Posted:
Back with half-a-sensible post after a long-ish time! It took my grey-cells a while to process what development CVs are trying to portray in the relationship of this see-saw couple (as I've nicknamed them!😛)
Why, I'd even lambasted Jalal 2 days ago for giving Jodha so much space - that he was beginning to act like a Majnu and NOT like the Shehenshah etc etc. I'm certain that those who'd read my posts would know more than anything else how much I'd hate for Jalal to lose his attitude and authority. I never wanted him to become a Romeo ...NEVER...I always wanted him to remain in authority - 'THE MAN' as we call it. I thought he was faltering. I'd become very very disappointed when he cared to go ahead and watch her dance after all that she'd humiliated him with under the weight of his Pagdi!
However, yesterday's 'mass'-cum-'class???' driven episode has made me realize one thing.
He IS being THE MAN - in his own way!I think I've just understood what the CVs are TRYING to show! (Though not too successfully always - but yet!)
He continues being stern with other people - his scenes with MA, Atgah Khan and now this Wajinder family clowns are proof enough of that. However, he does give Jo all the leverage he can. Not because he has no choice - not because he's head over heels in love with her - but, because he can exact sweetest revenge in this manner! Obviously, he wouldn't take this nonsense from anyone else - he is doing so only from her - because he knows how best to give it back to her too! He doesn't let her get to him, because his handsome mind has already devised strategies of revenge by the time she's finished with her sentences! 😛
Shouting and commanding her hasn't worked and he doesn't want to raise an upheaval in her Maika - so, he's doing it another way - the silent way - the devilish way!
Therefore, though the first part of the episode still stood disjointed and was NOT something that I thoroughly enjoyed (the dance I mean)...at the end of it all, I started realizing something else. It now seems like this was the best way for him to shut her incessant taunts - punish her for all that attitude she has been showing him ever since they left for Amer.
Every thing she's been doing to him in the past few days, he's avenged in his own way - EVERY SINGLE THING! We only need to shed our conservative caps for it since the CVs seem to have taken on a 'mass' route rather than a 'class' route in Jalal's personal relationship with Jo!
1) Jodha has been giving him below the belt comments and taunts for a while now and he did his share of below the belt comments and taunts yesterday to get back at her too (The vichitra sounds to be precise)! Only, his taunts are more 'effective' since they're calculated and not ego-driven like hers. No wonder the push-up scene didn't look as classy as the scene in the movie where AR Jodha happily eyes her HR Jalal sword practising - because, it wasn't meant to be! 😛
2) After all that tirade and 'Oh no one loves you Shehenshah' rebuke from her on the day before, he blatantly goes on to ask her yesterday
'Jodha Begum, by any chance have you started falling in love with me?'
Worst, she falters and doesn't even give him a proper answer!
3) After all that 'We at AMER don't punish, only warn people unlike you at Agra na na na na na'
He MAKES her punish him and MAKES her feel so sorry for having uttered any such statement in the first place!
4) She'd so callously told him that she 'pitied' his state & loneliness the previous episode. In this one, he reduced her to a thoroughly disconcerted queen when in his company - pitying her own state when he embarrassed her like none else ever had!
5) When she calls him budhu, he makes her the budhu instead during the Kumkum episode.
6) When she refutes his story, he challenges her to narrate her own version!
7) When she states she wanted his head, he used wise debate and placed his head at Devi's Ma Mandir!
8) When she kept repeating that she had many reasons to hate him, he's nullified her stance through his actions - by being on his best behaviour at Amer -thus compelling her family to keep chanting praises of him in her presence. Jo repeatedly finds herself cornered (unwillingly) to accept that she is holding on to her 'hatred' purely due to false pride.
If you remember, her family have brought up the visit-to-the-temple topic thrice so far - Almost like they're telling her 'Jo wake up and smell the coffee!'
9) Even if Jodha didn't acknowledge what Jalal went through while taming Hawai, Sukanya was gifted with a few lines to show us the viewers - that Jo is being reminded about it all!
It looks like Jalal is choosing the path of a cool calculated flirt to tame his prudish Begum - while he continues being Shehenshah with everyone else. Quite unrealistic - no doubt, but entertaining? Well - it seems to be working for quite a few - seeing how members have been stating that even their moms and grandmoms are enjoying it all. Maybe the overload of glycerine-saas-bahu serials has made people shift loyalties to something that can be entertaining and yet somewhat sensible too!
Also, we know Jalal had a weakness for women in his younger years. Books have stated that he was quite the romantic too! So, in his twenties he must have been at least half-as-devilish as this if not this much! Besides, how do we know what he was doing in his bed chambers with his Begums - topless push ups or poetry recitals - why not both?😆
One can choose to see it in this manner and continue enjoying it till the flavour lasts or one can wish for the JA movie sort of platonic matured love and give up on the serial. Sadly, there's not much else to hop on to on Indian TV in a parallel genre to keep us hooked either. Personally, I'll stick on to see how it unfolds. Besides, currently - the Ratanpur problem and MA scenes are both quite meaningful and just as enticing to me! 😃
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