What happens when you are finally done with a show that had been a constant companion to your waking hours?
A show that had become an integral part of your life?
A show that you had grown to become one with so much so that any twist and turn in it had the power to bring out varied emotional outbursts in you?
Well don’t know about you but for me, there is a strange sense of vacuum when I am finally done with the six seasons of Orange Is The New Black. I know the final season will come after a few days but I am somehow overcome with a sense of loss. I had grown to like, love, hate, despise and pity so many characters in the show. I had been repulsed by many incidents, I had been overcome with love by certain others. But there wasn’t any point in my life when a thought came that there will be an end to it all. I felt the show will go on and on.
I had been so used to going back to them, the characters, the turn of events, the prison politics and everything in the series that some sort of a dependence had been created because of it. During the despondent moments, during my difficult times, instead of feeling miserable and shedding endless tears, I had gone to my favourite series. Tastyee, Alex, Nichols, Lorna, Piper, Red, Gloria, Diaz, Joe Caputo, Fig, Rosa, Frieda and so many others had grown to become the quintessential part of my life.
This pain of parting with them is terrible. When the inmates rioted, I had been a part of the gang war, when Piper got an early release, my heart broke to imagine how she will stay away from her beloved Alex, when Gloria was talking about her son in prison, away from him, while he was fighting with death at a hospital, I cried with her. Somewhere deep down I was probably overcome with pangs of inadequacy for not being able to bear a child. When Ruiz said how the birth of her daughter changed her life, I realised I might not be able to feel the beauty of such an emotion where one willingly changes completely for another one because I shall never know what is it giving birth to a life. Rosa was a character who wasn’t there till the end but the strength of her character endured.
Ohhhhh Tastyee! You were my favourite character in the show. When you won the first prize at the prison career fair, I was proud for you. When you were a little one at the orphanage and tried so much to get adopted by a family, I wanted to run to you and hug you tight. I liked everything about you. The way you spoke, the way you cried, the way you stood out for your friends, the way you handled situations, the way you described the plight of the blacks in the US, took my breath away.
I can’t believe when but I just fell in love with this amazing lady.
Her fight became mine, her small victories were mine and when she went down in the end, I couldn’t control my tears for a long time. And that’s why I have my fondness for her friend in the most difficult hour, Joe Caputo, who fought till the end to save her. This is one man who proved power, position, money aren’t everything to everybody. His love story with Fig was also unusual and sweet in its own way.
Watching this series gave me an idea of the condition of US prisons, the underlying corruption rotting down the system and how miserably people have to lead their lives in many quarters.
I don’t know why right now I want to go out and meet the characters I had seen all these months, I want to get into their world and know more.
The wait begins for the final series to arrive.
Discoverer's Eye 