Folks,
I hesitated quite a bit before beginning this one, for I do not like raining on anyone's parade. I do wish I could share in the outpouring of joy and relief across the forum and the happy endings for both the butparasti-cum-conversion, and the body heat (now the black cloth) issues. But I cannot in all honesty do that, for my overall impression - only slightly improved after a rewatch this morning, and that too because of aspects other than these two - is that it was slapdash at best and ludicrous at worst. So, if you are among the rejoicing 95%+, I shall not mind if you decide to switch off at this point!
-The Green Missive: The message from Sheikh Salim Chisti was, in its lyrical, soaring mysticism, unquestionably the most beautiful part of the episode. His reference to the Almighty understanding the twittering of the birds that the Sheikh had seen flying around in the morning reminded me of another epiphany.
This was that of Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa, who, as a boy, saw a flock of white swans flying over head in the blue sky. He had a vision, an epiphany, of the Divine, which was so strong that he fell down in a dead faint and did not come to his senses for hours. It is thus that he acquired the suffix Paramahansa.
It is not clear what the Sheikh meant by Jalal creating an place like Ajmer Sharif free of religious strife; does he mean a physical place of pilgrimage, or a religious meeting place like the Din-e-Ilahi that Akbar created much later in his reign?
The Sheikh says, in an echo of what Hamida Banu once tells Jalal during the Farida fraud on him, that Jalal will have an heir once he understands mohabbat. One did not spot Hamida clapping, but she must have been hard at it!
The question, however is this: did the Sheikh have any idea of the endless frustrations and despair that Akbar would suffer because of the totally unsatisfactory heir that Salim/Jahangir turned out to be? So much so that he would have gladly ditched him if there had been any other heir available?
This was in fact proof positive of the old adage that there is only one thing worse than not getting what you want, and that is getting it.
Jalal: He was all Shahenshah in the Diwan-e-Khas before the ulema arrived, furious about their threat to his throne, raging like a caged lion as he seeks the source of the leak about his mandir visit, and cowing down Sharifuddin with a single scorching glance for daring to repeat/suggest, as the way out, that Jodha should convert or leave Agra.
But then all he does in practice is tell the hapless Atgah Khan to produce the culprit. How does he think this is going to be done, by magic? In fact, in every problem of this kind, both Jalal and his Wazir are all talk and no action. Why, Hoshiyaar was better than the official spies at finding out about the maulvi revolt! God help the Mughal sultanate if these are all the intelligence resources they have.
But during the actual hearing, apart from his insistence on his zubaan to Jodha, then and earlier, and that there should be no pressure on her to convert, Jalal seems curiously passive, and strangely ready to cave in to the power of the clergy. There is none of the fire with which he declares, just a little earlier, that if they had not been the custodians of the faith, he would have decapitated them on the spot. In fact he throws in the towel straightaway, and not only accepts that they have the right to dethrone him, but is ready to step down at once.
This is simply unbelievable, that an emperor would be prepared to quit this throne, abandon his subjects, and leave them to suffer from all the chaos, instability, civil war and all that would follow in their wake, for the self indulgence of being seem to keep his word to his wife. This is not rajadharma in any form, it is the negation of it. A king should be prepared to suffer hellfire if necessary to protect his subjects, and here we have a Jalal who thinks of nothing but his own self-indulgent virtue.
And how does Jalal imagine that the ulema who have, thanks to his lack of resistance, acquired the power to dethrone him, are going to accept his choice of a successor? That too a 4 year old, whose father was one of the most hated men in the Mughal sultanate? How long does Jalal think Rahim would stay alive even if the ulema accepted him as the heir? It seems to be such an ill-considered, kneejerk statement that one does not know what to make of it.
Lastly, as far as the court scene is concerned, Jalal hardly looks either relieved or happy after the conversion demand has been dropped and his position as the Shahenshah once more secure. In fact he looks withdrawn and grumpy.Why? Is it because he realizes what a near run thing it was? But then it was he who made it so.
Jalal-Jodha: My amplification on Lashy's perceptive take on this is that Jalal treats Jodha like a somewhat retarded child, whom he loves to cherish, indulge and tease. So nothing she does really upsets him; one does not get angry at the folly of children. He gives and gives and gives to her and, to please her, to her family, just as he lavishes toys and sweets and dresses on his little saalis. There is the same undemanding affection and caring towards her as he has towards them.
The only difference is that they cherish him in return, whereas Jodha accepts it all with an unparalleled sense of entitlement, but for what puzzles me. She does not really care for what happens to him, for if she had, she would have jumped up the moment he announced that he would yield the throne to Rahim, and declared that she was ready to convert of her own free will, if only out of the gratitude to him that she never voices but which she, hopefully, feels somewhere inside!
But she does not, and looks instead to Hamida Banu to bail her out, and save her from blame for not having done anything to save her husband's throne. She never imagines that Hamida will decide that she should convert.
As I plan to stick for as long as I can to my Deepavali resolution not to tear strips off Jodha, I shall refrain from comment about her opening lines to Jalal as soon as he turns up in her rooms. Besides how can one blame her when he is determined, like Darcy, to be pleased with her no matter what she does? It is pointless to look for a stormy, dominating Rhett in this Jalal, who reserves his imperiousness for Adham and Sharifuddin.
It is a fundamentally unbalanced equation between them, with him doing all the running, and I do not think this is likely to change any time soon. Just look at the precap! She is preaching to him against acting in haste and anger, and he is taking it in with boundless admiration. Yet what does she do every single time there is a problem except to act in haste and in anger? The obvious contradiction clearly does not occur to him.
In fact, Jodha Akbar is fast becoming a jazzed up version of PR, with a heroine who can never do anything wrong and is perennially up there on a pedestal. Not because she is intelligent or resourceful or capable of logical thought, but simply because the CVs decree that it be so.
Why, yesterday Jodha was so much like a deflated balloon, helpless and adrift, that it was depressing to watch her. Our Amer ki Mirchi cannot even deduce that a man who can give up a throne to keep one promise he made her would never have broken another promise (by now, Jalal's non-existent zubaan has taken on a life of its own!), but actually attacks him afresh on that score. How an intelligent man can love such a featherbrained creature is a mystery.
Till now, there has not been a single instance where she has influenced Jalal for the better, and whatever is good and noble in him was always there. Still, you will now see this haivaan ko banaya insaan mantra being force fed to us; it has already started with the precap.
So, the only constant these days in Jodha Akbar is Meri Jodha Mahaan.
Jalal-Ruqaiya: Jalal's behaviour towards Ruqaiya yesternight, cold and somewhat mocking, lowered him in my estimation. I still remember how he was constantly scheming with her against Jodha in the old days; that was apparently kosher, but what she did now, which is only to be expected from a jealous watchful begum, is not? I do not respect a man who throws over an old relationship for a new one, that too one in which he is doing all the running after a disdainful, eternally taking woman. There should have been some loyalty to a childhood friend who had shared all the ups and downs in his life, and at least some of the indulgence he shows in abundance towards his new obsession.
I also feel, like Ariel, that what Ruqaiya was feeling as she watched Jodha and Jalal talking and laughing was hurt more than jealousy, though jealousy would naturally have been there as well, and why not? She too loves Jalal, without ever having acknowledged because of his oft stated aversion to the M word. Smiley brought out the pathos of this predicament beautifully in her last scene with Jalal.
The problem for me here is that I cannot really pin down A Ruqaiya, ever since Smiley's complex, vulnerable Ruqaiya was replaced. So saying anything in defence of this one is like stepping on to quicksand.
But regardless of what she is, which is no different from what he has been till recently towards Jodha, and still is in other respects, Jalal should have handled her better and let her down without making her lose face. The part where he needles her about him and Jodha that night was deliberately hurtful and beneath him. I hope he redeems himself as the show proceeds.
As for those who feel that in pressurizing Jodha to convert or in rushing a messenger to warn Jalal about the maulvi revolt, Ruqaiya was simply defending her own interests that are tied to Jalal, I for one see this as too facile an explanation.
Ruqaiya is a complex character. She attaches top priority to Jalal's takht and to his remaining the Shahenshah because she is a Mughal princess. She has seen all the terrors and upheavals he has been thru, and thus sees the paramount need for him to retain the throne. Plus , as Alakh says, she is his childhood friend and she loves him in her own fashion. That cannot be denied.
Hamida Banu's reactions and what she says to Jodha after the tiger attack, when Jalal is at death's door, are very similar to Ruqaiya's. She never seems to be mourning the likely death of her son then, does she? She only voices fear for what will happen to the sultanate if the Shahenshah dies. So how, using the same logic, should we interpret those statements by Hamida? Obviously that she cares nothing for Jalal as her son, but only for the Emperor.
Jodha has seen nothing of any kind of hardship in her life, except when Amer is threatened by Sharifuddin. So, by the same token, if and when Jodha tries to protect Jalal in the future, one could argue similarly that it would be because his continuance in power is vital for Amer's survival.
That would not be true, and neither is it true that Ruqaiya's fears for Jalal are motivated solely by her self interest. Or Hamida's for that matter.
Hamida Banu: The other candidate for a halo after Jodha Begum. And for a gold medal for that 11:59:59 reprieve for Jodha. Of course she knew that the man from Ajmer Sharif would land up just before Jodha read the kalma, like a bomb being defused always with 1 second to go. Probably she knew he was like Harry Potter, and could apparate it with that green missive.đ
The Kala Vastra: Nothing did more to cheer me up at episode end than this brainwave of the CVs. I was falling off my chair for laughing.
It was LUDICROUS. A black cloth, or even a black blanket, cannot generate heat, which was what was needed. Jodha's half frozen body had no heat to conserve. What was needed was an external source of heat. That is why the Khwaja recommended her husband hugging her tight to transfer HIS body warmth to her. And if not body heat, there could have been the Mughal equivalent of brandy, plus a blazing fire. Neither of which needed Jalal .
But how on earth can a black cloth wrapping thaw out a frozen body? This kind of nonsense is an insult to the intelligence of the viewers. And obviously none of the CVs has done even an elementary course in physics!đ
What riles me is that this is beginning to resemble the endless fake DNA reports and fake duration of pregnancy reports in PR, plus the total farce that was periodically shown there in terms of court procedures. If the CVs take the viewers so much for granted, AND are condoned, how then can one complain any longer? They will take heart from the rapturous reception to this episode and dish out even worse things next time around.
The mystery of the mole: To my mind, the most interesting point in today's episode was Adham's revelation that it was not he who had leaked the butparasti details to the maulvis. It was clearly not Mahaam either. So who could it have been?
Even earlier, I was wondering about who could have known about Jalal's maatha-tekhna in front of the Kaali Maa, for only Jodha and her daasis were with Jalal then, and all the Mughal courtiers had been left outside. Unless one of the daasis gushed about what the Shahenshah had done to one of the Mughal baandis. It is mysterious.
I saw some speculation elsewhere that it could have been Ruqaiya, but that is as incredible as the black cloth explanation. She would never have risked Jalal's takht by initiating a process that could so easily spin out of control, and destroy not just Jalal's life but her own, and for what? To put Jodha on the spot? A non-starter if ever there was one.
I bet the CVs have no idea either, so this will be the latest addition to the collection of loose ends that abound in Jodha Akbar.
Shyamala B.Cowsik
Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi 2
Udne Ki Aasha
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