complete butchering of characters! - Page 16

Originally posted by: sashashyam

My dear,

What a warm message! I am delighted to learn that I was your first friend in the IF; by now you must be having very many more.

I would have PMed you earlier about my posts in the other forum if I had known that you would be so interested in them. I never take that for granted, so my PM list was quite limited to start with . It was only after I saw your id in the Likes for one of my overlong comments - I think it was on one of Divya's threads - that I thought you might want to stay with me and my posts. I am glad to see that I was not wrong!

Shyamala B.Cowsik

Originally posted by: ---Khushi---

Shyamala Aunty...you're a rockstar!!... you have so many fans all over the world, literally!!😳...its a shame that im unable to catch up with you at your new abode these days...too caught up with work...hardly get time to come online here on IF also.. have been skipping episodes also of late...but whenever I receive your PM, I do drop in for a couple of mins to browse thru your posts...do continue to PM me ...I should be a lot freer than now by the 2nd week of July. ...will catch up with you all then...

AKT.JA...awesome post...😆

Originally posted by: sashashyam

My dear,

What a warm message! I am delighted to learn that I was your first friend in the IF; by now you must be having very many more.

I would have PMed you earlier about my posts in the other forum if I had known that you would be so interested in them. I never take that for granted, so my PM list was quite limited to start with . It was only after I saw your id in the Likes for one of my overlong comments - I think it was on one of Divya's threads - that I thought you might want to stay with me and my posts. I am glad to see that I was not wrong!

Shyamala B.Cowsik

Originally posted by: AKT.JA

Please don't disturb Akbar. He is already busy planning the next Meena Bazaar. 😊

There is no need for him to pay attention to military matters either, as he and Jo will defeat all enemies.

Thanks to Akbar's recognition of Jo's hunars, there is no serious threat either to the saltanat or JaJo personally. Sure, an occasional soldier or bandhi will die, but saltanat will remain safe for JaJo's much cherished hugs and eye-locks.

The saltanat is a model of liberal policies and often tasks its own enemies to investigate one another, even themselves. This saves money that would be otherwise wasted on hiring competent officials; the same money can be more usefully spent towards jashns and Meena Bazaars.

Thanks to the focus on what truly matters, any enemy has to try exceptionally hard to get discovered here.However, so far nobody, even if he did managed to get caught, has attracted enough attention to get neutralized. We see Maham, SD, AK etc freely roaming around plotting against JaJo. But then clues were subtle---like SD and AK being absent when an attack took place, SD being known to have killed the old Hakima, or Shenu staring at Jalal's dagger---and JaJo cannot demean themselves by paying attention to them.

Besides, any action against these people would have been a distraction away from important and intimate soul-searching discussions like, "Aap, yehann, is samay?"

A few outlier cases deserve special mention -

* AM got fed up with waiting for Jalal to find him and therefore presented himself in front of Jalal in the forest. He even managed to lose his sword to Jalal who didn't have his own with him: Jo's humanizing influence, we can be sure, as the old Jalal always had his shamshir with him, even during sleep, and used to boast about it, but that seems to have been replaced by sikkas gifted or inspired by Jo. Anyway, despite these Herculean efforts, the maximum penalty AM could eke out of Jalal was "Jab tum ainey mein apni shakl dekhoge..." and having to continue to meet SD in the forest.

* Ben did get killed, but that was only due to the generally hapless Ruq. If JaJo were present, she too would have been spared and left to rendezvous with AM and SD in the forest.

* Maham tested the limits by openly telling Jalal, while screaming as loudly as her lungs would permit, that she has also hatched other conspiracies against JaJo. However, Jalal passed this stress test with flying colors. Rather than be curious about what these other conspiracies were, if she had any partners, etc., he decisively went for the extreme penalty, the nuclear option, of telling her she would no longer be addressed as Badi Ammi.

If MCB ever dares to attack Agra, I am sure Akbar will severely punish her as well, by refusing to call her Ammi Jaan. And in a rare display of his old manliness, it will be against Jo's objections. Now, that's the steely Shehenshah some of us have been waiting to reappear!

However, any good marriage means having to compromise, and Jo's hunars will make sure that her efforts are at least partially successful. Thus Jalal will agree to continue to call Hyder Qasim "Chote Abba" after Jo argues persusively that "baalak to nirdosh hote hain" and how can the Mughal empire, which always forgives the guilty, ever punish the nirdosh?

Tafteesh ki jaay!: Yesternight, I realised I was wrong when I said that Jalal had reached his conversational nadir when he told Jodha that he was organising the Meena Bazaar so that he could spend more time with her, a more peculiar and meaningless comment than which, given that he is perennially popping into her rooms unannounced, could hardly be imagined.

He did one better last night after listening to Todar Mal give instructions that the pagdi (it had been downgraded from taj to pagdi, for reasons unknown! ) should be examined for poison. What does Shahenshah Jalaluddin Muhammed Akbar say then?

Tafteesh ki jaay ki yeh kisne kiya, kyon aur kisliye!

It was unclear whom he was addressing; not Atgah, for I did not hear the standard Hukum ki tameel hogi, huzoor, but it was a most inane order. And not just because kyon and kisliye are the same thing, and the answer too both was blindingly clear: To assassinate you, stupid!

What on earth does Jalal mean by barking out such an order into the air? How on earth is it going to be obeyed and results produced, especially if no sakhti is going to be used on anyone without pukta saboot? Does he think the guilty party will put his/her name up on a notice board in a palace quadrangle?

It was the ruddy limit. And the way Motibai talked to Todar Mal, a minister of the sultanat, was so impertinent that it passed all bounds.😡

And the winner is!:As for the choice of the winner, I was glad it was not Jodha, for the reasons I had set out in my last post. Salima's choice of gift was unremarkable in that there was no fresh idea behind it, but it was clearly the one that best met Jalal's initial condition, that it should relate to the reason for his getting his new title, Akbar.

It was also noteworthy for all her earlier stated desire that her gift should not be khaas and that Jodha should win this contest, Salima was delighted at her own victory. She was showing all her batteesi like a Colgate ad, and it was the same at the actual presentation ceremony in the Diwan-e-Khas. And her eyes gleamed with unalloyed joy and pride.

One thing I liked was Jodha's patent disappointment at losing in the pratispardha. She was not consoled even by Jalal's gushing comment that the pagdi with the ill-placed and mingy morpankh (it was not inserted deep enough, so the whole stem stuck out) was the best gift he had received in all his life.

She seemed quite grumpy when she was walking with him later, and the moonlight that delighted him did not seem to touch her at all, so badly did her loss rankle! It was only after Jalal produced his boilerplate pronouncement that she was the closest to his now officially registered dil that she recovered and was able to smile again.

I bet that if Ruqaiya had been the winner, Jalal would have had to run for cover!😉 I liked Jodha being grumpy about her loss; it makes her seem human, and not mahaan.

Kabul shenanigans: The goings on in Kabul were chillingly realistic, and Ghani Khan's head with the watermelon reminded me of the scene in Cleopatra when Ptolemy's head is displayed to Caesar by the young Pharaoh; Caesar is furious at this indignity inflicted on a fellow Roman general, and his son-in-law at that.

That Faazil Beg, with his white, blind eyes, is scary. It is a tribute to Nemesis, the Greek goddess of retribution, that even such a ruthlessly loyal henchman was murdered on Mahachuchak's orders, I wonder for what failing.

It reminded me of Voldemort having Severus Snape murdered (in Harry Potter; though he never found out that Snape had been a very successful double agent in his camp for ages) and even more so of the case of Thomas Cromwell, an infamous minister of the English Crown under Henry VIII, whom that monarch used for doing all his dirty work, and then had him executed on a trumped up charge when he was no longer useful.

Bete ka janaza: The scene preceding that of the murder of Ghani Khan, the one with Munim Khan and Rahim,was obviously there to heighten the tragedy of what followed. It was beautifully written and enacted. The shock of his much loved son's death would be a terrible one for Munim Khan. As they say, Jaante ho duniya ka sabse bada bojh kya hota hai? Baap ke kandhe par bete ka janaza. Maybe that was why, in his raging desire for revenge, he lost sight of prudence, rushed to Kabul without enough back up, and lost the battle for the city. I wonder if he survived or was killed by Mahachuchak.

Todar Mal triumphs: And yes, as an official member of the Todar Mal Club, I was delighted to see him in such fine fettle yesterday. After saving Jalal's life for the second time (the first was at Mathura), he set out all the key points and conclusions with unruffled calm, clarity and impeccable logic. Let us see how soon he starts zeroing in on Shehnaaz, leading to the false accusation against him.

Shyamala

Originally posted by: mandyg

btw how did you all like yesterday's episode, i thought it was interesting compared to recent ones and i m liking mc scenes now, especially after reading some historical tit bits about her in mansi's thread!