Friends, lovely to be back in form writing these posts. I am better now and raring to go! And thanks for all those PMs and posts wishing my back speedy recovery. I am happy its recovering, but I feel sure it will recover even faster if Ruq gets caught and exposed ... which I want even more than the discovery of Chand Begum and the shady Maham!
Anyway, to get back to yesterday's episode, these days I find most of the episodes are not about single tracks. Every episode is a bunch of scenes progressing several tracks at the same time.
Yesterday's episode progressed four main issues:
The dhakka paigam issue seems to have unravelled at least in Jodha's mind!
Jodha came to realise that because Jalal couldn't read and write, he must have also not personally read the dhakka paigam. Within minutes of thinking along this trend, Jodha also realised that someone inimical (i.e.. Maham) must have read that paigam to Jalal and given it a lot of false frills, which is why Jalal so misunderstood Jodha on that dhakka night as inviting him to her cabin. Having known all this now , the question is whether Jodha will some day soon also tell Jalal about her discovery or will this matter just pass into oblivion now that the Creatives feel they have closed the loop?
I so wish Jodha would talk to Jalal about it, even if it is somewhat old hat now! I want Jalal to know that the dhakka by Jodha was not ill-intentioned and I don't want him saying "dhakka, dhakka, dhakka" all his life!
Also what happened to all these Zee man's hints that Rahim would unravel the dhakka paigam? Here I was, waiting for Rahim to emerge from inside some box with the remnants of the paigam in hand and playing a jigsaw puzzle with them to decode them, and the whole thing went for a toss!
Ela thinks there is going to be nothing more happening on the dhakka paigam issue and it's all old history now. But if the CVs do that I will always feel that this loop was not closed properly. I want Jalal to know that Maham overplayed her hand in this paigam issue also. It just isn't enough for me that Jodha knows. I want Jalal to know ,..
The love between Jalal and Jodha seems to be going back to platonic from passionate!
Jodha and Jalal got "closer to each other" (not according to me, but according to the Creatives) when he laid his head on her lap and she was ruffling his hair as they spoke. These kinds of lollipop scenes we have to expect daily now, but I can fully understand Maddy's anger about them. Yesterday she was WhatsApping me continuously that when Jodha and Jalal should be shown spending more nights of passion after that SR, they are instead being shown almost sharing platonic love in these lollipop scenes!
For some unknown reason, the CVs idea of coochey-coo is more and more head massages and head rufflings!!! W*F??? We are expecting much, much more after the SR, not less!
Anyway Jalal and Jodha were talking about how he used to drive away his teachers by putting fear into them during shikar etc. and that's how he failed to learn to read and write. Jodha then praised his hunar at remembering everything important through his extraordinary memory, and he praised Jodha that she had far more hunars than he had. This mutual admiration society was then engrossed in how to find Chand Begum ...
Overall the scene was a bit thanda. It was husband-and-wifely, but not more than that! If we must have a lollipop scene of romance in every episode, then it had better be more passionate than this. So often we have already seen Jalal lying like this with his head being ruflled by Ruq that to simply see a wife-switch in a similar shot was not OK by my book. Maddy had an idea that at least the CVs could give hints of something more passionate between them by showing Jalal pulling the curtains closed for the night, or some such readiness for another night with her ... but alas!
Ruq hopes to be MUZ on a fake pregnancy while Jalal catches her hookah maroing!
On the Ruq front two things happened. First when Jodha gave her the usual bitter gaada to drink and asked her what she knew of Chand Begum, Ruq said she too was a khas begum (like Jodha and Salima) but she further explained to Jodha that the Begum that begets the waaris is always more khas than other khas begums and becomes the Marium Uz Zamani (like Ruq herself was going to become).
So much for the naked expression of Ruq's ambitions with this fake pregnancy. Does she really think she will become MUZ with a fake pregnancy? I fail to understand how she can harbour such silliness in her already pea-sized brains. Folks, don't you all think Ruq is starting to believe her own lies? She is almost psychotic if she is spinning a fake pregnancy and then actually harbouring intentions to get titles as a result of it!
On top of that, in the precap, Jalal had appeared to have caught her blissfully smoking hookahs. And he was already berating her for it, when Hoshiyaar brought into the room another well-stacked hookah! Jalal hit the roof!
But think folks, if he is losing his temper so frightfully just at the harm that a hookah can do to an unborn baby, imagine how he will blow out if Ruq finally has to declare to him that there is no baby at all! I am so ready to see that scene! I so want Jalal to blow Ruq to smithereens. I usually have a small soft corner for Ruq, but this fake pregnancy and this Ruq behaving cuckoo is so getting my goat, that I want to see the drastic downfall of Ruq more than I want to see any other mystery tracks!
I also expect that the CVs can't keep on lengthening this Ruq fake pregnancy track endlessly. At some point it is getting tedious. So maybe in the next couple of episodes we will see that Jalal has seen enough clues that Ruq is not pregnant, and Maham has also fallen out with Ruq, and thus Maham exposes Ruq to Jalal. I certainly don't want to wait till the whole Chand Begum issue is first unravelled and Maham is then caught ... and then finally Ruq becomes the last one to get caught!
It is Chand Begum in the surang and Shehnaaz is her daughter!
My prediction that Shehnaaz may be the long lost sister of Jalal has come true. However I thought she would be Aqiqah, but she is actually not Aqiqah the lost sister. She is instead the daughter of Chand Begum, the 7-months pregnant wife of Humayun who went missing after Todarmal had ferried her to Humayun at the end of the Battle of Chausa. It is now clear that Chand Begum gave birth to Shehnaaz (who has some hatred of Jalal, and whether this hatred is righteous or misplaced we have to see).
In yesterday's episode, four things happened on this Maham-Shehnaaz- Chand front.
a. First Shehnaaz was counting doors and corridors in the palace and wondering about secret surangs, when Maham caiught her in the act and quickly Shehnaaz said she was counting starts (in the day time!). Maham outright asked her "Are you really mad or are you pretending to be mad?". That threw Shehnaaz indeed ... for it was a moment when one villain realised how sharp the other villain was! Anyway after Maham left Shehnaaz discounted Maham and again swore vengeance at Jalal.
b. In a slightly later scene, Hamida, Gulbadan and JiJiAnga were discussing Chand Begum and her sudden disappearance - and now her reappearance via the paigam to Jodha - when Maham entered the room answering the summons from Hamida. Hamida said to her "What do you know of the whereabouts of Chand Begum? You used to work directly for her and I thought you may know, for she has just sent a distress paigam to Jodha!" Maham looked instantly alerted and then said as casually as she could "Oh, Chand Begum has been gone for years now and no one knows where she is. In fact some impostor may have given some paigam to Jodha to mislead all of us. At any rate, why does Chand Begum have to hide her presence if she's alive? She's a right royal Mughal Begum and can rightfully claim her place here, can't she?"With that a seething and silently furious Maham left the room!
c. Then later Jalal, Atga and Todarmal got Tabassum, the portrait painter to do a painting of Chand Begum from the descriptions of Todarmal and Atga. When the painting was done, Jalal took a good look at it, for it had some resemblance to Shehnaaz, but the connection wasn't immediately evident to Jalal. But to us audiences the connection was immediate.
d. Even as Jalal was still staring at the painting, Maham was in the surang, giving even more dhamkis to her captive whose face we finally saw ... it was Chand Begum herself! Maham said to Chand Begum, whose hair she was holding and shaking her by "Chand Begum! How did you send that paigam to Jodha? Who here has helped you do that? On top of all this you continue to not tell me where that secret khazana is, which I know for a fact you must be having inside your head, in your memory! If you don't tell me that I will kill you and no one will suspect a thing because most people believe you are dead anyway!" Chand Begum looked totally messed up with, but she was stubborn and kept her silence despite a lot of hitting and hair pulling by Maham!
My comments on the episode:
I have three comments on this episode. Some parts of the story are getting convoluted and I need footnotes. Something isn't adding up yet!
The mystery of the "farman" that became a "naksha" and then became a "khazana"
Okay, so Maham now wants some secret khazana of Humayun's which was also marked on that "nakshaa"? What does she hope to do with the funds in the khazana? Does she hope the extra cash will help Adham mount an attack for the Delhi takht? What about that "farman"? Earlier Maham was hunting for some "farman", and then she was seen with a "naksha" and now she's hunting for a "khazana"? Have the CVs themselves got confused what Maham is looking for?
And what is Shehnaaz looking for in the rooms of Adham and Maham? If she suspects Jalal of some treachery against her and her mother, why does Shehnaaz search the rooms of Maham and Adham?
Lots of things yet to take full shape on this mystery yet. And as per spoilers the unveiling of Shehnaaz as Chand's daughter has to yet happen and we have to still know if it was Shehnaaz who put the paigam in Jodha's palki? May not be, because till yesterday Shehnaaz was still counting doors and passages in the palace, how could she have known her mother is in the surang she has not yet discovered? Or did Shehnaaz think of putting the paigam in Jodha's palki so that the family would start the khoj for Chand Begum and thus Shehnaaz may discover where her missing mother is?
And if her animosity towards Jalal is because she thinks Jalal has abducted her mother, well, then that is understandable for she has no clue that Maham wants her mother for anything! But then what does she think Jalal wants her mother for either? Why should Shehnaaz be a contender for the takht in Jalal's mind, when she is just a sister with no claims on takhts. So then does Shehnaaz think that Jalal abducted her mother for knowledge of that khazana? When Shehnaaz keeps saying she will get the takht from Jalal, how does she think this will happen?
The mystery of the promo and how Jalal and Jodha end up in Shehnaaz's net
The new promo seems to suggest that somehow Shehnaaz finds the surang (after some shots of a jhanda are shown) and it is around the same time that Jalal and Jodha also decide to investigate the surang again and there they are trapped by Shehnaaz who makes them walk into the net she has laid as a trap for them. Maybe Jalal who always carries knives and swords can cut through the net and free both himself and Jodha, but the question arises whether Shehnaaz is on the trail of Jalal and Jodha out of a misplaced sense that Jalal is her enemy or whether Shehnaaz really believes that she can get what is Jalal's now - the takht.
If Shehnaaz is feeling wronged by Jalal, because she thinks of him as the abductor of her mother, we can find it in ourselves to pity Shehnaaz to an extent for her misplaced animosity towards Jalal. The matter may get resolved easily then when Maham is caught as the abductress of Chand Begum. But the new spoiler today (posted by Maddy from Pinkvilla), says that Shehnaaz will continue to be a thorn in the flesh of Jodha and Jalal. This suggests to me that the mere finding of her abducted mother is not Shehnaaz's aim. Shehnaaz probably has ambitions which will get satisfied only after the vanquishing of Jalal, or even the assassination of Jalal. So the plot thickens, because after the finding of Chand Begum and even the hidden khazana of Humayun, there may still be this continuing mystery of what Shehnaaz hopes to get by killing Jalal, and how she thinks she will inherit the takht, and what she does to make Jodha and Jalal's life a misery. I wonder how long-running her role is! And I wonder if she and her discovered mother will be in this anti-Jalal mode together?
Accha, apart from all this is also this hanging question of when Hamida will tell Jalal and Jodha that she suspected Maham of something sinister during her "forest visits". See Hamida has no clue that Maham goes to a surang, all she knows is this "forest visits" of Maham dressed in a disguising blanket. So when will she tell Jalal about her suspicions of Maham ... and is that what makes Jodha and Jalal enter the surang from the forest end rather than the jail end and thus get trapped in Shehnaaz's net?
The totally unwanted scene of Javeeda and Zakira and Resham ... some clue?
In all that we saw yesterday one scene perplexes me. At first I was irritated that the CVs were time-passing with the scene where Javeeda asks Zakira to make Resham look as beautiful as Ben, and so Zakira starts doing some ghastly make-up on Resham's face making her look like an evil chudail. But then when I started thinking about it more I got the feeling that maybe this was not a faltoo scene and it may have some future purport to the mystery track.
What if there is some need for this Zakira to make someone wear a disguise? For example will Zakira next try some make up on Javeeda so that Javeeda can follow Maham into the surang? I have a very strong feeling now that this scene was not a time filler and it must have some practical significance to the mystery track. Any guesses, folks?
Now that the IPL is over, every serial is racing ahead at full speed with its new tracks, so I suspect JA will also now try to close all present open loops fast and proceed to the Adham-financial-fraud-discovery track very soon. So I expect this "Chand Begum-cum-surang-cum-Shehnaaz-cum-Ruq-exposure" business to be all wound up as fast as possible.
In those circumstances, I doubt if the Zakira scene of Resham make up was just a time filler. No serial can now afford to do time-pass, when everyone is gunning to increase TRPs as soon as the IPL is over! That scene has some value, but I am not able to tell how it will fit into the mystery!
Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi 2
Anupamaa
