Folks,
As I watched this episode, with the action ricochetting from one crisis to another, I was reminded of a runaway train in a thriller film, rushing down the tracks at ever increasing speeds. No one knows if the driver, in this case the series director Anurag Kashyap, will manage to save the train from a crash and guide it to a smooth, gliding halt at the intended destination, to cheers from the viewers who have followed every frame, every word, every move of his Yudh with concentrated, and at times strenuous attention.
A filmi climax? Oh no!!!: Or if he will be unable to stop the trainwreck, which in this case would mean a totally standard issue face off between the hero, Yudh , and the villain, Ajaatashatru, in a suitably equipped location. Which is what the precap threatens, I am afraid.
Now such filmi climaxes have their own, well known rules of the game. Let us check them off one by one, going by the precap.
- There has to be a dilapidated location, full of broken stairs and walls, and with plenty of drums and/or boxes for being knocked over in the big battle. Check. Only, here it is a construction site instead of the usual abandoned factory, obviously in a sort of bow to Shanti Constructions.
- The villain has to gain the heights, at least to begin with, so that he can spew venom on the hero from a commanding position. Check. Ajaatashatru is on an upper floor, and Yudh on the ground level.
- Most important of all, there has to be a hostage, preferably an abla naari of any age - mother, sister, wife, or daughter of the hero - that the villain can use to threaten and immobilise him. Check. It is the daughter here.
Taruni is no one's idea of an abla naari, but she is the next best thing, stupid in a crisis that calls for cunning. Once she discovers (I could not make out what she was unscrewing and from where,but it looked like a gun in the wall) the real face of her Ajju, instead of playing dumb and getting away from him to alert the rest, she shows her hand at once by slapping him (with her left hand, I noted; I had so far not noticed that she is a leftie). So it all comes to the same thing in the end.
- A great deal of verbiage between the contestants - angry lines of hate and revenge spewed by the villain, and equally ferocious promises of retribution mouthed by the hero. This seemed to be on the cards, with Ajju intoning, in the time-honoured style Ab milne ka waqt aa gayaa!
- The one thing they cannot have is the routine 10 minutes of fisticuffs at the end, with the hero getting bashed up for the first three quarters of the time, and the villain for the last quarter. For Amitabh in his heyday, this would have been a piece of cake, but not at nearly 72. So they will have to restrict themselves to verbal violence. More is the pity, for I would have liked to see Ajju's face reduced to a pulp. Maybe Rishi can turn up at just the right time and do the honours. He is almost as tall as his father, young and fit , and Ajju is on the weedy side, so it should be possible.
The worst would be if Yudh dies to save Taruni, in the mother of all stereotyped finales, and this not without a prolonged and tearful reunion with the non-abala naari😉, and perhaps even her mother. And of course with Inspector Choudhuri lumbering up to collar Ajju at the very end. That would be the pits!!
Well, at the end of the precap, my heart sank, and it has still not resurfaced. I am keeping my fingers crossed, so tightly crossed that I could easily enter them in a pretzel contest, for Yudh not to deteriorate in this fashion. In any tale, for the writer, the beginning and the end are the most difficult to get just right. I hope, very much, that they have got the end just right for Yudh.
No let us get on with the actual episode.
I was very pleased that my Red Herring No. 1 turned out to be correct. I was on pins to have that confirmed for, being a sucker for simple values like loyalty and friendship, I did not want Anand to be estranged from Yudh and turn negative. That round won, I could cope with almost anything else.
Red Herring No.2, Anand's confessing (again to Inspector Choudhuri, who seems to be omnipresent!) to the murder of Jeet (and of Malik as well, of course) was not correct. I wrote yesterday that I could not understand it at all, and explained why, but all that was swept away by a crude but almost always effective tactic of Ajju's: blackmail that hits at Anand's Achilles heel, his son and his wife.
Incidentally, those of you who suspected the nurse can now pat yourselves on the back. She was clearly Ajju's minion, for he chortles to Anand that she was waiting for the gun to get unlocked, i.e. for the safety catch to come off. The number of Ajju's minions would, by now, be enough to double the population of Singapore!
Red Herring No. 3. That Ajju is not MM, but his aide or tool. I had written yesterday:
"But in any case, Ajju is not MM. He might have the shaitaani dimaag, but he is no mastermind with the power and reach to organise and accomplish all that MM has been doing of late against Yudh. Especially not the political or official clout needed to force this vigilance enquiry against Gautam Dev, with Yudh being the real target.
So Taruni's Ajju, for all his devious nastiness, is merely Red Herring 3. He might perhaps be the terrified boy who is scared of Jokers and is hiding under the table in the orphanage, the boy who sees Yudh pocket the sale agreement for the orphanage property".
I still stand by this one, and will do so till Anurag Kashyap explains how Ajju was able to organise the witchhunt against Gautam Dev and Yudh thru the Vigilance Commission. The rest can, at a pinch, be swallowed, but the AILF angle and the Vigilance enquiry cannot.
There are other indications that do not fit in with Ajju being the mastermind MM. Remember Jeet telling Taruni, and also Ajju, that it was someone very powerful who was putting all this pressure on the Vigilance Commission, and later, saying to Gautam that that he would know this person's identity only in a few days, and would not submit Yudh' s file till he got that information? And Inspector Choudhuri's subordinate telling him he had received orders upar se to have the DNA testing done on the tooth of the now dead fake housekeeping staffer?
How can Ajju, a corporate lawyer, be the kind of person Jeet was talking about, and how can he pressurise police officials? To do both these things, it needs a powerful insider, typically a political heavyweight in government or a very high official.
I only hope that Kashyap uses a good part of the last 2 episodes to tell us very clearly just how Ajju did all that he did. Like the winding up explanations standard in a Hercule Poirot mystery. Poirot does them to show off, but he does cover every relevant point that comes up in the whole course of the case.
This apart, there were only 3 tracks last night: those of Yudh-Taruni-Gauri and of Rishi, and then the murderous one of Anand-Malik-Nikhil-Ajju, which I shall keep for the best and last.
Yudh-Taruni-Gauri: I was surprised and disappointed at Taruni's immediately concluding that Yudh was behind the murder of Jeet. She has the precedent of the medical file, where she fell flat on her face after suspecting Yudh. And moreover, as I had pointed out yesterday, what purpose would be served by getting rid of one vigilance officer working on Yudh's case? Another vigilance officer would have taken over, and the case would go on. So what she does merely illustrates her complete ignorance of how government agencies work, plus an enduring propensity to jump to conclusions. She does have some doubts later, but only hesitantly, and she never tries to think things thru logically.
The Joker deconstructed: As a fallout of Taruni's telling Yudh to get lost, we finally got to understand the genesis of the Joker. He is a projection of Yudh's mind, but not of his subconscious. Rather of the recesses of his memory, a projection rooted in the most distressing memories of his life, when he, inadvertently and for no fault of his, was the cause of his father being publicly disgraced. Since he died soon afterwards, without young Yudh having been able to explain the matter to him and set his mind at rest, there was never any catharis, and the trauma and guilt lingered. Classic psychiatrist material!
Gauri: sadly cliched: To revert, Gauri is as standard issue as could be, and there is, unfortunately, so scope for poor Sarika to do anything memorable.
She has no hesitation in condemning Yudh out of hand before the media without any proof to back up her accusations. She does not bother to think things thru at all, exactly as Taruni had done earlier. Both her crude emotional blackmail to get Taruni back in line - by telling her to go stay with Yudh if she had even the slightest notion that he was innocent - and her reaction to Yudh when he comes to reassure her that he had nothing to do with the murder of Jeet, are totally predictable, in the usual serials, that is. They are thus out of place in a Yudh.
The worst was when Yudh tells her that he is dying, obviously to drive home the point that things like a vigilance enquiry would hardly bother him now that he has so little time left. How does Gauri, who was once his wife and must have cared for him then, respond? She totally ignores what he has said about his mortal illness, and says, with brutal coldness, Mera pati mar chuka hai.
Rishi: where angels fear to tread: Our boy has Lady Luck, a capricious female with a soft corner for goodlooking young men, looking out for him. Proof positive of this assertion is that after rushing in recklessly where any sensible person would have been extra cautious, that too after refusing to take Dabra with him as back up and as a witness, plus committing the cardinal blunder of touching the murder weapon, he still walks free.
Thanks of course to Inspector Choudhuri, who has come there looking for the owner of the fake police uniforms picked up by the dhabawala. This was the address given in the registration papers of the car whose licence number was in the toll naka slip he found in one of those uniform shirtsl
Earlier the Inspector had (very likely deliberately) used the warrant for Anand's arrest for holding his oily pakodas, and then never bothered to get a replacement warrant. Now he goes so far as to let Rishi off the hook by firing extra shots, without the silencer, after Rishi has left that flat. As there is no evidence that Choudhuri is venal and on the lookout for a bribe, it can only be that he knows that both Anand then and Rishi now are being framed, and he wants to spike the guns of the one doing the framing.
The earlier scene of Rishi comforting Mona's family was sweet, except for Manju comfortably accepting her sister's sacrifice and not letting out a squeak about her own guilt (as she believes, though she too is really innocent of the killing). Well, I suppose one has to cut her some slack because of her kids.
But how was their lawyer, as Rishi says, sure of getting bail for Mona? There is no bail in a murder case. I know this myself, and in the serial too. Anand was telling Yudh about this when he is in police custody after the tooth and the bloodstained clothes were found in the boot of his car. It wwoul of course be finally adjudicated as second degree murder or manslaughter, but for now, the charge is murder, and there cannot be any bail.
Even more charming was the brief snippet of Yudh and Rishi jointly teasing a delighted Nayantara, who luxuriates in this unaccustomed bonhomie from the two men she loves best.
Anand-Malik-Nikhil-Ajaatashatru: This, and in fact Ajaatashatru alone, needs a whole page.
His name is a superb fit for his personality, and I wonder if Anurag Kashyap is interested in ancient history. For Ajaatashatru, a contemporary of the Lord Buddha, was the king of the powerful kingdom of Magadha, and a great warrior, but very ruthless and extremely ambitious. He imprisoned his father Bimbisara because he disapproved of the policyof non-violence, and other Buddhist teachings, that he followed. Ajaatashatru would have murdered his father as well, to prevent any rebellion to reinstate him, but Bimbisara saved him from the sin of parricide by committing suicide in prison. It is another matter that even this Ajaatashatru later became a follower of the Lord Buddha, after his beloved, Amrapali, joined the Sangha as a bhikshuni.
Now our Ajaatashatru is worse than his historical namesake was even at his most ruthless. He is not just a killer, or even just a cold-blooded killer. He is a sadist, and he enjoys the act of murder.
Watch him as he pumps those bullets into Jeet, as he turns the knife deeper and deeper into Dharmendra Malik, the deepset eyes alight with not just anger but enjoyment as well. Note how, even as he is berating Malik for having violated the ground rules of their partnership, Ajju is already rolling up his sleeves. He knows that he is going to kill Malik in a moment, and he does not want blood on his sleeves.
Watch the paralysing glare in his eyes as he warns the panic-stricken Nikhil who, totally out of his depth amd unused to actual bloodshed, tries to tear him away from his prey, not to interfere.
What is the most terrifying are the instant switches of mood, from easygoing argument to murderous fury as he pounces on Malik without warning, still smiling and asking him why he had not questioned him about the reason for his enmity towards Yudh. And then again to relaxed reassurance for the agonised, frightened Nikhil. Wo (Malik) bharose ke kaabil nahin raha.. (Which clashes with his earlier assertion that the murder of Malik was the only way of getting rid of Anand)..Just relax, sab saaf ho jaayega...
These acute mood swings indicate mental instability of a dangerous kind. Cleo would know better of exactly what kind, but whatever it is, the net impact is very frightening.
And no,Ajju does not care for Taruni, he merely needed her as a tool. If he arranged for the killing of the autorickshaw driver, that proves that he was quite readily to let her get badly hurt, if not killed, in order to scare her away from helping Yudh.
He cares for no one but himself and his hatred for Yudh, and the need to be revenged on him for jo usne hamare apnon ke saath kiya. Which apne? One does not know. If he was indeed, as seems very likely, the boy under the table in the orphanage, he would have had only Suryadev Mishra and his wife as his apne.
It remains to be seen if, and if so, how Ajju accomplished the long list of very complicated saazish against Yudh and his loved ones. For now, he gets the better of the far less astute Anand very easily. For one thing, he is clever enough to have guessed that the Anand-Yudh rift is a fake. Then, Anand stumbles when, recognising Ajju as the person who had accompanied Taruni to Yudh's press conference, he asks him Tum inka saath kyon de rahe ho? He also argues, unwisely, against hurting Yudh's family, hardly the way to pump the mastermind out to get Yudh. It is clear that Anand is very kachcha at this kind of game.
Ajju proceeds to corner him using the MMS of Aditya brandishing a gun with Preeti, in the background, tied to a chair . While I could not make any sense out of Ajju telling Anand that his sentence for murdering Jeet and Malik might be remitted, it was clearly the end of the road, for the present, for Anand. In the precap, he is shown confessing to Inspector Choudhuri that he had murdered Jeet, as Ajju keeps a sharp eye on him from the side.
All in all, a truly intimidating villain for all seasons, is our Ajju. If he is working for the real MM, he must be as valuable to the mastermind as Anand is to Yudh.
Scene of the day 1: Malik, catching the arm of the departing Anand, and saying, his voice almost suspended with bitter grief, Apne bete ko dimaag se nahin nikaal paaya mai.. uski maut ke liye kisi na kisi ko sazaa to milni chahiye na? The voice, and the naked anguish in his eyes, were intensely moving, for all that one knew about Malik as he was now. It reminded me of that other superb scene, about which I had commented then, where Malik is informed by the jail authorities,over the telephone, about the murder of his son.
Scene of the day 2:Anurag Kashyap, the series director, doing an Alfred Hitchcock and making a tiny cameo appearance as the father of the young Yudh. Hitchcock believed that his fleeting appearances in his own films were a lucky charm for them at the box office, and so did Subhash Ghai, who adopted this habit of Hitchcock's . As for Yudh, not even this appearance by the director seems to have brought it commercial success. The Yudh team will have to be satisfied with having attained quality.
Well, folks, 18 down and just 2 to go.😭
Shyamala B.Cowsik
PS: My apologies for not having responded individually to your interesting comments on my Yudh posts over the past 10 days. I am still in the middle of a bad bout of conjunctivitis, and it was all I could manage to get these posts out daily. but I hope it leaves me soon, and then I shall make it a point to catch up with all of you.
Once again, if you like my posts, please do hit the Like button. I would wish to know who my regular readers are.
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