Ziddi Ishq, written and directed by Raj Chakraborty, is the story of a girl named Mehul, who goes on a quest to find out what happened to her neighbor, Shekhar Da, who was not only her mentor and a good friend but also somebody she had a huge crush on. I felt that the problem with Ziddi Ishq was that the screenplay was not able to flesh out the characters in a manner that could leave any kind of impact or make the viewers invested in the so-called revenge saga. That was why at times you couldn’t understand the potency of the emotions the characters felt. Also, I have to point out that I didn’t like the creative decisions taken by the team, specifically when it came to the ending. I would have still bought it, but for a dramatic scene to be believable, it should be executed with a lot of conviction. If you are defying logic and opting for an over-dramatic execution, the dialogue, the screenplay, and the performances should be of such a caliber that one doesn’t mind leaving logic behind and getting invested in character arcs. Again reiterating that I do not have any issue with the larger-than-life characterizations, but here, in this case, the performers weren’t given a strong base, and no matter how hard they tried, the scenes never left an imprint. That said, let’s find out what happened in the series, what happened to Shekar Da, and if Mehul was able to find the truth at the end.
Spoiler Alert
How did Shekhar meet his fateful end?
Shekhar Datta lived right next to Mehul, and they both shared a very beautiful bond. Shekhar was a bit older than Mehul, but that didn’t stop the girl from imagining her entire life with him. Mehul’s friends hyped her up and asked her to at least tell him how she felt about him. But for the longest time, Mehul couldn’t find the courage to do so. Maybe there was a part of her that was scared that her tinsel town would be shattered if the man didn’t reciprocate her feelings. She used to go to his place to study, and Shekhar very sincerely helped Mehul and always motivated her to do well in her academics. Shekhar did not refrain from voicing his opinions, and at times he protested against the dwindling state of law and order in the country. Shekhar got a job at a company called Unicorn, and that was where things started to go downhill for him. Shekhar started dating a girl named Sayantika Chatterjee, who was his college friend and now his colleague at Unicorn. Shekhar made Mehul meet Sayantika, and obviously Mehul felt shattered. When Shekhar called Mehul over to his place and told her that he wanted to tell her something, she felt that finally that day had arrived when Shekhar would confess his feelings for her. But the naive girl didn’t understand that he probably never saw her that way. Maybe if Mehul had been a few years older, Shekhar wouldn’t have minded being in a relationship with her. She was young, yet Shekhar considered her to be a very good friend. That was why, when he entered a relationship, she was the first person he told about it. But then one day something unprecedented happened, and Mehul was never able to make peace with that incident. Sayantika filed a molestation complaint against Shekhar. He was labeled a lecherous man, and soon after that, he took his own life. Mehul could never understand how a man who talked about hope, who saw the positive side of things, could take his own life. Moreover, Mehul never believed that her Shekhar Da was capable of molesting anybody. But that was what came out in the investigation, and Mehul had to gulp down the bitter truth.
What was Solanki Majumdar hiding?
Mehul would have never come to know about what exactly happened to Shekhar if Mousumi Ganguly hadn’t joined her company as her boss. Mehul realized that it was Mousumi who had taken Shekhar’s interview when he had applied for a job at Unicorn, and in fact she was his immediate boss. Mehul wanted to ask Mousumi what her take was on the entire scandal. Mousumi made it very clear that she didn’t want to talk about the incident. Moreover, Mehul was a bit surprised that she had left a big company like Unicorn and joined her company. Soon after that, Mehul left her job, or maybe it would be better to say that she got fired, as she got into an argument with Mousumi and even broke the windshield of her car. Mehul felt that Mousumi knew the truth, and she wasn’t revealing anything because she was involved in some way. Anand, Mehul’s colleague, and somebody who liked her more than a friend, being the good Samaritan that he was, applied at Unicorn on her behalf. Mehul was a bit surprised when she bumped into the CEO of Unicorn, Siddharth Roy Chowdhury, the day she went to give an interview at the office, and he offered her a job without even knowing how her interview went. He told her she would be on probation for a month, and if her boss liked her work, she would be made a permanent hire. Meanwhile, Mehul decided to investigate the matter on her own, and she went to Sayantika’s house and found out that the girl had gotten married and hadn’t come back home for about 2 months. Sayantika’s parents gave Mehul the number of a friend of hers, and Mehul tried to get in touch with her. Though that friend didn’t tell Mehul anything, the latter received an anonymous message on her phone, asking her to come to Darjeeling if she wanted to know the truth. Mehul couldn’t meet the anonymous person, as surprisingly Siddharth’s right-hand man, Raka, arrived at the scene in Darjeeling and chased her before she could make any breakthroughs. Raka saw Mehul in the office after that incident, but he did not recognize her. With Anand’s help, Mehul got to know that Raka had a sister, whom he met on a regular basis. Mehul went to meet this woman, Solanki, and after literally fighting with her physically, she was able to get some information from her. Solanki told Mehul that Raka had killed her fiance, as apparently after she got pregnant, the man had declined to marry her. But that was not the entire truth. At a much later stage in the series, it was revealed that Solanki was pregnant with Siddharth’s baby, and he had threatened her not to tell anybody about it. She was scared for the life of her newborn baby, and so she kept quiet. Raka was a loyal man, and on many occasions he had put his life at risk for Siddharth. Never in his wildest dreams could he have imagined that his boss had ruined the life of his sister and that poor lady couldn’t even tell her brother about it.
Who killed Sayantika?
The person who had messaged Mehul and asked her to meet in Darjeeling was none other than Sayantika. Shekhar and Sayantika were dating, but then the latter realized that in order to climb the ladder of success, she needed to be in the good books of her boss, Siddharth. Siddharth had a reputation for being a ladies’ man (actually, lecherous would be more apt), and he got attracted to Sayantika. Shekhar kept telling Sayantika that she was digging her own grave, but she didn’t listen to him. There were many times when Shekhar felt ridiculed and disrespected because it was an open secret that his girlfriend was having an affair with their boss. Mousumi liked how hard-working Shekhar was, and so she organized a party at her place and called her team over so that Shekhar and Sayantika could mend their differences. But instead, things got worse. Sayantika passed a lewd remark about Mehul, and Shekhar couldn’t hold himself back. He slapped Sayantika, after which she filed a complaint against him.
Sayantika soon realized that she had committed a huge mistake by trusting Siddharth. She forced Siddharth to get married to her, as she got to know about his affair with Solanki. Siddharth did marry her, but then he held her captive at his Darjeeling cottage, and he didn’t let her leave. Meanwhile, Mehul did everything. To come close to Siddharth, as she knew that that was the only way she could find the truth. Siddharth asked Mehul to accompany him to Darjeeling for a mini vacation, and the latter accepted. During the trip, when Siddharth was leaving the cottage for some work, Mehul followed him, and she managed to find out where he had held Sayantika. Mehul managed to meet Sayantika (there was a bizarre and absurd action sequence out of nowhere that led to their meeting), and that’s when she got to know the entire truth about what had happened. Sayantika apologized for what she did to Shekhar and the kind of impact it had on Mehul’s life. She told Mehul that Shekhar loved her and he couldn’t hear a word against her. Sayantika confronted Siddharth, and she told Raka that Solanki was carrying Siddharth’s son and not her fiancé’s. Siddharth lost his temper, and he shot her dead, and he told Raka to not pay attention to what she had said. But obviously the seed of doubt had been sown inside Raka, and he decided to take matters into his own hands.
Was Mehul able to take revenge on Siddhath?
In Ziddi Ishq’s ending, Siddharth came to meet Mehul, not knowing that she had seen him killing his wife, Sayantika. Mehul, till then, had decided that she had no choice but to confront Siddharth and go after his life. Meanwhile, Raka went to meet his sister, and she accepted that whatever he had heard was the truth. I didn’t understand why, if it was so simple, she hadn’t told her brother before. I mean, it was not like Siddharth was keeping a watch on her at all times, and Raka did meet her, at her son’s school, every now and then. Anyways, Anand and Mousumi filed a complaint at the local police station, and they collected enough evidence against Siddharth to prove that he ruined the lives of many girls. Siddharth was shocked when Mehul confronted him and asked him questions about Shekhar Da. Shekhar didn’t commit suicide, as Mehul had expected, it was Siddharth who had killed him and then made it look like he had taken his own life. Mehul killed Siddharth in the end and avenged the death of a man she loved the most in this world. Another fascinating thing happened at the end, which I didn’t know if I should address in this article or not, because it somewhat made me cringe. So apparently on Shekhar’s last Holi, when he made Mehul meet Sayantika, Mehul had mixed vermillion in the Holi color. So according to her, she got married to Shekhar when he applied the color on her forehead (yeah, and I am not exaggerating). So in a way she couldn’t give up on the quest to find the truth or move on in life because she was his wife and owed it to him. Oh yeah, things ended on that note, and a toxic man who had ruined the lives of so many people met the kind of ending he thoroughly deserved.
