Friends, today I am going to forget everything else on the Wednesday episode - I am going to bypass all the Adams and Shariffs, and Bharmals, and Mahams and Hamidas - and focus entirely on that one scene between Jodha and Jalal. Jodha's speech was very insenstive in part and also very bang on in part. Jalal was very forthright in his words, and yet he was so contradictory in his subsequent actions. Both of them left me wondering at the dynamics they were playing out and the value of these current dynamics to the whole storyline.
My mind is feeling agitated, exercised and in part very vexed - but also in part very genuinely impressed - by the dialogues between Jodha and Jalal and what I learnt today about both of them. To explain exactly what my own take out was from this scene, I have found it convenient to divide the whole interaction into five parts:
1. A bit of the previous episode is vital to today's analysis
We cannot divorce what we saw of Jodha and Jalal today without taking into account their behaviours of the previous episode when the elephant was on the rampage. All of us in this forum almost unanimously agreed on two things: one, Jalal was conscious that it was a saazish and he discounted no one - not the Rajvanshis, nor the Mughals ... nor, as he said, even Agta Khan or his own shadow; and two, Jodha was throughout the elephant-handling saga terribly worried about Jalal.
She knew his background, that he is recovering after the tiger attack, and that he is almost insulated by thick walls of high security at Amer. She patently showed her worry for him on her face in the elephant incident. She was fully conscious that the target of attack had been Jalal. While Jalal was aware that he was surrounded and alone in a world full of lethal enemies, Jodha was aware of her genuine fear for Jalal and his own safety. That was till yesterday. So what changed today?
2. Jodha's entreaty to Jalal and her utter insensitivity
When Mainavati came to Jodha and asked her to please ensure that Sukanya's wedding should not get marred because of Jalal's intense rage at what had happened to him in the elephant incident, Jodha then took it upon herself to go to Jalal with her own version of what needs to be done. She directly asked him to leave Amer, and even folded her hands in entreaty. When he asked why, she launched into an elaborate recounting of the grave life dangers he had already been through on his Amer trip so far - in fact, so convincing was she about concern for his own life safety, that he was surprised enough to ask whether she now had begun worrying about him so much.
The reply from Jodha was not only seemingly very insensitive to the core but it was thrown back so fast at him that I was myself taken aback for a second with the sheer sharpness of it. She said an outright and blunt "No" and followed it up by saying she was wholly and solely worried about her family, their marriage of their daughter, and the consequences of any blame that may fall on them if something should happen to Jalal.
Jalal's own reaction was for a moment stunned - and he was stung. His reaction was to say that among his many enemies he had all around him, he could count her as one, but at least she was upfront with her unleashing of the "truth" rather than a backstabber. Let's just leave Jalal's reaction for a moment to be discussed later in this post, and let's focus on Jodha for a bit more here to try and fathom her.
Some forum members had written their viewpoints in other posts over the last few days that maybe Jodha was hiding her own attraction for Jalal behind her ego that would not climb down fast enough from the "ghrna" position, even if she now knew him better. Members who had this viewpoint therefore seemed to ascribe her blunt support for her family over any caring for Jalal as an "inability to climb down, lose face or reveal hidden feelings that were simmering".
Some other forum members wrote that perhaps Jodha would never be able to love Jalal as he would love her because family would always come first to her. Yet the same members also occasionally contradicted themselves by saying that as long as she does not fall in love with him, she will put family first, and it is only when she finally falls for him will her priorities change.
I can see both these viewpoints, but my feeling is : We need to understand why a woman who can be otherwise sensitive and caring cannot find it in herself to find that sensitivity and caring only with respect to this one man Jalal? Why this insentivity only to him and why this insensitivity only in the one aspect of whether she cares for him as much as she cares for her family?
We also need to see a change in the end behaviour, whatever her motivations. We need her to at least not be so blunt and insensitive even if she has not learnt to genuinely care for him. But better still, if she can learn to care for him and say so to him we would be over the moon.
Jodha is an enigma to me in the sense that I do not have an inside track of what the Creatives see as a strategy for her character in the present context. Her feelings and behaviour with Jalal is up and down and I don't know if that is the actual strategy! She is not yet in love with Jalal, for sure ... she has just about aired out her own grievances, and I doubt she has had the mindspace to start worrying about him, while she was all over the place about her own issues. I can understand therefore if she does not feel for him as we hope she would. But at least she can find decent civility in language and demeanour?
The big question in my mind is: Is she just boorish in etiquette (with him in particular), or is she hiding something and thus almost feverish in her refusal to admit any caring for him as a person?
Or conversely, is she so desperate to see a heart in him that she thinks by poking and prodding at his vulnerable spot which she has identified (i.e. need for caring) she can incite him to show that he has a heart? Does she feel good to see his hurt face when she says she doesn't care for him, almost as if seeing his hurt validates the fact that he has feelings and heart? Would she fear seeing apathy on his face when she thus declares her uncaring, finding solace instead in seeing that he does feel jealous of her love for her family? In short, is this her way of seeing if he has any capacity for feeling and igniting it?
3. Jalal's challenge to Jodha and his personal fallacies of logic
Jalal's own personal constructs of who he was, and what he believed his life was about, came forth when he put the crown on her head, gave her the shamsheer and asked her to imagine herself in his place. He was eloquent in what his personal beliefs were about his life. He said "If I go away, my enemies will crow over it. If I stay my enemies will continue to target me. Everywhere all around me the only thing I have is enemies. They are the one incontrovertible fact of my life. So you tell me, what do I do here, for whatever I do, the presence of enemies and their strengthening happens as par for the course".
This is where Jalal the man seems to be on the throes of discovering the fallacy in his argument that prevent him a as yet from becoming Akbar the Great. Like all people in this world, Jalal seems to be prisoner of his own thinking - and the way to freedom is for him to find and break the arguments that keep him locked in this self-belief as the "hunted and haunted one".
What Jalal seems not to have realised at all is that you don't have to take enemies as "granted" just because you are a King. Enemies don't come as part of the position of Kingship. They are there, for sure, but it is always within a King's power to try and turn enemies into friends. In fact the great Kings of all eras have succeeeded in doing just that and gone from being hated, feared, and revered from duty to being genuinely loved, respected, and lionised by an adoring public. Jalal is stuck in a mental bracket that he needs to break. The solution to managing enemies is not to merely acknowledeg their existence everywhere and live a life of eternal alertness against assassination, but to try and turn those very enemies into a mass following of those who are willing to give their hearts to him. But this is where the "bang on" part of Jodha's speech comes in ... to help Jalal.
4. Jodha's "reality check" to Jalal that hit the nail on the head
Again Jodha did not try to temper her sharpness of words when Jalal asked her to pput herself in his position and see what his life is like. She said: "I don't want to put myself in your place. I don't have to. It's a choice you have, it's a choice you are making. Think about it. You say you are surrounded by enemies, you are afraid of family, friends, the praja, even your own shadow. Have you never considered why there is an absence of any love from any quarter in your life - and there is instead only enmity to fend off? You are no longer the object of my "ghrna" and instead you are the object of my pity. How can I not pity someone who is neither able to give nor get love from anyone, and to whom evveryone and everything is a "foe"?"
Jalal, I think was stung quite hard, for he replied wiith a vehemence that: "Your pity is an insult to me. Being alone and lonely and loveless comes with the territory of a King. It is not a choice I made, it chose me!"
But Jodha knew better, that this was a man locked in his own constructs of what a King's life could be like, and he had never so much as ventured out of his mental constructs to even question if there was a different life out there for a King. He had never made a place in his life for this thing callled "love" - not just love for a woman, but a love for anyone that could be given and gotten instead of enmity and hatred and awe.
This part of Jodha's speech was brilliant for it had the capacity to make thim think about what she said later. I still cannot commend Jodha's choice of words or her style of blunt delivery of such meaningful advice. But she was perfect - bang-on - in her analysis of what was the missing kernel of truth in his life, and after she told it all to him with the ruthlessness of a harsh "reality check", she left the room and left him to ponder at his own pace.
I thought Jodha had done the absolute best thing for Jalal that she could have. She did not sermonize, but instead she pointed him in the direction that he could probe for himself. By doing this she prevented him from "resistance for the sake of resistance" and instead gave him the space to work it out later for himself. As I am sure he will! Very soon!
Remember when Bharmal taught Jalal how to transform a mistake he had made by doing "something big" to erase that small error from history, it was a seminal moment in the young King's life, for it was brilliant advice. This second part of Jodha's speech was also, I feel, such a seminal moment in Jalal's life when Jodha showed him that enemies could be transformed into followers if a King chose not to think enemies were a non-changeable given!
I want to dwell for a moment on the behaviour of Jalal throughout this exchange and immediately after it because he is a bit enigmatic himself.
For starters, I expected a bit more irritation in him when she favoured her family over his safety. Maybe he was just jaded with seeing that repetitive stance of hers, or maybe he was stung but not so far gone in hurt that he couldn't swiftly recover. Maybe he has just got used to the idea that her style with him, her level with him, would not go beyond the present level of tolerance that did not include caring, or maybe he was inside himself willing to give her more time to start caring for him. Jalal isa aware that he wants her to care for him, but he seems also not so fixated on it as to sulk or protest or rant or let it affect his relationship with her!
The second issue that struck me about him was how soon after this exchange he recovered to again become the Jodha-stalking person. He was not affronted enough to want to stay away from Jodha. In fact he surprised me by wanting to sneak up on Jodha as she danced! Would we not have expected the man to sit on a high horse for a short while at least to cool off before he indulged in "Jodha-following and Jodha-admiring"? What about him made him bounce back so quickly from any "tauhein" by her?
This question makes me wonder what is the real stage he is at? Is he ready to forgive her even if she openly says she doesn't care yet for him? Or is he able to accept that it would only be natural for her to not care for him yet as she has only now aired her hatred of him? Is he accommodating her uncaring because he has started having feelings for her that gloss over her faults and only see her good points? Or is she such an irresistible draw on his senses and mind that he cannot bear to be angry with her or therefore away from her for too long? What is making Jalal so uncaring of her uncaring of him, that he is able to immediately get attracted to the notion of watching her dance?
I am beginning to at least understand Jodha as "correct in her assessments but ill-mannered in her dialogues" with him. But he is foxing me with his "ability to give her the room to be so with him". Does anyone have an explanation for Jalal's resilience and "unputdownability" as far as this up-and-down Jodha is concerned?
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