Sandhya, Tripti, Pallavi, Cuddly Bear and all the others who wrote in on Sandhya's original post and have, hopefully, saved me a whole lot of typing,
Yes, Sandhya, I too feel that Tripti has nailed it in one. Hers is an amazingly perceptive analysis of the inner turmoil of her Ruqaiya and I would second it unhesitatingly. I could not have produced anything as passionately fair to her. Tripti my sweet, brava! A marvellous piece of psychoanalysis.
One caveat, though. I feel that she is not writing about this Ruqaiya at all, but about the tragic heroine of the film Ruqaiya Sultan:Malika-e-Hind (yet to be made. Should do better than Hemamalini's Razia Sultan). Not a serial, where such a complex character would never sell. The TV audience prefers to keep things simple. Black, or white.
For now, Sandhya, re:
@blue. No, I do not feel that the two sets of scenes were similar. What made the Jalal-Jodha scenes in this episode so special was the uncertainty, the mystery in the mind of each about the other. It is like looking at a jigsaw puzzle where you do not have all the pieces; you have no idea what you are going to get in the end, except in a broad sense.
The relationship between Jalal and Ruqaiya is what I would call an old shoe relationship. It has no mystery, no tingling of the senses - it never had. No dreaming of the other, no pain at the slightest hint of disregard. Anger and aggressive protests, yes, not raw pain.
Love is mostly uncomfortable, because one becomes too emotionally dependent on the other, on his/her mood swings and behaviour. It is often described in roseate terms, but it is not always so. One is up in the clouds and then down in the dumps, both for the most foolish reasons. But that is what makes it magical, for the upswings are the kind of high people nowadays seem to get with drugs.
You have to first be clear which Ruqaiya you are discussing. Smiley was warm and caring and vulnerable, and she was also able to wrap Jalal round her little finger effortlessly, with what I would call intelligent seductivness and silken control. See what I had written in my 4th post in this forum
Sheh, par mat nahin, of July 4, 2013,
about her, and about her and Jalal.
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3)The one between Jalal and Ruqaiya Begum: This is the most fascinating of the three, and no wonder.
For Ruqaiya Begum is that rara avis, a woman who can hold not just a man, but an emperor, effortlessly. Not by her beauty, for that is no more than passable, but by her intelligence, her political shrewdness, and her total self-possession. Plus the fact that thanks to a lifetime of knowing him, she can read his mind like an open book. Jalal must be having a lot of affection for her, as much as he can have for anyone, but as he says, the vital point is not that she is his wife, but that she is his friend. And he has very few friends.
So she teases him ruthlessly. There is the arrogant gliding walk - like a model these days on the catwalk - with which she slides past all the simpering females who line the upper terrace for a glimpse of their lord and master, and ensures that his eye not only catches hers, but stays with her, right until she glides back and out. It is a delightful display of control, and no wonder the other aspirants to imperial attention turn a delicate shade of pea green!😉
When he appears in her chambers, she does not run to him and fawn over him. She stays where she is for one long minute, leaning back against the bolster, her left arm negligently outstretched. Clearly the lady has Attitude with a capital A. Especially when she is smoking a hukkah, with ease and elegance.
She makes Jalal resume the game of chess that he had left unfinished the last time , declaring Zid hamara haq hai. This not said with pretty coquetry, but with unhesitating certainty. He knows her very well, so he is not riled, plus he is a natural, self-assured dominator who, as he says, hates to lose. Ruqaiya then displays the ready talent for repartee that must have won his heart and, even more so, his mind: Hamein jeet pasand hai, isiliye to dil har kar aapko jeet liya hai.
When he does make a winning move, the pun in her acknowledgement Yeh to kamaal ki chaal thi, refers as much to his disappearing act, that she has already found out about, as to the chess game. Her unfailing instinct tells her that there is something new in the air. When Jalal reveals to his friend that he had gone to Amer, her eyes narrow as she looks into the distance, and their expression is hard to read. He is leaning forward, fastening her eyes with his own. Can he read them?
All in all, Ruqaiya is the most fascinating woman I have seen on TV in a long, long time and Ekta's team should be felicitated for having portrayed her as such an enigmatic, astute and intellectually superior individual. She is clearly an original, and she will be a delight to watch.
As and when Jodha arrives on the scene, Ruqaiya might be supportive of, indifferent to, or resentful of her; it is not yet clear which. It would, I feel, depend on whether she sees Jodha as threatening her very unusual bond with their husband. Bar that, royal wives in those days were taught to adjust to others of their number. Either way, Ruqaiya will leave her mark on the Jalal-Jodha relationship.
Between her and Jalal, it is not really either check or checkmate, for as of now, they are both playing on the same side- Jalal's. I for one found it wonderful that someone like Jalal could relate so well to a woman, treating her as a confidante and an equal. I do not know if he loves her, whatever that might mean, but what they share is something even stronger than romantic love. Jodha, whatever Jalal's infatuation with her, is going to run into some very tough competition.
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Can you even recognise this Ruqaiya in the present one? This one does not hold Jalal and comfort him when he is in agony over the murder of his Khan Baba, but instead goes off to settle a harem dispute! No, Tripti, I loved your Ruqaiya but she is not the current model either.
They have whittled down every aspect of the old Ruqaiya that made her an enigmatic, self-assured woman, who could dominate Jalal without letting the effort show. Who was clearly described as politically so astute that Jalal consulted her on all tough issues. By the time Smiley was about to leave, they had also made Ruqaiya more vulnerable over her being childless.
This one is neither intelligent, nor subtle, nor self-assured. Jalal was never shown being so overtly caring and affectionate with Smiley's Ruqaiya - when she tells him that he is looking very good, he immediately asks her what she wants from him! - as he has been with this one, despite her tantrums being so loud and grating, not like the silken steel of Smiley's. In fact, Jalal puts up with far more from this Ruqaiya than any royal husband would have had in those days. Queens in those days knew their place, and it was well below that of their husband.
He does so because she is one of the just 3 people he can trust absolutely, or so he believes. And he has a highly developed sense of gratitude, a rare quality in royalty, who have an almost total sense of entitlement and take loyalty and sacrifice for granted.But no one cannot melt his gratitude and mint it into eternal control of his whole being.
The new Ruqaiya has never understood Jalal at all - she has created a dil-less template and she will never believe that it is not for keeps. So she cannot see that he has been a changing for a long time now. Women are said to be sensitive to such changes in their men; I cannot imagine any wife of such long standing being so blind about her shauhar.
Nor can I imagine Jalal's chief begum being so devoid of the capacity for independent thought that she lets Mahaam, whom she has always distrusted, and with good reason, and also despised as a baandi, pull her this way and that, and use her unquestioned influence on Jalal to further her own ends. The Benazir episode is a case in point. Nowhere does this Ruqaiya do any soul-searching, or blame herself for the danger that she had helped bring down on Jalal. But this is only one of a long list of similar instances.
She is often crass and overbearing in her dealings with all around her, and unnecessarily rude and arrogant towards Jodha from day 1. There is a mercenary attitude about her that is depressing. Take the latest instance of this.
Even before she starts getting jealous again, her offering to give Jodha anything she wants, except Jalal, as a reward for having saved his life. is both crude and demeaning of Jalal. How can one put a price on the deed of saving his life?
Not only does she harp on
her not having become a widow - not on her love for Jalal - but she seems to forget that he is also Jodha's husband. And not even a passing thought, as I have noted above, not to speak of words, about her acute folly in promoting Benazir so relentlessly.
She despises all below her, which is where she thinks Jodha should be: remember her reaction to Jodha's poem for Ruqaiya's baby? Yes, it is all the CVs' doing, but then we have to discuss this Ruqaiya that we are stuck with.
Unfortunately, one does not see her sustaining even a single one of the positive flashes she has displayed - her generous acceptance of Jodha's supposed baby, her gratitude towards Jodha for having helped save her nikaah, her genuine desire last week to see Jodha survive, her fierce loyalty towards Jalal - yes, I believe she would have had the poison tested on a baandi or even drunk it herself in a crunch, but she would never have knowingly let him be harmed. They all vanish like leaves in a storm.
I agree with Tripti that Jalal will continue to be fair to Ruqaiya no matter what tantrums she throws. He will never discard an old relationship for this new one. Moreover, he can completely understand where Ruqaiya's tantrums are coming from,from her endemic sense of insecurity vis a vis Jodha. and he will make allowances for her no matter what. Even in the peremptory hoojra restoration decision, he lets her down very gently, and not because he is very angry with Jodha.
So where are we wrt Sandhya's original question, which I seem to have answered in a rather confusing manner?
It seems of late to have become an article of faith, most recently endorsed by Mahaam herself, that Ruqaiya loves Jalal
passionately. But I have so far seen no clear evidence of this, and so I would not take it for granted. I do think it is true; she loves him, yes, but she is not in love with him and never has been. It is more a fierce loyalty and affection of long standing than romantic love.
My point is that even if she did so love him, Ruqaiya could not, in that era, have expected to control Jalal for all time to come. Now, with so little emotional investment in him - her behaviour after Bairam Khan's death is a case in point - she can expect it even less. Even if there had been no Jodha, Ruqaiya's control over Jalal, which exists only because he permits it. would have been whittled away in due course. She simply does not work hard enough on her marriage, and any marriages is always a work in progress. She takes it, and Jalal, totally for granted. The gods punish one sin above all others - the sin of hubris.
For Jalal, Ruqaiya and Jodha fall into different compartments. He will not feel that theirs is a zero sum game as regards his attitude towards both of them.
His relationship with Ruqaiya seems to have been, to borrow a current phrase, a friendship with benefits. He did not cheat her of romantic love, she did it all on her own.
As I said, I do not think she is in love with him, or loves him
desperately . No woman can love a man and still push him to marry a cheap
baandi from a rival's harem just to put down another begum of his. Why a loving wife, no dear friend would do such a thing.
This said, he has now , for the first time, fallen in love, and it is with Jodha. Love is a kind of
junoon, and no one other than the beloved can aspire to even a fraction of that obsessive attention from the lover. It is inevitable that Ruqaiya will see herself getting a much smaller slice of Jalal's attention and time in the future.
So did the Maharani of Mewar, Jayawantabai, in
Maharana Pratap, when her husband, Maharana Udai Singh became obsessed with the beauty of his third wife, Dheerbai, and spent next to no time with the eldest and the second queens. Jayawantabai continued to be as stately, as dignified, and as loyal as ever to her husband. She retained the most profound respect from Maharana Udai Singh, but not his love. But Ruqaiya is no Jayawantabai.
Ok, that is it, kids. It is meandering and not very crisp, I am afraid, but it is now nearly 1 am, plus I have been typing too much today and am quite tired of it.
To conclude, I would not blame Ruqaiya for detesting Jodha. I blame her for being so foolish in the way she goes about trying to put her down, a way that is crude, lacking in both intelligence and subtlety. I blame her even more for constantly advertising her belief that Jalal sits in her pocket all the time and is her puppet on a string. If I had been Jalal, I would have schooled my Gatti long ago.
My only hope now is that he does precisely that, firmly but gently, sitting her down and clarifying to her that her audha will be unaffected, as also his affection and caring for her, but yes, he now loves Jodha and that is something that she will have to learn to live with. That would do Ruqaiya a lot of good.
Shyamala Aunty
QUOTE=Sandhya.A]Loved it Trips
If lashy is a perfect occlumens of Jalal, you are of Ruqaiya.😃 This is what she will exactly feel.
Abdul and Smiley Ruqaiya..they added a distinct flavour and spice to the Mughal Agra. Those Ruqaiya - Jalal episodes were magical. I don't see them any different from Friday's Jodha-Jalal scenes. There was that tease, camaraderie, genuine affection plus a distinct style. Only that made me wonder what went wrong.
But I don't think Jalal is going to be sensitive here Trips and that is the saddest part. Ruqaiya will be made to commit blunder after blunder till we ourselves feel that Jalal is justified in dumping her. They can't churn out their epic romance otherwise. No, Jalal will never dump her. She will continue to be the Begum-e-Khaas.Now if only she did not trumpet that fact in every sentence of hers! It is as if I entered my Embassy in the morning, and told every single person in it that I was the Ambassador and thus the boss. See the way she argues with a chit of a baandi, Motibai. She should never bandy words with a servant.
(Why is that when single-minded friendship was weighed over romance in Kuch kuch hota hai and is treated so lightly here.😕) It is because Ruqaiya's friendship is not shown to be singleminded. She is shown more as regarding Jalal as a huge bank deposit of hers.
Edited by sashashyam - 11 years ago
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