Friends, yesterday's episode was described by some friends to me as "very cute" and "how sweet". These are those among my friends who have become so heartily sick of the paagalkhana that is the Agra Palace and its political intrigues and machinations and torturous people, that they found the nearly 23 minutes of Khyber caring for Jodha in the jungle a huge relief!
No Atifa, no insulting of Jodha, nothing crass to disturb the sylvan surroundings of the green jungle for the whole episode ... and but for some splashes of Jalal and Mansingh and Sharif searching for Jodha amongst the villagers, and some shrill screeching by Ruq, all was calm and quiet and even heart-warming. My friends who liked the episode loved the way an illiterate creature like Khyber was managing eventually to communicate with Jodha, showing deep sentimentality and succour for a woman in distress!
But I am afraid I was not exactly on a wavelength with these close friends of mine, because having an episode of nearly 23 minutes of just two people traipsing in a jungle, without a single word of intelligent conversation between them was a bit too much for me to personally bear. However sweet the gestures of Khyber were towards Jodha, and however wrong or right the situation was for Jodha to be in when she's pregnant and in pain, and however much of a relief the scenes were from having to watch Jalal and Atifa, I personally like episodes that have intelligent thought-provoking conversations between people - and I cannot sit patiently through drama that is all about gesticulations, difficult communication and largely repetitive scenes all shot in a single outdoor location. It was too much of a muchness I could not take in a single sitting!
That said, however, I must admit that after initial difficulty in getting any communications across between them, Jodha and Khyber managed by the end of the episode to get each other understood to some level at least. Since they were both operating with each other at the non-verbal and emotional level, I guess open hearts and simple goodness acquired a new meaning for both of them. He loved her and wanted to help her to be as comfortable as he could make her. She had compassion for him, and although his repetitive calling of her name "Jo...dha" irritated her a bit in the beginning, I suspect she kind of grew used to it and started liking it.
There was a mixture of exasperation and understanding in Jodha that made her soft heart very visible, as she alternately scolded him and yet responded graciously whenever he showed the intention in his own heart was good. Time and again she ran away from him, and time and again he ran behind her and pulled her back by holding her hand. He did the most effective baby-sitting job I have ever seen a darinda do with a grown and wilful woman.
Most importantly, he did keep her alive, bringing her whatever food he thought she could eat, and she eventually took the coconuts he finally offered her after throwing away all the many fruits he kept running to bring her at the beginning stages. (Incidentally, I noticed he broke more coconuts than I have at my Bappa's temple!)
The way he then even dismantled a whole hut belonging to a poor man and his wife to hold their roof over Jodha's head in the rains was just the kind of bumbling help that Jodha was frustrated with him for and yet so grateful for.
Eventually he even showed a bit of smart brains in grabbing hold of the end of her dupatta and sleeping with it under his head so she would not run away from him while he was asleep. He had that much clever thinking which must have surprised her.
The latest nikaah promo also does nothing to quieten enraged audience hearts and we even heard a rumour yesterday that Jalal may complete his marriage with Atifa and stay married for a few days so as to full uncover her plot! It was in the context of all these alarming spoilers that we watched Jalal in action yesterday.
When Jalal and Mansingh and Sharif and their men set out to find Jodha, Hamida in her tremulous voice said "Oh my God, why does trouble follow poor Jodha all the time?" to which Jalal sarcastically replied "It's more like Jodha runs after trouble all the time. What will my praja think? They will say if I can't even look after my wife, how will I look after them?" ... and with a terribly angry vocabulary and a mutinous face Jalal set out to find his wife.
I felt like telling Jalal "My dear boy, thank you for realising that the praja may be seriously questioning your ability to manage your wives. This time you have gone so overboard in your attempts at unmasking Atifa that you have done your darnedest unforgiveable best to disregard the pregnant condition of Jodha's tired body and the hurt condition of her heart. Your other wife, and the resident palace banshee, Ruq, is looking for her own advantage in all this, and now you are even completing nothing less than a full marriage with the already much-married Atifa, just as a ploy to unmask her? Even if all this were part of your teda act, and you profess to be a very clever King, you have made such a miserable mess of all of the situation so far and are likely to make it worse in the coming days, so why is it a surprise to you if the public at large are questioning your sanity and your ability to manage your own self - let alone keeping your wives in control, in happiness and in good care? If you can't handle so many wives all at once, maybe you should have fewer of them and shed some ... and definitely you need not go acquiring more wives even if it is to unravel a sinister Kabul-ian plot! Most crucially you've got to be careful what you say to your wives to keep them on your side ... for if you persistently insult, denigrate and wipe your feet using your "most loved wife" as your doormat, and expect her to understand that it's all part of your grand love, why should you then be surprised if she finds that her heart is better off showering its compassion on a much-beleaguered but basically well-meaning darinda than on a husband who goes to such lengths to throw her love in her face just to do a "good believable drama" of romancing the latest vamp from Kabul?"
My opinion of the creativity from the Creatives
Seriously what do the Creatives of this serial think they are doing - unleashing on us the absolutely ridiculous caricature of a man who is supposed to be one of the Greatest Ever Kings That Ruled Hindustan? And in the process of wanting to show us how strong his "ardhangini" Rajvanshi wife was, they made him break and shatter her to see how grandly she gets put together again? And boy, did they choose good timing! They have done all this in the holy month of Ramzan when a Mughal king and queen should exemplify to society the finest values of graciousness, love, decency, ethics and moral fibre!
And the Creatives have the further temerity to give Jalal some contorted dialogues and reverse reasoning to throw at Jodha like "It's your feelings for the darinda that now makes me want to love Atifa!" Holy cow!
If all that was Jalal's dialogue till yesterday, now it's going to get worse. Since Jalal now feels that Jodha has actually "engineered her own second kidnap" he is no doubt going to say that he not just loves but is going to marry Atifa because of Jodha's latest whimsical "self-kidnap" via Khyber.
To add to all this, two trouble makers have been adding their own bits to the scenes yesterday which further bode ill for the Jalal-Jodha MU. One, Ruq used every word of gossip in the villages against Jodha ... saying to Hamida that Jodha's morals and virtue were now being questioned by the praja as she has "run away with the darinda" and she has erased the good name of the King and the Sultanate and endangered the waarises. Two, the wily Sharif lost no time in underscoring the same touchy point of Jodha's morals with Jalal. He said to Jalal "Are you sure Jodha wants us to find her or has she run away from you and your anger to live with this darinda? During the last kidnap she at least threw her jewellery on the path for us to follow as a trail, but this time she's left no trail for you to follow!"
Now all we needed was for Jalal to get even more twisted in his logic with Jodha. I can imagine him now saying "People are talking about your loose morals and about you running away with this darinda to belittle me ... and so that's why I am marrying Atifa and staying married to her for a few days to unmask her plot!"
In all this I neither blame Jodha overdoing her compassion for the darinda, nor do I blame Jalal for overdoing his completely convoluted logic. I blame the Creatives.
I think the Senior Creatives of the Production House must have all departed to a different room to start on the Salim-Anarkali love story to be run from October ... leaving the Junior Creatives to make as much of a mess as they can with the remaining bits of the Jodha-Jalal love story. Otherwise I cannot find a reason for the way this whole track has been ineptly conceptualised, hashed, re-hashed and then delivered to us.
Okay,okay, okay, I will cut my diatribe. I just thought on a day when not much progress has happened on screen except for the "jungle mein bumble", I could use the time to air my angst.
For those who want to know what happened in yesterday's episode here it is ...
Jalal shouts that it's always Jodha who goes after trouble. "What will the people think of me?" he says with indignation, "They will all say if the Shahenshah can't keep his wives in order, how will he keep the praja and the kingdom in order!" Salima says to herself that she is scared that Jodha is now caught between two angry men - Khyber and Jalal.
Khyber meanwhile tries to wake up the unconscious Jodha by tapping her cheek. However, after some raindrops fall on her she wakes up ... and wonders where she is. She says "Oh my God, have I been unconscious through the whole night?" She sees Khyber looming over her and wants to run from him. She hears some village sounds nearby and decides to take her chance. She throws handfuls of mud in Khyber eyes and runs from him.
But after running for a bit she gets bad stomach pains. She finds she can't run any more.
Meanwhile a dindora man reaches one of the surrounding villages and beating on his drums he announces Jalal's handsome reward for villagers who help catch the absconding darinda who kidnapped Jodha Begum. Villagers greedy for money plan to search in the jungle.
Around this time, in the thick of the jungle, since Jodha can't run any further, Khyber catches up with her and holding her hand tightly, starts pulling her through forest.
Here in the episode we have an intercut back to one of the villages - where some villagers are indulging in scornful gossip that Jodha may have run away from Jalal to go and live with the darinda. In the palace Ruq makes the most of this spreading gossip and tells Hamida and Gulbadan that jodha's morals have become a laughing stock and she has erased the good name of king and family and endangered babies. Ruq doesn't tell this to hamida, she actually screeches and rants without leaving space for Hamida to get a word in. But when she finally gets a chance to speak, Hamida tries hard to support Jodha against Ruq.
As Khyber pulls Jodha here and there in jungle, Jodha gets afraid that Jalal will be very angry when he eventually finds her, but she then resigns herself to face it. When her stomach pains become unbearable and she cannot even walk any longer, Khyber makes her sit on a rock and brings wild fruits for her to eat. She throws them all away in anger. Khyber roars in dismay and agitation, but Jodha says "I am not scared of you" and again tries to run from him.
It starts raining meanwhile, and she takes shelter under a tree - when Khyber catches up with her. There is a straw hut nearby where Jodha shouts for help to a poor man and wife living there. But before that man and wife get the drift of Jodha's plea, Khyber goes and breaks their hut and brings the roof and holds it aloft to let Jodha stand under it. Jodha gets mad with Khyber for doing this to the poor couple, but she is also beginning to feel grateful to the bumbling but well-meaning Khyber.
In another part of the jungle surrounds, Mansingh and Jalal ask all villagers if they have seen Jodha and the darinda. Some villlagers offer to help the search party.
Sharif who has come with Jalal and Mansingh cannot help bbut take a swipe at Jalal. He tells Jalal "Maybe Jodha Begum has run away from you and your anger? The last time she was kidnapped, threw her jewels for us to find her trail, but this time she has done no such thing and seems not to want our help?" Jalal fumes at this.
Jalal eventually reaches the broken hut of the poor man and wife and gets news from them on what Khyber did and which way he went with Jodha. The entire search party then follow the directions that Jalal gives them for their onward search.
As the rain is still heavy, Jodha sits on a rock again, after roaming some more time with the directionless Khyber . She knows she has to eat to preserve her babies. She therefore decides to eat whatever Khyber may bring to her next. Khyber tries to touch her but she shouts at him "Nahin". For some odd reason Khyber interprets "nahin" to mean "coconuts". With an understanding smile, he then runs and fetches her some coconuts, which he then breaks impressively with just a single crash against a rock ... and then he proceeds to help her carve into the kernels to eat the soft pulp. This time she and he eat with the genial cordiality of two guests at a dinner table. In fact they eat so many coconuts, that he gets sleepy. Jodha encourages him to sleep, thinking that could be her chance to get away from him. But clever animal that he is, he grabs the end of her dupatta and places it under his heavy head before he sleeps - in order to ensure she is unable to run away! The episode ends with Jodha's face registering her dismay at his display of brains!
In the precap, we first see Jalal exhorting his men to follow all the clues he gives them. Meanwhile elsewhere, we also see Khyber frantically searching for Jodha who has obviously managed to run away. And then in a final shot we see Jodha caught in a flowing river ... getting swished away by the rushing water.
Watch out folks, today's episode may bring more of the jungle to us ... but I hope there's now a roaring fight between Jalal and Khyber in the jungle than just sweet sister-brother scenes between Jodha and Khyber.
I am in a mood for a fight. Since I cannot go and fight with the Creatives about the shambles they have made of the story, I am going to derive as much vicarious satisfaction I can out of the Khyber-Jalal fight, imagining myself to be Jalal and the Creatives to be the darinda in my life.
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