The second episode of the new season takes the audience down an uncertain path.

Dhruv gets some bad news at work, while Kavya flourishes on the other side of the city.

Kavya’s boss thinks she is ready for more responsibility and offers her a promotion with a raise, which she happily accepts. Dhruv’s boss asks him to consider quitting his job, because his performance has been inadequate. 

Later during lunch, Kavya calls Dhruv to give him the happy news and Dhruv realises it might not be the time to share his day with her. They talk for a while and then go about their day again.

The thing I loved most about this scene is that Dhruv was unsure and tense but he chose to keep that to himself just to make sure that Kavya stays in a positive mood. We rarely get to see characters who are emotionally mature enough to do something like that.

In the evening, Kavya reminds Dhruv that they’re supposed to attend her boss’s housewarming party. Of course, he is tired and does not feel like socialising, but he still agrees to go with her. This was rather painful to watch—Dhruv struggling in his career and Kavya being unaware of it all.

At the party, Kavya’s friend has a rather interesting conversation with Dhruv. She tells him about an algorithm that predicts how much time a person will spend with their parents through the course of their life. She tells them that they all have roughly one year left. All the time they will spend with their parents going forward will add up to less than a year.

Dhruv feels even more miserable after learning this and wants to escape that conversation. It feels like he cannot catch a break, negative thoughts and ideas have been following him throughout the day.

In an interesting parallel, we see Kavya’s boss and his wife having a rough time too. The new house they have purchased has quickly become a burden for them. There are issues with the water supply and parking facilities in the building. On top of that, his wife has been asked to stay home for 40 days to take care of the house. She finds that practice sexist and antiquated, which further becomes a root for disagreement between them.

Dhruv continues to sit alone while all these things are unfolding and imagines what it would be like to finally tell Kavya that he quit his job. How supportive she would be and how they’ll figure it out together going forward.

After leaving the party, Kavya and Dhruv are making smalltalk with each other when Dhruv finally blurts out “I quit my job...kind of.” Kavya asks him what he meant by that and he tells her that his boss did not find his performance upto the mark and so he had no choice but to quit.

Kavya reacts the opposite way to what Dhruv had expected and the two get into a huge fight about how Dhruv had the option to convince his boss to give him another chance. 

Watching them fight was heartbreaking. It shatters the illusion of the perfect couple that the show has built over the years. 

Once they get home, Kavya tells Dhruv that he doesn’t have to worry about getting a new job right away as long as he lets Kavya help his parents pay off their loan. There’s uncertainty in the air and things don’t go back to normal immediately, but there is hope for a better future and so this episode ends on that ambiguous note where Dhruv and Kavya are on a new journey and they don’t know what will become of them going forward.

3/5.