#Ipkknd: Arshi and the shared trauma
Something that all Ipk fans/viewers can agree upon is the fact that both even though Arnav and Khushi had a very different life and they both have very different personalities the one thing they have in common is their trauma.
Both of them had to endure the same kind of trauma at young age of loosing their parents. However, despite of sharing the similar kind of trauma it shaped their personality in a very different way which makes them so different from one another.
If I have to be honest with my opinion I don’t think that Sheesh Mahal incident completely changed Arnav or made him a different person. I like to believe that Arnav was always less socially active and shy since he was a kid. Anjali evens tells Khushi during one of the episode that how even during his childhood Arnav didn’t like when someone showed him too much of love or affection, when we get flashback from Arnav’s childhood we can see that he is quite young so during then his mother was still alive.
Arnav not being open to affection maybe due to his father, his father himself never really cared about the affection other people showed him or never really showed any affection to his wife, which Arnav always saw in front of his eyes. Maybe, his mom tried to cover things up by showering tons of love on him and Anjali but Arnav must always have been a silent kid so even beside the curtain of love that his mom put on he could still see the truth.
Arnav was obviously devastated after his parents death, specially his mother’s death. But, what I like to believe made him to be rude, cold and arrogant was because of how his uncle behaved towards him and his Di. His Uncle who was his family was supposed to console him and give him the strength to resilience during his tough time but instead he throwed them out of the house so that he could have the Malik property and house to himself and his family.
Arnav who was just 14 during then and had recently lost his mom when he saw all this he said obviously started believing that out of everything money, wealth and power are the most important thing in life. That’s why probably from a young age Arnav was adamant about becoming successful
I don’t think Arnav struggled financially as a kid because obviously he and Anjali were taken in by Raizadas. And as Arnav mentioned in one episode that he attended Harvard so if Raizadas weren’t rich they wouldn’t have sent Arnav to study in Harvard.
But then again Arnav himself says during initial episode that how Manorama had to break her FD when he was establishing AR. This may sound a little illogical but I think the ancestral property that Raizadas had wasn’t really much and that too was spent on studies of Anjali,Arnav and Aakash.
I am sure Nani offered the little money they had to Arnav to start his business, but Arnav knew that if he wanted people to fear him and respect him, the money that comes to him must be earned by his hard work. His ancestral money wouldn’t have been able to do so.
So yeah, saying Arnav did struggle for success won’t be wrong
Unlike Arnav she was quite young when her parents passed away maybe that’s why we never saw any of her flashbacks from her childhood cause she was too young.
Even though Khushi was taken in by Guptas after her parents died there’s a high possibility that not everything went smoothly. As she was just a child she most likely moved on and started living like a normal, happy child but there would always be that one person who would remind her that she doesn’t belong to them and they just did her a favour.
That person in Khushi’s life was obviously bua ji. Garima and Shashi always loved Khushi and considered her as their daughter. But it’s a high chance that bua ji didn’t like Khushi since the beginning (which can be seen in the initial episodes as well).
Whenever Khushi was little more happy or did something mischievous bua ji would always be there to remind her that how she is adopted and they did her a favour by taking her in. Those constant reminders stuck in Khushi’s head which lead her into believing that since Guptas did her a huge favour she must do everything they ask her to do even if she doesn’t want to do it.
Just like how she didn’t want to marry Shyam, maybe there were other things that she didn’t want to do but still did only because Guptas asked her to do it.
Khushi’s people pleasing behaviour has always been backfired at her instead. For instance, when she tried talking to Anjali about how she could think about her child and take care for herself or when she tried to convince Akash about how he should try to make things better between him and Payal. In both of the cases it backfired on her
So! We can see that even though Arnav and Khushi shared similar kind of trauma, it had different effect on them and it shaped the ultimate quality of their personality, because they had different situations
Arnav had no one around him when the tragedy struck, people turned their back on him. He earned everything he had on his own. Arnav Singh Raizada didn’t even care if his words or action hurt someone let alone him trying to make anyone happy wasn’t even in his bingo card ever. All he ever cared about was earning power and wealth which he did, he always knew that he didn’t owe anyone anything
Whereas Khushi did have people around her who rescued her and Ofcourse she was loved by them. But the constant reminder from those people to her about how they saved her from time and again ruined things for her, making her to be an ultimate people pleaser
