Folks,
Well, after sticking my neck out about what the previous episode's precap might lead to, I have landed on my backside with a loud thud, which must have been heard all the way from Agra to Amer. Everything for which I had hoped, even against hope, has proved to be a mirage, and worse. The only consolation is that my title for this post was at least halfway correct.😉
I do not remember when I last felt so dispirited about Jodha Akbar. It is a major letdown, that scene between Jalal and Jodha, and then from there, we are suddenly pitchforked into a mehndi ki rasam, and Jalal secretly watching Jodha's nritya, which consists of her shaking her none too slender midriff and her fairly substantial derriere.
It was trivialising things with a vengeance. I am sure Vicki will still be able to gild even the Jalal-Jodha scene with her flowing prose, and successfully gloss over Jodha's blank face as Jalal thanks her for not having negated his conviction that she is one of those enemies of his who hate him upfront, but I cannot find it in me to say anything about it.
I presume that Mansi, for her part, will parse each frame into its component parts to pan for gold among all this dross, and she will get there as well, for there is nothing that determined optimism cannot achieve, and she is very, very good at elaborate constructs. But for me, it will be fool's gold.
Both of them will of course be perfectly right from their respective points of view. It is just that I hear a different drummer.
In this, what dismays me the most is not a Jodha who does not seem to have a thought to spare for the dangers threatening the man she has married, except to categorise him as an untouchable she wants to shoo away, since his very presence would endanger the welfare and the good name of her beloved parivaar and her even more beloved Amer.
After having seen him close to death just a little earlier, she has no qualms about saying that her only worry is that nothing should happen to him in Amer,so that her loved ones do not suffer any after effects from his being assassinated there.
The only possible inference to be drawn from this is that it is perfectly all right for her if he is murdered away from Amer .The sheer callousness, and the crass self-centredness with which she said all that to him did not surprise me. In fact, like Jalal, I was glad and relieved to have my assessment of her confirmed. I need expect nothing from her any more.
There will be those who take the line that she needs more time to disengage herself from her ghrina for him. That her pride will not let her climb down so soon. They will of course have to avoid the sticky question of why it was necessary for her to be so brutal when she says, in effect, It does not matter to me what happens to you, so long as it does not happen in Amer.
I was proud of Jalal in that scene, for he took all of her heedless, cruel selfishness and her total absence of any concern for him - I do not even think of caring - on the chin and did not flinch.
I was glad to hear his voice cut like a whiplash when he told this ignorant, self-obsessed princess, from a petty, tinpot little principality that exists only on his sufferance, that he would not tolerate her trying to pity him. That his having to walk alone in life, and to be able to trust no one, was linked to his imperial destiny, and that destiny had been chosen for him by fate. He does not expect such a frog in the well to understand imperial concerns.
Rajat was superb in his controlled bitterness.
But what dismayed me a little later was the Jalal who is suddenly, without warning, reduced to a peeping Tom, secretly watching a woman who is dancing joyously, after telling him openly that if she is concerned about anything happening to him, it is only because it would derail Sukanya's wedding. I do not know precisely what this says about him, but whatever it is , I do not like it.
I am sure there will be any number here who would be able to romanticize over an emasculated Jalal trying to win over this woman despite everything, but I will not be one of them. I would hate this kind of Jalal far more than this kind of Jodha.
If this is to go on, I might as well pack up and leave, for I came on board for an emperor, and for Jalal to be one, it is not enough for him to repeat that he is one thrice or more in an episode. He has to act like one, to be imperious and dominating and proud, not a man so pitifully weakened by an obsession that he runs helplessly after a woman who talks to him as Jodha did today, like a poodle or a lap dog.
I am sure that after another 200 episodes, the Jalal-Jodha amar prem kahani will materialise, when it simply cannot be avoided any longer. But I cannot, as of now, see how it can, after such batterings, even approximate to what I had hoped for and had described in my last post. That is not to say it will not delight very many, and that, after all, is what TRPs are all about.
I know that I sound harsh, perhaps excessively so, but I am afraid that is how I feel right now.
Shyamala B.Cowsik
Tum Se Tum Tak
Ganesh Kartikeya
367