If Jodha,my dear, can, after listening to Jalal pouring his innermost feelings to her that night, still say that she saw only SKLL
(stree ke liye lalasa) in his eyes, she needs to see an oculist and a psychiatrist one after the other, as someone put it so pithily.
Every woman, and not just a courtesan, is supposed to have a feminine instinct that alerts her to when a man is in love with her, or so we (and may be I am ancient and thus out of date😉) were told in our girlhood days. Jodha clearly defeats this maxim.
I do not see where the question of Jalal preferring Jodha to the KT (
khaas tohfa) even arises. He does not care a hoot for the KT, which she, being intuitive and sharp, realises at once. He is also, even in his persistent state of rage and humiliation, unable to keep his eyes off Jodha. So that statement is a
non sequitur. As for Jodha, I can only cite what I wrote on my suddenly resurrected first ever post in this forum (
Ekta's Emperor Jalaluddin Mohammed: an assessment, of June 30, 2013, which seems to be enjoying an unexpected new vogue), in response to a request from some that I write a similar assessment for Jodha.
"While I have come round to feeling that Paridhi is perfectly cast as Jodha, being so very beautiful and trying her very best, I have very serious reservations about Jodha as a character, and I would feel the same even if she was a contemporary character.
She is exactly like an standard issue Ekta heroine, who is built up and praised and hyped to excess by the script, and her failings are religiously glossed over. I
f only the script would acknowledge her flaws, that would be so much better, and I would welcome her as a complex, interesting, grey character. But no, she HAS to be flawless, and coated with Apex Ultima, like the house in the Asian Paints ad!
It is not that I am a Rajat/Jalal fan, I am too old to be anyone's fan, but I like both Jalal as a character, with all his flaws, and Rajat as an actor very much. I cannot say the same for Jodha. I try very hard to be fair to her; for example, in my Heartbreak ++ post, I wrote that her pushing Jalal was natural and should not be criticised. But overall, I do not like her character.
So if I wrote an honest assessment of her as a character and of Paridhi playing her, I would have to say that the poor girl was struggling (wo)manfully with a poorly written character. And then even you, my dears, would not like It. So what is the point of my wasting my time and yours? Would you not agree?"
As for the Red Riding Hood comparison, she is nowhere near as green, is our Jodha. The times I have liked her a lot was when she was being street smart, as when she cons Jalal into giving up the Ratanpur fort by falling on Mahaam's neck and apologising to all and sundry, including the shahi kutta billi. That was superb. What I dislike is this eternal preachiness and self-righteousness,
And if she had been married to Maharana Udai Singh of Mewar, she would have been eaten alive by his third Rani Dheerbaiji, who would make both Mahaam and Lady Macbeth look like convent schoolgirls, and is magnificent in her sustained and wily malevolence.So it is not as if it is Agra alone which is so dangerous; any royal household might have been the same, other than Bhanpur and Amer, of course.
To sum up, I had looked forward to a Jodha who would be feisty and intelligent and coolly self-possessed, capable of holding her own against an emperor without being petty or smart alecky or plain rude. One who could face any calamity with fortitude and resourcefulness, instead of weeping like a tap in full flow and lamenting her fate to Moti. I would have cheered myself hoarse for that Jodha as she brought a turbulent, haughty and arrogant Jalal to heel in slow stages.
What we seem to have here is a typical Ekta female lead, who is always right no matter what she does and how she behaves. Jodha to me looks much like Archana and Purvi of PR, obsessed with their maternal
parivaars and pushing the men unfortunate enough to have fallen for them relentlessly on the backfoot till they have been reduced to doormats. And this while having the height of the pedestal on which they are perched being steadily raised by the admiring multitudes
Moreover, I do not want to have to choose between Jalal and Jodha. Why should our liking for the two of them be a zero sum game? I want to be able to like and admire BOTH of them.
But as things stand, I am, increasingly, unable to relate to this Jodha at all. She is a major disappointment: opinionated, obstinate, blinkered, and self-righteous. Where is the strong, intelligent, resourceful Diana-cum-Juno that I had wanted? Instead, we have this Shahi Begum who, instead of being coolly dismissive of the KT and not giving her any opening for her deliberate impertinence, actually stoops to an exchange with her.
Oh, Lord, how long this has become! My apologies. I hasten to add that none of the above is aimed at bringing you around to my point of view!😉
Shyamala B.Cowsik
Originally posted by: PadBear
yes it could be termed fun and made some of us nostalgic for the 70s. But the courtesan being clued in about Jalal is a given isn't it? Her speciality is the male psyche. So how to compare poor Jodha with Benazir? I...and I suspect Jalal, would definitely prefer blinkered Jodha.
I must say your dislike for Jodha (which you are very entitled to express in any which way), has helped me. I was more enamoured with Jalal, but am now falling for her highness. She has that endearing quality of being half aware and also blissfully unaware of a lot of things. I'm drawn to the fact that she's still little red riding hood living in unfamiliar and even dangerous surrounds. Still sleeps with a dagger does she.
Edited by sashashyam - 11 years ago
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