Take 5: Top 5 countdown for June 12th - Page 14

Originally posted by: sashashyam

My dear Divya,

As warm and pleasing a post as always, and I enjoyed reading.But I missed the bubbling cheerfulness that usually pervades all your pieces. Why is that so?

In fact, I am surprised that you seem to almost apologising for liking this episode,and have then gone on to answer all possible accusations and objections. What you should have done, if I might make the suggestion, was to have gone with the flow of the episode and the scenes and the lines. Then you would have enjoyed yourself much more, and your readers by example.

As for me, I loved the episode, and I am not easily pleased, as you know. Let me tell you, and those of your readers who have the patience to wade thru this post of mine, why I loved it, and you are all free, as always, to agree or disagree. And if it is too long, remember that it was you who asked for it!😉

Just one point on which I disagree strongly with you: No, Jalal will NOT have any hidden punishment in store for Ruqaiya. He says he has forgiven her, and that is that. It would be a major slur on his character if he were to go back on that and plot devious ways to get round it. No way will he do it. Nor did I think he is being menacing when he tells her never to betray him again. It is, I felt, just a statement of fact and a bottom line. It remains to be seen if Ruqaiya draws the right lessons from this affair.

Moreover, a Jalal who can let off Abul Mali, who has repeatedly plotted to assassinate him, without executing him, forgive Adham Khan all his crimes so far, and Sharifuddin for rebelling against the Emperor, can hardly be faulted for forgiving Ruqaiya for this, especially after Jodha's explanation as to why she did what she did.

Lastly, I would have liked you to comment on the performances and the scripting, both of which were superb last night.. Why must one always limit analyses to explaining , accusing or defending one character or the other, totting up points like a chartered accountant?

Now I hope you are not rusht/khafa with me for such candid comments! I mean well, my child, and besides, I care about your posts, a lot, actually, otherwise I would never bother with such constructive critiques!

Shyamala Aunty

Jodha Akbar 261: Equal honours

by sashashyam, June 13, 2014

Folks,

Do you remember when you had a meal so delicately seasoned, so well balanced, so filling, so utterly satisfactory, that after finishing with it, you simply did not want to do anything but roll the flavours of the dishes on your tongue? Not say a word about it, but simply to savour it again and again in your mind? That is how I felt at 8:30 pm last night, and I felt the same after I had rewatched my recording again and again.

I do not know about you, but I am a sucker for happy endings. And this was the happiest one I could have hoped for. In fact better than the best I had hoped for when I wrote in my last post, The death of a dream:

"Jalal does it all by himself...Which means that he does not want this to become a full blown scandal that will reverberate thru the harem, and then across Agra and the Mughal empire. ... This, if I am correct, would then mean that though he would freeze Ruqaiya out of his life as far as possible, he would not want to publicise the matter, and might have it hushed up as a miscarriage. The best, from Jalal's point of view, would be for no one, not even Hamida Banu and her coterie, to know anything of the truth. ..

This course of action would be in line with his behaviour during the (admittedly far less serious) moorti kaand. ... This time around, however, the depth of the betrayal by Ruqaiya, and the depth of the hurt she has inflicted on him, might make Jalal react far more ferociously. ...But I hope not, and I confess that I would be greatly relieved if he is able to control himself, and the situation, with icy maturity."

Well, I was right and I was wrong. Right in what would be not told and to whom, and wrong in whose wisdom would dictate that. And for once, I did not mind that I was wrong.

The Jalal I had dreamed of: But I must confess that till almost the end, after Jalal's oh so smooth cover up, and even more so after that infinitely touching scene between Jalal and Ruqaiya - which was, for me, the highlight ot the whole episode, awash as it was with forgiveness, compassion, nostalgia and regret, and with a perfect closure - I was conned into believing that for once, the script had given Jalal his due.

That they had finally showed him as the great and generous, wise and compassionate human being that he was, ever ready to forgive and forget the wrongs done to him by his own. As Akbar really was for the whole of his life. I could not believe my eyes or my ears, as I sat on the edge of my chair and drank it all in with welling delight. At last, I said to myself, they have hit bullseye!

Then the flashback began, and I came down to earth with a thud. I should have known, of course, that what had gone before was simply too good to be true. Of course I knew, as I wrote in my last post, that :

For it is almost a given that the CVs will, in due course, give Jodha the credit for persuading the estranged Jalal to eventually forgive Ruqaiya.

What I had not bargained for was that it would not be "in due course". It was to be right here and now.

It is true that I would have wanted Jalal not to be so ferociously angry at what Ruqaiya had done to him as to have no thought of what the scandal he was about to unleash would do, not just to Ruqaiya, but also to the Mughal imperial family and the sultanate as a whole.

I had discussed the awful ramifications of such a scandal in detail the last time, and I shall not repeat that here. But exactly like a bull in a china shop, Jalal, if he had been allowed to give free rein to his fury, would have wrecked far more than Ruqaiya's life and honour. He would have jeopardized the honour and good name of the Mughal empire to which he attaches such paramount importance. And he would have regretted the consequences for the rest of his life, regretted them bitterly.

I would have wanted him, after a little reflection, to think all this out for himself, even if he could not, as a man and an alpha male, have been expected to perceive, understand why it was that Ruqaiya had done what she had done. And then, given this perception, this understanding, find it in himself to forgive her.

Not that I did not know the latter part myself, for I had said the last time:

"It might be too much to expect that he would grasp, even if only dimly, that it was his excessive preoccupation with Jodha that has contributed to Ruqaiya's escalating insecurity. Or that he would understand that the second, and even more important contributory factor was his failure to get it across to her, gently and affectionately but firmly, that he loves Jodha, and that Ruqaiya now has to adjust to this, given that her status, and her position in Jalal's life will remain unchanged".

But I had hoped that he could have covered the matter up, as he actually did, out of his own far-seeing wisdom , even if his anger towards Ruqaiya remained hot and vengeful.

Equal honours: That was not to be. But never mind. What was shown was, in its own way, very satisfying , even if Jalal was robbed of his due. And that was because of the way it was scripted and enacted. Whence my title of today:Equal honours.

These equal honours are pretty widely spread.

Between the script and its enactment.

Between the characters of Jalal, Jodha and Ruqaiya.

Between the actors: Rajat, Paridhi and Lavina.

Jalal:Let me start with the Jalal we got. My mother, in her infinite wisdom, said at once, in response to my knee-jerk lamentations re: Jalal, that no man in such a fury could be expected to balance actions and consequences, and even less to understand the complexities of Ruqaiya's motives and pardon her folly. Mothers are always right, and so was she.

Akbar had a legendary temper, whence the tale that he had ordered that no capital sentence be carried out until he had reiterated it thrice. So perhaps it was asking for too much when I had wanted Jalal last night to weigh the consequence of the scandal he would have unleashed in his rage, and thus cover the whole matter up for raisons d'etat, reasons of state, if not out of compassionate understanding of Ruqaiya's psyche.

Given this, the rest fell into place perfectly. For every human being, there is at least one other whose words carry such enormous weight, are accorded such respect, because of the trust the other has been able to gain, that there is nothing that human being will not do for the other. For Winston Churchill, deprived of parental love for all his growing years, it was his beloved wife Clementina, who was his emotional anchor and his guiding light for all of his married life. For Jalal, at least in our serial, it is to be Jodha.

Once we accept that, we can be at peace. Of course , there was no TV serial made on Clementina and Winston Churchill to tell us how she had converted him from an aimless, psychologically handicapped young man into a great war leader (he was nothing like great in peace time!), for which Churchill's rooh should be duly grateful! 😉

To revert, it is also true that once Jodha halts him in his furious track, and tells him where he is going wrong, Jalal does have the greatness of mind to both understand and accept that he was wrong. And to then to not just do the right thing, but the great and generous thing, that too not half-heartedly, but in full measure.

I did not think much of Rajat's Jalal during the long expostulatory scene with Jodha. There should have been more of a gradual softening, a progressive lightening, of his face and his eyes as he is dragged, by the force of Jodha's words, to face the truth: that both the reasons for Ruqaiya's folly - her sense of alienation from him of late, and her consequent, desperate desire to get back to what she was for him in the old days - are directly linked to his behaviour towards her. There was some of it in his stormy eyes as he seemed to be pondering over what Jodha was saying, but not enough. He stood there almost throughout like an angry bull, head lowered and brows drawn together in lingering anger.

I was only glad that Rajat did not crinkle up his face, as he does all too often nowadays to convey rage. His handsome face then gets distorted by a nose that looks like a misshapen potato, and the whole effect is both all too predictable and over the top. Someone has to get him out of this tick, and make him revert to the cold, icy and terrifying anger he could summon up so effectively in the early episodes, instead of trying to look like a Pamplona bull in action. But if so many are going to drool over "an angry Jalal", there is no hope for this much needed reversion to his old form!

Jalal with Ruqaiya: True greatness: It was in the climactic scene with a Ruqaiya torn by grief and fruitless regret, that Rajat's Jalal came into his own.

Even earlier, as he stands, his back to the womenfolk consoling a distraught Ruqaiya, as Gulbadan Begum trots out the usual clichs about Allah ke ghar der hai par andher nahin..Uske har faisle ke peeche koyi na koyi wajah chupi hoti hai... his face twitches in helpless agony as the irony of it all seeps in. But of course he does not know that those very words are going to come true when Jodha fulfils Sheikh Salim Chisti's prophecy and gives him his long sought and dreamed of aulaad and heir.

Then Jalal sends them all off, Jodha included, and comes back to a tearful, frightened Ruqaiya, who stares at his grim face in fearful anticipation. When he begins to move towards her, the anger is still raw in his face.

But as he gets closer to her, as she stammers out her regret and pleadingly states her reasons for such folly, tears pouring down her cheeks as she swears never to repeat it, his face changes, and it seems as if he is looking past this Ruqaiya to his old childhood friend, his Gatti.

And as unexpectedly for us as for her, he folds her in his arms, as she dissolves into sobs.

I can still remember how proud I felt of Jalal at that moment, and all that was revealed later has not devalued that pride. For it takes a great man, and and an even greater Shahenshah, to not just realise his mistakes, but to accept them and to correct them so fully.

What followed was as exquisite in conception and scripting as it was in terms of performance. Every nuance that Rajat brought to Jalal at this point of time was so sharp and yet so delicate that I did not tire of that scene even after the fifth rewatching. Which, by the way, did not hold good for the dramatic flashback.

The tired sadness that he hides as he strives to get Ruqaiya back to normal, to pull her out from her anguish and shame. The painful attempt at restoring normalcy between them with that chess game. The wincing as she repeatedly begs for his forgiveness; he does not want to go back to that wound and make it bleed anew.

The determination to hide his own heartache in order to convey the reassurance that she so desperately needs. Aap hamari jaan hain, hum aapki jaan kaise le sakte hain? .. Tumhe is baat ko nahin bhoolna chahiye tha, Ruqaiya, ki tum pehle bhi hamari dost thi aur hamesha rahogi.. Tum hamari sabse pehli begum thi, aur hamesha rahogi..

The acceptance of at least part of the blame for what she had done. Kahin na kahin, humne tumhe ehmiyat nahin di, jiski wajah se tum itni badi gustakhi kar baithi...shayad tum tanha mehsoos kar rahi thi..

The heart-wrenching nostalgia with which he longs for the old, carefree childhood days with her.. Kahan gayi wo yaadein, kahan gaye wo din.. wo meethi meethi yaadein, wo bachpana, kahan kho gaya hai? Yeh yaadein, yeh yakeen.. It is like a heart-rending lament for a lost paradise.

The bitterness at this loss that he hides so well as he bids her farewell, and then the resurgent, protective affection with which he comes back again to tell her to trust him to set right her complaints, her problems, par Khuda ke liye, mujhe dobara daga mat dena.. main bardaasht nahin kar sakoonga.

It was a tour de force, a master class in acting. The script, flawless in every detail, furnished the scaffolding, the skeleton, but it needed a Rajat to flesh it out with his subtlety and his mastery of both emotion and nuance. It was, to my mind, his very best scene so far in Jodha Akbar.

His emotional refuge: But Jalal is no man of iron, he is human after all. As he walks aways from Ruqaiya, he is limp and crushed inside with grief and loss, and raging against the cruelty of fate, jiski dhaar shamsheer ki dhaar se bhi tez hoti hai.

So he goes back to his emotional harbour, his refuge from these storm-tossed seas. Back to his Jodha Begum, with whom he does not need to be the unshakeable Shahenshah whom no calamity can weaken, no loss can shatter. With whom he can be himself, even if it is to weep on her shoulder, and then sit quietly at her side as she holds him comfortingly by the arm and reassures him that between them, there is no room for gratitude,but only for love, and that she will love him forever.

Old shoe love: It is this that was brought out for the first time last night, and so beautifully and convincingly. Jalal and Jodha have already reached the "old shoe love" stage that Mira Nair celebrated in her Monsoon Wedding; their bond is based not just on total trust, but as much on deep and protective affection, far more than on passion. Passion is a building block of love, especially in the early stages, but it is affection, protectiveness and faith that make love lasting. Curiously enough, this couple seem to have leap-frogged to the latter stage all at once.

Jodha: She came fully into her own at last, standing in the path of Jalal's titanic anger like the immovable object that halted the irresistible force. Who handled Jalal in peak fury with the unhesitating confidence of a lion tamer.

Firm and forceful, grabbing a raging Jalal, who jerks his arm away, with a categoric Chhodne ke liye hum aapke saath nahin aaye hain...Humein aapse bhay nahin lagta..Bhay lagta hai ki aap krodh mein koyi anuchit nirnay ne le lein.

Overcoming her shock at the revelation of Ruqaiya's folly to stop a Jalal, determined to wreak salutary vengeance on Ruqaiya, dead in his tracks, with the unfailing, time-tested saugandh - both hers and Kanha's (one day she will say kasam, but we are not there yet!).

Except that unlike the lion tamer, Jodha does this not for showing off her control over Jalal, but for his sake, to prevent him from doing something he would regret bitterly for the rest of his life.

She does it because her protectiveness towards him is now greater even than the jealousy of Ruqaiya that surfaced so sharply the other day. Or perhaps, because she is now so sure of his love that she does not see Ruqaiya as a competitor any more.

And perhaps it was that very jealousy, now a thing of the past, that helps Jodha understand now where Ruqaiya was coming from. What she must have felt as her own till then unassailable postion in Jalal's life was undermined by the arrival of Jodha and Jalal's growing closeness to Jodha, coupled with his distancing himself from his Begum-e-Khaas. To understand that if Jalal had taken the trouble to convince Ruqaiya that her importance in his life would be undiminished, she would never have stooped to this deception in order to win back his affections.

This ability to see things from the point of view of the other, with honesty and compassion, even if there is no love lost between you and that other, is a truly admirable trait. For Jodha is not cooking up these arguments to convince Jalal; she clearly believes in what she is saying, and it is this belief of hers that carries conviction.

And it is this truth of what drove Ruqaiya to commit this ghastly mistake that Jodha forces Jalal, till then in a mode of stubborn denial, to face , by holding up a mirror to his own zehen, to his conscience. And given his innate honesty, face it he does, and then accepts it and acts on it.

Jodha is also intensely practical, and she realises at once that this has to be kept secret from all but the three of them. She sees this from the personal, emotional angle of what being so cruelly and publicly disgraced would do to Ruqaiya, and at one remove , to Jalal as well. But it is also true that by forcing Jalal to overcome his desire for retribution and forgive Ruqaiya, Jodha does a huge favour to the Mughal sultanate.

Set against the genuine, unforced nobility of the whole passage, even Jodha's mini bhashan to Jalal, adjuring him to fulfil his duties as a husband and a friend , does not grate on one's nerves. When she refers to Ruqaiya as Jalal's only friend.. Aur mitron ke to sau apradh bhi kshama kiye ja sakte hain, Shahenshah, because such friends, who stand by one all their lives, are very hard to find, Jodha is both passionate and appealing, as against the old self-righteous preachiness.

For she is now trying her utmost, not just to save Ruqaiya, per se and for Jalal's sake. She is trying to take Jalal beyond mere condescending forgiveness. She is trying to reawaken in him the memories of the old Ruqaiya, the Gatti of his childhood and youth. To reinstate that image in his mind and heart, wiping out the one of a scheming, deceitful wife who had betrayed him and hit him at his weakest, most vulnerable spot. To heal the wounds that have been inflicted on Jalal by the destruction of his image of Ruqaiya, his lifelong friend and companion.

I also found it touching that Jodha, for all her insistence that Jalal had in effect created the circumstances that pushed Ruqaiya to do what she did, does not underestimate the depth of his anguish at all that has happened. Even before he comes back to her, her eyes well up with empathetic grief.

And when he does get there, the way she handles him is perfect: gently, affectionately supportive, and totally free of any smugness or self-satisfaction. She is all set to be his unwavering support, a haven of calm and peace where he can take refuge from the storms in his life, a compass that he can depend upon to guide him in difficult times, confident that she will never have any interests at stake but his own.

Paridhi was exceptionally convincing during the whole of that long scene. The script, and all her lines, were superb, but so was the way she handled the whole, And no wonder, for this sort of strong, clear-headed, honest and fair-minded characterization is her forte, and it is rarely that she gets it. She made the most of the opportunity, and ended up with her most effective and appealing scene to date.

Looking back, I was struck, in the opening scene, but the shifting expressions on Jodha's face as Jalal is talking to Hamida and the rest, and Ruqaiya is weeping in the background. First, as he says that nothing is right, there is worry and trepidation: will he hide the secret or not? Then, as he goes on to say that there had been a miscarriage, relief washes over her and can be seen in her eyes. It was like rewatching The Sixth Sense and spotting all the clues that one could not understand the first time around!

Ruqaiya: Cleansing repentance: She got much less footage than Jalal or Jodha, and she did not have any of the moving or dramatic lines they had. She was also handicapped by being the guilty one, awash in remorse and weighed down by bitter guilt, which forced her into a monochrome characterisation and Lavina into a monochrome performance.

But still, Lavina's Ruqaiya, eyes constantly brimming over with tears of regret and shame, strives (wo)manfully to overcome these handicaps, and succeeds to a large extent.

Initially fearful of what Jalal would do to her, and then, when he not merely forgives her, but goes out of his way to accept part of the blame and to reinstate her as his friend for all time and his first begum, feeling even worse, crushed by the extent of such unhoped for generosity. When he sits down for the chess game, her face is a study in disbelief, and then in overwhelming gratitude. She looks at him as he speaks of the old days, and there is a raw pain in her eyes that mirrors his own.

When he comes back to her from halfway to the exit, holds her head in his hand and caresses it as he asks her to come to him with all her complaints, but never to betray him again, Ruqaiya simply cannot bear it, cannot bear to be treated with such forbearance. That shows in the little sideways twist of her head, the look in her eyes - shame, regret and above all, overwhelming gratitude for his forgiveness, his compassion and his supportiveness.

As she stands looking at him leaving, her face dissolves, like something put in a bath of acid. The features crumple and lose their definition, until all that is left is a mask of bitter self-loathing. I am sure that she would have been shamed far more by his kindness that she would have been by any punishment, and I devoutly hope that she is also cleansed of all her jealous insecurity and the petty-mindedness that results from that insecurity. I too want the old Gatti back, above all for Jalal's sake.

Oh Lord, see how long this has become! Never mind, I am sure you will bear with me!

Just a marvelous meal is not complete without a dish of karela, so too we had the rigmarole of Mahaam, the Gwalior Hakim, and Shehnaaz. It appears as if Mahaam has been taking a cut out of the provisions of the prisoners on a regular basis. Now we know where Adham gets his pilfering tendencies from!

As for the precap, undoubtedly Shehnaaz's fantasy, what struck me was, firstly, the stabbing from a metre away, and secondly, the spectacle of the guards standing like dummies even after the Shahenshah had been stabbed and had collapsed, with blood gushing out of his mouth!

Shyamala/Aunty

mind blowing analysis😃

Originally posted by: munnirony

well there is a diff b/w maham & ruku's mistake. maham's mistake could have actually taken jodha's life. bcoz obviously adultery is really a serious crime & the same goes with BB's mistake. ruku's mistake is no doubt insensitive, bcoz whtever maybe the issue, she knew tht jalal is emotionally attached with his kid, but never the less her mistake was not physically harmful to anyone. infact, for me the murti issue was a bigger mistake bcoz religion is a very sensitive issue. yes jalal realized his mistake of not giving ruku time & thts why he was able to control his anger, otherwise even jodha wouldnt have able to stop him. 2ndly, about jodha's dialogues to jalal, jodha didnt said tht jalal was not giving ruku time, if u hear her dialogues carefully she indirectly said tht jalal's time got divided bcoz now jodha is there. jodha didnt said tht jalal was ignoring ruku, jodha said tht ruku always needs tht assurance tht she is jalal's most fav. so actually jodha didnt said tht jalal is fault, bcoz if thts the case then she was enjoying extra jalal's attention & till now she also didnt said tht jalal should give more time to ruku, she said tht it was ruku who was feeling left out. jodha told it to jalal in a twisted way bcoz she knows tht he will understand it, but ruku wont.

Originally posted by: Mallika-E-Bhais

No, whar Ruqaiyya did is UN-FORGIVABLE in any light.

It was a line that she shouldn't have crossed. I understand her utter desperation & mad hysteria but that does not, from any angle, excuse what she did.

This one move of her's has distanced her from Jalal .. She is now in Siberia, he, in Mughal India.

Originally posted by: rima4ever

mind blowing analysis😃

Originally posted by: sashashyam

My dear Divya,

As warm and pleasing a post as always, and I enjoyed reading.But I missed the bubbling cheerfulness that usually pervades all your pieces. Why is that so?

In fact, I am surprised that you seem to almost apologising for liking this episode,and have then gone on to answer all possible accusations and objections. What you should have done, if I might make the suggestion, was to have gone with the flow of the episode and the scenes and the lines. Then you would have enjoyed yourself much more, and your readers by example.

As for me, I loved the episode, and I am not easily pleased, as you know. Let me tell you, and those of your readers who have the patience to wade thru this post of mine, why I loved it, and you are all free, as always, to agree or disagree. And if it is too long, remember that it was you who asked for it!😉

Just one point on which I disagree strongly with you: No, Jalal will NOT have any hidden punishment in store for Ruqaiya. He says he has forgiven her, and that is that. It would be a major slur on his character if he were to go back on that and plot devious ways to get round it. No way will he do it. Nor did I think he is being menacing when he tells her never to betray him again. It is, I felt, just a statement of fact and a bottom line. It remains to be seen if Ruqaiya draws the right lessons from this affair.

Moreover, a Jalal who can let off Abul Mali, who has repeatedly plotted to assassinate him, without executing him, forgive Adham Khan all his crimes so far, and Sharifuddin for rebelling against the Emperor, can hardly be faulted for forgiving Ruqaiya for this, especially after Jodha's explanation as to why she did what she did.

Lastly, I would have liked you to comment on the performances and the scripting, both of which were superb last night.. Why must one always limit analyses to explaining , accusing or defending one character or the other, totting up points like a chartered accountant?

Now I hope you are not rusht/khafa with me for such candid comments! I mean well, my child, and besides, I care about your posts, a lot, actually, otherwise I would never bother with such constructive critiques!

Shyamala Aunty

Jodha Akbar 261: Equal honours

by sashashyam, June 13, 2014

Folks,

Do you remember when you had a meal so delicately seasoned, so well balanced, so filling, so utterly satisfactory, that after finishing with it, you simply did not want to do anything but roll the flavours of the dishes on your tongue? Not say a word about it, but simply to savour it again and again in your mind? That is how I felt at 8:30 pm last night, and I felt the same after I had rewatched my recording again and again.

I do not know about you, but I am a sucker for happy endings. And this was the happiest one I could have hoped for. In fact better than the best I had hoped for when I wrote in my last post, The death of a dream:

"Jalal does it all by himself...Which means that he does not want this to become a full blown scandal that will reverberate thru the harem, and then across Agra and the Mughal empire. ... This, if I am correct, would then mean that though he would freeze Ruqaiya out of his life as far as possible, he would not want to publicise the matter, and might have it hushed up as a miscarriage. The best, from Jalal's point of view, would be for no one, not even Hamida Banu and her coterie, to know anything of the truth. ..

This course of action would be in line with his behaviour during the (admittedly far less serious) moorti kaand. ... This time around, however, the depth of the betrayal by Ruqaiya, and the depth of the hurt she has inflicted on him, might make Jalal react far more ferociously. ...But I hope not, and I confess that I would be greatly relieved if he is able to control himself, and the situation, with icy maturity."

Well, I was right and I was wrong. Right in what would be not told and to whom, and wrong in whose wisdom would dictate that. And for once, I did not mind that I was wrong.

The Jalal I had dreamed of: But I must confess that till almost the end, after Jalal's oh so smooth cover up, and even more so after that infinitely touching scene between Jalal and Ruqaiya - which was, for me, the highlight ot the whole episode, awash as it was with forgiveness, compassion, nostalgia and regret, and with a perfect closure - I was conned into believing that for once, the script had given Jalal his due.

That they had finally showed him as the great and generous, wise and compassionate human being that he was, ever ready to forgive and forget the wrongs done to him by his own. As Akbar really was for the whole of his life. I could not believe my eyes or my ears, as I sat on the edge of my chair and drank it all in with welling delight. At last, I said to myself, they have hit bullseye!

Then the flashback began, and I came down to earth with a thud. I should have known, of course, that what had gone before was simply too good to be true. Of course I knew, as I wrote in my last post, that :

For it is almost a given that the CVs will, in due course, give Jodha the credit for persuading the estranged Jalal to eventually forgive Ruqaiya.

What I had not bargained for was that it would not be "in due course". It was to be right here and now.

It is true that I would have wanted Jalal not to be so ferociously angry at what Ruqaiya had done to him as to have no thought of what the scandal he was about to unleash would do, not just to Ruqaiya, but also to the Mughal imperial family and the sultanate as a whole.

I had discussed the awful ramifications of such a scandal in detail the last time, and I shall not repeat that here. But exactly like a bull in a china shop, Jalal, if he had been allowed to give free rein to his fury, would have wrecked far more than Ruqaiya's life and honour. He would have jeopardized the honour and good name of the Mughal empire to which he attaches such paramount importance. And he would have regretted the consequences for the rest of his life, regretted them bitterly.

I would have wanted him, after a little reflection, to think all this out for himself, even if he could not, as a man and an alpha male, have been expected to perceive, understand why it was that Ruqaiya had done what she had done. And then, given this perception, this understanding, find it in himself to forgive her.

Not that I did not know the latter part myself, for I had said the last time:

"It might be too much to expect that he would grasp, even if only dimly, that it was his excessive preoccupation with Jodha that has contributed to Ruqaiya's escalating insecurity. Or that he would understand that the second, and even more important contributory factor was his failure to get it across to her, gently and affectionately but firmly, that he loves Jodha, and that Ruqaiya now has to adjust to this, given that her status, and her position in Jalal's life will remain unchanged".

But I had hoped that he could have covered the matter up, as he actually did, out of his own far-seeing wisdom , even if his anger towards Ruqaiya remained hot and vengeful.

Equal honours: That was not to be. But never mind. What was shown was, in its own way, very satisfying , even if Jalal was robbed of his due. And that was because of the way it was scripted and enacted. Whence my title of today:Equal honours.

These equal honours are pretty widely spread.

Between the script and its enactment.

Between the characters of Jalal, Jodha and Ruqaiya.

Between the actors: Rajat, Paridhi and Lavina.

Jalal:Let me start with the Jalal we got. My mother, in her infinite wisdom, said at once, in response to my knee-jerk lamentations re: Jalal, that no man in such a fury could be expected to balance actions and consequences, and even less to understand the complexities of Ruqaiya's motives and pardon her folly. Mothers are always right, and so was she.

Akbar had a legendary temper, whence the tale that he had ordered that no capital sentence be carried out until he had reiterated it thrice. So perhaps it was asking for too much when I had wanted Jalal last night to weigh the consequence of the scandal he would have unleashed in his rage, and thus cover the whole matter up for raisons d'etat, reasons of state, if not out of compassionate understanding of Ruqaiya's psyche.

Given this, the rest fell into place perfectly. For every human being, there is at least one other whose words carry such enormous weight, are accorded such respect, because of the trust the other has been able to gain, that there is nothing that human being will not do for the other. For Winston Churchill, deprived of parental love for all his growing years, it was his beloved wife Clementina, who was his emotional anchor and his guiding light for all of his married life. For Jalal, at least in our serial, it is to be Jodha.

Once we accept that, we can be at peace. Of course , there was no TV serial made on Clementina and Winston Churchill to tell us how she had converted him from an aimless, psychologically handicapped young man into a great war leader (he was nothing like great in peace time!), for which Churchill's rooh should be duly grateful! 😉

To revert, it is also true that once Jodha halts him in his furious track, and tells him where he is going wrong, Jalal does have the greatness of mind to both understand and accept that he was wrong. And to then to not just do the right thing, but the great and generous thing, that too not half-heartedly, but in full measure.

I did not think much of Rajat's Jalal during the long expostulatory scene with Jodha. There should have been more of a gradual softening, a progressive lightening, of his face and his eyes as he is dragged, by the force of Jodha's words, to face the truth: that both the reasons for Ruqaiya's folly - her sense of alienation from him of late, and her consequent, desperate desire to get back to what she was for him in the old days - are directly linked to his behaviour towards her. There was some of it in his stormy eyes as he seemed to be pondering over what Jodha was saying, but not enough. He stood there almost throughout like an angry bull, head lowered and brows drawn together in lingering anger.

I was only glad that Rajat did not crinkle up his face, as he does all too often nowadays to convey rage. His handsome face then gets distorted by a nose that looks like a misshapen potato, and the whole effect is both all too predictable and over the top. Someone has to get him out of this tick, and make him revert to the cold, icy and terrifying anger he could summon up so effectively in the early episodes, instead of trying to look like a Pamplona bull in action. But if so many are going to drool over "an angry Jalal", there is no hope for this much needed reversion to his old form!

Jalal with Ruqaiya: True greatness: It was in the climactic scene with a Ruqaiya torn by grief and fruitless regret, that Rajat's Jalal came into his own.

Even earlier, as he stands, his back to the womenfolk consoling a distraught Ruqaiya, as Gulbadan Begum trots out the usual clichs about Allah ke ghar der hai par andher nahin..Uske har faisle ke peeche koyi na koyi wajah chupi hoti hai... his face twitches in helpless agony as the irony of it all seeps in. But of course he does not know that those very words are going to come true when Jodha fulfils Sheikh Salim Chisti's prophecy and gives him his long sought and dreamed of aulaad and heir.

Then Jalal sends them all off, Jodha included, and comes back to a tearful, frightened Ruqaiya, who stares at his grim face in fearful anticipation. When he begins to move towards her, the anger is still raw in his face.

But as he gets closer to her, as she stammers out her regret and pleadingly states her reasons for such folly, tears pouring down her cheeks as she swears never to repeat it, his face changes, and it seems as if he is looking past this Ruqaiya to his old childhood friend, his Gatti.

And as unexpectedly for us as for her, he folds her in his arms, as she dissolves into sobs.

I can still remember how proud I felt of Jalal at that moment, and all that was revealed later has not devalued that pride. For it takes a great man, and and an even greater Shahenshah, to not just realise his mistakes, but to accept them and to correct them so fully.

What followed was as exquisite in conception and scripting as it was in terms of performance. Every nuance that Rajat brought to Jalal at this point of time was so sharp and yet so delicate that I did not tire of that scene even after the fifth rewatching. Which, by the way, did not hold good for the dramatic flashback.

The tired sadness that he hides as he strives to get Ruqaiya back to normal, to pull her out from her anguish and shame. The painful attempt at restoring normalcy between them with that chess game. The wincing as she repeatedly begs for his forgiveness; he does not want to go back to that wound and make it bleed anew.

The determination to hide his own heartache in order to convey the reassurance that she so desperately needs. Aap hamari jaan hain, hum aapki jaan kaise le sakte hain? .. Tumhe is baat ko nahin bhoolna chahiye tha, Ruqaiya, ki tum pehle bhi hamari dost thi aur hamesha rahogi.. Tum hamari sabse pehli begum thi, aur hamesha rahogi..

The acceptance of at least part of the blame for what she had done. Kahin na kahin, humne tumhe ehmiyat nahin di, jiski wajah se tum itni badi gustakhi kar baithi...shayad tum tanha mehsoos kar rahi thi..

The heart-wrenching nostalgia with which he longs for the old, carefree childhood days with her.. Kahan gayi wo yaadein, kahan gaye wo din.. wo meethi meethi yaadein, wo bachpana, kahan kho gaya hai? Yeh yaadein, yeh yakeen.. It is like a heart-rending lament for a lost paradise.

The bitterness at this loss that he hides so well as he bids her farewell, and then the resurgent, protective affection with which he comes back again to tell her to trust him to set right her complaints, her problems, par Khuda ke liye, mujhe dobara daga mat dena.. main bardaasht nahin kar sakoonga.

It was a tour de force, a master class in acting. The script, flawless in every detail, furnished the scaffolding, the skeleton, but it needed a Rajat to flesh it out with his subtlety and his mastery of both emotion and nuance. It was, to my mind, his very best scene so far in Jodha Akbar.

His emotional refuge: But Jalal is no man of iron, he is human after all. As he walks aways from Ruqaiya, he is limp and crushed inside with grief and loss, and raging against the cruelty of fate, jiski dhaar shamsheer ki dhaar se bhi tez hoti hai.

So he goes back to his emotional harbour, his refuge from these storm-tossed seas. Back to his Jodha Begum, with whom he does not need to be the unshakeable Shahenshah whom no calamity can weaken, no loss can shatter. With whom he can be himself, even if it is to weep on her shoulder, and then sit quietly at her side as she holds him comfortingly by the arm and reassures him that between them, there is no room for gratitude,but only for love, and that she will love him forever.

Old shoe love: It is this that was brought out for the first time last night, and so beautifully and convincingly. Jalal and Jodha have already reached the "old shoe love" stage that Mira Nair celebrated in her Monsoon Wedding; their bond is based not just on total trust, but as much on deep and protective affection, far more than on passion. Passion is a building block of love, especially in the early stages, but it is affection, protectiveness and faith that make love lasting. Curiously enough, this couple seem to have leap-frogged to the latter stage all at once.

Jodha: She came fully into her own at last, standing in the path of Jalal's titanic anger like the immovable object that halted the irresistible force. Who handled Jalal in peak fury with the unhesitating confidence of a lion tamer.

Firm and forceful, grabbing a raging Jalal, who jerks his arm away, with a categoric Chhodne ke liye hum aapke saath nahin aaye hain...Humein aapse bhay nahin lagta..Bhay lagta hai ki aap krodh mein koyi anuchit nirnay ne le lein.

Overcoming her shock at the revelation of Ruqaiya's folly to stop a Jalal, determined to wreak salutary vengeance on Ruqaiya, dead in his tracks, with the unfailing, time-tested saugandh - both hers and Kanha's (one day she will say kasam, but we are not there yet!).

Except that unlike the lion tamer, Jodha does this not for showing off her control over Jalal, but for his sake, to prevent him from doing something he would regret bitterly for the rest of his life.

She does it because her protectiveness towards him is now greater even than the jealousy of Ruqaiya that surfaced so sharply the other day. Or perhaps, because she is now so sure of his love that she does not see Ruqaiya as a competitor any more.

And perhaps it was that very jealousy, now a thing of the past, that helps Jodha understand now where Ruqaiya was coming from. What she must have felt as her own till then unassailable postion in Jalal's life was undermined by the arrival of Jodha and Jalal's growing closeness to Jodha, coupled with his distancing himself from his Begum-e-Khaas. To understand that if Jalal had taken the trouble to convince Ruqaiya that her importance in his life would be undiminished, she would never have stooped to this deception in order to win back his affections.

This ability to see things from the point of view of the other, with honesty and compassion, even if there is no love lost between you and that other, is a truly admirable trait. For Jodha is not cooking up these arguments to convince Jalal; she clearly believes in what she is saying, and it is this belief of hers that carries conviction.

And it is this truth of what drove Ruqaiya to commit this ghastly mistake that Jodha forces Jalal, till then in a mode of stubborn denial, to face , by holding up a mirror to his own zehen, to his conscience. And given his innate honesty, face it he does, and then accepts it and acts on it.

Jodha is also intensely practical, and she realises at once that this has to be kept secret from all but the three of them. She sees this from the personal, emotional angle of what being so cruelly and publicly disgraced would do to Ruqaiya, and at one remove , to Jalal as well. But it is also true that by forcing Jalal to overcome his desire for retribution and forgive Ruqaiya, Jodha does a huge favour to the Mughal sultanate.

Set against the genuine, unforced nobility of the whole passage, even Jodha's mini bhashan to Jalal, adjuring him to fulfil his duties as a husband and a friend , does not grate on one's nerves. When she refers to Ruqaiya as Jalal's only friend.. Aur mitron ke to sau apradh bhi kshama kiye ja sakte hain, Shahenshah, because such friends, who stand by one all their lives, are very hard to find, Jodha is both passionate and appealing, as against the old self-righteous preachiness.

For she is now trying her utmost, not just to save Ruqaiya, per se and for Jalal's sake. She is trying to take Jalal beyond mere condescending forgiveness. She is trying to reawaken in him the memories of the old Ruqaiya, the Gatti of his childhood and youth. To reinstate that image in his mind and heart, wiping out the one of a scheming, deceitful wife who had betrayed him and hit him at his weakest, most vulnerable spot. To heal the wounds that have been inflicted on Jalal by the destruction of his image of Ruqaiya, his lifelong friend and companion.

I also found it touching that Jodha, for all her insistence that Jalal had in effect created the circumstances that pushed Ruqaiya to do what she did, does not underestimate the depth of his anguish at all that has happened. Even before he comes back to her, her eyes well up with empathetic grief.

And when he does get there, the way she handles him is perfect: gently, affectionately supportive, and totally free of any smugness or self-satisfaction. She is all set to be his unwavering support, a haven of calm and peace where he can take refuge from the storms in his life, a compass that he can depend upon to guide him in difficult times, confident that she will never have any interests at stake but his own.

Paridhi was exceptionally convincing during the whole of that long scene. The script, and all her lines, were superb, but so was the way she handled the whole, And no wonder, for this sort of strong, clear-headed, honest and fair-minded characterization is her forte, and it is rarely that she gets it. She made the most of the opportunity, and ended up with her most effective and appealing scene to date.

Looking back, I was struck, in the opening scene, but the shifting expressions on Jodha's face as Jalal is talking to Hamida and the rest, and Ruqaiya is weeping in the background. First, as he says that nothing is right, there is worry and trepidation: will he hide the secret or not? Then, as he goes on to say that there had been a miscarriage, relief washes over her and can be seen in her eyes. It was like rewatching The Sixth Sense and spotting all the clues that one could not understand the first time around!

Ruqaiya: Cleansing repentance: She got much less footage than Jalal or Jodha, and she did not have any of the moving or dramatic lines they had. She was also handicapped by being the guilty one, awash in remorse and weighed down by bitter guilt, which forced her into a monochrome characterisation and Lavina into a monochrome performance.

But still, Lavina's Ruqaiya, eyes constantly brimming over with tears of regret and shame, strives (wo)manfully to overcome these handicaps, and succeeds to a large extent.

Initially fearful of what Jalal would do to her, and then, when he not merely forgives her, but goes out of his way to accept part of the blame and to reinstate her as his friend for all time and his first begum, feeling even worse, crushed by the extent of such unhoped for generosity. When he sits down for the chess game, her face is a study in disbelief, and then in overwhelming gratitude. She looks at him as he speaks of the old days, and there is a raw pain in her eyes that mirrors his own.

When he comes back to her from halfway to the exit, holds her head in his hand and caresses it as he asks her to come to him with all her complaints, but never to betray him again, Ruqaiya simply cannot bear it, cannot bear to be treated with such forbearance. That shows in the little sideways twist of her head, the look in her eyes - shame, regret and above all, overwhelming gratitude for his forgiveness, his compassion and his supportiveness.

As she stands looking at him leaving, her face dissolves, like something put in a bath of acid. The features crumple and lose their definition, until all that is left is a mask of bitter self-loathing. I am sure that she would have been shamed far more by his kindness that she would have been by any punishment, and I devoutly hope that she is also cleansed of all her jealous insecurity and the petty-mindedness that results from that insecurity. I too want the old Gatti back, above all for Jalal's sake.

Oh Lord, see how long this has become! Never mind, I am sure you will bear with me!

Just a marvelous meal is not complete without a dish of karela, so too we had the rigmarole of Mahaam, the Gwalior Hakim, and Shehnaaz. It appears as if Mahaam has been taking a cut out of the provisions of the prisoners on a regular basis. Now we know where Adham gets his pilfering tendencies from!

As for the precap, undoubtedly Shehnaaz's fantasy, what struck me was, firstly, the stabbing from a metre away, and secondly, the spectacle of the guards standing like dummies even after the Shahenshah had been stabbed and had collapsed, with blood gushing out of his mouth!

Shyamala/Aunty

Originally posted by: munnirony

well there is a diff b/w maham & ruku's mistake. maham's mistake could have actually taken jodha's life. bcoz obviously adultery is really a serious crime & the same goes with BB's mistake. ruku's mistake is no doubt insensitive, bcoz whtever maybe the issue, she knew tht jalal is emotionally attached with his kid, but never the less her mistake was not physically harmful to anyone. infact, for me the murti issue was a bigger mistake bcoz religion is a very sensitive issue.

yes jalal realized his mistake of not giving ruku time & thts why he was able to control his anger, otherwise even jodha wouldnt have able to stop him. 2ndly, about jodha's dialogues to jalal, jodha didnt said tht jalal was not giving ruku time, if u hear her dialogues carefully she indirectly said tht jalal's time got divided bcoz now jodha is there. jodha didnt said tht jalal was ignoring ruku, jodha said tht ruku always needs tht assurance tht she is jalal's most fav. so actually jodha didnt said tht jalal is fault, bcoz if thts the case then she was enjoying extra jalal's attention & till now she also didnt said tht jalal should give more time to ruku, she said tht it was ruku who was feeling left out. jodha told it to jalal in a twisted way bcoz she knows tht he will understand it, but ruku wont.

Originally posted by: Mallika-E-Bhais

That's not the only thing my head is full of.

Originally posted by: Mallika-E-Bhais

No, whar Ruqaiyya did is UN-FORGIVABLE in any light.

It was a line that she shouldn't have crossed. I understand her utter desperation & mad hysteria but that does not, from any angle, excuse what she did.

This one move of her's has distanced her from Jalal .. She is now in Siberia, he, in Mughal India.