Originally posted by: RadhikaS0
Not necessity, not desire - no, the love of power is the demon of men. Let them have everything - health, food, a place to live, entertainment - they are and remain unhappy and low-spirited; for the demon waits and waits and will be satisfied.
Friedrich Nietzsche
The tide is turning in Jalal's life. The past is ebbing away, the present is uncertain, and the future tentative.
He is in the throes of a moral crisis.
Yesterday when he saw himself for the first time in the mirror, all painted with blood, Jalal woke up from the numbness of not just that moment, but from the numbness of a lifetime, in which he had witnessed many a struggle for power and authority in Hindustan, symbolised by the Mughal throne.
Yesterday, he suddenly became aware that his hands were covered with blood, not just literally but also figuratively speaking. It was one of the most life-changing moments for Jalal. Like the moment that changed Ashoka forever after he witnessed the devastation he had caused to win Kalinga.
In an instant, he was filled with repugnance and self-loathing. He rushed to wash off that blood and with it the guilt that had lain hidden inside his heart for years - guilt associated with his struggle against his own family to retain the Mughal takht. When Jalal was trying to wash all that blood from his hands in the hamam and screaming his soul out for the latest person he had lost as the price for keeping the takht - for an instant, he reminded me of Lady Macbeth. His hands refused to stop scrubbing at the stubborn blood that seemed to drip from the wounds of all the people who had died so that Jalal could sit on the throne. I felt that his mind was continuously replaying his past and no amount of water was able to cleanse him of his guilt.
This internal struggle within himself spilled over into today's episode. After Mahamanga had cursed him to mourn for his kids as she mourned for her son, again the past started replaying in Jalal's mind. He couldn't fathom why, in spite of being the Shahenshah of Hindustan, he was doomed to remain alone and had to witness his loved ones departing and the ones who wanted to dethrone/kill him increasing around him.
Who knows what true loneliness is - not the conventional word but the naked terror?
Joseph Conrad
I feel anyone who is in some position of power or who wants to be in some position of power ought to see those moments (yesterday and today) wherein Jalal tried to expunge his innermost demons of guilt and fear in outbursts that seemed to tear his soul apart. He lamented the throne to which he was stuck for it had turned even his foster parents against him. It had divided his family and robbed him of the love of a family, the affection of friends, and the trust of comrades.
I had not been quite ready to accept Jalal as a throne-burning kind of person. But today, when he burnt the throne, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to do at the time. His extreme loneliness, the angst he felt in his heart, the struggle he was unable to resolve in his mind - between wanting to love and be loved and the realization that people loved his throne more than him and even those who he had regarded as his mothers would not think twice before killing him - every feeling arose slowly like smoke from burning cinders.
Here was a man who was crumbling in front of our eyes and clearly needed someone to bring back before he was annihilated by his own raw emotions.
I was spell-bound to watch Jalal today, expressing all his pent up grief and rage through his eyes initially and later through a very violent physical gesture.
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