Episode Discussion Thread #17 01/08/2016 - 31/08/2016 - Page 58

Originally posted by: sashashyam

Good Lord, my dear Rohini, now you are making me feel guilty! You have got it all wrong, I am afraid, but that has made your reaction so sweet and thoughtful. And you typed out all this while in such a rush? 🤗

I was not apologising for sticking in that part about last night's episode. Why should I ? I was laughing at myself for doing that almost automatically, like a smoker unconsciously pulling out and lighting a cigarette in spite of having earlier resolved to stop smoking cold turkey. It is such a habit with me when I read or watch or notice anything, dissecting and analysing it. I do it for myself all the time, and here I just put it down, that is all.

Me demoralised? Perish the thought! I was a tad exasperated for a while, and then I realised that this is how this place works, and I just do not fit in here in terms of what I want out of my participation, that is all. Perhaps I am a bit spoilt as well, but that is not so much my fault as that of the umpteen kids, and the non-kids, spread across all those forums who have spoilt me.😉

Don't fret about the Lok Sabha discussions that you missed, Rohini, the one on the Kashmir valley ( I do not see why this 15% of the area of the J&K is constantly conflated with the whole State, disregarding not just Jammu and Ladakh, but the Baltis and the Bakharwals, the Shias of Kargil and so many other groups there, spread over the remaining 85%) or on anything else. They rarely produce anything worthwhile, and the days of the great parliamentarians are long gone. I avoid the so-called debates on the private news channels as well, which inevitably end in a shouting match, with the anchor shouting the loudest, and give one a headache. It is all badly slanted anyway, and all those invited have their own personal axes to grind. It is the same almost everywhere else as well, witness the three ring circus that is the ongoing US presidential campaign!

But I agree completely with you about the problem of prioritising. If I had still been an Ambassador somewhere, I would not have thought of joining the IF in the first place, for I found even Facebook so time-consuming that I soon started visiting it only once in a while. And I would never have been able to stay abreast of the serials anyway.

I enjoyed your comments on Ashoka as he was last night. Only, I would not say that

In one stroke CVs have knocked the bottom of the story by placing Ashoka's love interest over his supposedly all-consuming Akhand Bharat Mission. The episode exposed both Ashok and KVK as monstrous liars. There is nothing more distasteful for me than a woman distracting her lover from his larger goals. And the man who succumbs to such a woman is even worse than her.

See, my dear, he who falls, picks himself up and rises again is always rated higher than the one who never fell. This is the danger that Ashoka was afraid of, consciously or sub-consciously, all along. He tells Devi that he wants to distance Kaurwaki from himself for her sake, for her safety and comfort. But it was also, and even more so, for his own sake, so as not to be diverted from his ABN mission.

Ashoka is not a liar. He is a young man overpowered by a longstanding obsession for this girl, who was with him in the spirit all thru the long, lonely years. When he was marooned in the arid desert of the soul that was his exile, when even his mother ostracised him and treated him as if he was some monster, it was the memory of meri Kaurwaki that was his emotional lifeline. Who can blame him for that?

He fights this obsession with his conscious self time and again, but now it has now broken thru the barriers he had erected around himself, thanks in large part to Dharma and also Bindusara. So, in that moment of weakness, faced with a tearful Kaurwaki who pleads for their mutual love to be salvaged, he deludes himself that he can indeed pull it off , that he can have it all. Remember how reluctant he is then, there is not the trace of a smile and the face seems grim and set.

I do not understand how he could have been so foolish as not to foresee the true ramifications of what Jagannath has done, and assume that there could ever be a stable relationship between Kalinga and Magadha. Or so foolish as not to foresee what would happen in the court.

But when the storm breaks over his head, and especially when he faces the choice between his vachan and his mother, the enormity of his mistake, of his folly, is revealed to him, and he looks almost demented under the strain. What he has done amounts to a betrayal of a trust, for he should have placed his motherland ahead of all else, and it is this realisation of what he has done that crushes him and forces him to his knees.

Mohit was wonderful in that part- the body language, the voice, everything.

Finally, as the Lord Jesus said to those who wanted to stone Mary Magdalene, let he who has never sinned cast the first stone. I would not see Ashoka in the way in which you see him, for I am constantly conscious of human fallibility. True greatness lies not in never failing, but in rising above failure and achieving great heights. Just as true courage is not the absence of fear, but in facing one's fears and conquering them.

Ashoka will now rise again. But what about the horrendous things he is going to do as Chhand Ashoka? Those would be a far darker blot on his character than something as foolish as this misstep.

But no one ever condemns Ashoka for the slaughter of all those innocents. It is like the Lord Buddha forgiving Angulimala for all the murders he had committed just because he had finally seen the light. I suppose no one interviewed the families of those murdered by Angulimala!Their reactions were unlikely to have been admiring of the Lord Buddha's aseem karuna towards this ex-monster who had destroyed all their lives.

To end on a lighter note, what would you bet that the target audience for Devi's next uplifting bhashan is going to be the Magadha Samrat (as he keeps saying, as if to reassure himself that he is indeed that😉) ? It would be just desserts for Bindusara, especially as I would not put it beyond her to point her forefinger at his face!😉

Finally, I would have loved to have looked you up in New Delhi, but since my mother became a serious cardiac patient, I do not travel out of Pune at all. Never mind, there is always skype, as I do not have an i-phone and thus cannot avail of face time.

Shyamala