#labibalife

[phati-sari]

Hi PS, hope you’re doing well. I have kind of a stupid question but I always love receiving your input. You mentioned once how for Kushi, Arnav’s “I love you dammit” was all she needed in order to fully be sure about their marriage. But legally they’re married right? Because she can sign things in his name and Arnav keeps saying “my legally wedded wife”. If their marriage is legally registered, why did Dadi make it sound like it was illegitimate in society? Thank you in advance :)

Hello!

The canon can be ambiguous at times on this point. I believe they are legally married because -- as you said -- Arnav runs around yelling “legally wedded wife”. That doesn’t seem like something he’d say unless she really was.

(I don’t think she can legally sign things in his name. That scene with the fake lawyer was just that -- fake. It was a ploy and I doubt that dude was a real lawyer.)

However, in their marriage was illegitimate in the eyes of Society™️. There are two things happening here: their marriage wasn’t religiously valid and they eloped.

Their marriage isn’t religiously valid

They went to a temple, he put sindoor and a mangalsutra on her. But that’s not a marriage. One still needs the vows, in the form of the saptapadi and phere. The mangal mantra needs to be said. And they need to be declared man and wife by the priest. Khushi had the marks of a married Hindu woman but she wasn’t married. 

It’s the difference between exchanging rings on a playground, or saying vows, exchanging rings that have been blessed by a priest, and being pronounced man and wife in the eyes of a Church. The marks of marriage are the rings but they do not, in themselves, constitute a religiously valid marriage. In the same way, sindoor and a mangalsutra are the marks of a marriage but they do not, all by themselves, mean a couple has a religiously valid marriage.

And to a religious families, such as the Raizadas and Guptas, the legal papers mean very little, it’s the religious validation that matters.

They eloped

The two issues are related and often conflated, but the other problem is that no one was there to see them get married. Their families assumed that while they ran away to get married, it was done with the proper rituals and customs. They assumed it was religiously valid.

The revelation that it wasn’t threw up another issue -- culturally, marriages sort of need a stamp of approval from Society™️. During Khushi and Payal’s Muhn Dekhayi, the rude Society woman (Sumitra bhabhi) asked point blank whether Arnav and Khushi had gotten married so quickly, and in secret, because they had to (that is, she was pregnant). 

And that’s what some people assume if you don’t have a three month long lead up with all the customary events and rituals and don’t invite everyone you’ve ever met and all their relatives. 

They had a live-in relationship

While their marriage might have been legally sound, it wasn’t sanctioned by religion or Society™️. This means they basically had a live-in relationship according to what the Raizada and Gupta families believed.

When Dadi said “What you’re calling a marriage is called by some other names by our society” she meant that Arnav was living with his lover.

There’s a certain poetry to the way Khushi’s horror at living together without marriage (largely driven by what Society™️ taught her to think) came back in the form of her living with the man she loves for six months in a marriage that Society didn’t think was complete.

[tellywoodtrash]

labibalife replied to your post “ishqbaaz 17.02.17 lb”

Didn't they show us flashbacks of RoTiLana as sisters? Confused...

They did indeed, @labibalife! Well I don’t remember if Mrs. Kapoor ever referred to Romi by name or not, but there certainly were three little girls in the flashback. 

Pfffft, the writers of this show are just as confused as the rest of us, as to why Romi is still in this damn show. At this point, they’re just ghusaoing her into random contrived relations to the Oberois. Wait a month or so, they might even try to pass her off as Anika’s long lost sister, Chutki. 

Can they just end this damn character? Have Saumya use her parathe-waale-haath to slap her into oblivion already. 😒😒😒

[phati-sari]

Hi PS, I hope all is well. I really gotta say that your analysis are golden. I’ve been going through the tag and it’s like you have a third eye when it comes to observing everything. I was hoping to get your opinion on Kushi’s accent. I’m not the best at understanding what region an accent comes from. But is there a reason for which Kushi’s Hindi sounds more fancy than her sisters? She uses complicated words that are Shudh but no one else in her family does. Thank you so much for your work :)

Hello!

Okay so, first of all -- I created the greatest hits tag like we discussed! I hope you like it!!

I feel like I’m going to disappoint you after you’ve been so0o0o nice to me regarding my analysis. I can’t think of any internal reason why Khushi speaks that way except for personal preference. I think Payal was more comfortable substituting English words where Khushi was more comfortable with the Hindi ones. I’ve written about their proficiencies in English and preferences here.

Externally, I think they wanted her character to speak that way to provide a counterpoint to both Lavanya and Arnav. The contrast with Lavanya was about the differences between them as bahus and (to a lesser extent) life partners. Khushi was the Lucknawi bahu that Nani always wanted. The contrast with Arnav was about how different their worlds are, and how incompatible they were on the surface.

[phati-sari]

Hello PS Jhi, I hope your health is well in this lockdown situation. I’ve found my way back to your blog during my rewatch and you’re honestly a wonder. There’s something I don’t understand . Why do the Raizadas not eat eggs? Lavanya baked something with eggs and Mami said she’d have to purify herself after. Is it something traditional? I know lots of people in India are vegetarian. But they drink milk so it can’t be a vegan issue. I’m Bengali-Canadian sorry, so it stems confusion.

Hello!

I’m well :) I hope you are as well!! Thanks for the compliment, I’m glad the blog is helping somewhat in the lockdown situation.

I think the terms vegetarian and vegan, while helpful in framing the discussion, don’t capture the full issue. In some parts of the world, including India, eggs are considered to be meat. I guess if we wanted to stick to the terminology, the Raizada family, like many Hindus, favour lacto-vegetarianism -- which includes milk-based foods and other non-animal derived foods but excludes meat and eggs. Vegetarianism itself is considered satvic (purifying the body and mind) in some Hindu texts. There’s an extra complication in that, according to some, unfertilised eggs do not violate ahimsa (respect towards all living things) and thus can be eaten, however, most people still avoid eggs because they cannot tell for sure if an egg is unfertilized.

I will take this time to point out that how a person follows their religion is a deeply personal decision -- me saying these things is not, at all, a judgement on how anyone lives their life :)

Oh, and that tellywood’s heavy bias towards Northern Indian traditions and practises tends to normalise these experiences while (at times) erasing the beliefs and practises of Southern India.

[phati-sari]

Hello there PS-Jhi, I’ve been going through the IPKKND tag on your blog looking for a specific post for so many hours. Not that it was a bother since I got to go through many other wonderful posts of yours. A few years ago, you made a post breaking down and translating Kushi’s monologue during the kidnaping track where she puts into words her relationship with Arnav. How something that was hate turned into habit and then without realizing into love. Any key word to find the post? Love your work.

Hello @labibalife :)

Okay so this is totally my bad. I neglected to tag the post as #translation. I apologise unreservedly, and am super sorry you had to look for hours. I admire your dedication and wish I’d made the process easier for you.

I remember the post, I’m very proud of it :) Here is the link :)

I’ll share the way I found it in the hopes that it might help you or anyone else looking for a post.

 I try to tag everything meticulously but, as we’ve discovered today, there are gaps! Now, since it’s an IPKKND blog, almost everything is tagged #ipkknd. More useful tags might be #analysis, #translation, and #i haz opinions.

The difference between analysis and opinion is that one is about backing up my statements with references to the canon and the other about me spouting headcanons and being generally less … pedantic … with the interpretations. There is a fair degree of overlap between the analysis and opinion tags :)

When I didn’t find the post under #translation, I decided to search for it. Tumblr search works decently, much much better than it used to, but Yahoo’s search engine is still inferior to Google’s. So I went to Google :)

Google has a feature where you can limit your search to just one website:

site:[URL] + keywords.

For example, my favourite line in Veritas is “He was adrift in a sea of treachery, and the life-line he’d chosen for himself was made of lead.”

So I search:

site:phati-sari.tumblr.com “He was adrift in a sea of treachery”, and the life-line he’d chosen for himself was made of lead

And Google dutifully pulled up Veritas.

To look for the translation post then, you sort of already have to know what’s in the post to search for it. I remembered that I’d split it into parts about His Hate and Her Love. So I searched:

site:phati-sari.tumblr.com “His hate” her love

And Google pulled up the post you’re after :)

[phati-sari]

labibalife replied to your post “Hello there PS-Jhi, I’ve been going through the IPKKND tag on your...”

Thank you so much :). That post was one that allowed me to rewatch the show in a different light. You truly are amazing PS

Heyy @labibalife :)

It’s no problem. I am sorry once again that I didn’t tag the post properly.

It’s so cool to hear how people found the blog and stuff though :) Thank you for telling me!

Hehe, *blush* I think I just overthink everything!

[phati-sari]

Hi PS-Jhi, what's your opinion on the chain bracelet with an opal or something that they've used on Shyam? It's looks exactly like the one Salman Khan wears in most of his movies. Do you think the writers tried to symbolise something with it since Salman Khan is Kushi's favourite actor. They used the same bracelet to identify Shyam in the video proofs when they were exposing him as the one behind Anjali's miscarriage. Hope this wasn't an odd question, thank you :)

Hey @labibalife​ :)

I think the bracelet is meant to evoke Salman Khan’s one to reinforce the way Shyam was introduced – as the Hero. It played into Khushi’s romantic notions of heroes and their heroines, and lulled the audience into a false sense of security about Shyam. The bracelet was a part of the character as much as three-piece-suits were a part of Arnav. I talked about it briefly here.

For a long time Khushi wanted to believe that Shyam could change and be a good husband. Using the bracelet as the primary way to prove his guilt then seemed like it was the final nail in the Shyam has the potential to change coffin. It reinforced that Shyam, as the audience had seen him, had never been a good guy. 

Shyam also gifted Khushi a bracelet, one that Arnav was insanely jealous of. I think it was meant to be symbolic – his and hers bracelets that served as a counterpoint to the his and hers watches Arnav got Shyam and Anjali.

[kingofinsxcts-archived]

labibalife replied to your post “//Yo yo if anyone needs spoppy furniture I have the whole set. I know...”

Do you still have some stuff left?

//Yep! All the spooky furniture ^^