Precap: Dadaji asks Sandhya to help unite Neeraj w/ the rest of the family, telling her that the family will be in her debt.
Dadaji discusses Neeraj’s predicament w/ Sandhya
Dadaji tells Sandhya that while Neeraj did agree to come, he’s not acquiesced to his new environment, and he’s also noticed yesterday that Neeraj seemed disturbed. Sandhya tells him that she noticed it as well, but tells him that Neeraj is totally new to the people here,as well as the place. Dadaji understands, but tells her that they too have a problem – they don’t have any idea of Neeraj’s likes & dislikes. They don’t know what makes him happy, and are scared of saying something that hurts him or opens old wounds.
He says that everybody tried to please him in their own ways, which he probably didn’t appreciate. He tells him that his 2nd son & family ain’t here (then what’s Nina doing here?), or else Neeraj might have liked it more. Dadaji tells Sandhya that he wants Neeraj to be happy, but not living separately, but as a part of the family. He knows that Sandhya is capable of doing it, and that if she does, the family will eternally be in her debt. He then tells her to come w/ him inside & see whether the others have woken up.
Neeraj is sitting on his bed ready, & Dadaji knocks. Neeraj is irritated, but turns around and sees Dadaji and apologizes. Dadaji says that he’s there to bother him and tells him that he wants him to meet his Dadi. Neeraj tells him that he was about to request that meeting himself.
Dadaji tells him that ever since she heard of his return, she wanted to meet him soon, and God listened to her prayers & brought him back. However, she fell sick . Neeraj & Dadaji leave to meet her.
Neeraj meets his Dadiji
Dadiji is lying in bed w/ other family members around her, while Hasmeth is telling her that Neeraj looks exactly like Ramesh. Dadiji asks why they didn’t bring him here right away? (Why indeed?) She was very anxious to see him. Dadiji tries getting up, and others try to persuade her not to, telling her that Dadaji has gone to get him anyway. She gets up, saying that she will meet Neeraj, no matter what, even while Urmi tries to tell her to obey the doc. As she gets up & stands, Neeraj & Dadaji enter, and she’s totally fixated on Neeraj.
Neeraj greets her and she hugs him. She tells him that as he was walking in, she thought that his dad Ramesh was walking in. Dadaji turns away, somewhat embarrassed, and leaves. Dadi tells him that she was crying for Ramesh a lot. She conceded that the fight was b/w father & son, but she wanted to see Ramesh one last time and ask what was her fault in all this? She asks whether he couldn’t have ever come & seen her?
Neeraj tells her that that’s not the case, and that Ramesh did talk about her a lot, and he cared a lot for her as well. He had told Neeraj that it was she alone who never said anything against their marriage. Ramesh wanted to apologize to her as well. But he never got that opportunity. Today, Neeraj wants to apologize to her on his behalf.
Anmol tells him that he’ll be forgiven when he calls her ‘ma’ – he may have called her dadima in Gwalior, but here, they all called her ma. Neeraj calls her Ma, and asks her to forgive his father & him. Dadi/ma hugs him, and everybody is happy. (I’ll keep calling her Dadima, or else it becomes too confusing. Sorry Anmol!)
Dadi tells him that she should be the one apologizing – to Ramesh, to Neeraj’s mom & to Neeraj. Despite an ugly fight b/w Neeraj’s bhauji & dadaji, she could say nothing.
Hasmeth asks her whether she’ll only keep apologizing to him, or feed him something as well? (Uh-oh, Neeraj, get another bag of antacid handy ) Neeraj turns to him looking a tad annoyed, and Hasmeth tells him that when she observed her vrath, she made laddoos w/ her own hands, and had the confidence that Ramesh would return, and that she’d feed him w/ her own hands.
Neeraj panics, asking whether he’ll have to eat again, and Anmol says he has to (poor thing! Neeraj should delegate this eating to Sandhya) Then they all surround him like yesterday and start feeding him.
Gayatri bua envious of Neeraj
Gayatri bua (GB from now) is watching this from outside. She’s pissed that everybody is now all over Neeraj. She says to herself that if she wants her wishes fulfilled, she’ll have to control his wishes.
Sandhya reminds Neeraj of his Gwalior mode
Neeraj is sitting outside on a swing, and Sandhya comes & joins him, and asks him why he’s sitting alone. Neeraj says that he’s thankful to be at least sitting – since he came, he’s been continuously eating Sandhya laughs, and he tells her that he wonders why they can’t think of anything but eating. He had no idea that his family either talks, or eats all the time. (I’m surprised that there were no obese members in that family, except to an extent Hasmeth)
Neeraj asks Sandhya why she’s staring @ him like that, and Sandhya tells him that the person who was like that himself is getting freaked out by seeing his own family doing the same thing (Okay, as Gunge, he was a glutton, but w/ the Jagirdars, while Neeraj was a party animal, I don’t recall him being a glutton) She reminds him that always, on the slightest pretext, he’d call a party, or a banquet, or something or the other. She now realizes that this ain’t something he learnt from the Jagirdars – it’s in his blood. She asks why he can’t open up to them – why is the old jovial him just not there? (Well, Sandhya, a lot has happened since to badly damage that)
Anmol & Nina join them, and Anmol tells them that he laughs all the time, but asks who’s sad @ everyone being happy? Sandhya tells him it’s his Neeraj bhaiya. She tells Anmol that he’s left all his joy in Gwalior, and that had he been in Gwalior, he’d have been filled w/ Neeraj’s jokes, which had people laugh until their stomachs hurt. Anmol tells them that in that case, Neeraj has to tell them a joke, and Nina joins in.
Neeraj denies it, and Sandhya volunteers, telling them that she’d tell it today, but tells them that it was one she had heard from Neeraj only. So she narrates the same joke Neeraj did @ the beginning of the serial – a man, and his obese wife were lying, and his wife had one leg on him. So the man asked her whether it was good to die a slow death or a quick one? The wife said a quick one, to which the hubby told her to in that case put her other leg on him as well
Anmol & Nina laugh, and Nina asks whether the wife really put her other leg on him?
GB questions Sandhya
GB is noticing all this from a distance, and is still pissed. She thinks that Neeraj’s remote is in the hands of Sandhya, who can make him grumpy or laugh as desired. She wonders who this girl is for Neeraj, and vows to find out.
Later, Sandhya is in her room making her bed, and GB joins her. Sandhya invites her in, and GB asks her whether everything is okay. Sandhya tells her that everybody is great, and so is everything here, and that she was going to call her tai and tell her that. GB asks her who else she has in her family. She tells GB that she has 4 sisters – all married w/ their own families.
GB then asks her point blank what her relationship is w/ Neeraj. Sandhya is shocked @ her tone, & speechless. GB quickly gathers herself, and asks more politely how did she know Neeraj? Sandhya is still speechless and GB tells her that she doesn’t need to answer if she doesn’t want to.
Neeraj interrupts and tells her that he’ll tell her the relationship. He tells her that Sandhya is his best friend, and he Sandhya’s. He asks her whether there’s something else she wants to know? GB quickly reassures him that she was just there to find out about her, and how she was coping. She tells him that she was there to chat, but now that he’s here, she’ll go, since she has a lot of work and has to prepare for pujas in the evening.
Neeraj furious @ GB
Neeraj then points out to Sandhya that that was exactly what he was afraid of – they’re either out to force-feed him, or drive them nuts. He asks what was the point behind any of those questions? And then she demands that he open up to them. How can he open up to such people?
Sandhya asks him why he’s getting hyper @ such small things? Bua had a question, she answered it, and that was it (Actually, Sandhya, he answered it, you were just gaping @ her, rightly shocked!) Plus she asked them about their relationship, which anyone in their place would ask. Particularly given the circumstances in which she accompanied him.
Neeraj tells her that she never thinks anything is wrong – if she’s good, everything else is good (Neeraj, have you heard what she did to the Jagirdars?) He then turns and walks out. Sandhya runs to him, asking why he came in the first place, but Neeraj is gone.
GB is sitting down somewhere, and says that both Neeraj & Sandhya claim that they are friends, but she’s seen in a movie that a boy & girl can never be just friends, and that movie was a super-hit. (okay, GB, thanks for confirming that you’re a complete moron! Is that why you’re away from your hubby?) She suspects that this friendship is a lot more than just that! So now, she needs to find out the exact nature of that friendship.
Comments
On Dadaji’s & Sandhya’s opening conversation, while they were right in that this is a new place for Neeraj, they’re ignoring the elephant in the room: the family’s ugly treatment of Neeraj’s parents. After all, had Neeraj moved into Sandhya’s home for some time, there too it would have been a new environment for him and Savita & Shreya would have been strangers as well, but they’ve not wronged Neeraj or his parents in any way, the way his dadaji had. Therefore, Neeraj wasn’t tense @ all in Sandhya’s place, except for this new revelation, but he’s totally like a fish out of water in his ancestral home.
If Dadaji wants Neeraj to be happy, that should be unconditional i.e. he should allow Neeraj the option of not living w/ them, particularly since he wasn’t doing that until now. His loving Neeraj doesn’t mean forcing him to live w/ the rest of them. The proper thing for him to have done, given what he knows & assuming he’s genuine, would have been to try & help Neeraj find an independent home & job, so that his dependence on the Jagirdars is over. Another thing he could have done was set aside a deferred payment to Purushottam for raising Neeraj all these years, so that Neeraj has no monetary debts to them either: he certainly doesn’t owe them for raising him, since they tried to kill him.
Dadiji looks like she’s someone who Neeraj might like. Somehow, her suddenly falling sick looks suspicious. I think that Ramesh is still heavily on her mind, which is why she wasn’t given first access to Neeraj, as she’s more likely to remind him of his dad, and why he didn’t want to come.
In this serial, and others, I had reservations about the oft repeated claim that a married woman’s place is in her sasural. The CVs seem to strongly believe that, which is why they’ve put the one woman who’s in her maayka – GB – as the villain of the piece. So it’s not just Sandhya she resents, but Neeraj as well. Apparently, she is very powerful in this house, but senses that if Neeraj is going to be hard to persuade to stay, he’d automatically get a lot of power. Just wonder what’s the deal w/ her – why isn’t she in her sasural? Does she stand to gain big if Ramesh’s share of the property goes to her instead of Neeraj? That’s all I can think of, for now. But please, don’t make this a saas-bahu track!
I hope that Sandhya goes into the same hostile Vrinda mode (okay, minus the tapori language, if needed) when confronting GB. I liked Neeraj grabbing this opportunity to pile on, and it would be funny if he is the reason Dadaji or Dadiji ultimately kicked GB out.
P.S. Today, I noticed that this serial has 2 Gayatris – Gayatri Devi, and now Gayatri bua. I’ll shorten it to GB going forward.
Episode rating:
: Neeraj’s meeting w/ Dadi/Ma, Sandhya entertaining Anmol & Nina
: Gayatri Bua & her entire persona, the ‘stuffing’ of Neeraj
No comments:
Post a Comment