Friends, Friday came and went with hardly any progress on any worthwhile front in the already tangled story mess. But we had the satisfaction of seeing one more layer of mess added to the existing mess-pile! Many of us -including me - rang up the Zee office to make sure we don't get that horrible spoiler coming true (i.e. the one that said Shivani will attract Hakim, and Jalal will propose marriage to Ben) but I am now afraid that is exactly what is to come.
However I want add a caveat here: even if it happens that Jalal will say that he plans to marry Ben, I feel this time it will not be to rattle Jodha and make her jealous. This time it may be because Jalal does have some plan up his sleeve to entrap Ben. He already showed me some slight jasoosi mode yesterday when talking to Hakim about who Ben really was and her strange paigam, so I feel pretty confident now that Jalal will get to know the truth about Ben and turn it against her. Our hero looks like his brains are slightly returning after the New Year vacation!
For the rest, the epsiode had some three major question marks for me:
One: What exactly did Jodha achieve by going to meet Sharif? He had already said in his paigam that he wanted to meet her as Jalal's life was in khatra. What additional value did the physical meeting at the jail bring? The only extra thing he said at the jail was that Abul Mali was behind it all. Beyond that what else was he able to tell Jodha? He didn't talk of Ben or Imtiaaz as the Abul Mali agents, and merely hinted that "some intruders" may have infiltrated Agra. He just leched away at Jodha and she acted all stand-offish, but what was the gain in terms of actionable information? Zilch?
So my question is: whether this visit to the jail by Jodha to meet Sharif itself may become a scandal later? This point of view is also reflected in the new Zee Tweet "Kya Sharif Jodha ko fasaa raha hai ya sach mein Jalal ki jaan khatre mein hai?"
Two: How does Shivani's love story with the kaarigar help the storyline? How does Shivani's impending elopment with her kaarigar from Agra, and the lovelorn looks Hakim was giving for her, become germane to the main story of Jodha and Jalal, and indeed how does it help unravel the existing "tangled tracks"? It only seeems to add one more layer of muck over the top of everything else? That too, it was given so much importance that we even had flashbacks of Shivani and her kaarigar falling in love!
The only three possible reasons I can see for all this Shivani story addition is: one, maybe Hakim-Jodha-Jalal-Shivani will all eventually come closer, especially if Hakim wins Shivani and she forgets the kaarigar (thus Hakim-Shivani love may instigate Jodha-Jalal love also); two, the opposite can happen too, and Jodha may opppose the kaarigar as brother-in-law and favour Hakim, while Jalal may rile Jodha and argue that Shivani has the right to marry who she likes, and he may give the kaarigar some title to elevate him (thus Hakim may dislike his own brother's angle); three, Hakim could become more an enemy and fall foul of Maan Singh (the history angle) if he is seen as hoping to get Shivani as his own love (even if Jodha-Jalal are married, we don't know if Bhagwant das, Maan Singh etc will want another Hindu-Mughal alliance for another daughter of the family?)
Three: How did it help us to see that Ben had so many snakes? These gazillion snakes were apparently facing imminent shortage too, as they were getting killed one by one when biting her, since she had enough poison in her to kill the ones that tried to bite her when she has had her full quota of poison in her. It looks like when she's lost some poison when she bites some victim, or she has to face a new day, she is able to absorb some new poison from a snake. But if her tank is already full, the snake that bites her gets killed by the level of poison already in her! So we are all supposed to be terribly impressed with her sheer poisonous-ness, and fear dreadfully for the life of Jalal ... while he sits blithely either not knowing anything about Ben - or knowing too much and not revealing anything? (That hand-washing scene is still fresh in my mind so I suspect he knows a lot about Ben already!)
But guess what guys, so long as this Ben bite story is not moving forward at all, this is all like some Animal Planet's programme on snakes masquerading as Zee TV! What is Ben waiting for anyway? Let her either try to bite Jalal or let her leave the show. This daily "I am going to bite, I am going to waste no time" story is becoming tedious!
Having said all this, here are my three picks of the day's central points:
The Jodha-Sharif meeting: why did she bother?
It was utterly ridiculous that Jodha drapes herself in ragged shawls and pretends to be a baandhi as she makes her way to the jail cell of Sharif, where he tries hard to look evil by squashing his face against the bars of the cell. It was such an over-the-top scene, that the less said the better. Anyway after all that ado, what did we get?
Jodha at first says a few anti-words against Sharif, but then he cries crocodile tears of remorse for his actions. He says now that Adham has a chance at freedom, he too needs pardon, if not for himself, at least for the sake of Bakshi Bano. Jodha sounds all miffed at him at first, but if she were really miffed at him, would she have trekked all the way to this jail in the dark of the night with only his sipahi as witness?
Sharif says to himself "All Rajvanshi women value their suhaag so she will turn up" and so apparently he hit all the right buttons with Jodha as she too turned up. But earlier she was shown as having valid doubts: How did Sharif sitting alone in a cell in Agra get wind of any plot against Jalal? How come Jalal was in danger and from whom? Could Sharif, already proven for treachery, even be believed? If after all these doubts Jodha still goes to meet Sharif all by herself, is she dumb or what? I wouldn't be surprised if this whole visit blows up into a major scandal and Jalal goes against Jodha yet again. Not because he is upset with her loyalty - but because he is upset for having married the stupidest woman on earth!
Anyway Sharif then did the ugly thing whereby he almost touched Jodha with his sticky-icky fingers, and started extolling her beauty and her desirability in absolutely lecherous terms - and then quickly changed it all to sound like he was pining for Bakshi. Jodha left the place sufficiently moved by this display of husbandly doting on his wife and promised to speak to Jalal about the khatra to his life. What was this scene all about? Why was it needed? What is Sharif's chaal - his freedom or Jodha's entrapment? If he is not free how does it help him to get Jodha entrapped? And if he wants to be free, how does it help to have just said nothing of real informational significance to Jodha? I am all confused!
The Shivani love story: Hakim vs. the kaarigar?
Okay now, what the hell was this story of Shivani and the kaarigar? The young princess is combing her hair at Amer when her comb falls over the parapet of the balcony on which she is standing. It falls at the feet of a young kaarigar decorating the palace walls with his masonry and he refuses to look up at her and return the comb personally as that would be too above his station in life.
The princess then goes to him herself to demand her comb, falls in love with his workmanship, and his face, and they both ostensibly then carry this love forward. It looks as if the love has even boiled over to include an intended elopment via Agra.
So when Bharmal makes his teerth yatra to some punyasthal near Agra, Shivani begs Bhagwant Das to take her to meet Jodha at Agra where she can spend ten days with her sister. This is the overt story. The covert plot is that the kaarigar will sneak into Agra and carry away Shivani for a secret marriage.
Meanwhile things are getting complicated by Hakim Mirza giving Shivani the glad eye at the Diwan-e-Khas when she arrived. So we now have the second triangle: Hakim-Shivani-Karigar! Who wants to lay bets on this one? While the main story of Jodha and Akbar moves not an inch, we can at least amuse ourselves by trying to make some money on the Shivani-Hakim-Kaarigar triangle?
Going at the rate at which Jalal is, in trying to make Jodha jealous and miffed at every turn, I won't be surprised if he tries to take the opposite position of whatever Jodha takes in this story of Shivani. If Jodha says Shivani and the Kaarigar should be given a chance at a good life together, Jalal willl argue in favour of Hakim. If Jodha favours Hakim, Jalal will favour the kaarigar. This much at least is sure.
Jalal slightly in jasoos mode along with Hakim?
The part of the episode that made me feel ever-so-slightly better after all these weeks was that scene between Jalal and Hakim at the end of the episode. Hakim starts the scene by telling Jalal "As you instructed me, I did some jasoosi about Abul Mali and Ben. I found out that Abul Mali is getting very active against you and this Ben is from his harem, so she is not kosher. Additionally she is supposed to be a Muslim, but has written this riddle paigam in Awadhi language to some Ammaji ."Jalal interjects that just because of a riddle paigam to her mother she cannot be accused. But Hakim continues that the paigam is disturbing for it is a strange twist in the affairs of an already suspect woman.
The part where Jalal connfounds us is when he takes the paigam from Hakim saying "Okay I will check with Ben on this". That gives some of us a fright that he is exposing whatever little clue he has to Ben directly. But remember folks, the scene was closed leaving Jalal deep in thought with the paigam in his hand. So I am convinced now that his own brains have started working!
Now here's my prediction: I think that spoiler that drove us all out of our minds yesterday will happen. Jalal may even say he is ready to marry Ben. But this may be less of a ploy to make Jodha jealous this time, and more of a ploy to buy time before Ben tries to bite him. Maybe he thinks Ben will want the Begum audha more than the escape back to Abul Mali's harem, especiallly since Imtiaz the pehelwan is now killed? He may thus get himself some space to work out the exact import of the paigam, and if Rahim could get an easy riddle like this one, a straight-thinking Jalal should not find it too difficult. At any rate I feel Jalal will himself now be in the cautious and alert mode with Ben (and at least he will not be lying down, closing his eyes and waiting for her lips!). Of course, Jodha and us viewers will be tortured by thinking Jalal really intends marrying this Ben just to thwart Jodha, but in the end dear Jalal will be shown as the "hard-thinking and high-plotting hero who saves himself and Agra!" After all those phone calls to Zee yesterday, at least I think they will go back to showing Jalal as having some brains!
Incidentally, I also called up Zee TV yesterday, and by the time I callled the guy at the other end had already got wind of the collective disgust of viewers. He started with an apology to me! Anyway, I persisted despite the ready apology and told the guy at the other end in my very broken Hindi that I did not like the way they are twisting the epic love story like this and making the hero and heroine look like nincompoops.
To that, the man at the other end said "Himmat rakhiye ji, humko sab pata ho chuka hai ki audience ko yeh track pasand nahin hai aur hum Balaji se bhi baath kar chuke hain. Ek do episode mein yeh Benazir wala story khatam ho jaayega and Jalal-Jodha ke characterisation aur love story bhi theek karaa deinge hum. Aap tension mat leejiye .."
My lingering worry is why he told me "himmat rakho". Did I sound like I was in need of himmat? Or did he have something else to spring on me that needed me to be courageous? Hehehe ... maybe he was just being avuncular with me!
Uncle Ji, agar aap serial ko is hafte ke andar theek nahi karenge toh hum bhi Mansi naam ke ek khatarnaak vishkanya ban jaayenge. Khabardaar!
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