Folks,
My apologies, but we have been having an internet connectivity breakdown here, and it has been restored only just now, at 11:05 pm. I hope this one will still be of interest to you. Yudh 13 is being recorded now and I hope to get that post off tomorrow by lunch time.
I was hard put to think of a neat title for this one, perhaps the choppiest episode so far. But A cat's cradle should do, for the various threads of the story got so entangled that the whole thing looked like nothing as much as a ball of knitting wool with which a kitten had been having an energetic game.
This effect was heightened by the unnecessarily choppy editing, with locations being switched almost every minute, and for no discernible reason. The editor seemed to have decided that bar a few exceptions, anything more than 60 seconds and he must move to another location and continuity be damned! Thus the scene of Arjun coming to Taruni's place, finding her still asleep, and then settling down at the dining table for a probing exercise re: his bete noire, Yudh, with Jeet, was spread over 3 segments, with other scenes being interposed in between. I could not see what was gained by this self indulgence on the part of Nishant Radhakrishan, the editor!
As usual, the most interesting scenes were at the very beginning and at the very end, but this time there was, right in the middle, a lovely little interlude between Yudh and his mentor, the ailing Gautam Dev. The unfailing loyalty and sense of belonging between the guru and the shishya, that it brought out so beautifully, warmed my heart. Lovely, but more of that in a bit. Let us begin, for once, at the beginning!
Mata Hari: The revelation that the young Naxalite woman, who was making a habit of slapping Rishi, is really an undercover IB (Intelligence Bureau) officer did not seem to me, unlike what it did to some here, to be either predictable or corny. There are in fact many very brave men and women who undertake these extremely risky assignments purely out of a sense of duty. The consequences for them if they are exposed can be terrible - a quick bullet thru the heart or the head being the most merciful they can expect. Extreme torture before being killed, and for women doing the same job, other and easily imaginable horrors await them. It is far easier to fight and die on the battlefield than to survive, day after tense day, in this shadowy world of suspicion and betrayal, where a knife in the ribs is the norm, not the exception.
But so many still do all this, and try to do their best for the country, for no one can risk what these officers risk every hour just out of service discipline. So I was delighted to see this young woman doing what she was doing, and with such panache, such self-confidence.
But...An undercover intelligence officer has, first of all, to live his/her assumed role 24x7, get into the skin of the character he/she has taken up, and never drop the mask except in an emergency. Thus, while I liked that early morning scene of her and Rishi, ending up with tea for two in the guesthouse verandah, I found it strange and unconvincing.
The girl is still in full AILF garb, and so she can be readily identified even from a distance by any of her fellow AILF members in her group, or by one of their many informers. Why would she risk getting her cover blown, thus risking her own life and sabotaging her all important mission, where she is, as she says herself, close to identifying the top guy?
NB: Now the tantalising question for us Moriarty addicts is this: Is MM also this top boss in the AILF, or alternatively, does he remote control the organisation?
To revert, the undercover agent claims to have done this just to let Rishi know who she is, and that he can depend on her for help. Why?? She could easily have passed him a cryptic message thru, say, young Dilip, and followed it up with a phone call over the guesthouse landline (not a mobile).
I think the way the scene was written and shot was meant to introduce a possible romantic angle between her and Rishi (I am so sorry, blu24, that I did not answer your question about this; by the time I came to your comment, this episode had already answered it, and then some more!).
She is not just protective of him, but also bosses him around with complete ease. It was also interesting to note that when she woke him up so abruptly, Rishi, after the initial shock, did not seem to be at all worried that he was being re-kidnapped! Her clearly trusts her after a fashion, even before he learns who she really is.
Plus, what she advises him - about the need for him to be his own man, and not try to compete with his father - was very perceptive and to the point, as was her other comment that Rishi was not like other (greedy, exploitative and corrupt) businessmen. Though she is part of the establishment, being now with the AILF, she would have interacted closely with the victims of corporate robber barons, and her outlook on big business would surely have been changed, probably drastically.
Well, if this is what it is going to be, not bad, not bad at all. She will be an intelligent support system for Rishi, and will curb his excessive enthusiasm for doing things just because his father had not done them. I am sure Rishi's mom is not going to take to her, but that can hardly be helped!
The encounter that wasn't: Questions galore: Though it was hardly funny, come to think of it, the final shot of Anand, his hands still in police handcuffs, wallowing in the slush amidst a herd of bufflaloes set me off, and I could not stop laughing for quite a while. Poor chap, he escaped sure death by a whisker, all due to his terrific presence of mind in snatching the inspector's revolver while pretending to be pleading with him.
Also very significant, and something that should settle the persisting questions re: Anand's loyalty to Yudh, was his assuring the unknown man at the other end of the line that Yudh had had no idea of whatever it was that was making Anand's interlocutor so angry, and that it was all his, Anand's doing, and he would set things right. He is then standing at the very threshold of death, and still he does not try to ingratiate himself, by shifting all the blame to Yudh, with the man who could spare his life.
I was struck by the fact that the inspector, who was clearly reporting back to his boss after disposing of the contract killer, and seeking his instructions re: what was to be done with Anand, always addressed him as Sir. Now this is, in the police, normally done only while addressing a senior police or other govt. officer or Minister. Not with a civilian, even if he is the one bribing the encounter specialist inspector heavily to do all this very dirty work for him.
Why? And who? : The fake encounter killing was clearly meant to silence - not to punish - the contract killing organiser, and thus eliminate the possibility of anyone getting back to his latest employer thru him. That this supari was for murdering Anuj Malik in the jail is now clear. The killer of Anuj Malik clearly told him, before slashing his throat, that the murder had been ordered by the Municipal Commissioner. Is he then the man to whom the inspector was reporting after the encounter killing?
But if this was so, would he run the risk to talking to Anand , even if it was without knowing who he was? And if it was indeed the Municipal Commissioner and he does let the second prisoner - ie Anand - talk to him, how come Anand does not recognise his voice at once? He clearly has no idea, even after he has been cut off, whom he was talking to. Plus, the man must have, judging from Anand's side of the conversation, threatened Anand about something that had upset him very badly, whence Anand's offer to meet him and sort everything out. This hardly sounds like the Municipal Commissioner.
The supari taker: It is all very puzzling, as it is undoubtedly meant to be. But one thing is for sure, the chap on the line with Anand is surely our MM.
As Anand tells the supari taker in his flat, there has to be a shaitaani dimaag behind the various strange accidents that have been happening to Yudh and his close ones of late, and this is, without a doubt, MM. True to the thriller code, the supari taker is inerrupted by the knock at the door just when he is about to reveal the name of the one who ordered the Anuj Malik killing, who would either the one with the shaitaani dimaag or his agent.
This apart, the whole scene, from the time the police barged into the contract killing organiser's flat, was hardly worthy of such a quality production.
Firstly, this is a man who has to always to stay several steps ahead of the police, and he does not even have a peephole in his front door, or a chain on the latch!! He opens the door at the knock as casually as if he was getting the morning milk! It was unbelievable!!
Secondly, why on earth would the police drag this unknown man, Anand, along with them to the site of the planned encounter killing? They do not know who he is, and surely they had no idea he would be there; they came only for the man who was the all in all for every kind of skulduggery in the jail. The raid on the flat must have been the follow up to the Jail Superintendent's enquiry findings that he had spirited those 3 prisoners out for the night to plant the explosives in the Municipal Hospital (which is what Anand was warning that chap about, noting that he had very little time before the police go to him).
And their supplementary instructions from their paymaster must have been to silence him once they had him in their custody, exactly as had been done with the 3 prisoners much earlier.
So, as they would not have had any instructions re: Anand, their making him a witness to the encounter killing, who would then necessarily have to be eliminated as well to protect themselves, seems meaningless. They should have simply dumped him at the nearest street crossing and gone off with their prisoner, and he would have believed that they were taking him to police custody. Why then such clumsiness?
Guru-shishya: The scene between Yudh and Gautam was beautiful in every line, in every expression. Also in the body language, with the tall Yudh kneeling at his mentor's feet in affectionate solicitude and respect. It looked exactly like an illustration of the traditional guru-shishya relationship.
Gautam, old, ailing and confined to his wheelchair, still has all it takes in the grey cells department, and he clearly loves Yudh like a son. Their mutual affection, their deep regard for each other, and most of all their sense of belonging together, their total trust in each other, radiated outwards like the warmth of a camp fire.
Gautam has been doing his bit to help Yudh out with the mining venture, by getting the Chief Minister to pull up Yudh's bete noire, the Home Minister. When he learns why Rishi is back there, heedless of fresh trouble, and about Yudh's serious worries about Rishi, he is once more the wise and experienced mentor. He reminds Yudh that many of his decisions in their early days together, which Gautam had then seen as wrong, had later proved to be all correct. He believes in learning from one's mistakes, and so he urges Yudh to let Rishi do things his way, but to assign a person to be with him as a support, a source of guidance and a mentor, but whose role would not be known to Rishi and who would take care not to cramp his operating style.
Another Anand, in fact, and when Gautam suggests that Taruni be Rishi's Anand, Yudh is at once both impressed by this out of the box solution, and hesitant. It is all there in his face as he turns away from his guru and starts evaluating the pros and cons of this suggestion. The eyes are remote and veiled as Yudh looks, not outwards at the world but inwards, into the deep recesses of his mind and his heart. Let us see what he finds there and what he eventually decides.
The great lobotomy affair: This was straight out of a bad TV crime series. I was appalled.
First we had a sleazy doctor from a regular mental asylum, who is ready to deal with an even worse sleazebag like Kapil (who, be it noted, was never an established criminal with all the resources that such a man would be able to tap, but merely a perverted sports instructor, so how does he find this other creep at such short notice? ) and perform a lobotomy on a drugged 18 year old girl who has been handed over to him by Kapil.
All he is concerned about, once Kapil's arrest is known, is how he will get paid, and he sends his aide to the jail to make sure of this. That scene in front of Kapil's cell, followed by the chap talking openly and loudly enough on his cellphone to alert the nearby Mona, was truly comic.
Now lobotomy,which is the surgical removal of the frontal lobe of the brain, thus reducing the patient, in most cases, to a vegetable, was widely used for dealing with the violently insane decades ago. It is nowadays banned in most parts of the world including India. And in a country where a clinic doing ultrasound tests for sex detection of the foetus is liable to be summarily closed, here we have this so-called doctor openly ordering the lobotomy, and just as openly chewing out the nurse who has the moral sense and the guts to protest against it!!
Then, like all the stupid characters in films do in such situations, the woman does not go quietly to the ladies washroom and call the police. Oh no, she must wave her cell phone in the doctor's face, while loudly proclaiming that she is calling the police!😉 Follows a farcical free for all in the hospital corridor, ending when Mona and Dabra's man in black rush to the rescue of Smriti.
But do they find her? No. However, hats off to young Smriti. With rare presence of mind, she gives her tormentors the slip and runs out of the asylum in her hospital gown.
Our Mona, of course, has no idea she has escaped till she hears about it from Smriti's father a bit later. She has clearly exhausted her quota of bright ideas for the day when she guessed that Kapil had handed over her mobile and laptop to Malik, and then when she spotted the lobotomy specialist's sidekick talking loudly on his way out after meeting Kapil in the police lock up!
Yes, and it was also clever of Nikhil to guess where Kapil would have hidden Smriti by remembering the Gangavihar address on the mental asylum van that took Smriti away.
Now for the most filmy bit. As Malik and Nikhil get out of their car to nab Smriti, whoosh, there comes a police car that blocks their way and gets to Smriti before they can. Lo and behold, our little girl is safe!
The one thing I missed was the standard issue climax scene: Smriti stretched out on the operation theatre bed, under anaesthesia, and as the surgeon approaches her forehead with the scalpel, the OT room bursts open. Hands up!! , yell the cops. Now would that not have been more entertaining than what we got? There is something to be said for a tried and tested formula!!😉
Moral abasement: The thing I found the most chilling was what Malik says to Nikhil, who is full of options for disposing of Smriti, who, he fears, can get them both into jail on kidnapping charges (but how can she recognise Malik's goons unless the police link Malik to the accused, Kapil, and then parade them before her? It sounds far fetched, but let it pass).
Drug overdose bhi to ho sakta hai na?
Here is a respectable, or nearly so, builder, shattered by the murder of his only son in jail. His wanting to take revenge on Yudh, who he believes was behind the killing, is one thing. But now he is cold-bloodedly ready to, firstly, kidnap a very young girl, who has never harmed him, and hand her over to a pervert in order to get Mona's laptop and mobile. Next, when he feels threatened by the kid's existence, he has not the slightest qualms about seizing her, injecting an overdose of drugs into her and leaving her to die.
And Nikhil Pardesi, ex-IT entrepreneur, thinks on exactly the same lines. How low can a man sink? It has been rightly said that more murders are committed by respectable folk desperate to protect their respectability than by common criminals.
Like mother, like daughter: The scene between Taruni and her mother are both delightful and revealing.
I loved watching Taruni at the breakfast table, like a sleepy kitten rubbing its eyes, still half asleep. I loved her slow smile of instant understanding as she listens to Gauri first explaining that she had taken a day off to be with her daughter, and then follow it up, a tad sheepishly, with the addendum that she wanted to talk to Taruni about something. Up goes Taruni's left eyebrow, in comical enquiry.
She is as strong and independent a woman as her mother, and when it comes to her father, Yudh, Taruni will go her own way. And this regardless of how insistent Gauri is that she should get out of all her associations with Yudh, firstly because it might create conflict of interest problems for Jeet, and secondly because if Yudh got into trouble because of Jeet's enquiry, Taruni too would be sucked into that mess, in her capacity as the Shanti Constructions CEO. Taruni does not argue about either of these valid points. She merely states that her father needs her now, and it is only till Rishi takes over the reins. She does call after Gauri when she stomps off in exasperation, but I do not think she will budge.
Another and very interesting point that came out of this scene is this. I at least had always assumed that despite their divorce, Gauri and Yudh had both retained a special soft corner for each other. I do not as yet know about Yudh, but as for Gauri, she does not care a hoot about anything that might happen to Yudh so long as her present family - Jeet and Taruni - are both out of it and safe. Alas for the romantics among us!
Now to see what she does if and when Jeet finds something apparently incriminating in Mona's laptop, and Taruni insists that her father is being framed, and refuses to abandon him.
Like father, like son: Rishi is much like his father, in his firm principles, in his ability to reach out to the little people, witness his attending Dilip's father's post-funeral ceremonies, overruling Mahato's protests. Hum kabhi bhi doston ka saath nahin chhodte.. na sukh mein, na dukh main..
He is also like his father in his guts, and in his tenacity. So he inevitably seeks to emerge from his dad's shadow and prove himself on his own. He wants to succeed here, where even his dad has failed. To take his own initiatives, as when he wants to investigate the mine blast, though his father disagrees. Exactly as Yudh had done in his time, as Gautam Dev points out to Rishi's worried father.
I am waiting to see Rishi come fully into his own, and also whether Tauni will really join him there as his wiser, more grounded alter ego. It is going to be a fun watch.
Well, folks, 12 down and 8 to go!
Shyamala B.Cowsik
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