Jodha Akbar 79: The turning of the tide

Folks,

If I am so late with this, it is partly because I expected most of you to be down with acute, possibly terminal mohaningitis, and thus incapable of assimilating anything other than the prospect of our suitably chastened Amer ki Mirchi, in an agony of guilt and grief, nursing her patidev.

Also because the assorted beautiful, highly emotional takes on this episode, awash in sentiment and imbued with the hope that the meeting of souls was just around the corner, gave me the impression that there was nothing more to be said and I could take a weekend off. Alas, that tempting prospect seems out of reach, and in view of demands from some of my young friends, here I am !

As there is obviously no point in my describing how aesthetic, or moving, or uplifting, or all of these, one or the other scene was, let us take as a given that the whole episode was indeed a treat for the eye and the heart alike. Instead, let us analyse it as a whole, as the sum of its parts, and see how what happened has affected each of our principals, and what could be the implications for their immediate future (and ours!).

The turning of the tide: But first, the title. On the seashore, when the tide runs out, in some places, it goes out very far into the sea. Large swathes of sand are laid bare, littered with the sad debris of dead marine life, and of human folly in terms of garbage. The tide recedes further and further. The wreckage strewn around seems all pervading. As if there will never be anything more than this arid expanse of dirty brown sand, devoid of life and even the prospect of life.

Then, suddenly, the tide begins to turn. First very slowly, millimeter by millimeter, the white foam spreads across the grubby brown sand and whitewashes it. Then come the waves, white sea horses dancing and prancing in the wind, ever advancing as they gallop farther and farther inland. Soon, one can see nothing of the ugly wreckage that littered the seashore, it is all a stretch of rich, gleaming blue laced with the white of the foam, like imperial robes edged with ermine.

So it is with our tale. In the previous episode, as Jodha plunged to hitherto unsuspected depths of folly, it was as if the tide had gone out for a long, long time, leaving us with the ugly debris of a relationship damaged almost beyond recall. But on Friday, it seemed that the tide was indeed turning. Very slowly at first, and hesitantly, but with the promise, and the prospect, of brightness and beauty ahead.

Jalal: To those who fear, after watching the last 3 episodes, that Jalal is being reduced from a dominating, alpha male Shahehshah to the leading man of a standard issue Ekta soap, dancing attendance on a demanding and capricious lady love, I would like to offer reassurance. It is might seem so, but our medieval Rhett Butler is not about to be reduced to Manav Deshmukh of Pavitra Rishta.

Methinks the real key to Jalal's behaviour with Jodha - during the tent squabble, after the snake episode, and at the dargah - lies in his perception of their shared sense of being rootless, and not belonging anywhere, of having no one who really cares for them, that he describes the other day, ostensibly to Mahaam, but really to himself and perhaps to an invisible Jodha.

Because of this feeling of kinship, and because he thinks he can understand her hidden desperation that surfaces in illogical, immature and even ugly reactions, like an obstreperous child having a tantrum and drumming its heels on the floor, Jalal goes the extra mile, not to be provoked into retaliating in kind, and being accommodating to a fault with her.

That is why he is so unruffled when Jodha harangues him about the khema, disarming her and making her look extremely foolish with a calm explanation, and a concluding jab that he is not interested in looking at her, thank you. And shakes his head slightly in bemusement as she stomps off.

Also why he does not react to her mindless and extremely stupid assertion that the Rajput assassin's motives were entirely understandable, and that he (and not her Babasa and his desire to save Amer by offering her in marriage to Jalal) was responsible for the attack, and also for Rajput hostility towards her family. His eyes widen in disbelief as she rants on, but he says nothing. One does not argue with a frantic, hysterical woman.

He lets Jodha down even more gently after the snake episode. She is acutely embarrassed, as well she might be after her atrocious accusations against him, and he helps her recover by turning it into a joke. The sarcasm is there, and in abundance, in his dialogue with the snake, but it is not bitter, for all that he does show how much her accusations hurt him - hamein kitna kuch suna diya.. tumhare zeher se to ek bar hi marte hain, jeekar roz roz nahin marte ..

She is not of the same mettle. I would have been pleased and impressed if she had immediately apologised, without any holding back, for the ugly barbs she had thrown at him, which were beyond the pale and worse. But she lacks the grace and the sensitivity to do that. However, despite this, he has succeeded in making her feel guilty and ashamed of herself.

To revert, that is also why he guides he so gently in the mazhar. Why he explains, with a little pause while he searches his memory for the right word, that what he is asking her to eat is the prasad. Why he asks, after tying the mannat ka dhaga, only for her wish to come true, and, in a gesture of genuine friendship, tells her so.

NB: Rewatching that segment clarifies that he says Humne usse bahut kuch liya hai -not aapse bahut kuch liya hai - ie that he has taken a great deal from the Almighty, and so wants nothing now, and has thus made his wish for her. Which makes sense. Why on earth would Jalal endorse, even if partially, her illogical mantra that he has despoiled her of everything she holds dear?

It is his territory, he belongs there, but for her it is strange, and he wants to make sure that she is comfortable and does not feel that she is being left alone.

He also wants her to feel comfortable with him. To many of you, it might seem that the reason for his making her accompany him on the hunt is to get back at her by scaring her and harassing her. But I feel it is more of what I noted above, trying to get her used to being with him, even if she cribs and nags at him non stop.That he why he teases her to talk with him - kya aap pura raasta hum se baat nahin karengi? - , so that interaction between them becomes commonplace, and does not seem strange and awkward. When she gets to be too much, he shushes her abruptly.

In fact, as some of you have noted, the whole build up to the shikar is vintage Jalal: the insistence on having his own way, her homilies going in thru one ear and out the other, and the mischief with which he looks back at Jodha cupping her ears at the report of the matchlock gun going off. But there is none of the automatic hostility of old.

I hasten to clarify that all this, even put together, does not add up to love. Not as yet. Nor is it desire, at once simpler and more commonplace. At no point in the last two episodes does he even look at her with even a hint of longing in his eyes. If anything, as in the tent scene, there is only a weary patience, and at other times, a detached kindness.

The challenge: Apart from the sense of kinship mentioned above, and the understanding of her inner turmoil that makes him cut her a lot of slack, there is something else. She is a challenge of a kind he has not faced till now. The first woman he has encountered who wants nothing from him, and will give him nothing, not even friendship. Who detests him openly and fiercely, and often, especially of late, wrongheadedly.

This has to be changed, for he never lets a challenge pass, and he does not like losing. She has to be brought round to liking him, caring for him. So he tackles it the way his Khan Baba has taught him. When a straight on attack does not work, then you adopt salami tactics, fine slice by fine slice.

In the process, he will, in due course, find that she has, with all her follies, her pigheadedness, her self-righteous bhashanbaazi, insinuated herself into his being, so much so that she becomes indispensable to his comfort. But for that, as in mathematical problems, there is one necessary and one sufficient condition, of which later.

Finally, his stopping Jodha from donating her jewellery and giving his instead, right down to the shahi pagdi, had nothing to do with his wanting to please Jodha. He was being the Shahenshah, which is something that pervades every cell of his being at all times, and a Shahenshah has to make these grand gestures, and make them exclusively. He asserts his pet prejudice that his begum should not strip herself of her jewels, and shooes Jodha off abruptly without a word of explanation, but he gives that explanation to the fakir.

This fetches him the unexpected bonus of warm praise from the guardian of the dargah at Ajmer Sharif, for having come so humbly, like a common man, without his shahi pagdi! Talk of undeserved encomiums!

Jodha: I do not cut her anything like as much slack as Jalal does. She comes across, even after making allowances for the trauma of the dature ka ark episode, as someone with a closed mind that she resolutely refuses to open up and broaden, being addicted to snap judgments, and once she has taken them, allergic to any facts, especially those concerning Jalal, that run counter to these judgments.

The fact is that Jodha is a very warmhearted and good girl, but she is opinionated, unyielding in her prejudices, and with no understanding of anything beyond her Amer, like a frog in a well. She is like a small town girl pitchforked into the capital of an empire, with none of the understanding of the complexities of imperial governance that the gentle and equally goodhearted Salima has.

Worse, Jodha seems to have no desire to learn either, exulting instead in simple minded self-righteousness. She will not understand that for her imperial husband, the choices are rarely between good and bad, black and white. That they are mostly between the bad and the worse, between two shades of grey. She has been spoilt by her whole family and told constantly that she can do no wrong, and here in Agra, Hamida Banu spoils her even worse. No wonder she is the way she is.

I am not one of those incurable romantics willing to overlook all her failings in order to luxuriate in the prospect of le grand amour being round the corner. Or rather just behind Mohan's charge against Jalal as a horrified Jodha looks on the outcome of her handiwork, a burning mashaal in her hand (where on earth did she get that from all of a sudden?)

I do not propose to rehash what I had written about her 2 days ago. On Friday, she was so shellshocked and ashamed after the snake episode that she was on her best behavior for most the rest of the Ajmer trip, of course till the hunting expedition, when her inbuilt do-gooding instincts took over and, predictably, led to disaster.

The missing apology: But first, to answer the obvious question: Why does she not apologise to Jalal after the snake fiasco? Why merely thank him for saving her life, and that too in a muted fashion?

She does not apologise, as she should have, because that needs the courage to expose yourself without fear of ridicule, and she, for all her self-righteous bluster, does not have it. She is afraid that he will laugh at her and despise her for her folly. Once you do not apologise at once, it can never be done,

So, instead, once the initial sense of guilt has ebbed, she starts looking around for ways to getting back to thinking badly of Jalal, so that she can silence the inner voice that rebukes her for her failure to apologise.

She thinks she has found it in the jewellery episode, whence her rush to a harsh judgment against him. She ends up falling flat on her face once again.

Jalal, in contrast, is completely self-assured. He can stoop without being worried about whether that would be interpreted as a sign of weakness. That is why he does not hesitate to apologise publicly to the Ameris in the open court, not because he is a Shahenshah, but rather in spite of it.

The mannat: Jodha behaves impeccably in the mazhar, and even her penchant for making a speech at the drop of a hat - this time about the Khwaja's holiness - serves her well. Jalal is pleased and the maulvis are delighted. She looks so beautiful in her eager sincerity that this would have been so even if she had spoken is Swahili!

As for the mannat, a clarification is in order here. There are two places where they pray. The first, and the really important one, is at the mazhar of the Khwaja, inside. That is where she copies Jalal and prays with her hands raised, and I am sure with all her heart, for her husband's safety and well being. One does not know what he prayed for, probably for the well being of his subjects.

Next, after the chaadar chadana ceremony and the blessings, they come to the second, subsidiary place and tie the mannat ke dhaage. This is a more devout version of throwing a coin in a well and making a wish. It is not as holy a place as the mazhar. So she can ask for whatever she most wants.

Here. Jodha's mannat, not for her husband's downfall, as some have commented, but that she should, at least once, be able to teach him a lesson, is a childish thing to want, and inappropriate given the sanctity of the place. But it is not malicious.

He wishes that her wish might come true and, in a gesture of genuine friendliness, tells her so. Her odd response to this, that she is glad of that, seem to be less due to haughtiness than to awkwardness and an inability to open up and say something warm and appreciative to Jalal.

I am sure that after the tiger attack, Jodha will be horrified, thinking that it is her mannat that has come true in an almost deadly manner. She will see it as a paat for herself, and will feel unbearably guilty.

But what was disappointing is her sticking to her old mantra that Jalal has taken everything away from her, which is as illogical as her even more curious assertion that the Rajput assassin's attack was all Jalal's fault. Disappointing because even the shock of having misjudged her husband so terribly in the snake episode has not taught her to re-examine the facts dispassionately, and reassess her opinion of him in the light of the facts.

It would do her a lot of good to fall helplessly in love, and have to try and win over the object of her affections. I hope this happens, in the sense that she discovers she is in love with Jalal before he discovers that he is in love with her. It is not impossible, for he will, for quite a while, interpret his soft corner for her as due to the kinship of ek hi kashti mein sawaar hone ki. Let us see!

To revert, the necessary condition I had mentioned above would be her learning to assess him objectively, free of her deep rooted prejudices. The sufficient condition would be for her to discover in herself the capacity to love him truly, deeply, unreservedly, to match his love for her. For there is no deewangee that can exist without an equal passion from the beloved..

Originally posted by: elasingh

You write and explain too beautifully Shyamala...

I am full of admiration for this piece of Art.

Originally posted by: nandininandu

You wrote so beautifully Shyamala...I am in awe with your writings. You made my sunday...just loved your title.

I soo wanted to compete in quit but prize is not exciting, I cant withstand the holy rants of jodha in person...if by anychance jallad replaces the silly kitten please let me know. Lately I am not paying much heed to her ranting

Originally posted by: swtngl

As always, your titles pretty much sum up the episode. This episode was the turning of the tide for Jodha. She is starting to see a different side of him. Prior to Jodha being falsely arrested for killing the baby, she was starting to see Jalal in a positive light. Post the whole thing, she once again sees only the negative in Jalal. After today's episode, she is on her way to see him in a positive light again. Hopefully after the tiger attack, she will realize her mistake and be more cordial to him.

As for Jalal, after he realized that she is on the same boat as him, he has become more patient with her. He does not get angry at her and just smiles at her rants now. Kahna ji must be so happy that Kahna ji is no longer on the receiving end of her complaints. The way Jalal has started acting with Jodha is how he acts with Ruqaiya. He shows his patience and calmness in front of Ruqaiya when she gets mad, just the way he is showing now with Jodha.

They are not in love yet, and they are not even close to liking each other. I believe they both need to get to know each other and build trust between them.

Favorite scene:

When Jalal says "I thank god for letting me save the snake's life, else the blame would have gone on my begum" I re-watched this scene too many times. 🤣