‘Dui Shaw’ Episode 3 Recap & Ending Explained: Why Does Antara Keep On Forgetting? 

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Antara, the penultimate episode of Dui Shaw, hinges on the open ending of Pett Kata Shaw’s “Mishti Kichu.” In this episode, we meet a woman who seems to be in a marital union with the devil himself. However, she does not remember anything from before her marriage. A partial metaphor for how women are made to abandon their individuality after they enter into marital unions and remain subservient to their husbands, Antara mirrors Mishti Kichu’s central horror and presents a twin horror but with its antithesis—the horror of forgetting.

Spoilers Ahead


When does Antara find out that she is trapped in her marital life?

The opening shot of the episode shows a woman waking up on a boat at night. We do not know where she really is, as the time and place get dissolved quickly. In the next shot, the woman wakes up and realizes that she was just dreaming. She turns around and sees her husband sleeping next to her. She shares a rustic zamindar house with her husband. Her daily routine involves cleaning around the house and speaking on the phone with a female relative whom she refers to as ‘bhabi.’ However, whenever Antara tries to strike up a conversation with her elderly husband, asking him about his writing job, her husband seems disinterested and walks away. Antara is aware that a little girl has been spying on her for days. The girl’s curious disposition makes Antara chuckle. Nothing here seems to hint that Antara is unhappy. 

One day, Antara calls the little girl upstairs and brings her inside her house. She tries to forge a friendship with the little girl. While chit-chatting with the girl, she reveals something that Antara shrugs off as a child’s whimsical story at first. The girl, Maya, tells Antara that the man she thinks of as her husband is not really her real husband. In fact, the little girl proclaims that Antara’s real husband is dead, and that she has seen her current husband at his funeral. Antara is not ready to attach much gravity to the child’s gobbledygook. However, her husband, the one we see, confirms that Maya is not at all lying. Maya adds that she had witnessed a distraught Antara following her current husband like a lost puppy after her real husband died. 

The current husband tells Antara that he is not a human, and then mimes having horns on his head, hinting that he is Iblis. He then poses a question to Antara—and in doing so —to the viewers: he whispers the evil thoughts to the people, and those who are good completely ignore his words, but those who are bad follow them—so does that make him the root of evil? The man then holds the little girl’s hands and goes outside to drop her off. 

As the child joins her friends outside, the man, or the Shaitaan, spots a little boy standing in the bushes. He understands that the boy has a crush on Maya. Iblis then whispers evil thoughts into the boy’s ears. He persuades the boy to hurt the girl, which would inevitably cause the girl to desire him. The boy then goes to Maya and keeps pushing her multiple times. Antara notices this and finds this abnormal, especially since the boy has started acting weird after her husband whispered something in his ear. The boy does not stop pushing until he has got Maya on the main road. A van mows down Maya. Witnessing Maya’s bloodied, inanimate body, Antara starts screaming. It is pertinent to point out that this is the same little boy who is warned by the palmist of Bhaggo Bhalo that he will soon be under the influence of the Shaitaan. 

The narrative suddenly cuts to a close-up shot of a teacup. We see Antara preparing tea for her husband and repeat the same question that she asks every day: “How is your writing going?” This is a hint of what is about to come, that Antara will continuously find herself sliding down the spiral of living, forgetting, and reliving. 


Antara expresses her doubt 

While in a conversation with her husband, Antara realizes that she does not remember anything from her life before her marriage to him. She cannot recall her birthday, or her horoscope sign, or even the place where she lived before her marriage. More menacingly, Antara finds an advertisement in one of her old magazines. With the tagline, “Made for each other,” the ad portrays a husband and a wife. Antara notices that someone has scribbled a pair of horns on the husband’s head. She also finds all the bottles of sauces and oils have somehow developed toxicity labels on them. Furthermore, it seems that someone has specifically marked words like ‘warning’ and ‘stay away’ for Antara to notice. Antara calls her bhabi and tells her about these weird developments. The woman on the other end of the phone tells Antara that her husband has procured the magazines so that she stays calm while he is away. Antara finds it weird that the woman is aware that it is her husband who got the magazines out for her. Antara realizes that she cannot recall seeing this woman ever. When she asks if she has ever seen the woman, the woman disconnects the call. Bewildered, she goes downstairs to ask the neighbor if she remembers when she came to this place. The old neighbor empathizes with Antara and tells her that a woman is destined to forget what she has left behind after her marriage. As Antara leaves, the woman, who was simply a stranger to her before this, addresses her by her name, which leaves Antara even more confused. 

That night, Antara joins her husband at a jalsa organized at their house, with masked men playing various classical musical instruments. These are the ghosts of the masked men of “Waqt” who are now trapped in an eternal hell with Iblis as their ringmaster. The little boy, who murdered Maya, is also there serving food to the couple. Antara seems disinterested and disgusted throughout. Her husband, Iblis, narrates the story of his first love. One day, while wandering through a garden, his eyes fell on an exceptionally beautiful woman. Alluding to the story of Adam and Eve, Iblis recounts how he slithered in to win the woman, who already had a husband. 


Why Does Antara Keep On Forgetting? 

Antara wakes up in the middle of the night on a boat. The boatman tells her that what she sees now is all a part of a big lie. She is puzzled to see that the boatman resembles her husband, Mahmud. Mahmud tells her that she will remain stuck in this loop forever, which means she may find the truth about her condition, but she will eventually forget it. 

Antara wakes up, and she realizes that she had been dreaming. She walks around the house with a lamp looking for something. There is a chipped bit of wallpaper that has caught Antara’s attention for a while. She tears at it and bares the wall underneath, where someone has scribbled a warning—“Your husband is not human.” She finds a box containing all her personal belongings—actual personal belongings from her past life—which includes a withered and pressed flower and a vintage photograph with her husband, Mahmud. However, Iblis finds her, and we do not see what happens to her. The next morning, Antara is back serving tea to her husband. This obliteration of memory is perhaps what Mahmud had warned her about, which remains in our memory but evaporates from the memory of Antara. 


For Antara, time is a flat circle

The narrative at this crucial juncture introduces an ensemble sequence of moments where Antara simply stirs tea. At first, Antara stirs the tea for her non-human husband and suddenly recalls the little girl, Maya, who does not visit her anymore. The second instance comes with a slight variation. She stirs the cup, but it is not followed by her usual inquiry about her husband’s writing job. Rather, Antara asks an unseen person about his business. However, when the person offscreen shows his face, Antara is shocked and uncomfortable and asks for her husband, Mahmud. By the third repetition, Antara’s unhinged mental state is unleashed. Antara lives in an ‘eternal recurrence,’ mirroring Rust Cohle’s enunciation, “Time is a flat circle.” We might be watching Antara stirring sugar into the tea for the n-th time, but each time Antara stirs the cup, it is the first time for her. 


How has Iblis managed to keep Antara trapped?

Again, Antara is seen with the teacup, but by this time she realizes that her current husband is the culprit behind the murders of both her husband and the little girl and the architect of her entrapment. Antara expresses her desire to run away, but her husband, Iblis, does not let her. The telephone rings, and she sees this as a perfect opportunity to expose her husband. Iblis mimics the voice of Antara’s bhabi, and it dawns on her that the character was an invention of her evil husband to keep her tied to her marital duties. The telephone call brings news of a medical report. Antara goes to the forbidden room of her husband and finds an ultrasonography report lying on what resembles a baby cot. Unaware of the occurrence of a consummation, Antara confronts her husband about the report. Iblis assures her that it is not a human baby but rather a void. Iblis has not been endowed with the power to create, so it is impossible for him to father a human child. He begs Antara to discipline him and turn him into a human. 

We learn that, unable to withstand the shock of losing her husband, Mahmud, Antara had followed Iblis and landed up at his house. Iblis has carefully obliterated all her memories and forged an understanding in Antara about her new and sole marital life. Her new husband has ensured that Antara remains satisfied with only one piece of information throughout her life: that her husband prefers his tea with condensed milk and four spoonfuls of sugar. So, whenever Antara, trying to piece together the mysteries, embarks on her quest to find the truth of her life, she is left traumatized by the weight of the knowledge, and she wishes to wipe out her memories. Iblis follows her wishes and acts accordingly. 


A commentary on the degradation of human morality

As the Shaitaan tries to display his grasp over humanity, Antara tries to burn him down. She realizes that the Shaitan, who is born of fire, would only die in an eternal fire. To set the fire, she uses newspaper clippings of harrowing human crimes. She mocks Iblis’ assumption about his indisputability and faith in his own power by reading out the newspaper reports detailing shameful human deeds. Gone are the days when the humans required the Shaitan to whisper in their ears, Antara tells her husband. Now, they surpass the devil every day with their degrading morality. Her husband reminds her that Antara had followed him of her own will. This is a cue for Antara to recall what she had long suppressed. The evil has managed to keep her under his spell because she has allowed him to do so. Every time she has wished her pains to be obliterated, the devil has answered consistently. While her husband Mahmud begged for infinite knowledge, which ultimately became the reason for his death, Antara continuously begs for the absence of it, which has kept her trapped and reliving the same trauma. 


How does Antara come to terms with the loss of her real husband? 

We see Antara again on the river, resting her head on Mahmud’s shoulder. Mahmud tells her that he is indeed her dead husband, who now lives only in her memories. Mahmud tells her that he remembers everything about Antara. However, Antara insists that Mahmud is just her imagination. Mahmud’s proclamation that he remembers everything from the day of their first date is due to the fact that Antara has imagined her ideal husband to be like that. Antara had a rather unsatisfying union with Mahmud. While it is true that the devil tormented her, it does not make Mahmud a greater husband in comparison. She remarks that she understands that Mahmud is a figment of her imagination as he seems to understand what she wants. The absence of this understanding was the reason for their marital discord. Antara realizes that she never got the time to grieve over the death of her husband. Instead, she chose to follow the devil. She pleads with Mahmud to go away and allow her to grieve his passing. Mahmud jumps into the river. The next morning, Antara wakes up and finds no one sleeping next to her. Finally, she makes tea not for any of her husbands, but for herself, and savors it. 


Damayanti Ghosh
Damayanti Ghoshhttps://letterboxd.com/deemem/
Damayanti is a Master of Arts in Film Studies from Jadavpur University. An inveterate admirer of the Hindi popular cinema, she takes equal pleasure in unearthing obscure animation and horror but does not let on much about it. Her favorite book is 'The Motorcycle Diaries'. Her favorite film is 'Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa'.


 

 

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