Friends, the Wednesday episode of Jodha Akbar was rather mundane. After the big hug and kiss scene we were all ready and expecting Jalal to find out that all his fantasies of reunion with Jodha were just a dream, and true enough within the first three minutes of the episode the shot of him hugging Jodha dissolved ... showing him entering a room empty of Jodha and empty of Kanha too!
As if in timely fashion, Moti appeared from somewhere ready with a letter to read to Jalal. She said Jodha had left for good, and had given her a letter to read personally to Jalal. It was a letter not meant for anyone else but Jalal - and a letter not to read by anyone else other than Moti either. The very fact that Jodha stressed all this suggested to me that what she meant was that this paigam, under no circumstances, should fall into the hands of the evil witch of Agra, Maham!
The letter was long, and full of Jodha's reasons for leaving. She said she was not leaving in anger but from a broken heart. The greatest part of the letter that hit Jalal hard was four things:
a. Jodha said that it was not Jalal's anger that hurt her, but his suspicions of her fidelity. If she was the type to have had some ex-flame at Agra she would not have walked around the pavithra fire at their wedding!
b. She married him out of ghrina, in the early stages, but then that ghrina had changed to love thanks to Jalal's own attitude towards her. But now there was no future for this love. (What a way for Jalal to find out that she too loves him!)
c. Jodha had carried out the first vachan of her marriage - to always follow her husband's wishes - and she had thus left because he wanted her to leave. But Jalal had not followed that other marriage vachan that said "Always trust your wife and respect her dignity".
d. There was no use in Jalal trying to find Jodha and bring her back because all that would get back was his Begum - but not Jodha!
You know, folks, the moment when it must have come home to Jalal that Jodha has really gone for good was the moment he said "Where is Kanha?". He knew that there could be no Jodha without Kanha. I thought that moment was particularly poignant. Jodha too in her letter says that even though she had his permission (in fact, his order) to leave, she was taking Kanha out of the room with her without his permission and for that she was sorry!
Jalal looked broken and distraught and words did not escape him. He was almost voiceless throughout this letter, and his sombre expression of feeling inwardly shattered was only once broken when his face changed into an exclamation of surprised shock on hearing that Jodha too had lost her ghrina and fallen in love with him. But what use was it to know that now, when she saw nothing coming out of this love. They were like two souls sundered by circumstances, left to pick themselves up as best as they could, alone and away from each other!
Jalal, after the letter was read out, walked out of the room in a daze. He had said too much to Jodha and had given here too many reasons to believe that he would never change. He was a loving man, but his suspicions would never rest unless he discovered the true meanings of trust. And Jodha's letter also spoke of the incontrovertible truth in this world ... that it is always the women who are accused and suspected and it is always the women who have to keep proving their fidelity and their love, while the men never think twice to keep asking them to do that agni pariksha every time there is even a slight disturbance in the marriage!
Anyway, while Jalal was digesting all this, Jodha was walking the streets with a bag on her shoulder and the Kanha murthy in her hand ... walking, walking, walking in dejection, even as flashbacks of her life with Jalal and his latest anger kept harassing her mind. Eventually she reached a village where she could find some well water to drink and a kind lady shared some food with her. She was dressed simply (and Paridhi without jewelry is really very pretty!), so that no one could recognise her.
But suddenly when two men of the village started disparaging the Shahenshah for his fickle-mindedness, she started firing away at them both in defence of Jalal, till the two men wondered what her connection with the Emperor could be. When last seen, Jodha was sitting down exhaustedly on a rock slab, not knowing what or where the future led.
Meanwhile at the Palalce, Ruq and Maham had a heated exchange. Ruq told Maham that the "Rajvanshi man" had turned out to be Sujamal, Jodha's brother ... and how could Maham have not known that one fact when she seemed to know everything else? Maham acted all innocent and surprised and feigned shock at hearing this, but in the very next breath she told Ruq that it was not the means that mattered but the end results. And the end result here was that Jodha had finally left.
Folks, I was not surprised to see that Ruq was very uncomfortable to hear this! In Ruq there is sometimes a streak of fairness that balks against injustice - and here she was feeling a bit guilty at the way Jodha had been despatched for a wrong reason! But was it really a reaction to injustice on Ruq's part or again her selfishness is something we have to debate. Because Ruq also said to Maham "Now Jodha has gone and Jalal will become desperate and run after her and I will fully lose him to her!"
In another aside, Maham caught Sharif and his horse arriving late into the Palace after much of the hoo-ha had died down. She was very eager to give Sharif the news of all that had happened - that Jalal had suspected Jodha of infidelity and thrown Jodha out, and Jodha too had left. Sharif, the conniving rascal saw his benefit in all this. "Now Jodha can become mine" he said to himself.
I instantly knew that there was surely going to be a near-abduction attempt on Jodha by Sharif. Knowing that Jodha could be anywhere and that Jalal had no clue of her whereabouts, Sharif may get emboldened to do a search-and-track-down of his own on Jodha, hoping to capture her for himself, now that Jalal's hold on Jodha had come to nil! So I fully expect that Sharif will now turn into a bloodhound and try to find Jodha wherever she is! If Jalal wastes time in getting to Amer and back, Sharif may be far ahead of him in the race to find Jodha.
The precap of the episode is also very interesting ... Jalal is seen with his two wives Ruq and Salima. Ruq argues to Jalal, "You did not ask Jodha to go, she went on her own. So there's no need for you to try and find her. Let her go." But Salima, the ever-honest and sane one tells Jalal the one point that is uppermost in his mind also. She says "For the sake of your love you have to find her". Jalal immediately agrees that he should, and Ruq is left in no doubt that the operative emotion here was going to be "love". Jalal says to Salima "I promise I will find and bring her back safe!".
Before I go on to the detailed analysis of the Jodha letter (which is my chosen subject of analysis for today) I want to add one word about a new spoiler that has come out just now that Balaji and Ekta are in the process of deciding the full and rich details of the consummation scene which is slated for the end of April or beginning of May.
This scene will celebrate the coming together of Jodha and Jalal after the separation track. So now that the confessions of love of Jalal have come out via his angry speech, and Jodha's confession of love has come out via the new paigam, I suppose when they catch up with each other after the hunt down, the reunion is going to be celebrated by the Creatives with the consummation scene.
A lot of buzz is being generated on exactly how "filmy" this scene is going to be considering the time slot of the serial, but it appears Ekta wants a consummation scene like never before seen on TV. So let's wait in hope for the end of April or beginning of May.
What that means is that for the rest of this month, the Amer trip, the jungle hunt, the Sharif kidnap attempt , the manaofy-ing of Jodha and the saadhvi introduction will happen. I hope the unmasking of Maham's role in this Sujamal affair will also happen!
Okay here is my detailed analysis of the Jodha letter ...
Jalal enters Jodha's room after removing his footwear shouting "Jodha Begum, Jodha Begum", when he spots even Kanha missing. He says "Where is her Kanha?" and turns to find Moti there with a paigam in her hand. "Pranaam Shahenshah" says Moti in a tearful voice and shows him the paigam. "Whare is Jodha Begum? And what is this?" he asks. Moti says "My friend Jodha begum has gone for good Shahenshah, after leaving this letter for you." Jalal in shock slumps down on a seat, his face ashen.
"Along with being Jodha's friend, I am also her sevika", Moti continues "so I have to follow her orders. I am charged to read this letter to you. Even if you wish to punish me, this duty is mine to do." Saying this, Moti unfurls the scroll to start reading.
As I did with the Jalal speech, friends, I want to separate the parts of Jodha's letter so that we can all see the sequence of her thinking ...
a. Jodha explains how she wanted the letter to reach Jalal
"Respected Shahenshah, pranaam. I was in a lot of duvidha whether to write this letter to you or not. But then I felt that to go away without informing my pati would be an apraadh, which I could not do. This letter is intended for you and you alone, and the duty of reading it to you is the duty of Moti Bai alone, so that my last words will definitely reach you."
b. Jodha says she goes by Jalal's orders
"I am not going out of anger with you, Shahenshah. It was your orders to me to leave Agra and go away. Since you are both my pati and my Shahenshah, I was bound to obey your orders. But yes, without your permission, I am taking my Kanha with me". (There is an intercut scene here - a flashback of how Jodha spent her last moments taking Kanha in her arms and walking out.)
c. Jodha explains what exactly hurt her most of all
"Last night when you came to my room, you were very angry - but not just angry, you were also having a lot of suspicions about me. I saw you and listened to you in silence and never replied you. Part of it was because I too was angry. Not angry that you suspected my purity, but angry that I could not even inspire basic trust of my husband in me. That hurt stopped me from saying anything to you. I wanted to be able to say "No" to your every hard question and even tell you the full truth about my brother. There was a wish in me that my every answer would be plain to you because of your vishwas in me, and you would not suspect me."
d. Jodha talks of her wedding pheras being very sacrosanct for her
"I wish you had had the vishwas that at Amer your Jodha would not have married you if she loved someone else. I believe in Kanha and take a saugandh on Kanha, that if I were in love with someone else before our marriage I would have preferred to die in the flames of a jauhar, rather than walk around the havan flames with you taking my wedding pheras."
e. Jodha makes her confession of love
"It is true that at the time of our marriage I was not in love with you. But I was not in love with anyone else either. It is true that at the time of our wedding I used to hate you. But you were the one that made the lotus of love bloom amidst the kheechad of my ghrina in my heart." (Jalal is shocked to hear this confession of love in this way!)
"I wished so much that you would just look into my eyes and get all the answers you wanted about my love. But this wish is now too far away. You heard what I said but understood only what you wanted to understand. In your anger you pulled me to you, but even then could not see the vishwas in my eyes?"
f. Jodha talks of what her expectations were of her pati-parameshwar
"Shahenshah, a pati is the one who protects the maryada of his wife, the one who fights for her sammaan. But my husband raised a question mark himself on my maan and my charithra. So I had to take the decision to leave. In my culture we treat the husband as "parameshwar" and literally worship the pati. But when you turned your eyes away from me, there was no option before me but to leave."
g. Jodha blames Jalal for forgetting his wedding vachans
"You have forgotten the vachans you gave during our wedding's saat-pheres. The first of your vachans was that you would always have vishwas in me, and always protect my sammaan. But I remembered my first vachan to you that I will always follow your orders."
h. Jodha talks of how unfair society is to women
" Today you may have come to know the truth about me, but once there is a knot in the string of love it can never be untangled again. It is not even your mistake, for this is the way of this world. The agnipariksha is always expected of the woman and the man always reserves the right to suspect women."
i. Jodha says the real person in her will never return
"I am going now Shahenshah, but I pray for your future. I pray that you find that heart of yours that you say you do not have. I will never ever return. And if you have even this much sammaan for me, please don't send your troops to find me. Even if you find me, you can only get your Begum back, but not Jodha. Pranaam again. Your Jodha."
A shell shocked Jalal, and a weary and dispirited Jodha are then seen in separate shots after this letter is read.
My comments on this letter:
Although this letter seems to have been written by a very broken-hearted Jodha, taking her final leave of the Shahenshah, the letter and its neatly arranged words and contents suggests that Jodha gave every sentence a lot of thought before including it. Her thoughts are not in disarray, in fact they are very cogent, well laid out, and progress her feelings step by step systematically.
This letter smacks of a person who has spent a whole night in agony, and then derived a certain clarity of perspective finally before making her feelings known to him. Sometimes it so happens that periods of great storm are followed by periods of eerie calm when perspective returns and the scale of the devastation can be cognised. Jodha seems to have been in that state of mind, where she saw that whatever caused the great tumult in her life with Jalal, what was left of it all was what mattered. And the stark fact facing her was that the future she thought she had with him was no longer there.
One of the smartest moves Jodha seems to have made, despite her state of mind is to ensure that no one but Jalal got the letter and no one but Moti read it to him. Does this not suggest, folks, that Jodha has by now become fully aware of the treachery around Jalal that she cannot trust him to get the true message via anyone else in the palace? She has chosen not even to trust Salima or Hamida in this issue, but only her own Moti. Salima and Hamida, she must have known, would try to dissuade her from taking the ultimate decision, whereas Moti would do just as she was told without volunteering or forcing her opinion on Jodha.
I have already highlighted parts of Jodha's letter that deserve special attention in my opening remarks. But there is one more thing to be said. We have to juxtapose this letter of Jodha against the tirade of Jalal's to see how different are the two perspectives, but how common is the love.
His words were rough, aggressive, berating, whiplashing ... and yet it was an expression of his love that brought the anger to the surface and tinged his words with harshness. Her words are passive, soft, resigned and reconciled to her state of affairs, and yet they too are an expression of love that has brought silent suffering to the surface and tinged her words with the wetness of fresh tears. Can we conclude from the way he was harsh and the way she was passive that he feels more love for her than she does for him?
That would not be fair, for the language of love should not be judged by how strongly worded it is or how strongly felt the sentiments are. There is a saying that "Calm passions are not necessarily weak, nor violent ones strong. There is love in rough words and a lashing tongue as there is love in rolling tears and in soft whispers."
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