Friends, the Wednesday episode of the serial was no great shakes. There was no lovey-dovey Jodha-Jalal scene for starters. All those who were wishing for more hugs or more romance must have been disappointed. But despite the episode not having too many high points, or even a gripping pace, it did take the story forward in small bits.
There were broadly four areas of action:
Ruqaiya in the previous episode had thrown a mighty tantrum that she didn't like the sound of a cozy Jodha-Jalal Wedding Anniversary - and she swore to separate Jodha and Jalal. She had remembered that Jalal loved roses and so she plotted to use roses in some way to sunder Jodha and Jalal.
She got Hoshiyaar to bring her a bouquet of roses with one prominent red rose in the middle. Hoshiyaar was then despatched out of the room, so that he could not see the crux of the plan. Ruq pulled out a flacon of some poison and sprayed it on the red rose, and called a bandhi in to do a smell test of the bouquet. The bandhi promptly fainted and Ruq declared with utter satisfaction that the poison was potent enough to put the bandhi to sleep for hours and hours.
Satisfied with her plan to knock Jalal off to sleep on his Wedding Anniversary (and thus render Jodha alone on her special day), Ruq re-summoned Hoshiyaar to take the bouquet as her gift to Jalal. As Hoshiyaar gave Jalal the bouquet, Ruq also followed to see her plan take effect.
But alas, Jalal smelt the roses twice and did not even yawn with sleepiness. Ruq was miffed beyond words. How did the scent not put Jalal to sleep, she wondered. As usual, her well-laid plans had gone for a six!
It later turned out that Hoshiyaar was the one who had somehow seen Ruq spraying the potion on the rose and seen the bandhi get knocked out and deciphered Ruq's plan to hurt Jodha by making Jalal sleep of their Anniversary. Hoshiyaar had some lingering loyalty to Jodha for she had taken the pains to really celebrate his birthday well. And so he decided to do Jodha a good turn by discarding the tampered rose with another benign one.
I was happy to see Ruq botch up another plan ... but seriously, she seems to have a terrific propensity to score self-goals. I don't see Ruq ever becoming a truly A Class villain. She will always remain just a shade above the average circus buffoon who blunders along merrily and may accidentally manage to pull off some average machinations!
2. Shehnaaz reveals more of her true self
Already many of us have been speculating that Shehnaaz may be the long lost sister of Jalal now come back to the palace to "claim her takht" by killing off Jalal (and with him Jodha too). In fact Diksha has a very interesting and possible theory that either Shehnaaz may be that long lost sister in truth ... or else she thinks she is that sister but needs proof ... or else someone may have put her up to act as if she could claim to be that long lost sister, though she isn't so really.
In the last episode Shehnaaz had given us enough dialogues for us to reckon that she wanted to make a claim on the takht, and that her "enemy-in-the-way" was Jalal. She was just putting up an act of being a mentally-regressed person, with a grown body and a childlike mind. That was her ruse to ensure that no suspected her behaviour as strange if she was seen as psychologically affected.
Yesterday, in confirmation of this "long-lost daughter of Humayun theory", we saw her go straight to Gulbadan Begum's room and start ferreting through her drawers and cupboards clearly looking for some farman or authoritative paper. She saw a pile of books on a table nearby and suddenly got mightily interested in the Humayun Nama that Gulbadan was writing.
But hardly had she started speed-reading the book, Gulbadan herself returned to her room and started asking uncomfortable questions on why Shehnaaz was here and what was she looking for. Shehnaaz immediately put on her childish face and said she was looking for paper to write a "Sorry" note to Rahim. Gulbadan said it was not necessary to write to Rahim when he could be told the same "Sorry" verbally, and so Shehnaaz was forced out of the room. Gulbadan was left cluck-clucking at the extreme strangeness of this girl.
But those of us who had suspicions that Shehnaaz was perhaps looking to resent herself as the lost daughter of Humayun seemed to see enough to confirm our theory. This girl is avidly looking for some farman of entitlement with Humayun's mohur on it to be able to prove her antecedents. It is perhaps the same farman that Maham is looking for to try and get Adham the Delhi takht. The question still lies open whether Shehnaaz and Maham are a team - or are separately on the same trail. The answer is likely to be blown open this week ... for in the precap we see that Jodha and Jalal have entered the suspicious surang and are closing in on Maham's trapped-victim there, who may well be the husband or lost love of Shehnaaz. I am really looking forward to the big bhandaphod today on this issue for it is intriguing me!
3. Maham gets a royal ignore from Jalal
Maham was first seen in a scene where she stands before a mirror in her room and says wistfully to herself "Will Jalal forgive me? Will he again start trusting me, and return my status and powers?" She seems to have tears in her eyes, but these disappear when her hulking son Adham enters the room with his usual contemptuous look. Maham starts then spewing venom at Jalal saying she will never again love him and Adham is her only priority and she will help him get the Delhi takht. But she also warns the seething Adham to not do anything silly meanwhile to trap himself. Adham looks like he has registered nothing of what his mother said because his expression changes from wretched to vicious.
In a slightly later scene Hamida has called both Jodha and Jalal to her room to wish them for their anniversary. She kindly advises Jodha (who is both daughter and bahu to her) that while a Shahenshah has to care for and build the Sultanate, it falls on his wife to care for and build the home. Hamida also gifts the two of them some specially ornate new crowns (which she says are a set) for both of them to wear.
Just then Maham requests permission to enter the room to give Jalal her greetings on his anniversary. Jalal point blank refuses to meet Maham or have anything to do with her - but Hamida and Jodha both prevail upon him to show graciousness on this one occasion. They say "Surely you can just put up with this for this one special day?" Jalal then agrees to let Maham in.
Now comes the ugliness in the tale. Maham greets Hamida and then gives her good wishes to Jalal, but ignores Jodha despite Jodha showing the courtesy of greeting her. I am sure Jalal saw and registered this slight on Jodha, for in return he just acted as if Maham was not in the room at all and neither had he heard her greetings! He left Maham looking like a piece of the woodwork, and pulled Jodha along with him out of the room on the pretext of some other work.
I personally cannot believe that Maham was foolish enough to want to come here and get this snub, so I have a kind of funny feeling that she insisted on this greeting business as part of some new saazish. Especially since she had told Adham that she would take revenge on Jalal, it seems most probable that she wasn't really wanting to be back in Jalal's good books. Something else is working on her mind whereby she doesn't seem to mind the slights and insults of Jalal ignoring her because it is all part of a plot she is working on!
4. The precap: all roads lead to the surang
The precap was the best part of the episode, I thought. We don't know how Jodha and Jalal decided to follow Maham, but they seemed to have done just that. As Maham disappeared into the surang, Jodha and Jalal seemed to have also entered the mouth of the surang. There perchance, Jodha hears a muffled voice that sounds like someone is in trouble. She alerts Jalal and the two of them plan to investigate. The episode ends there tantalizingly!
What will they find in there is the intriguing question. I have a feeling that they may see the Gwalior Hakim there tending to the wounds of the victim, and they may come to know that there is a captive man and a baby in the surang. Some sharp questioning from Jalal to the sipahis may also reveal the hand of Maham in this whole escapade. Or who knows, maybe Jalal and Jodha will catch Maham in action, threatening the captive and torturing him once again asking for the farman?
It is the usual tactics for serial scriptwriters to make the villain spew out a full dialogue at this point that betrays his/her motives. So maybe Maham will be shown disclosing her whole story out as a dialogue, and Jodha and Jalal will not only see what she had done but why. For example, Maham may say to her captive "Give me the Humayun farman which entitles you and your wife to the Delhi takht, for my son Adham deserves the takht and not you." Even that much said may put Jalal on the scent of the whole plot!
I am looking forward to the next episode with a great deal of curiosity because I so want to know how Shehnaaz, Maham, the captive and the baby all add up - and whether we will know who Shehnaaz really is.
One outstanding thing that the precap shows (that should thrill all of us) is that Jodha and Jalal are doing this jasoosi together as a team. I am very happy with this development because it signals the closing of one chapter of their lives and the opening of another. Hitherto, Jalal and Jodha were fighting each other, but I suspect from now on they will fight together as a team against their enemies. That is real progress!
My comments on this episode:
Since a lot of the action in the episode was rather blah, there isn't much to say till the surang bhandaphod happens. After that we may have more insights into the characters of those associated with the surang plot. But meanwhile I have a few sundry comments on the characters who were at play in the Wednesday episode ...
Ruq has distinguished herself as the worst plotter in Sultanate history. The evil-scented roses idea was pathetic.
- First of all it was such a silly ploy to try and get Jalal sleepy so that he can be separated from Jodha. I thought Ruq wanted Jalal to be with her rather than with Jodha. So how does it help to make Jalal sleepy so that he is with neither Ruq nor Jodha?
- Secondly, when you make a plot like this you don't want to alert Hoshiyaar that you are trying to do something sinister, right? Telling Hohiyaar to go out of the room for a second must have instantly given Hoshiyaar the sense that he is being averted from seeing something fishy. So naturally his first instinct was to peer through the latticed screen and register all that was happening. Seeing that the ruse was to spray a rose with some sleeping agent, Hoshiyaar then also saw the "bandhi sleepiness test" being applied and succeeding. Is this the way to make sure no one knows that you are plotting something ugly, by making them extremely curious to see what you are doing?
- Hoshiyaar was then called back into the room to take the bouquet to Jalal, when Ruq was anyway following him. What was the whole point of asking Hoshiyaar to give the bouquet to Jalal if Ruq was also going there anyway? It just gave Hoshiyaar enough time to switch roses and see that some lingering loyalty to Jodha could be exercised. Other than that what did this whole plan achieve? If Ruq wanted to make sure the scented roses reached Jalal and put him to sleep, should she not have carried that bouquet herself to Jalal?
- Which brings me to another question: why does a wife need a khwaja sera to carry her personal gift to her husband. Is that all part of audha-consciousness that insists on such formality? What an idiot wife this must be, not knowing when to get all formal with her husband!
The only person I could respect at the end of this exercise is Hoshiyaar. His frequently changing loyalties have puzzled me of late for we do not always know if he's on Jodha's side or Ruq's side at any point of time. But at least this once he remembered Jodha's kindness in insisting on celebrating his birthday - and so he repaid her in return by determining to see that Jalal was wide awake to enjoy the anniversary with her.
Although these two women are not yet confirmed as a team, there were a lot of similarities I noticed in their way of operating as villains. At the same time there are cross-purposes in their intentions which is very interesting ...
- They are both pretending to be innocents that they are not. Shehnaaz has chosen to pose as a sadma-hit poor innocent with a woman's body and a child's mind. Maham has chosen to pretend as if she is a sentimental and sad woman, yearning for pardon from Jalal and wishing to be back in his good books. Both have thus adopted postures of innocence and mock-genuineness. But while Maham has taken the tactic of "appealing to Jalal's heart" as her method to get his attention, Shehnaaz has done the opposite and is deliberately antagonising Jalal as her method to get his attention.
- They are both after the farman which seems to be the crux of their whole plot. Maham is searching Hamida's room and searching the surang-captive (maybe Shehnaaz's husband) for the farman. Shehnaaz is searching Maham's room and Gulbadan's papers for the farman. From both their behaviours it is now getting clearer that the farman is some suspected entitlement document to the throne written by Humayun under his mohur. It is also clear that they are searching each other for the farman. So there is some kind of competitiveness between them even if they are a team for mutual benefit for the time being.
- They are both now after Jalal and not Jodha. Maham used to be against Jodha earlier but right now Jalal himself is her target. Shehnaaz too believes Jodha to be a stepping stone to Jalal, and Jalal is her target. Here there is again a contrast ... Maham would like to eliminate Jodha from the matrix to get at Jalal, while Shehnaaz would like to incorporate Jodha into the matrix for the advantage of climbing on Jodha's back to get at Jalal.
- Applying the Diksha theory, the question arises whether Shehnaaz is really the lost sister of Jalal, or she believes she may be that person but has no proof herself, or someone (e.g. Maham) has brainwashed her to believe or act like she is. I have a feeling that Shehnaaz and Maham are like two thieves who are on the surface working together - but underneath it all they are double-crossing each other. For example, if Maham and Shehnaaz are in cahoots with each other it explains a lot of things. It could be Maham who tipped Shehnaaz off that Jodha has left the Agra Palace out of anger with Jalal, and Shehnaaz could very well have ensured that some wayside people point Jodha in the direction of the Mathura ashram where she was staying so that Jodha too would arrive there and Shehnaaz could work on Jodha's vulnerability to befriend her. But then again, why was Shehnaaz searching Maham's own room (ostensibly for the Kanha murthy but in reality perhaps for the farman)? Is it a race between Maham and Shehnaaz as to who finds the farman first? Do Maham and Shehnaaz already know each other and are just acting as if they don't - or have they really never seen each other before? Is Maham holding Shehnaaz's husband and child captive thinking Shehnaaz's husband may know where the farman is? Is Maham then planning to eliminate Shehnaaz's husband to get Shehnaaz married to Adham who can then claim the takht as her husband? Or is Shehnaaz trying to get the farman faster than Maham in order to release her husband and child from Maham's clutches and get the takht for herself and her husband? Is it because Shehnaaz is not able to yet find the farman that she feels she has to kill Jalal for the takht (because if the farman gave her entitlement directly to the Delhi takht, she needn't have to kill Jalal to get her entitlement)?
We can endlessly speculate all day today if we are bored - or we can just wait for the evening to see if the next episode reveals all. I have a feeling that before the weekend is out we will know exactly who Shehnaaz is, why she is here and what her connection with Maham is! Before that I have to prevent my curiosity from killing me!
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