Friends, yesterday's episode had two high points for me - the Maharana Pratap issue and the boat ride. The rest of the scenes were like fillers.
Of these two important scenes I've picked, I want to say a few things about the Maharana Pratap issue and get it over with first so that I can then focus on the boat ride, which was more important, to me, not just because it was a "romantic scene" but because the dialogues between Jodha and Jalal (stilted as they were) still seemed to be leading slightly - very very slightly - into more tolerable territory.
Here then is my take. Please as always give your viewpoints and set me straight if I am wrong!
The Maharana Pratap issue:
There seemed to be three things to this scene that caught my attention ...
1. It looks very much like a channel-to-channel panga is going on, and our Jodha-Akbar story is feeling the need to compare its own set of characters and their characterisations to those of the same characters in the serial Maharana Pratap. Of late we have been having a lot of publicity by the rival channel to say they have their own Jalal, Mahamanga, and Bairam Khan Khan in addition to Maharana Pratap and his mother Jaywanta Bai. I was just thinking to myself that in our serial poor Maharana Pratap is always beeing shown as a lone man with his family nowhere in the picture. Of course, in the Maharana Pratap serial, Pratap is much younger and we are given a full taste of his growing up in a family where there is a King and his three wives who are ambitious for their own sons etc etc. As I was expecting, it was not long before our serial too has started showing some part of Maharana Pratap's family (albeit only the ladies of his family who accepted the Amer invitation yesterday and decided to mend bridges with the Amer family women). I would have expected the invite to include Pratap father also, but hey, at least we have seen some part of Pratap's family so far. Let's see how these channel wars go. They are interesting enough in themselves.
2. The whole Amer shaadi is being given the colour and context of a face-to-face between Pratap and Jalal, with both parties seemingly shown as eager to get the measure of the other. (Again an interesting channel panga angle?). In the process, when Pratap tells the group of warmongering Rajvanshi enemies of Jalal to await a future chance to square out things with Jalal in war, and to not use the shaadi to do "peet ke peeche se war", I thought it was Star Plus' way of showing magnanimity - that they are not going to make Pratap negative just to score obvious brownie points on the rival channel. They are going to make Pratap look reasonable and honourable, if only to make Jalal even greater by comparison when they do show both of them head-on in war. But our serial's Pratap sans war-mongering would be a Pratap full of long sentences and dialogue spoken in a breathless barrage. So await the volley folks. He is gathering spit to give us his unrelenting verbiage!
3. I also noticed that right from the start of the serial. Pratap has not changed his green dress! Shame, shame, Creatives!
Okay enough said about Pratap. I am going to have fun seeing this Pratap-Jalal face-off as a channel war!
Now comes the dissection of the boat ride
1. The loop closure we got in the boat ride
Firstly, let me tell you Jyoti's own observation here, for it was a very lovely one. She always looks for "loop closures" in serials that we watch together, and yesterday there seemed to be one in that boat ride. The loop that had been opened when Jodha went for the boat ride with Suryabhan seemed closed yesterday by giving Jodha another boat ride with Jalal. Jyoti has SMS-ed me saying between the two boat rides, one was leading her nowhere with Suryabhan, whereas the new one was leading to her "destination" ie. Jalal! I liked that idea ... for in finding tiny "creative things" in the serial that seem to hide small but pretty "directional clues" (whether intended by the Creatives or not) we get our additional thrills!
2. Baby strategies by the Creatives to give an impression that Jodha and Jalal are changing.
It seemed to me as I watched yesterday that while the Creatives do not yet want to majorly change the way Jodha and Jalal are behaving towards each other (they do still have their "Jodha-ire" and "Jalal-sarcasm") there is a small change in the way the principal leads are being made to have interchanges with each other and with others such that a positive spin is now being sought to be given to their behaviours.
My attitude all this while, was that I was looking for palpable changes in Jodha and Jalal towards each other, and that made me often upset that I was not seeing reasonable change ... but in looking for the visible changes, perhaps I was missing out on the very small, very subtle changes that the Creatives were trying to make to show the very gradual growing together of Jodha and Jalal. If you try to ignore the irritation of Jodha's continuing barbs at Jalal, and try to ignore the contuning sarcasm of Jalal just when things get interesting, you may see the many smallish differences from episode to episode in their relationship. But believe me, you need magnifying glasses, a heart ready to accept tiny things as monumental and an ability to decipher the tiniest twitches in the hero and heroine to figure out if they are changing!
Re: Jodha: While the Creatives seem to be continuing with Jodha's own "voiced ire" against Jalal, they are also subtly using the repartees of other characters such as the daasi, Hamida and Jalal - and some of the boat ride events - to try and show viewers that Jodha could be saying one thing but having a different feeling inside of her.
For example, Jodha starts with her usual "khema-fussy" self and wants to know if Jalal has a separate khema, and then seeing him approach from inside his khema, she "guesses" it is his room. The daasi is made to quip "Oh so nowadays you make sure you know a lot more about him, do you?" suggesting that Jodha's words and actual feelings don't match. Then again, the way Hamida pullls off the couples boat ride plan and Jodha seems to capitulate with rather quick readiness seems another way of suggesting that something else is on her lips bellied by the swiftness of her insides to acquiesce with the plan. In the boat, whenever she came out with one of her sharp barbs against Jalal, his immediate change of subject or sarcasm seemed to shut her up on that topic ... till she could find another one. In fact, on one occasion she herself found an out from her "anti-Jalal stance"when she saw his hurt hand and found it convenient to change the subject. The soft way she nursed that hand seemed to be added as a counterpoint to the harsh way she was otherwise speaking to him.
I know many of you who are aggrieved by Jodha's continuing irritating behaviour towards Jalal may discount what I am saying as "not true, Jodha is still her cussed self". But I think I saw some small attempts yesterday by the Creatives to soften every harsh sentence from Jodha with an almost immediate spin that her words may be saying one thing but her actions are showing something different.
These are very tiny changes but there is a definite attempt at least by the Creatives to at least bring down the "intractability of Jodha's stance" a notch! Earlier her grudges used to be continuing affairs, held for days together, and implacable even in the face of strong contra-logic ... whereas yesterday she seemed ready as ready to pipe down and acquiesce silently after any barb of hers was either brushed aside or beaten down or just joked about. Her ability to sustain grudges seems slightly diminished, and finding new barbs to deliver seems to be her desperate mission now for self-cover.
Re: Jalal: It would be wrong to think that the Creatives are putting Jalal very far ahead of Jodha in his feelings for her. Here, to my mind, it looked like the Creatives were trying to show small changes in him by making him sometimes overt in the way he looks at Jodha, sometimes covert in the way he does that, sometimes simple in his conversation openers, but also sometimes reverting to his sarcasms as a cover when she attacks him. He looks attracted, yes, but not yet on firm ground, and he is still to a large degree responding to her reaction of him rather than developing his own strategy to manage her "ire". But the Creatives seem to be at least trying to convey the impression, definitely, that he is more "open" to exploring Jodha than he was before.
The way he looks at Jodha has lost that hard edge, and his words when they come from him seem softer to hear, more general than against her, and even his sarcasm seems less intended to hurt and more intended as a way to get the last word in the argument. He is also being shown as getting more playful and in getting a sort of glee in baiting her and in replying to her with his own brand of humour. There are moments when he finds himself protective, and there are moments when he says he needs protection from her - whereas he seems to relish the private prospect that she needs protection from him! But equally I also noticed moments when he looked hurt at her rejection of him. For instance when he tried to open the topic of boat rides and her liking for it, she brushed off his attempts to make simple conversation saying "You don't want conversation, you want argument!". He did look hurt in that frame! So Jalal is thus being shown as a mixed bag for the moment with soft emotions interspersing his true-to-type sarcasms.
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