Friends, yesterday's episode was a sort of turning point for me because suddenly it seemed as if Jalal had started doing a "Jodha" on Jodha ... and conversely Jodha has started doing a "Jalal" on Jalal! You may have to read that twisted sentence a couple of times to decipher what I have written, but the long and short of it is: Jodha was behaving like Jalal was till the previous day ... and Jalal was behaving like Jodha was till the previous day.
For starters, Jodha was rather more of the quieter and more acquiescent one, while it was Jalal who was leaving no opportunity for tana-maroing! But again, if you watch these tana-maroing sentences of Jalal carefully you will notice that the green emotion of jealousy has started gripping him! That was a big leap ahead for Jalal to make in the emotional stakes ...
But apart from this small role-reversal of jealousy-driven tana-maroing, yesterday I saw some other very big role-reversals in Jodha and Jalal also, and these came in the two critical scenes: the Jodha-Jalal wound dressing scene and in the temple visit scene, so let me start by covering these scenes in a bit of detail ...
The Jodha-Jalal wound dressing scene:
1. The initial jealousy-driven tana-maroing in the scene
Having overheard her parents voice concern over any impending fights between the belligerent Jalal and Maharana Pratap at the shaadi mandap, Jodha went in haste to Jalal in the bedroom. The minute she sashayed in, he asked her to take a seat. And barely had she opened her mouth to say "I've come here to ask you ...", than he finished her sentence with a sarcastic: "I know you will only talk to me if there's something to ask! What is it?". He wanted more conversations with her!
And when she tells him of her father's concerns that he and Pratap may have a fight at the wedding, his first reaction is one of envy! Yes, the fact that seemed to irk him the most was her love for her father, because I guess he was hoping she would be worrying about his own safety in a fight rather than take her father's point of view. His quip: "Oh, so you are capable of loving someone?" was so envious sounding! He was feeling jealous of her love for her father!
2. The one big role reversal in the scene
The absolute surprise for me in this scene was the way they both seemed ready to take the relationship to the next stage of physicality ... but in this, the behaviour of Jodha was so ahead of Jalal that it was a revelation to Jalal himself. Previously we have seen scenes (like the boat ride) where it was Jodha reluctantly having to dodge Jalal's accidental or deliberate physical contact, but yesterday Jodha seemed the more brazen of the two. So much so that Jalal seemed to be eager to cover up his sudden jolts of surprise and discomfiture with barbs, quips and jokes!
When Jalal deliberately went and sat as close to her as he could and she asked: "Why are you sitting so close?" I would have expected the usually fussy Jodha to just jump out of that spot in a hurry. But the girl just sat tightly on! And she didn't make any move to get up till he showed her his hand for some lep treatment, and even then when she got up and went for the lep, she came back to sit in the same ever-so-close spot she had vacated. After a hand massage (when she seemed aware that he kept looking at her face), he then ribbbed her for a head massage, and what did I see? She wasn't grudging this massage she was enjoying it silently if you saw the way her hands went from massaging to caressing his head. He then tellls her to not "gala dabao" him, a barb that seemed uncalled for at that time ... but it could well have been a cover up for his sudden escalation of feelings!
Then later she spotted his neck wound and without fuss asked him to undress. He - and we- did a double take, and again he seemed to lapse into a joke to cover up his sudden heartbeat leap by saying: "The Shahenshah ka izzat is in khatra?". And when she actually started dabbing the lep on his neck, as he stood bare-bodied, he must have started feeling even more phsyical sensations, because he abruptly changed the topic to talk of the forest being full of snakes, baags and baagins.
Was I dreaming or was Jalal actually at the receiving end of some such unexpected readiness for physicality from Jodha that he was having to hide his sudden spurts of physical feeling behind barbs and tana-maroing?
The tide did change yesterday in favour of physical contact, the roles did reverse, and Jalal did get some pleasant insights into the real state of his baaghins mind, and he did search for cover!
The Jodha-Jalal temple visit scene:
1. Again more jealousy-driven tana-maroing
The fact that Jodha was initially reluctant to take him to the temple but then had to acquiese (because he rightly compared her visit to Ajmer with his visit to the Kali temple) seemed to grate on him. When she asked if he needed soldiers to protect him at the temple he replied: "No one needs protection from anything else when you are around!" But then he quickly also softened that by adding : "Plus, you have the lep that cures even if something happens to me!" But the fact that she had not wanted to bring him to the temple was eating him up!
2. The big role reversals in the temple scene
The temple visit then had two role-reversals of Jodha-Jalal:
a. First was the sweet reversal of the Ajmer dargah scene, when this time Jalal learnt by watching Jodha, how to pray Hindu style at the Kali Ma altar! He had also remembered to remove his shoes here, and if he forgot about his sword and pagri removal, Jodha reminded him that he had done the same even at Ajmer.
b. The second role-reversal was a huge moment in this serial. If you all recall, when Jalal had saved Jodha from suicide he had gone into a huge angry bhashan when he also blurted out his real reason for hatred against her. He said it was she who had lalkaro-fied the lion in his den by holding a sword to his neck during his trip to Amer. His ego could not get past that insult to himself as a man and as an emperor! It seemed to be a huge cathartic moment for Jalal at the suicide scene, when he let out his reason for hatred ... and from then on he seemed to get healed. It was after he got that hatred out, that he was able to see past his own hurts and be able to see Jodha's situation as a lonely heart in the same boat as he was!
In the same way, Jodha is now having her big cathartic moment at the Kali temple. Her ego had boiled against the way the Mughals pillaged the temple and she had taken a shapath to bring his head to Kali Ma's feet. In a beautiful display yesterday of her catharsis moment, he put his own head at Kali's feet and smeared with sindoor, he said "A head bowed willingly to God need not be cut!". And the precap suggests that she is further going on to tell him all about how the Mughals looted the temple ornaments, and he is definitely going to make it up to her by returning all the looted items.
But after this venting of the reasons for her hatred, we can all expect that Jodha will be ready to heal and she will start seeing Jalal truly only after her own inner turmoils are washed out! Exactly the way Jalal's hatred was washed out and he then began to see her!
Two other very sweet scenes yesterday:
a. At the temple when Jodha's expression suddenly changed from prayer to weepiness as she thought of her "adhura" shapath to Kali Ma, I loved the way Jalal sensed her innner turbulence and said "You are always peaceful after prayers, so why are you so despondent now?". Lovely moment, lovely caring and concern!
b. The moment when Jodha arrived to meet Hamida, Mainavati and Dadisa saying she had overslept, and the grins that the three ladies gave her as if to say "We know you must have had a long night!" ... and the blushes of Jodha at this implication ... were priceless. In the end Hamida spared her more explanations by saying it was normal for a girl to oversleep at her maike. But the three old women were clearly having a fun moment at Jodha's expense! Loved that scene!
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