S̳h̳a̳k̳h̳i̳-̳l̳a̳c̳i̳o̳u̳s̳

EPISODE 3: "Snow queen"

Shaurya stirs awake to the sound of Mom's voice calling him to breakfast, and he asks for five more minutes... until he remembers that Mom isn't supposed to be alive. He runs out to the kitchen, only to be shocked even further by the sight of Dad sitting at the table with a big smile on his face. Even Yash is in the next room, though his face is cleverly kept hidden as he dresses for work like a regular salary-man. The first thing that Shaurya does is pinch Dad's cheek
(ha, I'm pretty sure you're supposed to pinch your own),
and asks if this isn't a dream. They act as if Shaurya is the crazy one and ask what on earth he dreamt that has him so riled up. His voice gets shaky as he says, "A bad dream. It was a bad dream. Dad caused a big accident and ran away, and Yash left me and Mom and ran away too. And Mom..." He can't even finish the last part, and says that's why he lived hating Dad and Yash, and never looked for them. Mom pets him on the head like he's a little boy telling them a silly story, and Shaurya clutches her hand to his face with such relief. But suddenly a new voice cuts in, and Anokhi is standing in the kitchen asking cheerily about what's for breakfast. Shaurya shoots up to ask angrily what she's doing here, but everyone acts like this is perfectly normal and Yash calls her their pretty little niece. Shaurya sinks in his seat and realizes that it's a dream after all, and mutters teary-eyed that he doesn't want to wake up. Breakfast continues on around him, and Shaurya starts grasping at straws- technically the tablecloth - to convince them that if he can feel the texture of the lace, this can't be a dream. In actuality, we've fast-forwarded to October 4, 2013, and Shaurya is grabbing at a corner of Anokhi's lacy skirt as he sleep-talks aloud that this isn't a dream. He pulls her closer and starts rubbing his face all over her skirt, and she yelps, "Pervert!" before slugging him with a right hook. Thus breakfast (at the family's city apartment) starts off with a black eye for Shaurya, and Grandpa yells at Anokhi for being impudent to her uncle. They may have moved off the island, but the family dynamic remains pretty much the same. Grandpa says that Anokhi's smart mouth is why she gets called Blunt Witch, and she just argues, "I'm smart and I'm pretty. If I'm nice on top of that, isn't the world just too unfair?"
LOL.
Dad andAnokhi are apparently giving each other the silent treatment, which of course means that they spend the morning talking through Shaurya ("Yashnim, will you tell your niece," "Uncle, will you tell Dad"), and saying whatever they please. The point of contention is Anokhi's employment, or lack thereof, and Dad can't believe she has the nerve to criticize her uncle when he at least is gainfully employed as a taxi driver. She guffaws that this time, she's made it to the last round of interviews to be a reporter, and Dad counters that studying for three years just to make it to the final round of interviews isn't a thing to be proud of. As Shaurya cuts out his egg yolk to pass Anokhi the whites and she does the reverse (that's so cute), he says that if she fails again this'll be the thirty-sixth time. She corrects him that it's the thirty-fifth, and she'll really make it this time. Dad says that if she fails, he's going by the letter of the law, and we see that a contract has been taped up to the wall. It's a contract concerning Anokhi's employment after graduating college, which states that she gets to apply to be a reporter for a period of three years, after which she'll drop that career path. If she fails, on top of picking a new field, she's also contracted to go on blind dates on Dad's orders. It's signed and dated October 5, which means she has one more day to make good on her end of the deal, or it's blind dates and a new career for her. It turns out that Anokhi's last-hope interview is at Jagruk Nation, where her mother Devi is now a department chief and anchor. Her long-time coworker Ketan waits to pick her up at the airport with another staffer. Preetam says that one of the new interviewees has Pinocchio syndrome, but she's Devi's daughter so they have to take her, no matter how absurd it is to have a reporter who can't lie. Mom arrives from a trip overseas and is as cold as ever, ready to go straight back to work. Shaurya spends the morning rubbing Grandpa's shoulders, while Grandpa flashes him a picture of the pizza place's daughter, wanting him to date her now that he's broken up with his last girlfriend. Shaurya quickly says he already has a new girlfriend, and clearly invents one on the spot. Dad and Grandpa ask about her, so he says her name is Priyanka, and that she's got a good voice, hee. Dad points out that he described his last girlfriend Meera in exactly the same words: nice, smart, and has a good voice. Shaurya just tries to wave it off, and Anokhi figures that it must be his type. She advises him to fix up his style a little, because he's clearly getting dumped because of his appearance. Grandpa seems interested in that tidbit, and asks Anokhi if Shaurya's style is really that bad. She says it's downright rotten. Shaurya doesn't seem the least bit concerned, and says he wouldn't date a girl who'd leave him for superficial reasons anyway, and then follows Anokhi to her room to ask quietly where her last interview is. Her answer is the last thing he wants to hear: Jagruk Nation, where her mom works. She sent Mom a text letting her know that she'd be coming. As they clear a path in the parking lot for Shaurya's car (with a banner for the Fireworks Festival waving in the background), he asks if she really thinks that the number she's been texting all these years is really her mom's. He argues that no response for ten years means that she either changed her number, or she doesn't care. Anokhi gets defensive and says that her mom is busy and has been abroad, but Shaurya says that she's just setting herself up for disappointment. She just thinks he and Dad are the same and asks if he's ever met her mother. Of course he can't answer that question honestly. Anokhi says she only believes in things she can see, just like she believed in him eight years ago. He gets into his cab with a long sigh, remembering how Anokhi came to his defense when they were in school. He starts the car, and LOL-the screen on his dash pops up voice-cameos to tell him to put on his seatbelt. Shaurya asks his new girlfriend, "Priyanka, what should I do?" GPS: "Drive safely!" Dad finds Shaurya's wallet on the floor on his way out, and picks it up to try and catch him before he leaves. But when he opens it up, he finds a picture of Anokhi inside, which gives him pause. And when he looks down toward the parking lot, he sees Shaurya staring at Anokhi as she walks away from him. Shaurya ends up swinging by the bus stop to give Anokhi a ride, and she puts up a fight until he offers not to charge her. She sits in the backseat like a customer just to spite him, and he softens a little and asks if she wants to buy his dream. He says it's a good dream where he met people he's been wanting to see for a long time, and maybe it'll bring her a happy reunion with her mother. She can't resist that, and bargains him down to 5000 rupees to buy his dream, so he snaps a button off of his shirt as a receipt of payment. She calls him immature, but immediately threads the button onto her necklace for safekeeping. When she asks who the people in his dream were, he brushes it off as something she doesn't need to know. Shubh Savera reporter Shaan hangs out at the police station pressroom and notes to Preetam (who's busy repeatedly entering the ridiculous combination of search terms: "handsome reporter Keertan") that Devi has wasted no time - she's only just returned to the country, and already she's Jagruk Nation's nightly news anchor and section chief. Preetam doesn't hesitate one beat before agreeing wholeheartedly with Shaan, who calls Devi's brand of showmanship nothing short of a con job. Preetam confirms that Devi is as much an image-conscious entertainer as she is a reporter, and recounts all the times she's faked things for the camera, like going out to buy a pair of children's shoes so she could hold it up at the scene of a bus crash, or kneeling in a flash flood to appear waist-deep in water when really everyone else is walking past her only soaked to their knees. The rival station reporters are a little surprised that Preetam is so quick to trash his boss, but he argues that he's a reporter so he's just speaking the truth. Shaan just stares and wryly calls him out on his one-man quest to make "handsome reporter Keertan" a popular search term. Anokhi heads to the beauty salon and asks the makeup artist to make her look like her mother, pointing to her picture in the paper. I love that the stylist just rolls her eyes at Anokhi's a-reporter-is-not-an-announcer speech, and tells her assistant to give her the announcer interviewee special. A text makes Anokhi jump out of her chair, and she re-reads it to make sure she didn't imagine it: It's a text from Mom, the first in thirteen years. All it says is, "Fighting." Anokhi's face lights up, and she swoons as if it's the best present she's ever received. The stylist just stands there confused, as Anokhi says over and over, "Can you believe it?! My mom texted me!" She calls Shaurya to tell him the news, and he starts to argue against the likelihood that it was really her mother, but catches himself and just says unconvincingly that she's right and he's sure she'll get hired today. She kisses the button around her neck and says his dream was lucky after all. Shaurya asks his navi-girlfriend if Anokhi is innocent or stupid, and GPS replies that he's entering a children's safety zone. He nods and answers that she's right-Anokhi IS a child. It turns out that he's had a customer in the backseat this whole time, and the foreigner says into his phone in English that his cabbie seems like a crazy person. After dropping him off, Shaurya notices a grandpa across the street looking troubled, and stops to ask if he needs help. The grandpa accidentally rolled his wheelbarrow into a truck, and doesn't know how to contact the truck owner since he doesn't have a cell phone. Shaurya sweetly offers to take care of the problem and sends the grandpa on his way, and leaves a note for the driver to call him, taking the blame for the accident. He crosses the street and takes a call from Dad (ha, saved in his phone as the hilariously incongruent "Younger brother") and finds out then that he dropped his wallet at home. Meanwhile, the truck driver comes out, and omo, it's Yash! Omo. Turn around! Turn arouuuund! Yash reads the note and checks the dent in his bumper, and thinks the scratch too minor to make a fuss over.