Myra, since yesterday the demeanor of Anjali is reminding me of one character and a movie. Today Astha and Anjali's interaction strengthened that. There was a movie in 1980s "Khoobsoorat" where the heroine's sister gets married in this household that is ruled by a stern, disciplinarian humorless matriarch. The heroine is a force of nature who goes to that household and turns everything topsy turvy and in the process falls for the younger son. Now the younger son was no Shlok but a good natured sweet person. Also the mother was strict, but not mean.
Here Anjali is also mean and conscious of her high status. But the interaction between her and Astha reminded me of the interaction of mother (of hero) and heroine.
In any case, I liked Shlok's vindictive part more in the phone conversation where he is on the phone, sees Astha and decides to proceed with his essay on women to rile her. He succeeds too. There were three scenes between them, but that scene was the highlight for me. The room scene was more to higlight Astha's impulsive nature and to create more misunderstandings between the two. In that scene, I cannot blame Shlok for thinking that Astha entered his room deliberately to spy on him. He is the type of person who is already suspicious of Astha's motives and this only magnified those suspicions. The first scene between the two was to highlight egos of both where Shlok ignored his father's admonitions for once and kept on being obnoxious as he reacts too much to Astha. It was only when Niranjan started apologizing for him that he was shocked into silence and came to his senses. But he still continued with his stubborn behavior. To me he was amusing in that scene.
Anjali's daughter in law was interesting so far, but today came somewhat one-dimensional side antagonist where she tries to speak against Astha to score points with Anjali. But Anjali was again interesting. So she tries to belittle Shlok in front of Niranjan, but was offended that Astha argued with him or was "supposedly" the cause for his delay. More and more I am convinced that she is Shlok's mother - the same rigidity, need for control and discipline, disapproval of others who do not meet the set standards, and devotion to Niranjan. I think Shlok is a mixture of his parents where he takes some traits for Niranjan.
Niranjan was another character who today came out as shrewd. He wants to keep Shlok in the house as to him Shlok is heir apparent because he doesn't think highly of the older brother (who is a rebel). So Astha seemed like a perfect person to control both Shlok and Anjali as she can bring some much need chaos to his obsessively regulated household.