Friends, after seeing the episodes of the last two days (war episode and culprit exposure episode) I have six questions I cannot find satisfying answers for ...
Soo here are my questions to the Creatives of this serial:
Question 1: Is Jalal such a stupid General of War that his enmity of the Amer family has made him take the four Amer boys to war, only to be utterly surprised at the war tent in the middle the battleflield when his advisers suggested that the Amer boys could well be his enemies and not his wafaadaars? The way Jalal was shown as utterly surprised to hear of this possibility shocked me. Did the Creatives have in mind to portray Jalal as that kind of unthinking idiot?
Question 2: Again, was Jalal such an ass as to know that Sujaanpur guys could attack at night, but have no preparations for it? He was caught without any of his own force in sight, during that midnight attack, and he was surrounded by just two or three of his stupidest advisers who could barely handle swords. The Creatives have to be able to answer this question: just to be able to make the help of the four Amer boys heroic in a battle where Jalal was caught almost all alone, is it OK to make Jalal look like a strategic fool?
Question 3: Yet again, when Jodha decided to tell Jalal that it was she who poisoned Ruqaiya and caused the miscarriage, is it even reasonable to think that a man, who is any sort of decent King, would immediately reach for his sword and actually swing it to kill her on the spot? No matter what his outrageous rage at Jodha, and however angry or confused he may have been, the Creatives could have thought of at least twenty other ways for his to demonstrate blinding anger. But to make him his slash his sword to cut her was so pathetically juvenile, that I find it bordering on the ridiculous!
Question 4: When Jalal was in the hamam (the bath) he was for some reason feeling his wounds on the arm and neck and also remembering the way in which he acquired those wounds on the war field and how the Amer boys surrounded him to come to his rescue. But, pray, what was that expression of amusement on Jalal's face when he had that reverie. I could not place that expression, although I have seen the episode at least thrice. Was it a smugness that the Amer boys had to display their wafaadaari at any cost? Was it a kind of rueing that he was in that position of needing help? Was it satisfaction at the thought that he was now open to a new mind on the whole issue of Amer loyalty? What was it? If I can't make out what Jalal is feeling here, I am unable to know if he was indulging in a re-think of his position or indulging in more folly!
Question 5: What is his reaction to Salima going to be? The precap again smells like more of the reactionary stuff he trundled out at Jodha! Is it all going to be a re-enactment of the hatred of Jodha now transferred into a hatred and punishment and nazarband of Salima? God help me, but I have no more stomach for more of this same kind of stuff. I would hate to see a Jalal whose reactions continue in the same vein as before and he has learnt nothing from the Jodha epsiode to change his patterns in the Salima episode. I don't know if the Creatives intend showing any measure of evolution in Jalal's behaviour in the Salima episode, and so I wait with my teeth on edge! In a bid to show the story of the Beauty and the Beast, is Jalal going to be shown as the "beast-that-readily-surfaces-at-every-crucial-moment"?
Question 6: What is the "redressal of mistakes mechanism" that Jalal is going to follow? I hope it is not just a soppy scene of him being ticked off by Hamida to go and "maafi maango" from Jodha and his sasurji. In fact I don't want it to be that Jalal needs someone to tell him what he should now be doing. I want to see his brain start ticking, his thoughts start flowing, him taking his own initiative in redressing the situation. I do not want Ruqaiaya or Hamida etc. to be the ones setting his head to rights. I want him to be the 100% Man taking the difficult route, and not to find him whimpering with his head in Hamida's lap. Maybe Jodha is giving him a reality check already but I do not want him to be merely reacting to what Jodha says with either a silent supplication to her as an easy way out, or an eyelock that changes tack! Will he even try to talk with her and discuss why things happened the way they did? I want to see the decisions of a strong man who is driven to make a turning point out of the crisis in his life. All of us who analyse this serial are looking for the strength in the characters we love so that the story has great value to us. What I would hate to see, for the sake of expediency and the swing of TRps, is "too simplistic ways out of tough situations".
The net reason for my raising these six questions above is that I am already beginning to feel a bit shortchanged on the character of Jalal whom I adore. I feel as if Jalal is being made to look like a bit of an ass just to be able to carry the story forward. Maybe I am over-reacting or anticipating wrongly. Maybe some of my judgements above are not sound. But it's the trend of things that I have seen in the last two episodes that makes me nervous about what butchery is in store for the character of Jalal!
The whole of last week we were all upset that this anger of Jalal was so over the top that it was beginning to seem like an incredible stretch of the imagination. I want to thank Shyamala for making it sound reasonable that Jalal was doing all this from a deep sense of mistrust from childhood and from a deep sense of betrayal from Jodha with whom he had let down his guard.
This week we collectively heaved a sigh of relief that the war is finally over and the culprit is being tailed, and that Jalal would be a character worth watching for his ability to withstand pressure and emerge well from these trials he has been under. But if the last week's "ridiculous anger" of Jalal is being replaced with this week's "ridiculous decisions and reactions" of Jalal, I would feel very disappointed.
Till I have good explanations to the six questions above I will personally not feel OK. I hope all other regular members on this Forum have found explanations for all of these kinds of questions. I want to find that I can trust in the reactions and growth of Jalal. I want to see a man who makes sense. His character is too important to me to be able to accept ridiculousness as his "stock-in-trade".
Now in a bid to make Jalal apologise to Jodha, I hope he is not again portrayed as a "grovelling" person. He has to have his dignity intact in the process of redressing the mistakes he has made.
