Rangrasiya ... Farewell

My heart was ridiculously heavy as I sat down to pen the last episode take on Rangrasiya .. a show that started with great promise nine months ago, and continued to enthrall for the first few months, with its tale of love between a rough, tough BSD officer, a man battling his own demons as much as his enemies on the border ...and a delicate desert rose with a spine of steel. And then unfortunately it scattered in direction and focus, in pursuit of those elusive TRPs, which are themselves a measure only of supreme mediocrity. I will always feel sad that we never got to see the story we were promised ... 

But I am very  happy that we got to see what we did ... which included an opening set of sequences close to a movie experience, beautiful authentic locations, 3-4 months of a slowly unfolding gripping story line  ... an immensely talented ensemble cast, all of whom did complete justice to their roles ... 

And last but not least, this show gave us an incredibly talented lead pair with crackling chemistry, and enormous dedication and capacity for sheer hard work. Sanaya and Ashish have scorched the screen as PaRud for the last seven months. And they actually managed to achieve the feat again in the last two months in  a hastily conceived and shoddily executed second love story ... which is no mean feat and says a lot for their amazing talent. Standing ovation to this amazing pair ...

 I have followed Sanaya through four shows now, and was always aware of her amazing talent ... so her performance did not come as a surprise ... even so, it was impressive how beautifully she played a barely educated, simple village girl with no ambitions and very small dreams ... a persona completely opposite to Sanaya in real life. 

She took a few days, maybe a couple of weeks to settle into the character of Paro ... this is something I have noticed Sanaya does with all her roles. She takes her time to settle in, because she actually gets into the skin of her character ... she absorbs each and every nuance of the character as she plays it. She is not a method actor in the sense that Ashish (for example) is ... she is more a thinking actor ... and an emotional one. In a recent interview, she was asked whether she thinks sad thought while doing a crying scene, because it is noticeable that she actually cries in many of her crying scenes, one can see her nose going all red :). Her reply was that she doesn't think of extraneous sad thought to cry ... she just FEELS the scene, and the tears come. That answer demonstrated her method of acting ... while she is on camera, she IS the character, she FEELS the character's thoughts and emotions ... and that's why she portrays them so brilliantly ... because she is not ACTING, she is LIVING the character. 

That's probably why it took her a little while to get into Paro's skin, because she is so much the opposite of Paro. But once she did, she never looked back. The traits that differ between the two, are the acquired ones of education, language and the like. Many of the traits she shares with Paro are actually the more important ones, which formed the core strength of Paro's character - her sunny nature, her optimism, her ability to look on the bright side, her ability to deal with the bouquets and brickbats life throws her ... accept the bouquets, deal with and learn from the brickbats ... and move forward.

I marvelled again at Sanaya's talent as she transformed overnight into Myrah, a sketchily written unplanned character, and grew her into a real person, adding layers and depth to her, till she was someone I could feel, understand, empathise with. 

Ashish ... he was a fantastic costar, equally matched with Sanaya not only in talent, but even more importantly in his  hard work, dedication and professionalism ... all these things put together, went into making their pairing one of the most sizzling jodis seen on the television screen in a long while. He had an author backed role, a complex role, a very layered role ... and he did justice to it. He portrayed the many shades of Rudra ... his angst, his anger, his vulnerability, his passion, his fire ... and brought Rudra to roaring life. After the bad experience with FK in Chhanchhan, I am always wary of Sanaya's costars ... it was good to see her matched with someone worthy of her talent. And he benefitted a lot from this show ... he was probably always a good actor ... haven't seen him earlier, so can't say ... but he became a star with Rangrasiya. Something he has taken pains to acknowledge repeatedly. 

 

I felt he grew as an actor through the course of this show ... he was prone to hamming and going over the top in his emotional scenes ... something I can say only here ;) In many scenes during the first few months, I lost patience with his unending tears and his OTT acting in the all too frequent breakdowns. He seems to have learned from Sanaya, the art of underplaying emotions, making them more subtle, and actually trying to feel them rather than act  them ... he was more effective in the last couple of weeks in the emotional scenes than in the ones in the earlier part of the show. 

Both actors are completely professional, their chemistry was sizzling ... and the last couple of weeks with MyRud was testament to that ... in a love story I wasn't even rooting for, they made me feel their pain, their angst ... if only the makers had done this with Paro, and gone in for a proper separation track, rather than killing her off, the show might have done better. 

What I'm most happy about ... after Rangrasiya, Sanaya has finally laid to rest for once and for all, the question as to who is responsible for the sizzling chemistry in her shows. No question about it all now. She has had three successful jodis in three love stories ... while all the co-actors in question have had their most successful jodis only with her, and haven't re-created the magic with anyone else. Naysayers can bleat and whine all they like about how good her co-actors were ... Mohit is a mediocre actor at best, Barun is good, Ashish is very good ... but Sanaya is the common factor for all three - she has given them all their biggest hits of their respective careers. 

Of the ensemble cast, special mention to two more surprises ... Udit Shukla and Geetanjali Mishra ... one a loveable rogue, whom you could not hate, even when he was at his worst ... the other, a beautiful character, who evolved even more beautifully through the show, from a timid browbeaten housewife to a woman of substance. 

Ananya Khare was good all through ... she was playing something she has done before, so no surprises there. I liked the reformed Mohini in the last week, she retained the acid tongue, but tempered it with good intentions.  

Signing off from Rangrasiya with a hope and a prayer ... hope Sanaya comes back soon in a rocking new show ... from her interview, she is not yet ready to slip into the regular saas bahu crap, she will try to find something different again, regardless of TRPs. And a prayer that her next show hits the bulls eye in terms of popularity and those damned elusive TRPs both ... at least gets decent enough TRPs for the makers to stick to their story, without worrying about the show going off air ... and gets her the long overdue critical acclaim and awards she so richly deserves.