Jodha: brutally insensitive but bang on! - Page 2

Originally posted by: lashy

WOW my thoughts exactly!

Originally posted by: rogerrocks

I swear man..Whats with the high handed behavior? And why is Jalal being shown like a love sick puppy? Enough already😆 Jodha needs to realize that she is equally lucky to land Jalal as her hubby..He needs to stop complimenting her and placing her on a pedestal atleast for a while😆

Originally posted by: skanda12

@All:

I was expecting that the episode would create mayhem on the forum, so all those with a for and against opinion are welcome to comment on this post.

As always this is my personal viewpoint and I stick by it. My own objective is to always look for the positive even in the negative, so you will find in this - and my other posts - there will always be an attempt to acknowledge the negative but to look for the larger positive context.

As part of this personal process of finding the positive even in the negative, I usually try not to let pieces of negative dialogue detract from the basic good intentions of people or their sincerity of a personal viewpoint. I would agree that words chosen by someone may be wrong or blunt in their etiquette, but I would try to see if the intention itself was ill-meaning or even if it had some long-term value to the story before letting the words colour my judgement of a situation.

But despite my own views, I value every shade of opinion for or against any idea, so feel free to use this thread to air your views as you wish.

Mansi ,

Nice post , i must say tht you have out in so much effort to elaborate what happened between jalal n jodha ,but i must say iam not impressed by wat happened or jodha's stance .

I think , i would elaborate on my views tomorrow morning , i would sleep on it for now.

KAshi

You are one of the people whose post I follow and love (other are Shymala aunty, Moronskimallika,mehanajain, lashy a.k.a shraddha). All of you have unique style of writing and also perspectives are different so it's not repetitive. I absolutely love reading your posts. There are many reasons for it but main reason is Whenever I feel upset or disappointed about a character or episode, your post gives me hope.

In beginning of the serial, I used to like Jodha but as the story progresses I have started loving Jalal more than Jodha. Jalal is so good with Ameris now and he even bowed before Devi maa and fulfilled her sankalp (although as much as I would like to believe it was ONLY for her, it's not true- it was due to her and also his goal of ruling entire India).One thing that bothers me of Jalal which is I understand is needed for a ruler is how he gives reason for his act depending on each person like MA and Jodha regarding bowing to Devi maa. If I was Jodha and heard his conversation with MA about it, I would always doubt his true intentions and would be hard to trust him ( not that she trusts him or does not doubt his intentions whenever he does something good). Anyways back to Jodha, I used to feel for Jodha and understood her hatred but now she is going OTT with her behavior. I was so mad at Jodha today due to her behavior. She could have said all those things in nicer way.

My other comments are in red.

Originally posted by: skanda12

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? I wonder that too. I am like why cannot she be at least sensitive to him if not caring. I believe it's because she believes she has "ghrina" for him. So, she does not both caring for him or being sensitive to him an dhis feeling. I was just thinking during the episode and why is she so blunt and rude? she can say all those things with better usage of words. But, then I am like when a person believes he or she hates someone why would he or she care about what other person would feel? Isn't the purpose of a person who hates someones is to hurt/taunt/rude/trouble other person?

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? I wish it was true but I doubt that she is trying to do that too right now. Because she is more worried about her sister especially when it was hard for to find rajvanshi groom and last time prospective one was killed and so this time she does not want ay problems in her sister's marriage.

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.

-fantastic and insightful analysis

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. That is true. But, I felt like she did not have to say that's why no one loves you. That is so not true. His ammi jaan loves him and i know other people love him for selfish reasons.

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!-

5. Jalal and his strange behaviours in the aftermath of the exchange

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? I think the answer lies in his dialogue of last scene of episode , where he says "He is the shahenshah and her husband too". I mean to say for him it's like no matter how much she hates him or not care about him, he is her husband and shahehshah and he has a right to see her dance and no one can stop him. It's kind of like love me or hate but you can't ignore me.

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?

Nice post. I loved the depth of your analysis.

Originally posted by: Ipshitaa

Nice post. I loved the depth of your analysis.

I loved today's JA interaction on many levels. Coming to the actual scene, overtly, Jodha did come across as an utterly insensitive Ameri Rajkumari. It looked like all that matters to her is the prestige of Amer and not the life of a shehenshah who happens to be her husband she claims to hate from the bottom of her heart. The thing I found interesting here is the manner in which she came in initially to request (a vinti) the shehenshah to leave Amer since his life is in danger. I too saw genuine care and concern in her behavior there. But as soon as Jalal prodded her, she immediately pulled up a facade of hating him like she has done always and went to quite the extreme for proving otherwise in her disclaimer. Honestly, I felt bad considering the gravity of the situation but I think this behavior of hers is no different from her behavior on previous similar occasions. So in my view she spoke from her heart till she was prodded. And then she suddenly started nibhaooing her "dushmani" to the T. Jodha is one egoistic and obstinate soul (which goes with her being a Rajput of that era).

About feeling pity for Jalal, I thought that part was actually very sensitive (although bitter) of her to understand the plight of a shehenshah and seeing him as a human in want of love and trust and not a King. Seeing him and his frustrations over issues and identifying with his mindset was in my opinion an understanding that she developed about him at a personal level along with the knowledge of how lonely he is up there. And I think it somewhere touched him as well since he looked down and looked extremely hurt at the her honest but insensitive rendition of truth. But yes, she overdid that bit when she repeated the pity word which forced Jalal to speak up. This scene I feel is also an extension of their talk after the tiger attack when she had mentioned that he is all alone at the throne.

If I were asked to comment about jodha's behavior in one line, I'd say she cares for him in her own twisted way but she doesn't want to admit it herself let alone being vocal about it and lower her ego and pride😆

Masi a very good post as usual from your end...👍🏼 But I DISAGREE ...

Originally posted by: prejudiced

Am glad you saw it too and wasn't my dream or positive thinking...This is what Ive mentioned in the prior page. Both while during the attack and when she came to Jalaal it was her concern for HIM.

I loved your analysis of the episode @Mansi simply because you have a completely different perspective and I am amazed that you always try to find something good even when the circumstances lead to a dire situation. Anyways, I was appalled by Jodha's insensitivity towards Jalal who has come all the way from Agra just to see her sister get married who by the way had to face innumerable number of rejections. Would it kill her to ask him whether he was OK considering he had to wrestle with the elephant to tame it and bring it under control? Nope, she had to come barging in and ask him to leave completely taking her mom's words out of context when all her mom said was to try and convince him to not get mad. For someone who was shown as sensitive, kind and loveable even to animals she is no way close to any of that traits when it comes to Jalal. Let's forget that he is her husband and once an arch enemy for a second and ask this question why was Jodha not thinking on a humanitarian perspective. Would she have acted differently and shown more care and concern if it wasn't Jalal? I guess she would have. This is where I have a problem. You do not have to be in love to treat someone fair. All one needs to do is to take a step back and analyse the situation as a whole and look at it from both her and his perspective. She only thought what is good for her family and Amer but forgets the fact that Agra is her home now and should look out for both her sasural and mayka. I think Jalal was absolutely right in asking her to put herself in his shoes and ask her for her response to this situation. Despite being blunt and not being able to grasp the fact that the man to some extent has bared his soul she goes on to say that she pities him and no longer hates him. I guess I have to be happy that she atleast said that she doesn't hate him anymore. As far as I can tell Jalal has come a long way when it comes to putting up with her attitude and tantrums. It did not sit well with me when she walks out of the room saying that she pities him and then he gets all happy and excited to sneakily watch her dancing. It wouldn't hurt if he doesn't act that he is all love sick when she still seems to not give a hoot about him or atleast pretending to not care or think about him when everyone for some reason has only been talking about him. I hope they ease up Jodha's character a little bit just so she is not so stern and blunt when it comes to Jalal. I am not asking either one of them to fall head over heals for each other since it will definitely take a while considering they both were at each other's throat waiting to take revenge.