejected again, because she was not the woman who gave birth to this child. Subbu basically treated her like a bad investment. Raman never thought of her as that. Even within the first month or two of their marriage, even in the privacy of their own room, he still maintained she was his wife. He respected her as such, and as ruhi's mother. She earned respect that was out of her reach before. And again, within a few minutes, that respect was snatched away. If we have said Shagun made Raman feel worthless then Raman too did the same thing to Ishita, in his quest to protect his own heart.

Don't get me wrong, I love Raman. In my earlier post I talked about why Raman behaved the way he did, and above I'm addressing what went through Ishita's head as he made this crazy  bid to destroy his relationship himself before Ishita would be the one to walk away from him. He wanted to be the one to strike the blow because of his insecurity about what he meant to Ishita if he was no longer ruhi's dad. This is Ishita we are talking about. To the outside world, she is a woman of Steel. Very few times have we seen her crumble openly. Even Raman underestimated in his fit of shock, anger, disbelief, sadness and fury, just how much he could break Ishita. Just how deep he could cut her. He successfully caused her to walk away. But even he didn't imagine  she would walk off a cliff though. He underestimated the power he had over her. He, like many people that watch the show underestimated just how influential he was in healing her, and just how much he meant to her. He  did what Subbu, a man who spent 12 years with her couldn't ever do. If Raman loves Ishita with a certain madness, then Ishita too considered Raman her world. He is the only one who could have driven her to this.

When people question how much Ishita really loves Raman, I don't understand it. A very big characteristic that defines Ishita is that she hides what she really deeply feels from the whole world. I think Ishita began to fall for Raman very very soon after they got married. But shaguniya madam and her hold over Raman was something Ishita saw very clearly. As the accident track began to unravel, and even before that, people make a big deal of how Raman loved Shagun so much. She then sees him supporting Shagun, not Amma. At this point Ishita  and Raman share a bond. Friendship, concern, care and laughter. They laugh together, tease each other. In reality, they flirt. Ishita begins to see someone who life has treated unfairly. Who like her, puts up,a front. Where Raman pretends to be made of stone, Ishita pretends she is fine. Fine with everything. Fine that her husband, who she is falling in love with, is protecting his ex wife.

 Even as the truth comes out, she has now seen them together. Ishita, I think at this point, continues to fall in love with Raman silently. Silently, because life has made her a very, very good actress. After her miscarriage remember, she pretends and Raman is the only one to really question if she really is fine. So, at the earlier post accident point, Ishita reminds herself Raman will never be in love with her and she carries on. He will only ever have given Shagun that right, to be loved by him.

And let's remember, if Ishita has been taught to act, then so has Raman. Raman too is falling in love with Ishita, but the way he hides behind his wit mean that Ishita constantly questions how much she means to him. She continues to remain silent, because she might be rejected. He might not reciprocate. That might all still be for Shagun. These two are so similar that you at this point really just want to bang their heads together, and be like ' you aren't that different, and actually, he loves you just as much as you love him.' 

But whereas Ishita I think manages to start figuring out Raman's coping mechanisms that he hides behind his taunts, Ishita even after they both come to realise their feelings are reciprocated continues to hide certain feelings. Raman's past is so complicated that it constantly interferes in his present and what woman feel completely secure in the newly discovered knowledge her husband loves her, when her husband's ex lives in the same house. Ishita I think gets very used to feeling insecure about Shagun. And when you get used to feeling insecure, that is a hard feeling to shake. And that is why Ishita always seems like the more hesitant one between her and Raman. Raman reveals his insecurities through being a drunken mess, or ranting. Ishita hides all of it. And that must be so so tiring. 

In my opinion, Ishita loves Raman so much, so so much. But a long way into the 2015 episodes and shaguniya constantly hovering made her incredibly insecure. When she finally, finally, gives Raman insight into how inferior she feels the night they finally become one, that's when she opens up completely. Until then, she has still hidden a part of her from Raman. She's hidden the most raw part of her. She doesn't take shagun's name, but she mentions other women that aren't like her. And that's his clue. And the utter shock on raman's face just indicate how amazing an actress Ishita bhalla is. The person who loves her madly, didn't even know she felt just as insecure about him, as he did about her.

The little girl had once innocently put together this question, simply worded but so profound,

"Ishimaa, love toh dikhta hai na? Lekin aapka aur papa ka dikhta nahi."

The mother lovingly answered her child,

"Aapse kissne kahaan dikhayi nahi deta? Dikhai deta hi, pata hai kahaan?"

"Kahaan?"

 The child curious and mesmerized asks sweetly,

"Humari chhoti si Ruhi mein. Humme saara love humari Ruhi mein dikhta hai its more than enough for us."

"Toh aapke liye yeh love enough hai? Aapka mann toh nahi karega na mujhe chhod ke jaane ko?"

The mother promises her child, hugging her and holding her close to her heart, as she places her on her lap - I won't ever leave you nor will your papa - we love you a lot.

Ironically, that is what exactly happens.

 

The child who feared the one thing above all faced that very fate -of abandonment in a moment, in a disastrous moment, unwittingly, she who brought these soul mates together became the reason the love that exists between both her parents seemed to perish as she disappeared. The love that the mother said they see in her, because of her, represented by her - with her disappearance too seems to have lost its way.

No wonder when the mother tries to kill herself physically, she says those words she did. Because emotionally, she is already dying  - first owing to the loss of the child who breathed life into her existence and worse because of the blows of the hateful, spiteful words of the man who made that life worth living, who made her love that very life are that without Ruhi there is nothing. With Ruhi gone, there is no us, if there is no us, there's no relationship, there's nothing, I have nothing worthwhile in my world, I have nothing to live for.

She' accused of forgetting the other two children, her parents and others around her as she makes a run from everything but in that state of mind I feel she takes things at face value. When Raman starts accusing her,  she takes the silence of those around, including that of her parents, as agreement to whatever her husband is accusing her off. In the venom of his words she finds the loss of all her strength and fate, in their love, their marriage, in her own self - and loses her will to live, much less anything else.

When he makes the accusations of her deserving a barren life, he makes her feel worthless of mothering even their other children.   In his anger by saying she doesn't deserve motherhood - he relinquishes her claim to those children - one of whom she would be accused of being a stepmother of and the other, who though her own flesh and blood won't be called the fruit of her womb, whose existence didn't happen because she suffered through any labor. Whom could she stay back for then, or return too?

What did she have to live for if not for her family - all of whom in that moment made her feel as abandoned as Ruhi was on that cliff.

Unaware of the heartache and pain left in her wake, Ruhi is hurting for that act of betrayal and would need time and the reinstatement of beliefs and love to link these two together again.  Because only when Ishita can move on from that guilt, that still has the strongest hold on her heart, can she heal.

Only when Ishita finds the will to live again, by rescuing her child, helping her heal and set the wrongs right - would she be able to even fight for the respect she deserves. Only when these two return would that man who unflinchingly crushed the woman who he loves madly, who loves him with the same amount of madness -  in a moment of despair and pain, blinded by his own hurt and anger, mad at his own helplessness of failing to rescue his child,  would these three heal - of the wounds that they suffer, inflicted by others and they themselves on their hearts.

 

Ishita has been made to feel inferior or has been hurt so much by others for her inability that she assumes what she is getting is more than what she deserves and hence we don't see her fighting back shagun or keeping her away from her life.

She has accepted the fact that she is the second choice or option in raman's life ...somewhere down the line she feels his kids are more important than anything in raman's life.

 RAMAN has never been able to make her believe what she is to him bcoz he is totally unaware of her insecurities...he thinks his wife is a strong ,stubborn or a overly matured female whereas in actual case she is an amazing actress who hides all the hurt and her actual feelings effortlessly keeping all the grief to herself.

Like always raman tried to get impulsive and hurt her this time too unaware of the fact that this time he crossed all the limits pushing her off from a place where she would never come back.

She would have expected raman to be the last person on earth to have called her baanj or made her feel worthless and he would have never expected his strong wife to have given up this time.

My intention definitely wasn't a Raman vs Ishita post, I just wanted to highlight that Ishita too loves Raman very very much, but explain why Raman is always more open about it.