Reviews For Episode 5 Of Upanishad Ganga | Hindi TV Serial On DVD

Episode 5 of Upanishad Ganga brings us the influence and importance of vedas as the source of Dharma (in broad meaning) via the story of DaraShikoh, the son of Mughal emperor ShahJahan. The entire story is filmed into two segments and this episode explores its first segment.

This episode indirectly shows that lust for power, corrupts one, as we see that Shahjahan is on the death bed and all his sons are finding the opportunity to declare himself of the successor of the emperor. What more we need to say, as we know that Shahjahan was imprisoned by his own son Aurangzeb in his last days! But there is always a ray of light, and the eldest son (and thus the rightful successor – as per the lineage rule – of the throne) Dara Shikoh aka Dara was a noble and wise man.

He studied literary stuff not only from Islam but from Hindu religion also in detail. The episode explores the tale of Dara and his love for Vedas in a dramatic representation of the last days of Shahjahan’s life. We see that Dara was captured and imprisoned by his brother Aurangzeb who hates him. Despite of being in prison, we see Dara as calm and composed as he was as a free man! When asked by his son that why isn’t he look afraid on the approaching death?! Dara’s wise answer shows us his growth as a human with pure soul.

Zakir Hussain plays Dara very convincingly. He got the right dialogs and he delivers them with utmost sincerity. After seeing him as angry Rantakar, seeing him as Dara is a delight. Seeing K. K. Raina is even more delightful. He is in excellent form. See his body language and you can literally feel his acting talent. He simply slips into the character. Abhimanyu Singh have nothing much to do as Aurangzeb, he does whatever he needs to, convincingly.

Around half of the episode is the conversation between Dara and various people (usually one at a time). Due to that, the chances of the episode becoming boring were there. But the effective direction, perfect editing, wide dialogs and sincere performance made it really enjoyable.

The starting scene where we see Gaurishankar teaching about Chhandogya Upanishad to his students at the bank of river and a man was drawing his portrait, is definitely a good starting point. The camera angle is we can say, perfect, here.

The conversation between Aurangzeb and his men about Dara is a delight to watch. It represents a lot of things. How a man who seeks nothing but the power, sees nothing like relation or love, but can go to any extent to get to his target. The people who wanted to be his good book will always hover around him and push his thoughts in the way he like!

As the hymns are sung by a background singer, they looks fake when actors lip sync it. It is one of the down point of the episode. Dara’s conversation with his son is realistic. As a calm, composed and experienced man, Dara see the life from a different angle, than his so young, inexperienced, enthusiastic son (who wanted to live the life yet). The song Agar hai shauk milne ka have really nice wordings and it is sung nicely too. Again lip-syncing is not so convincing here.

The rest of the episode is having so much of good stuff to go for. The fantastic DVD quality makes it even more delightful to watch it. The sound is dubbed really well. It is definitely worth the money and time you spend to watch it.

It is worth to note that this episode is available to watch for Free on YouTube: