Originally posted by: pj10
I must confess I have truly never understood Shaan. I don't understand the source of his pain- Does he resent Astha choosing her parents over him their son? is it that once Astha walked out, she never looked back and he feels like she did not love him enough? Is it his disappointment in Astha and her choices and he regrets falling for her and spoiling both their lives along with that of Shaurya? Does he regret his inaction and not standing by his wife (his action sure don't suggest this)? Does he resent Astha that she put him in a position where he was forced to pick his family over Astha owing to family loyalty? Since he has been drowning in alcohol, abandoned his son and taken no action to fix anything, I am hard pressed to understand the source of his pain.
@bold: His words make me think that he regrets not following his wife out of the house. But since he's never taken the step to leave and we never learn why he has such loyalty to his brothers, it will probably stay a mystery. So my running storyline in my head was that Shaan must feel like he has nothing other than the Sabherwal name and Tejvi are really good at emotional blackmail, so might have promised Aastha's ruin if Shaan left with Shaurya. Everyone seems to fear Sabherwal money and power.
I say this differently-"There are no free lunches in life, there is a price and a prize associated with every choice" . There is truly no compromise in life but our inability/unwillingness to pay the price needed for a choice or the prize not being worth the price. The compromise is picking a choice where price and prize seem somewhat aligned while wanting a completely different and more expensive prize. When people say that they have no choice what they truly mean is they are unwilling to pay the price needed to make the choice and shoot for the prize. In context of the show - when Astha chose to walk out of SH...it might seem that she did not compromise her values but in other words she was willing to pay the price of abandoning her son and her husband to care for her old parents. There is no limiting factor in anyone's life, we play safe because we believe that the challenge of taking a path less trodden (price) is not worth the uncertain returns. It is our fear of losing what we have in hand that makes us risk averse.
@underline: So I would agree with you about this if we're only referring to ourselves from our privileged positions of having choice in life. I would not say the same thing about someone who isn't lucky enough to have the choices that I've had in life. We make choices from what is available to us. When a choice isn't available or we don't know that it exists, this argument doesn't hold true.
Aastha made a "choice" to leave her son, but it should have never been a choice put in front of her. The system is broken when those were the choices. I'm not trying to be idealistic, but I think we should always strive for more instead of deciding between the narrow choices that society makes available. For Anokhi, it shouldn't be get an education or get married. This isn't binary. She should have the ability to educate herself and get married if she chooses to. To me it's not unwillingness to pay the price, it's unethical to dangle that prize and ask someone to pay the price.
When it comes to education and freedom, I hate the idea that you need to compromise on things, to pursue your dreams, because society has caged you in due to its restrictive rules.