Folks,
As almost every aspect of these 2 episodes has been analysed threadbare - in sorrow, in anger, and in vicarious satisfaction - there is nothing much left for me to do there. So this one is going to be like a Van Gogh or a Monet painting, a pointillist collage of what struck me these last 2 days, especially the parts I found, at times intentionally but mostly unintentionally, delightfully ridiculous.
So let me start with the best.
The incomparable: I have a confession to make, folks. After watching last night's episode 133, I have grown to like the determinedly sultry Benazir, for all that she is like an overweight (the upper arms in particular), out of condition belly dancer in that ridiculous costume that is there only minimally. The woman just does not have the figure for that Amrapali costume, which needs either a Deepika Padukone or the original screen Amrapali, Vyjayanthimala.
Benazir looks exactly like Bipasha Basu would have looked in it. Which is why the funniest scene the night before was Ram Tannu Pandey goggling at this unlikely femme fatale, and describing her as yeh sundari jaise abhi tak nahin dekha!š
But Benazir is much more. She is street smart, non-malicious and very, very sharp. As Tripti pointed out perceptively, Benazir must have had a hard life, and a precarious one. So, unlike a cossetted princess like Jodha, who can afford to be rigid and moralistic and demanding, she must have learnt early on that to survive, she would have to be not just a temptress sans pareille (without an equal) as her name promises. She would also have to be as hard as nails, and on the ball to exploit every opening life offered her in a world overflowing with lecherous, exploitative, but still exploitable men. Such women usually have only searing contempt for the men they flatter to their face, and their tough life makes them unremittingly cynical. So must it be with Benazir,
Given this, it is very much to her credit that she can instantly make out that Jalal is a rara avis, as unlike the men she usually deals with as cheese from chalk. That he is no philanderer, and more to the point, he is not in the least interested in her, the woman who drives every other man mad, except as a means to an end. The end being, as she also makes out at first glance, to rile his Jodha Begum.
Thus, in just one day, Benazir manages to read Jalal a hundred times better than Jodha can after months. But then, Jodha, as I wrote earlier, is blinkered.
Nor does Benazir, despite being only a kaneez (NOT a daasi, as Jodha labels her with uncharacteristic and revealing spitefulness!), hesitate to let the Shahenshah know that she can read much that he would like to keep hidden. I admired her honesty and courage in saying things upfront to Jalal about his evident preoccupation with Jodha, and she stumps him every time. She has thus very likely brought home to him things he would like to ignore, seeing them as signs of shameful weakness when set against the rage and sense of humiliation that still consume him.
In fact, Benazir is like one of filles de joie (courtesans) in the Guy de Maupassant short stories, disreputable and superficially mercenary, but intelligent, perceptive, self-reliant, basically goodhearted and honest.
The one who befriends the lost hero, and helps him to find his way back ot his true love, a buxom Chandramukhi in the making, perhaps? I am not quite sure as yet whether Benazir would be so generous and helpful, for she has fallen hard for Jalal herself.
But it is at least possible that she might be the real bridge builder between Jalal and Jodha, since she will, if the CVs will permit it, be the only one in a position to assure Jodha that whatever he may pretend, Jalal can think of no one else but her, Jodha. Not to speak of breaking open the comfortable (for her, that is!) cocoon of mitrata in which Jodha has imprisoned Jalal, and making her face the truth about what she feels for him.
Unless of course, and this is an exciting possibility, Benazir is really an Abu Mali mole, meant to worm her way into Jalal's confidence and help the Abu Mali-Sharifuddin combo bring Jalal down. If so, that scheme too is going to come a cropper very soon. Partly because of this duo's track record against Jalal, and partly because Benazir, given the very soft corner she already has for the Shahenshah, might well betray them to Jalal rather than the other way around!
The unforgettable: Jodha is the one who lit up these 2 episodes for me, and provided an abundance of nostalgic fun.
The latter was because in large part, she reminded me irresistibly of the Hindi film heroines of 1970s vintage, sulking and raging at the men who pretended to despise them and sought to distance them, often with the help of a benevolent courtesan (for invariably obscure and senseless reasons that need not concern us). The Asha Parekhs, the Saira Banus, the Sadhanas. Every one of them stomping around with a furious face, hissing like a steam kettle on the boil, raving and ranting to all and sundry, and spewing venom against the man whose disregard, to her dismay and helpless grief, darkens her mind and her spirit.
To begin at the beginning, I had commented 3 days ago that Jodha would probably now find out, at least for a while, what it feels like to be consigned to the outer darkness because the Sun King had turned away from her, and that it would be interesting to see how she handles it.
Naivete abounding: On the initial evidence, Jodha handled it badly. After a promising session with Kanha, where she announces her decision to go and apologise to Jalal, what does she do next? She meets Mahaam, and lets her derail this plan completely with the single, catty remark that Jalal was looking far happier than usual.
Now, Jodha knows that Mahaam hates her viciously, has let Jodha know this on every possible occasion in the past, and that she will do anything to trip her up and hurt her. And still she believes all that Mahaam tells her and lets Mahaam poison her against Jalal? The girl must be stupider than even I had believed! And we blame Jalal for letting his Badiammi, who has nurtured him all thru his childhood, lead him by the nose. What about Jodha, who has no such excuse?
Following this, I was also appalled at the way in which Jodha charged into Jalal's room in full attack mode. There was not an iota of regret or apology in her eyes or her voice. She was the same old battleaxe. Worse, she berated him on his having felt not prem for her the night before, but stree ke liye lalasa ( SKLL seems to be her 'in' phrase, the replacement for vaasnapoorti! ) . And this after listening to him bare his innermost being to her that night. It was so ugly that I blenched. It seemed to have lashed Jalal to a white hot fury, for he retaliated in kind, with savage and cutting contempt. He then exited, leaving her in self-inflicted misery and tears.
The jashn: Given all this, I could not fathom what possessed Jodha to stand up at the jashn, assuming that Jalal would actually seat her next to him after that dust up earlier in the day. It was the height of folly, and Jalal exploited it to the full.
Jalal's behaviour in humiliating Jodha in public was very ill advised and unseemly in an emperor. But consider this.
You go to a wife who has told you, as you believe, that she loves you. You naturally expect to be welcomed with open arms. You pour out all your innermost feelings to her, something you have never done with anyone else .And then, just when you are making the first move, she goes all distant and disapproving and shoves you, the emperor of Hindustan, to the ground.
What you want to do then is to grind her into the dust, and make her, to borrow Mahaam's lurid phrase, weep tears of blood. Moreover, we have to factor in the way an emperor thinks; he is accountable to no one and can behave any way he likes; everyone else has to adjust to him. So perhaps he just does not care.
So all that Jalal seems to care about now is driving a stiletto as deep into Jodha as he can and then turning it once more, and the instrument be damned. That, and watching her like a hawk to see if his vaars have the desired impact.
At the jashn, Jalal must have been more than satisfied on this count. That the pain he inflicts on her will rebound on him is another matter altogether.
The baajuband: As for Jodha going to Jalal's rooms to return that baajuband, instead of sending it thru Motibai, it seemed to be equally ill-advised, indeed masochistic. She says later that she wanted to talk things over with him. She does not at all grasp, and I have noted this earlier, that his hurt and rage cannot be healed by an apology and that right now, the very sight of her will only stoke that rage even further.
She tells Moti (soon to be replaced, alas! šThis one had a lot of character) that she was seeking an answer from Jalal. But an answer to what? She says one thing and he says the opposite.How then can one get an resolution there?
What was needed was for her to realise that there is something wrong somewhere, and then try to convince him of it and, if possible, also find out what is wrong. But Jodha is not savvy in handling men, and her SOP is to charge straight at an obstacle, like a determined bull. This time, it does not work.
Even so, if she had talked politely and distantly to Jalal, let her glance sweep once over Benazir in tolerant dismissiveness, and then swept out graciously, her dignity intact, Jalal would have been stumped. Instead, she fumes visibly, looks daggers at Benazir, and storms out in the end.
For Jalal, it is full paisa vasool. I do not agree with the reading that he looks sad after she leaves. He merely looks sulky and irritated with the whole world, and is focussing for the moment on getting away from the sultry, clingy femme fatale he has saddled himself with!š
The green eyed monster: Jodha's outbursts, first to Moti, and then sotto voce after the shamsheer scene, were curiously revealing. She literally had smoke coming out of her ears, and was green enough to delight any Save the Planet types. š
It was fascinating that she now seems to recollect all that Jalal had told her the night before , not with anger but, in the light of what had happened now, with a sense of loss, of deprivation. What then of the stree ke liye lalasa that bothered her so much when she took it as directed towards herself? She is now safe from such unwelcome attentions, so why does she fume and fret if Jalal's SKLL is directed elsewhere? She should be relieved. But no, it is quite the opposite!
I noted the standard ratri vyateet accusation, which was making a comeback after a while. But previously, she was accusing Jalal, baselessly, with wanting to do it with her, and was, on the road to Ajmer Sharif, sharing this apprehension most inappropriately with even a strange daasi. Now she is furious that he is vyateeting his ratris with woh daasi. Jodha must learn to be logical, she cannot bar the poor chap from any ratri vyateet at all!šI was hugely amused by her ranting to poor Moti.
Then, during the shamsheer scene, I was struck by, firstly, Jodha not having done the logical thing and pretended not to notice her patidev indulging in SKLL with his voluptuous khaas tohfa. Instead she stands there, eyes spitting fire, for a good long while, taking it all in.
Till the khaas tohfa murmurs seductively to Jalal (whose self possession deserts him at that point, leaving him looking awkward and embarrassed , like an errant schoolboy) that she will be awaiting him in her gareebkhana, which finally proves too much for Jodha to take. Curious, this jealousy about a man she would normally have to share with all his begums, and which she had never betrayed earlier. How is she going to explain it to herself, I wondered.
This question was answered pronto, by Jodha's uncharacteristically contemptuous reference to woh daasi not having dared to wear her shamsheer practice costume unless the Shahenshah had told her to do so. Aha, I said to myself, see how the paragon is descending to good old fashioned jealousy!
More to the point, Jodha can kid herself for now that what she feels so strongly about is not Jalal doing ratri (to be precise, din) vyateet with another woman, but that he should demean himself with such a lowly, contemptible creature as Benazir. That it is not jealousy, which would be difficult to explain away (to herself in the first place) while still insisting that she does not have any prem for Jalal. It is merely moral outrage at his slumming!š
It remains to be seen how long this French farce is played out.
Performance-wise, Jalal was in top form during the shamsheer sequence. The sudden distracted look on his face as he spots Jodha, and loses his concentration. The very hesitant, micrometer nod of assent, all the while looking at the furious Jodha, when the khaas tohfa announces that she will be awaiting him in her room. The slightly shamefaced smile with which he fobs her off and winds up the session abruptly, while trying to keep the retreating Jodha in his field of vision. It was as well he stopped, otherwise Benazir might have ended up pinking him unintentionally!
He was standard issue at the jashn and during the baajuband sequences; that cat at a mouse hole look , that slow sneer, and the cold smile are all things he can do in his sleep.
Jodha was throughout far too standard issue angry, tearful heroine, though Paridhi managed to look convincing despite getting little help from the script or the screenplay.
Miscellaneous: I did not much like this predictable gift comparison business by Ram Tannu Pandey; it is getting to be boring, and Jodha's halo hardly needs any further gilding. In fact, such preaching by RT Pandey to a husband would usually end up being counterproductive for the wife.
I devoutly hope that we are not about to be saddled with not one but 2 mahaan vyaktis in the form of Ram Tannu Pandey and his latest protegee. It would be too much to take!š
Suggestions in the forum that Jalal might become jealous of RT Pandey seem to me to be too far out to even merit consideration.
All in all, good corny fun these last 2 days, would you not agree?
Shyamala B.Cowsik
Web Series
Fan Fictions
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