Friends, my weekend analysis of this last week's episodes is below. This last week seemed to throw up a lot of different types of interactions between different people, which is only natural given the fact that both the Amer and Agra families were in full force at Amer for the shaadi of Sukanya.
There were a lot of minor events and some really major story-turning events as well, so I hope I will do justice to them all in my analysis below. If I've left out anything vital let me know. (Jyoti, is travelling on work this weekend and will join this thread by Sunday!)
Ok, so seatbelts on, folks, and here goes ... I am not exactly going with the story flow of the episodes themselves, but rather I am grouping the scenes below according to the people who were in the scenes, so my analysis today is rather like a collage than a sequential set of events!
1. Jodha's scenes with three others:
a. Jodha-Mainvati:
It is only natural that Jodha should be angry with Mainavati, after the way her mother refused to take her back to Amer in that huge sabha scene in Agra. But so much had happened since that scene in Agra that I almost forgot the relationship between Jodha and Mainavati till I saw Jodha ignore her mother during the welcome aarti at Amer! I could feel for both Jodha and Mainavati in this scene but when they later made up with each other in Jodha's old bedroom, it was a really touching moment, for who can keep a mother and daughter apart for long. Jodha loved the way Mainavati explained the feelings of being a mother and it seemed almost as if Jodha wanted to experience the same feelings in her life too some day. Overall the scene was very controlled and the dialogues were wonderful. There was no "hypervati" either, thank God!
b. Jodha-Sukanya:
That scene between the two sisters discussing how to handle their marriages was also lovely. Sukanya thought her elder sister would be able to advice her as she had already been through her adjustment period with Jalal, but only to discover there has not yet been a suhaag raath between Jodha and Jalal - and that Jodha was covering this up by saying things are slow in an inter-faith marriage! I think Sukanya knew that Jodha was waffling on this subject because she said "I hope by the time we talk next, you will have sorted out your problems!" The sweet part was the sisterly bond seen when they both made a pledge to "keep each other's secrets"! I thought this scene was beautifully directed too, for it was just right on dialogues and nuances of feeling without becoming melodramatic.
c. Jodha-Maham:
As Jodha herself was saying to one of her maids, why this Maham came all the way to Amer if she hated Amer and Jodha so much is not clear. Since Maham has come to Amer with so much ill-feeling, it is not surprising that she is pouncing on every opportunity to rail against Jodha. She blamed Jodha this week for Jalal's temple trip although Jodha had the upper hand in that argument! The big thing I noticed about Maham is that Maham is venting on Jodha but her real angst is that Jalal is slowly going out of her clutches. He has decided to attend the Amer shaadi, he is going to the temple, he is getting closer to Jodha, he is getting close to the Amer family, he is not asking Maham's opinion for all this ... the lady is unable to control Jalal and he is alarming her with his decisions. Maham is finding Jodha a convenient scapegoat to blame. In the Friday precap, she is further raking open the whole issue of how Jodha burnt the clothes gifted to her at her own shaadi, so it looks like Maham is going to create "trouble" at every turn in this Sukanya shaadi!
As I had written in my daily posts as well, I think this whole Jalal-Pratap face off at one level is a panga happening between two rival TV channels both showing a similar part of history but from opposing points of view. So a lot of what was shown in the first face-off between Jalal and Maharana Pratap at Amer seems to be about "your hero vs my hero". Overall I would say, though, that Zee TV is making sure not to denigrate Pratap and boost Jalal as the better man very obviously. In fact they are going to all lengths to show that both Jalal and Pratap are worthy opponents, and while Pratap has his own style of direct confrontation, Jalal has his style of sidelong glances and clever strategic planning against Pratap. In Friday's episode both men were shown as close to their pet animals (elephant and horses) as if to highlight that they were not dissimilar in many ways. But one thing is evident: Jalal is not constantly thinking of Pratap as he has many other things to think of, he is a bigger guy with bigger concerns. Whereas Pratap seems to have less on his plate, and is more preoccupied with Jalal, and although he doesn't want to spoil the shaadi ka mahol, he is nursing hopes of the Rajputs grouping up and vanquishing Jalal at the right time.
For convenience I have grouped these four nutcases in one highlight point, although each one of these is a different kind of specimen! Whenever any two of these four meet, there is nothing but time-wasting, bumpf and absence of any destination for the talks. Adham has botched up the tribal archers attack on the boat ride of Jalal, and now he has no Plan B yet in place. Meanwhile he is stalking Jalal but not getting anything much out of it. Sharif is pissed off with Adham, especially when Adham is sidetracked every two seconds with every passing baandhi. Adham has in fact even hugged a "baandhi" only to find it was his own silly wife Javeeda in Rajput attire! (What a hilarious moment!) Javeeda is distressing Maham even more by trying to become an Ameri-daasi herself and is spouting the Rajput language at every turn. Maham has no one to turn to except Resham, who if you ask, has no need to be in Amer at all! Meanwhile, Jalal has astutely inferred that since security at Amer is so tight, the attack on him must be an inside job. He in fact has started trusting the Bharmal family so much that he feels safe with them (and via them against likely Rajput attackers) and seems not far from beginning to suspect Adham-Sharif of treachery, especially iif these two continue with badly-palnned attacks. Interesting days are ahead!
The week saw at least four different kinds of encounters between Jodha and Jalal ... and with each passing encounter the banter between Jodha and Jalal became less hurtful and more playful. They are clearly getting easier and easier with each other and losing their hurts and hurdles and gaining new insights into each other's souls.
a. The boat ride:
This was the first exclusive scene of the week focused on Jodha and Jalal when along with some ascerbic banter between the two (quite a bit of one-upmanship) there were a lot of physical slip-and-catch scenes as well. In my post on this episode, I had written that Jalal seemed to be behaving more like Jodha (giving biting sarcasms) and Jodha seemed to be behaving more like Jalal (more tongue-tied and tolerant). But the boat ride was sweet, even if the nok-jhok was relentless, because we were reminded of the loop closure on the old boat ride with Suryabhan which reached nowhere, whereas this boat ride was going somewhere definitely storywise! In the end, the attack on the boat by the tribal archers set up by Adham helped to seal a mutual closeness between Jodha and Jalal as we saw Jalal covering Jodha with his body and soothing her fear by saying "Don't worry, I am here!". He then rowed them both to safety. The scene showed a heightened sense of still-present rivalry between the two, but not of a bitter kind - in later scenes even this rivalry became less and less.
b. The temple trip:
This was a huge event. It had all the makings of a watershed moment in the whole epic love story of Jodha-Jalal. The scene started with Jodha being reluctant to take Jalal to the temple, but he insisted on going. There at the temple entrance there was nok-jhok about what he could carry into the temple and so he left his shoes, pagri and sword outside. In the temple there awas another lovely loop-closure moment when he prayed Hindu style following her actions (as she had followed his style at Ajmer). Then came the moment when he saw her changed countenance and she told him of her shapath to offer his head to the deity. He never questioned her on why she had taken that shapath, and he just went and bowed his head to Kali Ma and kissed the floor at her feet, and told Jodha that to bow his head before God made it unnecessary to cut his head as offering (which the pandit too endorsed). What a big moment that was! Only after he did all this did he even ask her why she hated him so much and had prayed to offer his head to God. When she told him about his men and their temple loot and their barbarism at war, he stood angry and ashamed that she had been eye-witness to this horror - and his chagrin that he was not in control of his men hit him hard. He wanted to make amends, because he had come to know one huge truth: Jodha did not hate him as a man or as a husband, but she hated him because he had been a barbarism-tolerant king! That realisation also gave him the solution: he had to redress the way he ruled as emperor! He left the temple with a final personal prayer to God and a determination in his heart. She left the temple with the relief that a huge burden of hurt had been aired and her shapath had been indirectly fulfilled! What a scene! What a moment in history as Jala took the first steps to becoming Akbar the Great! And the best part: they went back to their normal behaviour and even got closer, after this earth-shaking scene at the temple!
c. The bedroom scenes:
First Jodha came to the bedroom and said Hamida had ordered her to stay the night with him. That night passed, but to ensure that she continued to share the bedroom with him, Jalal got another wonderful opportunity the next day when Jodha came again to plead him not to start fighting with Pratap at the shaadi. He put his sharth that she should spend every night at Amer in his bedroom! We were then given some bedroom-sharing scenes we all had wanted to see ever since the Amer trip was announced! (In fact some forum members thought they didn't get enough, but I had to reassure them that this was good enough for the moment!)
The bedroom scenes fell into five types of scenes:
(i) There was banter, but easy banter without hurtfulness (like when he put the fear of snakes into her to make her use the bed and not the sofa)
(ii) There was some serious husband-wife talk too (like when she asks if he would have religious problems after the temple visit and he said "Don't worry!")
(iii) There was open flirting (like all those hand and head massages and bare bodied lep-application, which I must say, she also secretly seemed to be enjoying)
(iv) There was husbandly jealousy (when he showed he wanted her to worry about him and not always worry about her father's feelings)
(v) There was a delightful playfulness (when he told the story of the angry queen and the dashing king to his saalis, when she openly laughed at the story!)
See how each step, one after another, was progressing them both through these sequences towards greater accord and less animosity! They are both on the journey towards each other already at a fair clip!
There was also the contribution of others in enhacing the "bedroom experience" (like when Hamida, Mainavati and Dadisa acted the next day as if Jodha had overslept because of a long night in bed with Jalal!)
d. The garden archery scene:
This was a lovely encounter between Jodha-Jalal when, through the mouths of Maan Singh and Bhagwan Das, Jalal got to know what a naughty tomboy Jodha had been in childhood. He also came to see her prowess in archery and marvelled at her multi-dimensional skills. She returned the compliment with praise for his multidimensional "tana maro-ing skills" ... but see, folks how far their relationship has come, because he was just able to shirk off her barb with an easy shrug of his shoulders and a rueing of her cussedness, without any ill-feeling!
The little saalis (of the "hidden shoes fame" during Jodha's shaadi) are being very sweetly re-introduced as little Cupids. But the part I liked best was the way these little girls were already flirting with Jalal! And he was flirting with them! The tiniest one of the lot is actually totally fida on Jalal and keeps complimenting his handsomeness and how he is like a fairytale Prince! And he is lapping it all up! And did you all notice ... Jodha is looking at Jalal sideways now and then to see this "handsome face" for herself !
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