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episode 195
in episode 18, a sister had told a brother, "dekhna jab tumhari zindagi main woh aayegi na, tumhe pata bhi nahin chalega aur woh tumhari zindagi ban jaaygi."
you'll see when she comes into your life, without your even knowing, she'll become your life.
and two sisters had had a fanciful exchange lying on their backs in their bed. the younger one had chimed, "jiji, kyon na hum aise ladko ko dhoonde jo bhai ho, phir hum hamesha saath rahenge."
jiji, why don't we find boys who are brothers, that way we shall always be together.
her sister had laughed and then had come a crack of thunder.
"khushi, tumse shadi toh koi pagal he karega..."
khushi, only a mad person will marry you.
the scenes came back to me as 195 opened on flowers in red and white, suhag raat. the girl indeed had come into that brother's life and without his knowing become his heartbeat, his life. the sisters had found two boys who were brothers. they would never be apart. and seems the man who married khushi was indeed a mad man... it was time for the crack of thunder. and it would come. sudden, sharp, scary.
fresh white rajanigandha and blood red rose filled the frame, the mind... they suggested things about love and union and nuptials, their fragrance wafted on the poignance of the hour... we knew khushi and asr should have had just such a beautiful suhag raat, but that was not to be.
the flowers seemed to illuminate the story. red and white. passion and innocence. the two most powerful essences of the night.
if there was only passion and any less innocence, for me it would have been impossible to cross this night and stay on. khushi was of course utterly and obviously innocent in all this chaos. but really just as innocent of heart was the man who was acting like a mad man. arnav singh raizada had an untainted innocence within, nothing convoluted, murky or base.
the baseness belonged to shyam. only him. and with this he blighted two people's lives, two pristine ones. maybe he envied this very cleanness, maybe that's why the shining untouched beauty of khushi had attracted him so.
that time she had turned back and looked at him... perhaps the most evocative and ethereal palat of hers, he'd sensed that keynote innocence maybe and his essentially fallen soul had yearned for that purity...
ever since then his games had been unleashed to catch her and tether her to him somehow. tonight he crushed rose petals in anguish, agonised she was not to be his, and he stood there helplessly setting up her suhag raat bed.
he lingered after his wife left and who knows it could e the reason why we came to the crack of thunder.
asr saw him standing there as he came to the room. he hadn't expected this. did it rile his fury, his seething passion again? and made him completely lose it?
for a second after he shut the door and turned and saw her sitting on the flower bedecked bed, he seemed nonplussed, a riff of desire coming over him, but then quickly that was gone, even as she got up, also shedding the image of expectant bride her sister in law had organised her into. how carefully anjali spread out her lehenga to look all pretty and perfect. almost macabre that moment had been. the violence of the wedding versus the slow setting up of the rasam of wedding night, replete with sister in law gently ushering in the bride and making her comfortable.. every ritual must be observed.
had shyam not been there staring at khushi, would asr have said through gritted teeth he couldn't bear the thought of spending six months with her in the same room, that it suffocated him... it was disgusting. strong word. instantly angered her, she who was in a terrible state emotionally and feeling not at all like the happy bride waiting for her bridegroom.
she raged at him, then why... why... phir kyon ki shadi humare saath... why did you marry me. kyon kar rahein apne saath aisa... why are you doing this to yourself?
it was good to hear sanaya's voice, even if it was raw, strained and scratchy.
kyon de rahein apne aap ko taqleef, aur saath aapke hume bhi? why are you hurting yourself and me?
she didn't want to stay in the room with him either.
that got him seeing red again. yeah, he knows where she'd rather be, but she won't get to be there either.
khushi looked on not understanding a word he was saying.
had shyam not been standing there, would he have said such an unpalatable, pretty disgusting actually, thing?
he said to her that outside this room they would act as a happily marred couple... then a barb about her acting abilities.
again khushi was mystified. worse, helpless. the pagal who had married her was making no sense and yet she had no power, no way of getting away. but she kept fighting back.
they were again as equals... and if one has been in love and felt all the many feelings that phrase drags one into willy nilly, one would know, only lovers can have a fight this ugly and bizarre. no sense in all of this. one says a word, the other reads something in it and goes ballistic. in this case, everything khushi uttered, asr read stuff into...
what if shyam had not been standing there.
yeah, this night would have been impossible anyway, but would it have come to this... he dragged her to the poolside french window and said,
"aaj se meri jagah yahan hai.. aur tumhari wahan." from today my place will be here, and yours there.
he shut the door. a moment reminiscent of that sudden crack of thunder. he had just thrown her out. she would sleep on the poolside.
she watched him horrified and hurt, he turned away and stood with his back to her... he always did that if he didn't want you to see his feelings.
a sad low rabba vey as she turned away.
this is not the first time he's acted in this extreme and egregious fashion... snapping her dori, ripping her dupatta, dropping her from his office, making her do parking, banishing her to the guest house, forcing her to marry him, when has he been exactly calm cogent composed and fair when it came to her. it's almost as if she just makes him lose control, go a little crazy. that "dammit" element in their interaction.
but tonight what he did was brutal and wrong and heartless. and yet at the same time it spoke of unchecked passion. endless emotion. aching writhing asphyxiating love.
yes, there was suffocation in him too... every time he thought of shyam and her, every time the spectre presented itself, that image imprinted in his mind, taunting his heart.
he threw her right out onto the stone floor, cold and hard.
and stayed up all night. tortured by his own action... unable to see her suffer, flinching at the sight of her sitting on the floor shivering. he knew she was scared of the dark, she might catch a cold as she had in the dhaba on the way to nainital. he didn't want to care, he paced, he ripped those fragile, stirring, streamers of flowers, he ran to give her a quilt, then threw it at her... she threw it right back at him, eyes angry, sparked with fire. she may be down on the floor, but she was certainly not out.
passion played hell into two people. and then came morning, bright and fresh. di knocked, and there lay a bride on the floor by the pool, the pool's edge her pillow. she looked so beautiful. and her bridegroom slept on his chaise longue in an awkward position, half sitting, so guileless his face.
when the knock startled him awake, he was hassled. di mustn't find out, so he ran out to awaken his bride. but this is khushi, never eager to get up from sleep.
there was only one thing to do. pick her up of course.
i will never be able to completely forgive him his throwing khushi out of the room and letting her lie on the floor. hard and cruel what he did.
nor will i ever get over just how much he loved her. or the beautiful sense of belonging and right with which he just picked her up in his arms. khushi was always his, for she had really become his life... he didn't know it yet, but his heart felt it clearly.
khushi couldn't take his cover up of their "suhag raat" and railed let anjali ji know. i loved her anger, her lack of self pity.. so what she'd slept where she had, she was not going to wilt.
story takes us now to the next ritual, lighting the kitchen fire by the bride. the sister who had predicted the arrival of a girl like khushi in her bro's life is angry with him for doing what he did. the sister who loves khushi fiercely and had giggled with her about the boys, is angry with her for doing what she did. neither know, it was to save them that their siblings did what they felt they had to do.
innocence and passion, freshly cut.
...
glimpses of an episode that touched, moved, and shook one up.
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