Barrister Babu shook its audience with its 345th episode. Bondita is seen lashing at Anirudh. She tells him he is no longer her happy Barristra Babu (a misspelled term she has been using instead of Barrister since childhood). He is simply Anirudh Roy Chaudhary. A man filled with enmity, a man who does not let his emotions change his decisions. This was a plot twist nobody saw it coming. Today’s episode was a power-packed one.
Some are happy to see the bold Bondita back on screen after acting like a lovesick puppy for so long. Some are confused about Bondita’s decision. Some think she’s just as much at fault as Anirudh. If you fall into the latter half categories, this article is for you.
As a literature enthusiast who analyzes everything she reads in fiction and dissects it for fun, the episode was wonderful. It did the characters justice. It didn’t water down the character’s personalities and behaviors. First, let us talk about Bondita. It is Bondita’s nature to not let go of her family, however toxic they may be. She believes everyone should be given second chances. When she came back from London, Anirudh’s ignorance and indifference to her existence hurt her. She admired him the most. She put him on the pedestal of God because he had empowered her to pursue an education, even if it meant risking his own life (which he did many times).
It isn’t easy to let such a person go. Especially for Bondita, who values family over anything else.
Everything she did post-leap was to regain the most important figure in her life (read: Anirudh). She cannot be judged for her fixation on getting the old Anirudh back.
She did her best to get the old Anirudh to resurface. Through the Vayanti and Sanyasini track, Bondita tried creating new memories with Anirudh and rekindle the old relationship they shared. In the Sanyasini track, she put in a lot of faith in Anirudh to end the enmity with her before she became a Sanyasini. And yet, he did not relent. He kept calling her a spy (but a human nonetheless). He put her down in front of everyone, his family members, and even Somnath. He refused to call her anything but a spy. Throughout his conversation with Sonmath, he said, “Bondita is a spy, but she’s a human first.”
Not only this, but Sumati got hurt too, which was an added fuel to the fire.
Bondita’s anger is justified because her trust in the relationship she shared with Anirudh was broken. She never believed that her Sakha Babu would be so cold, even if it came to Bondita’s life. The shocking realization that the relationship she shared with him when she was a kid, when she was Vajyanti, was all a waste, dawned on her.
She always believed she could bring back her Sakha Babu back if she tried hard enough, that love could heal anyone (which isn’t true). And this was a direct challenge to that opinion.
This is empowering. Considering how society considers women to rehab centres for broken men, women think it is their duty to heal men. And as a psychology enthusiast, I can vouch for this. It never works. Love wouldn’t heal problems. Society has conditioned women to break themselves apart to fix men up. By this episode, makers have challenged that notion.
Bondita decided she had enough. She wouldn’t run after a man who wouldn’t fix himself. She would live her own life.
And I believe this is a message we as a society needed.
P.S. Love doesn’t heal away all your problems. You cannot heal your partner’s problems. The only thing you can do is stand by them while they fix themselves and motivate them, but in the end, the decision is up to them. Now, the decision is up to Anirudh. Not Bondita. Barrister Babu is showing the truth and we should praise it for that.