Originally posted by: skanda12
Shyamala:
What a super piece of analysis! When I saw the episode yesterday, I was thinking, there is so much happening on so many different fronts, and all of it seems important, so what does one start to talk about. Yet your post has done full justice to what we saw yesterday '
I want to indulge myself here on one point that strikes me strongly:
THERE IS MUCH MORE TO THESE TWO SHARTHS THAN THEIR FACE VALUE WOULD SUGGEST.
To explain what I mean, I need to set the arguments out '
There are three related issues here for me:
1. What will the sharth scene be like? Is the precap a true indication of what may come?
2. Why would Jodha lay the sharths to accept the marriage? What would her logic likely be based on?
3. Why would Jalal accept the marriage sharths despite Jodha's obvious recalcitrance? What would his logic be based on?
OK, so here are the arguments one by one '
What will the sharth scene be like? Is the precap a true indication of what may come?
I think the precap and promo are both misleading deliberately. I think the situation will be like this. Jodha will insist on meeting Jalal herself to iron out a few issues with him.
Why would she choose to talk to him directly and not send a message through her father? Well, if I were in Jodha's shoes, the credibility of her whole family is now in question for her. Not one of them "rats" had the elementary decency to tell her the truth (even if she demurred, what stopped them?) ' and right up to the point of yesterday, some further methods of subterfuge to hide the truth were still on the minds of the family (kangan bandhan, face in water etc etc.) Jodha must have decided in that one silent moment of resolve at the end of yesterday's episode that "apna haath jagannath", and that she alone could do anything to salvage her life hereafter and there is no use asking anybody else to do anything for her.
Now according to me (and this is pure speculation), she will ask to talk directly to Jalal. I don't know if he will come to see her alone (as the promo shows) or with an entourage (like the precap shows). It is likely that after listening to her two sharths, some one of the others in Jalal's entourage (in that room or outside of it ' and most probably Maham) may rise in antagonism against Jodha's sharths. This is when Jalal may himself rise angrily to shut the objections of Maham or whoever else! Jalal may say "I am marrying Jodha - the Muslims are not marrying the Hindus. And it is my wish to give her the freedom to pray as she chooses to the God she chooses. Agra is a home and it is not a jail. I have done an alliance with the Rajputs to bring them into the Greater Hindustan fold, and to gain their cooperation, not to crush them to become clones of us. Since I have done the allliance with a view to embrace the Rajputs into my fold for a larger cause of Hindustan, I have to respect whatever they come with and demonstrate this acceptance ' hence mujhe dono sharth manjoor hai!"
Maham's mouth (along with other mouths, including Jodha's and Bharmal's) may all fall open at the same precise moment - leading to a new ceremony to be named "mooh kholaayi"!
Okay, so now let's see why Jodha may lay the sharths to accept the marriage? What would her logic likely be based on?
The obvious and superficial reason could be that her family has pulled the emotional blackmail on her that her father and his word and his worth would all take a beating, as would Amer and its praja, if she refused this marriage of "alliance". Moreover they may say that Jalal may become extremely intransigent if his "allaince offer" were to be refused in a public show like this marriage. I think, however, that notwithstanding the blackmail points, the real value of these two sharths is entirely different.
These two sharths of Jodha are her own way of sizing up Jalal. She has always heard that he was "kroor" and ruthless. But what was he like personally? What were his values? How did he decide when he had to decide on tricky issues? Upon reflection in that room alone, it must have struck Jodha that she knew very little of Jalal except what she's "bought" about him from hearsay and some personal experience. I think in that moment of resolve to go ahead with the marriage after Mainavati talks to her about "maan-maryada" etc. Jodha decides that she has a serious knowledge gap where Jalal is concerned, and she knows only his public persona and nothing about the inner man that he is.
Remember how Jalal cleverly offered sherbet and mithai to Bharmal to size him up before the alliance talks began? I feel as if Jodha's two sharths are of the same category as "feelers". She is both stating her dearest wishes, but she is also sizing up Jalal by his responses. I think it is creditable that he will rise to her expectations or possibly even exceed them through his positive reply. She will be able to decide, I think, that despite his dreadful reputation he is a man she could do business with. After those sharths are accepted we may generally find Jodha subdued and going through the marriage rituals in some peace (except maybe for that clothes-burning high point when she gets needled by him beyond her ability to bear things).
Why would Jalal accept the marriage sharths despite Jodha's obvious recalcitrance? What would his logic be based on?
The two sharths are also Jalal's own opportunity to know for sure that Jodha has agreed to marry him at least for some reasons beyond just being loyal and sacrificial to her father's word. Jalal has seen clearly already that Jodha has not been told that she is marrying him. The girl has been cheated by her kith and kin. He even tells Maham it is not her fault that she ran away at the muh dikhayi, because it was clear that his face as the bridegroom was a total surprise to her.
On the face of it this scene could look as if Jalal is gloating over the satisfaction of the public jhatka that Jodha has got for taking pangas against him, and Jodha's two sharths may also look like more evidence of her "ghamandi" attitude, her temerity in laying conditions on the Shahenshah even when her family were the underdogs in the alliance. But my feeling is that these two sharths mean something else entirely to Jalal.
Upon reflection, Jalal must see these two sharths as a very positive indication that Jodha has made an attempt to rise above her family's "balidaan" of her to try and find her own small platform for reconciliation with this marriage. Jalal would also know that if he said "No" to the sharths, Jodha would have no recourse but to relapse into that "sacrificial goat" for the rest of her life with him. On the other hand, if he said "Yes" to her sharths, he at least would know that she had stepped outside out her family's blackmail into re-asserting her own stakes in this marriage. Her two sharths would surely tell him that Jodha is ready to rise above her family to enter this marriage "on her terms" whatever those terms may be! She could have asked for "xyz" but the fact that she asked for something of her own rather than something for her family's sake must surely signal to Jalal that she is ready to take tentative personal control on the flow of events?
To sum up, I see these two sharths as the attempt of two individuals to say to each other '
Jodha: "If you agree to my terms, I think I could at least do business with you even if I otherwise hate you. You may have one reasonable side of you I could begin to work with '"
Jalal: "The fact that you've laid these two sharths on me tells me you are now ready to do this for yourself and not just for your family. I am happy you are doing this for you not for someone else '"
I don't know how many of you all will agree with my analysis above, but I think it would be shallow to see these sharths as a "communal harmony" thing or even a "religious autonomy" thing. I think its about two people signalling to each other that that they are beginning to see some small space of commonality between them - to begin a marriage of strange antecedents.
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