Friends, yesterday when I wrote the post I had feared that we would have an overdose of Ruq in the coming days. I thought we would be subject to a daily segment heavy with Ruq for the next two or three weeks. It all looked like too much to bear. What I didn't know was that I had vastly underestimated the air time that the Creatives had planned to give Ruq. Yesterday alone, near on 20 full minutes was devoted to Ruq, Ruq, Ruq and Ruq alone as we went through her stormy session at the DEK, followed by a continuing rant at Jodha after the DEK.
By the time the episode was over, to my chagrin, all I could remember was her ugly contorted face, the unmitigated greed in her eyes and the vituperative way in which she had reduced the Shahenshah of Hindustan to a ridiculous spectacle.
Friends, I cannot ever forgive Ruq for what she did yesterday. I never did like her, but I always told myself that it was not her per se that I did not like. I told myself I didn't like three cornered love stories and she was the third corner of this one and hence my dislike of her. At times she even seemed to redeem herself, and so over time I had learnt to tolerate her as a semi-vamp that was not always deliberately venomous but often couldn't help herself, she was so badly brought up and badly behaved.
Even yesterday through the entire episode, a bit of residual compassion in me was trying to give her the usual long rope. But when in the precap she showed that every inch of what she was doing was calculated step-by-step treachery to leave "poor Jodha with nothing", I cringed at myself for even contemplating giving her a quarter! How could I have even thought for a fleeting second that this demoness had any decency?
For today's analysis I want to dissect her entire dialogue with Jalal at the DEK and later with Jodha. I saw the episode about five times. The first couple of times it looked like she was a woman distraught saying whatever came to her mouth as a result of high feelings of self-pity and competitiveness with the other wives of Jalal. But if you go through her diatribe carefully, you will see how well her arguments were constructed and delivered. She systematically nailed Jalal in public through a well-thought out strategy. And she looped him into a tangle using his own words against him like a ravenous lawyer! And then she played the guilt-strings of Jodha to the hilt. What a performance for someone we had thought of as just above being an idiot!
Look at what happened on screen - and then see the artfully-calibrated strategy of Ruq ...
RUK at the DEK ... and the verbal degradation of Jalal!
Jalal and Jodha were walking in the garden after the baby naming ceremony when their pleasant interlude was interrupted by a bandhi saying Ruq had summoned the DEK under special circumstances as she was looking for justice. Wondering what this was all about, Jodha and Jalal made their way in a rush to the DEK.
Many other harem begums were agog at what was going on as they also tried to reach the assembly, and so were Hamida and Gulbadan. Hamida went to sit by Ruq at the sabha, and asked her "What have you come here for?" Ruq just replied cryptically "Let the Shahenshah come, everything will become patent!"
Jalal was then announced into the DEK. He strode in and sat upon his throne rather thoughtfully. Ruq waited till he was settled and then said "Shahenshah I have a request. I wish to present myself as a fariyaadi before your takht!" He nodded his assent and she took her place before him. "What is your fariyaad Ruqaiya Begum?" he asked her - and already his voice was sounding tired and weary. Ruq replied "I will shortly tell you, Shahenshah, but before that I want to ask a question of the Mallika-e-Azam and everyone present here ..." Hamida at once said "Go ahead and ask Ruqaiya Begum."
Ruq began "Mallika-e-Azam, isn't it true that according to the Mughal Sultanate's laws, the Shahenshah has to honour his given word?" "For sure" Hamida replied, standing up to reinforce her point. Ruq then continued "Then you all may remember that the Shahenshah had given me a farman in this very DEK to grant my one wish." Jalal and the others couldn't help but remember that occasion. "That is correct", said Hamida, "but if you wanted to ask him for that wish you could have done so in private, where was the need to call an assembly at the DEK?"
Jalal, I think had already got scent of what was coming. He was seen muttering to himself, "If my guess is right, I hope and pray to God that you Ruqaiaya, don't commit a grave error here." But Ruqaiaya continued to answer Hamida "I did just that Mallika-e-Azam. I did ask the Shahenshah for what I wanted but he refused me point-blank."
Jalal then did not even wait to be told what the issue was. He just simply and forthrightly told Ruq "Look here, I have told you before and am telling you now again, I cannot fulfil your request, and that's it." Ruq jumped at the fact that Jalal had pre-empted her strike. "See Mallika-e-Azam, the Shahenshah has himself acknowledged in the open sabha that he will not keep his given word. He had made this farman a falsehood."
Hamida, looking increasingly puzzled and perturbed said in a trembling voice "But what is it that the Shahenshah says he cannot give you? What did you ask for?" Jalal sensed the answer to come. His hands clenched his sword with greatly controlled anger. Ruq replied "I asked the Shahenshah the right to become a mother. I asked for the happiness of having my own child. I asked the Shahehnshah for one of Jodha Begum's babies for myself."
For a log moment a stunned silence fell on the whole court as she said that. Jalal looked ferociously angry, Jodha stood and swayed, Gulbadan and the other ladies gaped with their mouths open and Mansingh and Todarmal couldn't believe what he had heard. Ruq now began to address Jalal directly, compelling him to look at her eyes and face "So Shahenshah, are you going to honour your given word? Or are you going to bely this farman and your lineage as a descendant of the Babur family?" Jalal seemed to lose his self-control. He said with menace in his voice "I can only request you not to cross your limits here." Then raising his voice to the hearing of all he said "I have told you already that your request is illegal and not advisable. This cannot happen as you wish."
Ruq then launched her scorn at him saying "Wah, Shahenshah, wah, what sort of insaaf do you trundle out? The Shahenshah of Hindustan cannot even honour his given word? Do you remember that you yourself had pronounced a death sentence to Khyber but then you honoured your word given to Jodha Begum and rescinded your death sentence on him. If you could do that for Jodha Begum then, why not honour your word given to me here? What is the hesitation?"
By now Jalal had totally lost his temper. "Ruqaiaya, the two requests are as different as chalk and cheese. Jodha Begum wanted to save a life and she didn't want me to err by executing a man during the paak Ramzan month. But what you want now if for me to separate a mother from her child which I will never do!" Ruqaiaya looked fiercely at Jalal as he continued "Ruqaiaya, try to understand, children are a blessing of God, and I cannot separate a mother from her children, you wish cannot be granted."
"Oh but I thought you are the Shahenshah and the representative of God to your people with unbridled powers to do anything?" Ruq replied ascerbically. But Jalal countered that "Even so a Badshah has no right to separate a mother s love from her own children. I cannot snatch Jodha Begum's baby from her and give it to you, and neither will I do it."
Ruq had a ready reply "I am not in any way depriving Jodha of being a mother, Shahenshah. She is going to have two babies, so all I am asking for is one of those babies. She will still have the other one. She will not be childless, and neither will I be so." Jalal started screaming at Ruq by now "Auladh is not jahidaad Ruqaiya, that it can be divided and ggiven." Salima and Jodha looked very shocked as Jalal shook his head in frustration. "Why the hell don't you understand that a child is like her own eyes to a mother and to snatch the child and give it to you is as bad as blinding her to give you your vision." Ruq replied again "But you have just as much right as Jodha Begum on those children, so can't you share what is yours with me to give me a little happiness?"
Jalal replied "If you don't want to try and understand, I don't want to engage in this discussion with you. Ask me for land or ornaments or gifts or even my throne and my crown and I will give these to you. But the things that are not exclusive to me or right for me to give, I cannot give you."
Ruq said then "For a childless mother a child is higher than any takht or taaj. What will I do with a throne and a crown when I have no child who can ascend to receive these things?"
Jalal looked fed up by now. His voice fell to a low pitch as he said with dismay "The thing you ask for I cannot give at all Ruqaiaya, so if you wish you can give me any sazaa, but I cannot give you what you ask for." "What?" Ruq said with utter arrogance belying her supposedly resigned words, "I should give you a sazaa? Before that day comes I'd rather die. But anyway, what can be a bigger sazaa for you than to yourself display the fact that the great Shahenshah of the Mughal Sultanate is reneging on his given word!"
Jalal looked at her as if seeing this disgraceful female for the first time with new eyes. He benthis head then from distaste and from the shame of how she had ridiculed him in open court ... and she turned and left the DEK.
Ruq's strategy with Jalal
Throughout the sequence with Jalal, Ruq never so much as shed a single tear. She was totally non-sentimental. She showed emotions of outrage, a fierceness for personal justice and the disdain of a woman who wanted to nail Jalal directly and squarely without so much as a modicum of respect for his position and status. She treated him like he was a worthless King with a worthless word of honour. She buckled him under a barrage of arguments that she knew he would have no answer for.
She first got the people in the sabha as her "jury" by asking them her first question on whether a King should honour his word or not. Having thus cornered the rest of the people in the hall, she then went on to present the farman as the evidence on which this case hung. Everybody recalled how and when the farman was given. Having thus cultivated the ground, she then threw her first salvo at Jalal directly saying he had refused to honour his word in private talks and hence she had felt the need to escalate this matter to the DEK.
Jalal then unfortunately played a wrong hand. He favoured her case by making a pre-emptive refusal of her request which played right into her strategy. She was waiting for that. All the humming and hawing prior to that must have been her waiting game. When Jalal himself then tried to take the initiative and say "I know what you are trying to get and the answer is still NO!" Ruq saw that she had obtained the advantage. He had, according to her, condemned himself by his own mouth.
Now she made her big strike ... she said she had asked for Jodha's baby and he had refused. She gave the whole assembly enough time to digest the import of this huge request, before she then proceeded to lay out the case for why she should get what she wanted. She never once said it was something she wanted. She throughout said it was something the powerless King was finding himself unable to give. It was all about his inability and not about her want!
She said to him that if he dishonoured her request he was sullying the reputation of his lineage from Babur. She said he had selective and debatable fairness where he favoured Jodha's request in the Khyber case but did not favour her in this baby request. She belittled his position as a representative of God to his people as he said it was beyond his powers to take what God had given Jodha. She belittled his status as a father of the children saying he was not even able to give a child as a father with equal rights as the mother. She belittled his throne and crown as worthless objects in the face of her request. And finally in a blow that was a complete defacement of everything Jalal stood for she said she need not give him any punishment either for he had punished himself disgracefully by displaying his total inadequacy to honour his word!
If I was on her side, I could honestly say she demolished Jalal with her flawlessly handled "legal and moral case" by knocking persistently at his powerlessness! But looking at it from Jalal's side, I think the beginning of the end for Ruq has come. No man, not even the much forgiving Jalaluddin Mohamed Akbar, can ever forgive this level of debasement in public. She had not only shamed him but she had done so step-by-step as if she was dismembering him torturously and systematically till he had no defences left. And in all this not a single tear was shed. She was remarkably cool, calculative, cut-and-dried and ruthlessly persistent.
Now contrast this with her strategy for Jodha ...
Ruk with Jodha ... calculated crying to produce guilt!
Ruq then ran out of the DEK crying and sobbing for the first time. Perhaps she knew that Jodha was following her and this act of outrage and crying was for her behalf.
"Did you see Jodha Begum that Jalal has shown everybody that he cares for only you and no one else? He has proved that you are his Begum-e-Khas, and he never crosses your word ever. Why? Because you are to give the Sultanate its waaris! You are to become the Marium Uz Zamani! Salima has her Rahim, and you will have not one but two kids of your own, but I have none? That ark has ruined my insides, and laid me barren. If I asked Jalal to give me one of your children, what wrong have I done?"
"Can you believe that Jalal has gone back on his farman and his word of honour to me. He has betrayed me. I have never felt this weak in my life before. I have no worth above that of a "kaniez" to Jalal. Tell me, what difference does it make if the child is yours or mine."
Jodha tries to put in a word here "Ruqiaya, try to understand ..." but Ruq stops her from speaking "No Jodha Begum, nothing need be said any more. I have understood. You have robbed me of the Begum-e-Khas audha, and now you are robbing me of the dream of becoming a mother. Is it wrong for a woman to dream of becoming a mother? Is it wrong to want a child who will call her a mother? I don't know how it looks to your eyes, but in my eyes, I have done no wrong! I just made this small request to jalal, but he ..." she breaks away from Jodha racked in sobs and crying bitterly.
Jodha is left breathing heavily from the burden of guilt of having to do what is right by Jalal despite her own feelings for her own little babies!
Ruq's strategy with Jodha
The strategy that Ruq used on Jodha was completely the reverse of what she used on Jalal. If for Jalal she used intellectual demolition of his capacity as an honour-bound King, with Jodha she used not an ounce of intellect but was all emotion. She pulled at Jodha's guilt strings in several ways.
One, she ran out of the DEK crying, no doubt expecting Jodha to follow her.
Two, she made Jodha feel like an undeserving worm just because she was slated to produce that much-needed waaris and gain that audha as MUZ.
Three, she counted how many children Salima and Jodha had between them and played the sad tune of a "childless woman rendered barren by an acidic ark".
Four, she said she felt treated by Jalal as a "kaniez" and no better.
Five, she stopped Jodha from having a say, and accused Jodha of robbing her Begum-e-Khas position and robing her of her dream to become a mother.
Six, she said whatever may be Jodha's point of view, she felt she was not wrong.
I thought it was a masterly attack on the soft-hearted Jodha, by one who knew exactly what was Jodha's weakness. The very fact that Jodha had asked Jalal to forgive Ruq when she faked her pregnancy was now working against Jodha. Because Ruq knew that Jodha would fall for sentimental claptrap and be ever-ready to absorb the guilt of any situation that went wrong, whether Jodha was directly involved with it or not.
Maybe in this case Jodha will say "Yes" to giving her baby not from her own soft-heartedness for Ruq, but just to save Jalal from the ignominy of being degraded in open court. But what difference does that make to Ruq? The ends justify the means for her. If she can make Jodha take any action in her favour from any motivation she has won her game. And as she herself declared in the precap, she has just played the first of her moves in a much larger plot to strip Jodha of everything she has or will get.
Will Ruq's strategy work?
In a way, if you see what Ruq did, she has divided Jalal and Jodha to be able to rule their decision. She has used different strokes for different folks and thus separated the team of two into individuals responding differently to her differentiated tactics for them both. She has been one clever woman.
But folks, this is where the line gets drawn between being clever and being too clever. I think if Ruq has had such an easy start to her campaign she is bound to soon get extremely arrogant with her early successes - and when Jodha says "Yes" to her having one baby (just to save Jalal's "maan") Ruq will become greedy enough to want to eliminate Jodha totally from her life and get both the babies and the audha of MUZ et al.
I, for one, hope that she will be foolish enough to think that winning the first battle is like winning the whole war. It isn't. I want her to over-estimate her own powers. I hope she gambles on being continuously successful and is left with the loss of even the first and substantial gains she has made yesterday. I hope she miscalculates that in getting Jodha to say "Yes", she has already got the child and can gun for more! I want to see Ruq slip spectacularly because she counted her chickens before they were hatched!
And I want her to be then severely caught and punished in the same DEK where she thought she could "morally dethrone" the King to prove her own supremacy over him. More than anything else, I want that "teda Jalal" if I can have him, to get his own back at her in the most devious way possible. As you can see folks, I not only want Ruq caught and exposed but I want to wait and enjoy the step-by-step process of her humiliation. She has hurt the two people I care for - Jodha and Jalal - too much yesterday, and even if they are willing to forgive her, I can't!
I need to see Ruq annihilated!
For those who want it, here's what all happened in the episode yesterday ...
Jodha is getting ready for attending Bakshi's baby's naming ceremony when Resham comes and cries that Maham has not eaten for days and may die in jail. Jodha says she has to go for ceremony but will think about this later. Resham cries a lot - but also looks evil.
Jalal enters the sabha for the naming ceremony as all are assembled. A maulvi learns from Jalal that Sharif has decided to turn over a new leaf with his wife and child. They all pray for the baby's welfare and then Sharif names the child - "Afreen". Jalal says this baby will get 3 subehdaris - Nagore, Ajmer and Mewat - just like any boy child. Hamida and Salima find Ruq missing at this ceremony.
Jalal and Jodha are later walking in the garden when Jodha says she is very proud that he is doing so many things to raise the status of women in society. Jalal says it's all due to Jodha's encouragement. Just then they get a summons that Ruq wants to call a special session of the DEK. They rush there as they wonder why ...
After all are assembled Ruq requests to present a farman. She asks all "If a king gives a promise should he not honour it?" Jalal knows what she is after and says "My answer to your request today is also NO." Hamida asks "What is this promise?" Ruq says she asked Jalal for one of Jodha's babies but he has refused to keep his word in private talks ... hence the need to make it public at the DEK. All are aghast.
Jalal shouts at Ruq that even if he is the father and king, he has no right to take a baby away from its mother's love. He says "Take my takht or taaj or punish me - but no baby!" Ruq then insults him in public "Your sazaa is your own shame in being unable to keep your word of honour." She goes out crying as Jalal is made to look foolish and angry, and Jodha is stunned and sad.
As Ruq runs out crying, Jodha follows her. Ruq then rants at Jodha that she too needs a child just as Salima has Rahim, and Jodha will have one child. She says Jalal is treating her as a "kaniez". She asks "What is wrong with my request?" Jodha tries to talk, but she doesn't let her reply. She just cries bitterly that she alone has no child. The episode ends on Jodha's confused face.
In the precap, Ruq is telling someone (maybe herself or Hoshiyar) that "I will win this whole round against Jodha. Poor Jodha will lose everything!"
What Maham and her food throwing will have to do with Ruq's downfall puzzles me. Any ideas anyone?
I don't know what to expect from this Saturday mega episode which seems all about Maham!
Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi 2
Bade Achhe Lagte Hain
CID
