Friends, the Monday episode let me down slightly. That's because I was hoping and praying that we would have the "great storm" between Jalal and Jodha (i.e. the body shaking and shouting promo scene) on Monday. After the last one and half weeks of steady build up of Jalal's anger, I thought Monday would be the day he would have this spectacular outburst ... and then our worst nightmare will be over. Because after that we can at least start looking forward to the first steps of action and reconciliation phase starting from Tuesday ... that was my hope.
Alas, Monday's episode was just another time filler as the steam built up inside Jalal. We saw Jalal still talking in innuendos, and Jodha looking disconcerted by all that he was saying, but although she kept asking "Why is he so changed? Something has surely happened between us?" I am sure she knew full well that somehow her issue of meeting Sujamal at nights was mixed into the issue between them. Every time Jalal looked at Jodha, he looked at her with accusatory eyes and a heavy heart. Every time she looked back at him feeling "perplexed", there was a shade of guilt in her eyes, and a kind of fear that she was treading a dangerous path.
The episode opened with Jalal coming out of Jodha's hojra, thinking she must have gone on another of her nightly trips to meet the "strange man" ... but his fears this time were unfounded. He saw Jodha sitting in the garden, singing Rahim to sleep. She had apparently been telling Rahim stories of Jalal and his bravery and exploits as a King when Rahim nodded off ... because when Salima came to carry Rahim away, the child was still murmuring "Then what happened to the Shahenshah?".
Jalal must have found the scene between Jodha and Rahim - as Choti Ammi and beloved son - very touching, and he made his way there. Salima had words of praise for Jodha being almost a real mother to Rahim, and Jalal - despite his deep inner anger, suppressed feelings and very hurt eyes - tried to make light of it by talking as normally as he could with Jodha. But although his voice was soft, his words were laden with sarcasm. You could see the depth of his soul in his eyes, and he was a very deeply distressed man, hurting enormously on the inside.
He asked if she had done her daily work of visiting the Ambe Ma temple even that day, and Jodha replied that she had not gone to the temple and was helping Salima by taking care of Rahim. Jalal then asked what stories she was telling Rahim about himself. Jodha said she talked of his being a brave kind abolishing slavery and making the praja his own, but Jalal said the credit for those things must go to her. She demurred and said the credit was all his, but Jalal then said "That's true, a King must have his Begum with him to have that companionship. Otherwise, like my mother says I am just a lone powerful tiger in the forest, with no friends or companions, and from whom everybody hides the truth". Jodha was about to reply when Jalal just walked off unable to look at her any more. She got wind of the fact that some ugly distance was forming between them but she seemed unable able to pin it down exactly! I guess her guilt was somewhere clouding her own judgement.
Folks, this first scene was just a tone setter to show us how bad Jalal had already started feeling - and though he was trying hard to have control over the way he was seething on the inside, his outer actions were showing his increasingly poor attempts at self-restraint. How long he would be able to withstand this pressure before bursting out with all the pent up fury, we couldn't tell.
However later in the afternoon of the next day there was something that happened to finally gather the dark storm clouds overhead, ready to rumble and roll. We got ominous signs of an impending bolts of thunder and lightning to arrive soon, when the boy called Mazhar came into the Diwan-e-Khas, with his two women Aziza and Ruksana.
About a couple of weeks earlier Mazhar had brought his curious case to Jalal whereby he wanted to marry a girl of his choice Aziza, who he loved, whereas in childhood his parents had betrothed him to another girl called Ruksana, his childhood friend. The story was so parallel to that of Jalal with Ruq -a childhood friendship arranged into a marriage- and his subsequent falling in love with Jodha, that all three of them - Jalal-Jodha and Ruq - seemed to have a vested interest in how Mazhar story shaped up. Jalal had given Mazhar a month in which to decide whom he really wanted to be with - his love or his childhood friend.
But Mazhar had turned up at the DEK earlier than the appointed time saying he had made up his mind against his love Aziza. When probed further, he said Aziza has lied to him and even gone to meet her past lover and never told him about it. Her lies had killed his love for her. Aziza however cried bitterly that she still loved Mazhar and wanted to marry him and she was not trying to relive her past ... but Jalal found such empathy in the story of Mazhar with his own personal plight now that he gave Mazhar permission to overthrow Aziza, and said he would support Mazhar in marrying whoever whomever he chose. Jalal in fact told Aziza, "You have punished yourself for your lying for you have lost the "beintihaa mohabbat" of a man who ardently loved you". The words uttered at Aziza seemed intended for Jodha!
Ruqaiya , of course, crowed over Jodha that "friendship" had triumphed over "love", but Jodha was so deeply affected by Jalal's decision against "love" that she followed him out of the Diwan -e-Khas and said he had done wrong in this case of Mazhar. She said "I am not happy with your decision. Aziza did no paap. Everyone has a past, but the future cannot be held ransom to anyone's past if they genuinely were in love". What Jalal was about to reply to that we will know only on Tuesday, for the episode ended with Jalal's eyes taking on the look of two brilliant angry daggers. His rage was coming to the surface.
And sure enough the precap showed us the whole "shoulder shaking and shouting promo" that we have been dreading. Jalal ratlles Jodha bodily and shous at her "Why are you telling me lies? Who is this "gair mard" you have you been going out every night to meet? I am unable to bear this torture any more. It's not the going out alone that matters but the lying. Tell me the truth. Tell me all. GO ON. TELL ME!." His voice becomes louder and louder, grating and harsh and thunderous, as he blasts out at Jodha with all the fury and spite of a man betrayed treacherously by who he thinks of as a wretched lying wife. I think the doubts in Jodha's mind as to the reasons for Jalal's strange innuendos and behaviour of the last few days must have all cleared in one blinding shot. She seemed to have no reply to give for the man who had the right to ask these questions!
You know, folks, even if Jodha had some sort of adequate reply, it struck me that it no longer would have made any difference to Jalal. He seemed past that stage of explanations. All he knew was that he was one big bursting and exploding heart.
And indeed Jodha could not have given explanations either, bound as she was by the vachans given to Sujamal. So all in all, it seems to be heading for a situation where Jalal's accusations and questions are going to be met with guilty silence from Jodha , infuriating Jalal so much that he will turn her out of Agra back to Amer.
The rest is in the spoilers ... Jodha will decamp to a wayside jungle instead of reaching Amer, while Sujamal will save Jalal's life by taking an arrow meant for Jalal, and the whole truth of who Jodha met at nights and why will tumble out. Hmida will give Jalal a piece of her mind and Jalal will run to Amer but find Jodha missing ... and his remorse and relentless search and eventual reconciliation with her will follow. We have a very interesting track ahead, but we have to live through BLACK TUESDAY, that's my greatest dread now!
Other than this we did not see anything much happening except that Adham finally killed Pir Mohammed and all his henchmen through horrendously naked blood thirsty treachery, and Sujamal got the glimmer of his chance to enter the harem as a possible eunuch/baandhi thanks to some recruitment drive going on! Bakshi Banu in her pregnanacy was apparently facing all kinds of trouble without sufficient bandhi help (thanks to Jodha's slavery banishment ) and so Hamida set Ruq to action on a bandhi re-engagement process. Sujamal now looks like he will soon be in the garb of a eunuch inside the palace triying to do more snoopery on the "real culprit" while Jalal will banish Jodha to Amer. But perhaps just simultaneously Sharif may again attempt an attack on Jalal and Sujamal may take that arrow to save Jalal, so that the "truth" from all sides can all start coming out in full detail"
As I said folks, if I can somehow survive the Tuesday's episode without getting shattered myself by Jalal's violently detonating anger and Jodha's continuing doggedly mute response , I can then hope to enjoy the oncoming episodes of the opening of Jalal's eyes, the search for Jodha and the hope of a heart-satisfying reconciliation scene! God help me through Tuesday!
My comments on the Jodha-Jalal relationship fracture!
For a change I do not want to detail any particular scene here for I have already gone into some length above on what we saw... but I wanted to elaborate on my perception of why Jalal was so angry.
I feel that he is not as angry with Jodha as with himself. I feel as if he is angry that he allowed her to pierce his heart, which he had kept hidden all these years, safe from vulnerability. He is now unable to bear the torture of his own mind accusing his own self of being negligent over the state of his own heart. Why did he allow someone like Jodha close to himself? Why did he give her his heart? Why did he give her the opportunity to hurt him like he's never been hurt before? How can he blame her for hurting him with her "treachery" when it was he himself who gave her his heart to toy with, to play with, to break into a million pieces, and then not know how to mend?
There is a beautiful quotation by Bill George Peter Sims that says "Your anger and emotional outbursts usually result when someone penetrates to the core of what you do not like about yourself or still cannot accept."
This has set me thinking on what Jalal does not like about himself that has now come to the fore via the anger and emotional outburst at Jodha. Could it be that after years of being a brutal, bloodthirsty and ruthless jallad, all through his growing years, Jalal finally found a place he could run to where he started seeing himself as a nicer person with a heart? And could it be that his greatest nightmare is having to see that heart broken by Jodha, for he now is forced to run back into the person he once was before Jodha came into his life and heart. And could it be that a lot of his pent up anger is caused by him having to really now see with new eyes what a cruel man he was all through his growing years? Has Jodha, by breaking his heart forced him to revisit the past, see it with new eyes, and then given him an opportunity to really release his own past with forgiveness instead of merely covering it up as the past he need not go back to?
I am not a psycho-analyst so I can only imagine what it must be like for a man who was once a brute, to suddenly find love in himself. And then just when he thought he had become someone else and left his past behind and he need not examine it again or revisit it, he gets a shake-up in life when that love is betrayed and he is therefore forced to go back to the past to live there for a while.
What does Jalal see of himself when he looks at his past? What about the past hurts him the most? He was a brute, a jallad, a bloodthirsty warrior bent on cruelty. But is that what he hates about himself most? I don't really think so.
I think he is unable though to handle the fact his life used to be tinged with deep distrust of people and he doesn't want to have those feelings of distrust again. He fears the feelings of the past, not the person he was. It's easy to blame Jodha for creating his distrust again now, but if he thinks about it he will realise that long before Jodha became an object of distrust in his life, he was used to seeing almost everyone with distrust. His dstrustful self is still hiding somewhere deep inside his heart and not allowing him to give his whole heart to someone else without that distrust rearing up its head now and again. His distrust embedded somewhere deep inside his heart needs healing as much as his relationship with Jodha.
Jalal does not look, even now, to me, as someone who really distrusts Jodha. He still seems unable to shake his faith in her as many of his dialogues up until this moment of breakdown show. He does not in his heart of hearts believe that a girl who drank poison to save his life would throw him over for a past love from Amer, if at all he believes that story. He is angry because he does not want to go back to his old distrustful self and he is forced by these new circumstances to accept that distrust has not totally left him.
I don't know who said these lines, but I wish I could tell them to Jalal : "When the nights are long and you can't sleep for all the sadness of a past left unresolved; when you cannot grasp the future squarely and move on; when the past haunts both your waking hours and your dreams... it's likely that you're in the grip of anger and a sense of betrayal by others. But please do recognise that those you think are hurting you are just showing you a mirror of who you once were. They are asking you a question: Do you want to love them with a corner of your heart always afraid of betrayal and therefore staying in distrust? Or do you want to leave distrust behind and go into the future with them free of any and all doubts? There will always come a point at which you must cease to stay stuck in the past or it will define you and mark every step you take from now on. Distrust cannot be allowed to linger stealthily in any corner of the heart. It needs to be chased out and sometimes it take a lot of new pain to take another older pain out!"
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