Folks,
First of all, my deepest apologies for going AWOL from Thursday last. I would have accompanied this mea culpa with an uthak baithak, kaan pakadke, but for the fact that my aged knees would not have stood for it!😉
Now to business, as I have not one but two episodes to cover, Nos. 15 and 16. I first thought I would combine them into one post, but they are so different in tone and content that it would not have worked at all. So let us start with the Wednesday night episode 15, which was a highly emotional one in so many ways, whence the title. I would like to take these scenes one by one, rather than go by the linear narrative, with which you would all be familiar by now. So this will be more of an appreciation than an analysis, and there was a lot to appreciate.
Yudh and Taruni 1: In their first little scene, Taruni, despite the gnawing anxiety that besets her as to whether she will be able to pull off this complex and unfamiliar surgery, comes and sits by Yudh and reassures him warmly: Fikar mat kijiye, main karungi unki surgery. She is not sure at all that she is up to the task facing her, but she will not let her fears seep thru to her father and disturb him even more. This is real affection, for the mark of that is protectiveness.
Yudh's answering smile is a marvel of nuance: gratitude, affection, relief, and trust are all mingled in that 5 second shot.
Arjun: A total flop: Contrast this with the harsh approach of Arjun when Taruni phones him before the operation, which is the very opposite of what it should be. She is clearly tense and worried, and as she faces this professional crisis, she is seeking moral support from someone who she thinks can give it. But what does this man, who supposedly loves her, do?
First he makes the ugly and hurtful remark that Nayantara probably deserved what has happened to her. Anything more insensitive can hardly be imagined. Next, he urges Taruni not to undertake the operation, on the grounds that if she failed and her patient died, she would not be able to live with it. But what if she refuses to even try, and Nayantara dies? Would Taruni be able to live with that?
Arjun is not merely thoughtless and almost cruel, he is plain stupid. If I were Taruni, I would think long and hard about saddling myself with such a man for a life partner, who has demonstrated that he would be of zero help in any real crisis.
Yudh and Taruni 2: This is just after the operation is over and Taruni, her voice suspended by strain and sudden relief, stands silently in front of the father and son. Her whole body language is so negative, and she looks so limp and defeated, that Yudh would have immediately concluded that she had failed and Nayantara was no more.
Still, he does not ask Taruni anything, nor does he give way to his grief. He sees that she needs his emotional support at this moment, and he gives her precisely that, thru a warm embrace that accepts everything and tells her Don't worry, you did your best and that is all that counts. It is only when she whispers Wo theek hain.. she is fine.. that he throws his head back in gladness, and seats himself on the hospital bench, his long, lanky frame limp with relief.
Now this again is genuine affection, for it too is protective.
Yudh and Taruni 3: Yudh, who has been doing some soul-searching after the operation, chooses to bare his heart to Taruni, blaming himself for neglecting Nayantara all their married life, and thus having brought her to this pass. This account of his past, of his failings and his bitter self-condemnation, is something that he surely has never shared with anyone else. He seeks both the catharsis of a confession and a healing touch that will help him tide over his regrets of a lifetime. And Taruni does not fail him as Arjun had failed her.
She offers no facile sympathy or even empathy, nor does she seek to minimise the seriousness of what Yudh has been confessing to her. She merely offers blunt consolation: everyone makes mistakes, and now he has his whole life ahead in which to atone for his mistakes. She apologises at once for having made it sound as if his faults would need a lifetime to correct, but he does not mind it at all.
Instead, he extends his regret to cover Gauri and Taruni as well, and feels that the wrong he had done to them would need many lifetimes to set right. Again, Taruni is all moral support, assuring Yudh that neither her mother nor she were at all angry with him, but were quite happy.
She thus does the very best she can for this man who is her father, and whom she wishes to shield, even from himself, in every way she can. It was a beautiful, touching scene.
Rishi and Taruni: There were 2 scenes between the siblings, one before and one after the operation on Nayantara. Both were low on hype and words, and rich in the emotional quotient.
When Rishi comes to ask Taruni whether she will agree to do the surgery, despite its being totally unfamiliar territory, his voice is almost suspended with apprehension and anxiety. She looks into his face for a long, long moment, her eyes are tense and the mouth rigid. Then slowly, very slowly, the mouth relaxes into a slight smile and the eyes brighten as she assures him that yes, she will do it. The instant, enveloping hug he gives her, which she does not quite expect, I felt, says far more than the Thank you that comes after he releases her.
It is the same after the operation. Rishi does not ask Taruni anything as she emerges from the OT, he does not want to crowd her with his frantic worry. He waits till she whispers into their father's shirt front that yes, his mother is fine. And it is then that he hugs her, and holds her close in unspoken gratitude and affection.
They are close to each other, these two, for all that they have known each other for so short a while.
As is Yudh to both his children. Witness the wordless way in which he pulls Rishi close after the operation, and puts his arm around his shoulders in silent caring.
Rising to the occasion: There could be no better way of describing Dr. Taruni (Sikarwar? It is not at all clear as yet) in what is, as she says, with ferocious authority in a crunch situation, " MY OT!". The whole scene of the operation is remarkably well envisaged and directed, and it looks realistic, which is hardly the case in the common run of serials.
Every line spoken by Taruni and her every action ring true. Her candid statement to the OT staff about her inexperience as she seeks their support. Her mounting fear as she inadvertently ruptures a blood vessel while extracting the bullet and is unable to stop the bleeding, which gets worse and worse. Her refusal to panic, when the OT staff begins to do just that once the feed from Vellore and Hyderabad fails and the surgeon is left on her own. Her firm decision to use the defibrillator, and to administer the shocks herself, holding the pads in her bloodsoaked gloves. Her gutsy decision to make one last try after stepping the voltage up to 250, facing down the protests from the staff with a roar of command Do it!
When the 250 volt jolt makes Nayantara's body arch with the shock, Taruni's eyes, wide open, are fixed on the heartbeat monitor. After a long moment, they close tight. In relief or in despair? We are not told, not till she emerges from the OT and seeks solace in her father's embrace.
It was one peach of a scene.
Rishi and Aruna: Or Ms. IB. It was only in this episode that I learnt her name. When Rishi comes to warn her of the impending attacke on the AILF camp by the security forces, she is concerned more about the success of her personal mission, to identify the General Secretary of the organisation and some of its top brass, who are all arriving there very soon. So she pleads with him to put off revealing their location to the authorities for those few hours. Which is when the gunfire opens up, by the Home Minister's henchmen disguised in Army commando uniforms, who have been following Rishi instead of waiting for him to come back and brief them about the camp location.
She initially believes that Rishi has lied to her and betrayed her, but later, as he weeps in helpless misery in her boss's room after being (falsely) informed that she had been killed in the attack, she learns the truth. Whether this will lead to any closer relationship between them in the rest of the story remains to be seen. I somehow doubt it, for this is a tale that is as close to realism as possible, and real life does not offer too many happy endings.
For now, she wants to be free of his attentions, which seem sure to endanger her mission. Free to continue her operation and bring it to a successful conclusion. It is heartening to see a female character on TV who is a true, capable professional, dedicated to her duty and subordinating all else to it.
The heart has its reasons: Rishi makes what is arguably the biggest mistake of his life in agreeing to help the Minister get at the AILF. His decision is fuelled by anger at what he, like everyone else except Aruna's boss (who stands his ground even in the face of the ruthless and crude bullying by the Home Minister; kudos to him!) assumes to be an AILF attack that almost killed his mother. And that anger is fuelled by his deep love for his mother. So this too is an affair of the heart.
At episode end, as Rishi, Ranjan and his wife crowd around Nayantara's bed in the ICU, Yudh stands outside, watching them all thru the window. He does not go in with them. There are still distances between him and his wife that he needs to bridge, and that will, as Taruni says, take time. But bridge them he will, for Yudh is now listening to his heart, and the heart always has its reasons of which the mind has no knowledge.
It reads better in the original French, as anyone of you who knows the language will agree.
Le coeur a ses raisons, que la raison ne connait pas.
For in French, raison can stand for both "reason" and the "mind", in the sense of intelligence.
Shyamala B.Cowsik
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