Folks,
I had meant to do the Requiem for Ruqaiya 1 next, but last night's finale was so intensely moving that I have decided to start with that. The title too, as you would have guessed already, is derived from that scene of Jalal and his Khan Baba.
The abiding image of that episode was the very last one: Jalal and Bairam Khan in a tight embrace, silhouetted against the sky. It warmed my heart as nothing else in all these nearly 5 weeks of Jodha Akbar, for in one fell sweep, it blew away the miasma of siyasat, of power gained and power lost, of cynical games played with the lives of others. All of that will undoubtedly return, and in force, but for this one brief moment, the air was pure and fresh, and the heart prevailed.
The final encounter between Jalal and his Khan Baba, which was far more emotional than anything Bairam Khan would ever have permitted his pupil to indulge in - he does not allow even tears at the death of Jalal's father - did not only redeem the former Wazir-e-Aala. It also saved Jalal from doing something he would never have been able to get over for the rest of his life, destroying the man who, whatever his present failings, had provided him with a father figure for all of his growing years. It was his Khan Baba's final, priceless gift to his pupil.
The end scene also proved, beyond all doubt, that Jalal not only has a heart, but that he does not need a Jodha to teach him how to use it. I have written this earlier, but it bears repeating. Jalal has an admirable trait: he is grateful for any and all kindnesses done to him. This is remarkable and rare in a king, for kings have a highly developed sense of entitlement, and see the loyalty and devotion of their followers as no more than their due; gratitude is out of the question. Not so with Jalal, and this is an innate quality that has always been there.
On the horns of a dilemma: This was more in evidence today than ever before in the debate over how to tackle Bairam Khan's rebellion. Jalal seems lost as his heart struggles with his head, while Mahaam Anga, her eyes as hard as agates, and Hamida Banu Begum, looking exactly like the Before part of a Saridon ad for headaches😉 , fight for his soul. Sandwiched between them, their clashing arguments washing over him, Jalal agonizes, brow furrowed in helpless indecision.
I could not understand exactly what his Ammijaan wants him to do - go and fall on his Khan Baba's neck and beg his forgiveness? For a woman who has been an Empress, even if only briefly, she seems to have no notion of the imperatives of state power and the bounden duties of an emperor. Perhaps it comes from her not being of royal blood, but she sounds all the time like the 16th century version of a Salvation Army preacher .😉
Mahaam Anga is predictable, but she is far from sure of her hold on Jalal, for she is rattled when Ammijaan surges forth from the wings, plonks herself behind her son, and collars his left ear for her homilies. As Jalal, already haunted by old memories of his Khan Baba, wavers, Mahaam Anga's eyes mirror near despair.
It takes all the finely calculated eloquence of Ruqaiya - whose rousing address is, in its way, as cleverly tailored for its one man audience as Mark Antony's classic Friends, Romans, countrymen speech in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar was to the Roman crowd - to bring Jalal round to putting the needs of imperial power over the gratitude and affection of a lifetime.
But even then, as she questions him in the end: Aapne hamesha kaha tha ki pehle aap ek sipahi hain, jisme dil nahin hain, to phir aaj aapka kaleja kyon pighal raha hai?, Jalal's eyes, meeting hers, are dark pools of uncertainty, guilt and misery. I felt like landing Ruqaiya one of Maham's ringing thappads, and telling her: Because he HAS a heart, you fool, and that heart is now weeping for the choice it has to make!
In the event, Jalal does take Ruqaiya's advice, and as he rides out of the city gates in full battle regalia, after a full-throated battle cry,Yalgaar! , it does seem that the head has won out at last, and he is, fully and without reservations, as ruthless as an emperor needs to be.
Of guilt and redemption: But beyond the gates stands Bairam Khan, arms akimbo like one awaiting crucifixion, and everything is turned upside down in an instant. The Ruqaiya-Mahaam Anga combo might have swayed Jalal for a while, but never forever.
Bairam Khan's fabled arrogance and hubris seem to have been melted in a crucible of bitter regret and remembered affection as the words tumble out of him: Humse bahut badi gustakhi hi gayi. Badshah ke khilaaf jaakar hum bahut sharminda hain.. Ab mahal ke andar rehne ka haq hum kho chuke hain.. Kisi se nazar bhi nahin mila sakte.. Kahin ja bhi nahin sakte kyonki yahin hamara ghar hai.. yahi hamara watan hai..
The real Jalal, the one who drops his sword in an instant, kneels next to his mentor and holds him close, will have nothing to do with Bairam Khan's request for a death sentence. Jo ta umr hamare sar par saaye ki tarah rahe, unka sar hum kaise kalam kar sakte hain?
As he speaks to his Khan Baba as of old, forgives him his trespasses, and offers him the full meed of respect for all that he has done for the Mughal sultanat, the accumulated bitterness of the last few weeks is washed away in a tide of emotion that heals them both.
The inevitable parting that Bairam Khan insists on will no longer be a corrosive one. And looking ahead, when Bairam Khan is killed by an old enemy on the way to Mecca, there will be no unbearable burden of guilt on Jalal's soul.
Epiphany: As for why Bairam Khan did that volte face, here is my take on it.
It is not that he loves Jalal less, it is that he loves, and is loyal to the Mughan sultanat more, above Jalal and all else.
As for personal ambition, when he says, in response to Jalal's offer of a riyasat - Kabul, Gwalior or Chanderi - Bairam Khan ko badshahat ki chahat na kabhi thi , aur na kabhi hai!, he is speaking no more than the simple truth. He has never wanted power for its own sake.
The problem comes from his conviction that he alone knows best what is good for the Mughal sultanat, more than the boy whom he has trained for the throne. When he suddenly realises that he is, thru his actions, damaging the very Mughal sultanat that he has given his life to rebuild, and that the boy whose judgement he did not trust has grown to maturity and is capable of making his own decisions, he comes around completely. This sudden realization that one has been badly wrong, and needs to correct one's course, is what is called an epiphany.
And thru Bairam Khan's confession and redemption, the screenplay brings out clearly the difference between him and Maham Anga. For she wants power, not to strengthem the Mughal sultanate to which she claims to be loyal, but to strengthen her own hand in her ongoing efforts to elevate her doltish son as far and as fast as she can manage. And to make gains on this path, she will sup with the devil if need be. Actually,come to think of it, in such an eventuality, it is the devil who should beware!😉😉
Mahaam Anga-Ruqaiya 2: I was waiting for Ruqaiya's promised chaal to get back at Mahaam Anga after the Zaheer fiasco, but the CVs apparently forgot about that. Now they have metamorphosised into a pair of most unlikely allies, against Hamida Banu Begum for the present, and even more so against Jodha when the time comes, for they will soon sense her threat potential.
For now, I enjoyed the candid cynicism with which Ruqaiya bares her real motive for coaxing Jalal to take Bairam Khan head on, and the instant pact between her and Mahaam Anga, which was strongly reminiscent of the one of 1941 between Hitler and Stalin. It will probably last just as long! 😉
Requiem for Ruqaiya 1
I am not one who claims that Smiley's Ruqaiya was a Sarah Bernhardt character. She has not much of looks to speak of, she has a voice like a corncrake, and her diction is as flat as a pancake. Nor is she any great shakes as an actress. But she looked like the Padshahi Begum, she had dignity and grace, she never raised either her voice or her hand with those below her. In short, she was a lady who was every inch a queen.
And in her last scene with Jalal, at the end of the Farida affair, she wrung my heart with her mute agony at being childless, and at having, because he is allergic to the very mention of mohabbat, to hide from Jalal the fact that she loves him.
The new Ruqaiya 2: She is clearly much better looking than the old one. Her face is smooth in its lacquered perfection, and she has all the nazakat needed for the Malika-e-Hind. But her face. with the light eyes, looks like a cold mask, and she seems to be far more overtly arrogant and unfeeling than the old one was. Plus she seems about as capable of conveying nuances as Katrina Kaif. 😉
Ruqaiya 1 was a creature both strong and insecure, arrogant and vulnerable. In Episode 21, she was so convincing in her misery and her frailities, in the prison, and then with Jalal in their bedchamber, where there was a nervous gentleness in the way she handled him. I somehow cannot see the stylish mask of a face that this new one has bringing out those nuances. The Ruqaiya during the hunt was already harder.
They are also making her out, suddenly, to be a political power, collecting the jaziya and lecturing Jalal on the duties and responsibilities of kingship. Gone is any evidence of the chronic insecurity about her hold on him that was most sharply in evidence during and after the Farida issue, which was rooted in her childlessness. She now looks every inch the confident, favourite First Consort, flaunting the Malika-e-Hind title that was never used before. This Ruqaiya does not seem likely to seek reaffirmations from her lord and master about her being his most chaheti begum. The Malika-e-Hind would have no such doubts. What has happened all of a sudden?
It seems likely that the CVs, had, without really meaning to do so, created a fresh and fascinating Ruqaiya, intelligent, tantalizing, and Jalal's trusted partner in life, but yet with many vulnerabilities and secret griefs, unable to let him know what she feels for him for fear of losing the closeness to him that she cannot live without.
They later decided that the layered Smiley's Ruqaiya, the agony in whose face when Hamida declares that those without mohabbat cannot have aulad seared the screen (that was a ludicrous statement if ever there was one, but that is not the point here), was not what they were looking for after all. In typical Ekta Kapoor style, they wanted a scheming nanad to supplement Maham's vicious saas, that is all. Smiley would not have filled the bill.
Then again, in their standard issue 'good girl- bad boy about to turn good' scenario, they needed a bad girl to set off the good girl's goodness. And the prime candidate for this was, who else, Ruqaiya!We would thus be justified in fearing, looking at the new Ruqaiya of the last two days, that they will soon leach out everything that made the character fascinating and vulnerable at the same time, and reduce her to a standard issue negative female from any TV soap. Like Bahar in Mughal-e-Azam, even after allowing for her being the seniormost queen. A very great pity.
But let us scroll back a bit and enjoy the last few scenes of Ruqaiya 1.
The hamaam scene: I liked the way in which Smiley's Ruqaiya, having accepted Jalal's overt harshness in the DEK with a konish (the triple bow) instead of the usual aadab, sets about correcting the damage to her image without loss of time by doing her Malika act in Jalal's hamaam (where it seems, from the stream of orders that she issues, that nothing is as it should be!😉) . What I liked even more was the way in which she candidly confesses that her special solicitude for his comfort was due as much to her need to shore up the perception, in the harem, of her standing with the Shahenshah, as his sabse chaheti begum, as to her sense of duty.
She matches his apology with hers, and when she asks that he should never again scold her in public, she does it so respectfully and charmingly, without bruising his ego (something of which she is generally none too careful), that it is no wonder that Jalal not only apologises all over again but - his eyes dark and sincere - gives her what sounds like an iron-clad assurance: Hum apni bachpan ki dost se wada karte hain ki chahe hamari zindagi mein kitni hi begumein kyon na aayein, hamari Ruqaiya Begum ka darja unse kayi guna upar hoga...kyonki kabhi bhi, koyi bhi, hamari Ruqaiya Begum ki jagah nahin le sakta. As he holds her hand and kisses it, the look in his eyes is full of affection, something as close to love as it has ever been or ever will be.
Smiley's Ruqaiya has clearly made a recover from the loss of face in the DEK!
The Meena bazaar: pushing her luck: Every single thing that Ruqaiya 1 does here is aimed not so much at Jalal, as at the gawking audience of the rest of the begums, headed by the luckless Pinaaz Begum (still holding the jootis she could not persuade Jalal to accept!😉).
But there are some lovely lines in Ruqaiya 1's repartees with Jalal: Achchi sooraton ko savarne ki zaroorat nahin hoti. Saadgi bhi qayamat ki ek ada hoti hai Shahenshah...Dekhne aur jaane mein faraq hai, mere sartaj, jaise insaan aur tasveer mein.. And when he remarks that the shawl seems to be of bahut purani kaarigari, she is quick to pick up that ball and run with it, to use baseball lingo. Purani cheezon ki ehmiyat hai kuch aur hoti hai. Chahe wo shal ho, ya sharaab, ya koyi purana rishta! Jalal's eyes. sharp and amused, are quick to acknowledge the hit. Overall, despite the slight flare of anger at the extortionate price she cites for the shawl,Jalal is impressed by her knowledge of his likes and dislikes, and her determinedly hatke ways.
Ruqaiya 1 then duly makes mincemeat of the other begums at the Meena bazaar, and does not fail to rub it in either. For her, they hardly count for more than a nuisance that she, confident in her hold, be it only of the mind, on Jalal, can afford to brush aside with contempt.
But while their inchoate hatred and ill-will might not touch her, and Jalal is willing to overlook her many near impertinences because of his fondness for his only childhood playmate, I felt that she is at times squandering her hold on him and pushing her luck too much. He is not just a man, with the normal masculine ego. He is an emperor, and a famous warrior who has never known defeat. Whatever his indulgence towards her, it cannot be presumed upon heedlessly without eroding it. And when she gets around to grasping this, it might well be too late.
I thus could not understand her leaving him - when she is seeing him after months! - to go off and settle a harem squabble. Or her making him wait till she saunters into the bedroom at her leisure. Or her turning her back to him and pretending not to notice him at the Meena Bazaar till he comes to her khema and stretches out on the divan next to her. These gestures smack of unseemly arrogance and overconfidence, and this when it had been brought home to her , in the Zaheer affair, how much her own standing in court depends on him.
Perhaps, more than overconfidence, it is her determination not to be seen as weak in front of Jalal that leads her to make him wait for her, and to ignore him at times, just to prove to herself, and to him, that he is not the center of her universe, as he is for everyone else. Her problem of course is that he is the centre of her universe, and she is always afraid, in her heart of hearts, that she will, one fine day, be supplanted by the mother of his heir.
It is true that theirs is a very strong and long lasting relationship, which as she herself says, cannot be easily damaged. I was amazed and impressed by Jalal's immediate regret at having ticked her off in public, and even more so by his unreserved apology to her later. With those few for whom he cares, he has no ego.
Plus, he loves Ruqaiya in his own way, for the core of all love is caring for the feelings of the loved one. In his apology and all the assurances of regard and affection he gives her, he shows that he does care, deeply, for her and her feelings.
The problem, to my mind, is that she does not - bar the instance of the portrait, where she is, for once, gentle and demonstrative - show a similar caring for him. Their interactions are more like mind games, where she mostly wins and he does not, contrary to his usual mindset, seem to mind losing. There is no indication, on her side, of a deep need for him to be with her, as a person she loves, not only as the emperor. As for him, he thinks first of her for advice when he faces a dilemma, but that seems to be more as a trusted and valued confidante and a very dear friend than as a beloved. Neither haunts the consciousness of the other.
This does not mean that there is no love between them. It is rather that it is what Mira Nair described in her wonderful A Monsoon Wedding as 'old shoe love'. The affection and caring that comes with a long association, that is warm and enduring, but without being a desperate need, a clinging, an obsession. This comes thru very beautifully in the scene with the chadar and the jooties. It was exactly the kind of domestic squabble that can be expected between a happily married couple of long standing, who do not need to indulge in romantic niceties with each other at this stage (if these two ever did, which I very much doubt!).
But when a sudden, new obsession takes hold of one of the two, usually the husband, this is the kind of relationship that is the most at risk. Especially when the new obsession exposes the man to unfamiliar emotions and hitherto unknown delights. Today, this would end in a divorce. Jalal has it easier, that is all, for he can keep both the old and the new!
He will surely ensure, when he falls in love with his new begum, Jodha, that Ruqaiya suffers no loss of face or prestige. But I suspect that when she faces this situation, Ruqaiya will realise that it is not just Jalal who has suddenly discovered that he has a heart after all, but that she has one too. A heart that is not content with ruling Jalal's mind. That will be her personal tragedy and her personal heartbreak.
Jalal's portrait: As one of my young friends noted in my post of 2 years ago, Ruqaiya has bought into the whole "Jalal has no heart" line, and so seeks to rule his mind, and then his zehen. With a man like Jalal, who jibs at the very mention of love, she knows that playful power plays are the way to go. Yet, when she has the portrait made for him, she shows a hint of vulnerability, of caring, of missing him, that she has never before betrayed, not just to him, but perhaps even to herself.
Thus when Jalal, in his standard Gatti mode, promptly accuses her of , firstly, wanting an inaam for doing the portrait, and then of wanting to prove that she is better at this phan than he is, she responds with an unusual Ya Khuda! Hum aapki barabari kyon karenge?
I liked Ruqaiya's honesty in that scene: she did not take credit for the portrait, but took credit for the fact that she knew every line of his face so well that from her description, the painter could make such an accurate rendition of his face. When one thinks about that, and then thinks about how Jalal then commissions a portrait of Jodha - showing an equal, if not higher recall function, for after all, he only saw her in snatches, whereas Ruqaiya has known him for years - one cannot help but feel sad for his sabse chaheti begum.
L'affaire Farida, or Uff, yeh mohabbat!!: Now for the segment about which I have been asked repeatedly for my take. So here it is, and do remember that it has been written with my tongue firmly in my cheek!😉
Firstly, the whole Fatima story is very curious. It seems incredible that the son of a baandi can inherit the throne; it is in fact nonsense. The heir would have to be the son of a high born begum, not of a concubine. Nonetheless, it is evident that the arrival of a child, his first, would absorb Jalal so much that Ruqaiya's standing with him would slip. Whence her evident relief at the 3 month revelation, and Jalal's just as evident anger. It is thus a candid take on the ground realities of life in a harem, even if an imperial one!
The rest was an extremely labored and hamhanded attempt by the scriptwriters to drive home the need for Jalal to begin believing in mohabbat.
It was bad enough when they showed the Shahenshah, with Begum No.1 in tow, actually going to the prison where the devious Fatima, and her paramour Bahadur Khan, were trussed, hands up, like Veeru in Gabbar's den in Sholay.
Now, I am not questioning the appropriatemess of the death penalty for them. What Farida had tried to do was a very serious crime - a fraud on the Emperor by attempting to pass off an illegitimate child of hers as his, and thus (though this seems unbelievable in historical terms) as the heir to the throne. This would be tantamount to treason, a capital offence without question. But it is ridiculous to show the Shahenshah turning up to execute the sentence personally.
Next, just like in the movies, who turns up at the last second, just as Jalal is getting set to swing his shamsheer at Farida's neck? No prizes for guessing it. Of course it is his lachrymose Ammijan, Hamida Banu Begum, looking, as always, melancholy and ready to burst into tears. She intones Ruko! , halting her son in mid swing. Then she proceeds to bore him, and us, to tears with a homily on mohabbat, adding that Islam forbids the killing of an expectant mother, a sin which would call forth a curse on the perpetrator that would condemn him to be childless all his life.
It is this last that halts Jalal in his tracks, for like most sceptics, he is not firm in his disbelief. I for one cannot understand why a 21 year old (or less) is so worried about not having a child yet. He has at least 40 years more to get himself some. But he seems as obsessed with the idea as a TV soap bahu after a decade of childlessness.
His Ammijan makes matters worse by propounding the utterly laughable theory that no man can become a father without mohabbat. For two to become three, she asserts, in a very dubious exercise in creative arithmetic, the two first have to become one. And that cannot, she declares with all the assurance of a prophet, happen without mohabbat.
If this was true, there could be no better family planning method in a country like India, where 90% of marriages are still arranged, and necessarily without any mohabbat between the couple ! I would also doubt if there was any mohabbat between Humayun and this depressing wife of his😉, and still they produced not only Jalal but a posse of other kids! And for a queen, inured by royal training to political marriages of expediency, to mouth such rubbish is even more ridiculous than it would be in an ordinary woman. But then Ekta does not believe in subtlety; she prefers to drive her points home with a sledgehammer.
Jalal, not being burdened with any knowledge of arithmetic, seems foxed and dismayed by all this talk of one and two and three😉, though he is visibly disturbed by the warning.
But it is Ruqaiya, who can surely count accurately, whose face is frozen in despair as her mother in law holds forth to her son. The inarticulate agony in her eyes, and the tears that, later in her bedroom with Jalal, threaten to overflow and betray her weakness, touched me to the quick. To be childless is, for her, a tragedy too deep for tears.
To drive home the point about mohabbat, Farida, when she is released, tells Jalal, in the most dismally senti lines heard recently, that she would pray for him to find it with someone who would be dearer to him than his life.
While Jalal snarls his dissent, Ruqaiya, understandably, looks appalled. She has it difficult enough as things are - what with baandis producing kids while she has none, and other haremites forever yapping at her heels 😉- and the idea of having to handle a mohabbat mein deewana Jalal must have seemed like a nightmare.
Jalal's and Ruqaiya's reactions were proof positive - both in the prison, and later when Jalal revives the issue with Ruqaiya in their bedroom and wonders if they both are childless because there is no mohabbat betweem them - of the power of fear, no matter how ill-founded and irrational, to corrode and weaken commonsense and rationality. For he asserts his total disbelief in any such feeling so strongly as to hint at the exact opposite!
Watching Ruqaiya's near despair at not yet expecting a baby made me feel sad. Here is a very highborn, bright, capable and self-assured young woman, every inch a queen, and what does she crave for ? A son, who will ensure her primacy in her world and in her husband's regard. I can understand the vital need for an heir to an empire, but it is nonetheless depressing.
Moreover, Ruqaiya's real problem is not that she does not love Jalal. She does, very much so, and one has only to look at her eyes in the prison scene to grasp that. It is rather that, given his sharp and oft-reiterated aversion to mohabbat, she dare not tell him so. She fears that if she does confess to such feelings, she would lose out on the admiration and closeness he now has for her because he sees her as a soulmate, who thinks and feels just as he does.
But there is a lovely little vignette right at the end of this scene that is enough to lift one's spirits. Ruqaiya 1, having discreetly wiped away her bitter tears at Jalal's question, and having absorbed a repeat of his anti-mohabbat declamation, proposes a shikhar expedition on the morrow to divert his mind. Jalal nods in assent and then smiles up at her. That smile encapsulates all they are to each other, as only Rajat's Jalal could make it.
NB: No matter how sorry one feels for an expectant mother at the personal level, there is no way the kind of criminal fraud that Farida and her paramour are planning to pull off, making their child the heir to the Mughal throne, should have gone unpunished. They should have at least been jailed, if not executed. In any kingdom of the 16th century, in France or Germany or England or China, such an offence would have resulted in the instant execution of both of them for high treason. At the very most, they would have waited till the woman gave birth and then executed her. That is what is done these days for a death row woman convict who is expecting a child. How can one argue that the crime is excused just because she is going to have a child? What happens to the law then? Should every begum of the emperor who cheats on him and then practices this kind of criminal fraud and lese majeste get off scot free?
Jodha: Well, if I have been neglecting her for so long, it was because there was nothing really to analyse in the cheerful, charming, beautiful, picture-perfect Amer ki sabse chaheti beti (aur Bhanpur ki sabse chaheti bahu!). And though I do not suffer from diabetes, there is only so much of saccharine stuff and exchanges of lovey dovey looks that I can take! 😉
But as of now, they are getting some things about her just right. I liked two things about Jodha in Episode 22.
One was the calm dignity, firm but free of arrogance, with which she put that cheeky chunari seller in her place, capping that by draping the expensive chunari - fit only for the Mughal Shahenshah's begums - over her maid's head. It was a splendid put down, much better than chewing the woman out, and she added a solid retort about Mughal badshah ki begum and Motibai to sew everything up. Of course it was the 150 mohras that spoke the loudest, but she handled the whole impeccably.
Jodha-Ruqaiya (direct): Later, Jodha handled the jaziya encounter with Ruqaiya with the same clear-eyed, non-confrontational firmness, and emerged the winner. For one thing, she had all the best lines, though entirely predictable ones, and she rounded it off by the grand gesture of handing over a priceless necklace in payment of the tax for the whole lot of the pilgrims.
Apparently the Malika-e-Hind is also a closet chartered accountant😉, seeing that she does a lightning calculation and sets off the value of the necklace against a whole year's jaziya (for how many pilgrims?)
Second, I liked the open, childlike (not childish) way in which Jodha laughed when Motibai ends up with mud all over her face and over that 150 mohra chunari. It was like a carefree little girl, and it was charming.
But a major caveat is in order. That Jodha treats her maid as her equal is admirable, but there has to be a limit to that. I did not like the way Motibai bargained for that chunari like a housewife in a fish bazaar, without waiting so see what Jodha felt about it at all. She should keep the rank and dignity of her mistress in mind. It looked bad, and it only highlighted the need for some staff discipline. A queen must be kind, but a bit aloof and dignified as well; otherwise the staff will start being, and looking, presumptuous.
The need for change: The constant refrain in this serial is about how Jodha will change Jalal for the better. But it is equally important for her to change herself where it is necessary.
Jodha could, so far, afford to be as simple and straightforward as she is because she has never faced any serious dilemmas, any great danger, any great tragedies, in her life as Jalal has. She has never been as lonely as he is, so lonely that he does not even know that he is lonely. Lonely in that he has no one with whom he can connect with the certitude that the person is not out to use him one way or the other. He is the closest of all to Ruqaiya, and still, when she praises his appearance, he is sure she wants something from him.
Jodha can thus afford to see things in black and white, to run to save a pigeon or a deer, and to lecture her family on the Rajput code of honour.
The first time she is going to be pulled both ways is about Sujamal, and the beginnings of this were evident at the Yamadwitiya ceremony. When he joins up with the enemy to redress what he sees as a great injustice done to him, Jodha will understand that there need not be one clear right and one clear wrong, and she will suffer with him. As Jalal suffers when Zaheer is blinded and later dies, when Takhtmal is murdered, and when so many other things go very badly wrong despite him.
Jodha will have to grow up, to learn that life is not so simple, that there are competing pressures that have to be balanced, and that for an emperor, his empire and its needs come before all else. That often the choice is not between the good and the bad, but between the lesser of two wrongs. That the imperatives of statecraft often cannot be subjected to personal concepts of right and wrong, or to those of human sympathy.
She will then, not being an impractical fool like her mother in law, learn to be less self-righteous and judgmental, and thus both more pragmatic and wiser, and become a true helpmate to her husband. Which I am dead sure the insufferable Hamida Banu was not. I am pretty sure Humayun fell to his death on those library stairs when he was running away from one of her whining lectures!😉
Jodha-Ruqaiya (indirect):Well, the keenly awaited Jodha-Jalal encounter, on which I for one had set great store, proved, unexpectedly, to be a no show, The two of them circled that tree so many times that it seemed impossible for him not to hear the sound of her payals, or even to step on the end of her trailing odhni!😉 But still I enjoyed it, especially Jodha's quick-wittedness in scaring the deer away with smoke (she has apparently done a Girl Guides course in camping, including lighting a fire without a match!😉 )In this, the first of her successful encounters with Ruqaiya, an indirect one, she was helped greatly by Ruqaiya taking an inordinate amount of time for her shot. If she does this all the time, she would not be able to hit even a slow moving elephant!😉
In fact, Jalal's whole stance, while she is taking aim, is that of the weary patience of a husband forced to accompany his wife on a shopping trip.😉
What was intriguing here was the detachment with which Jalal views the whole proceeding, commenting to Ruqaiya, in an unconscious echo of Arjuna's maxim in the Mahabharata, that her focus must be total and she must, in some way, become one with the target. He also senses the smoke. Kuch to hai, Ruqaiya.. Use mehsoos karo.. Lagta hai ki hawa mein kuch ghul sa gaya hai, he says, even before he sees the smouldering twigs. When he does see them, his eyes light up, and his mouth twists into a grin, in genuine amusement and appreciation of the trick played on Ruqaiya by the girl he sees hastening away. And he says as much to his fuming begum: Tum hiran ko maarna chahti thi aur wo usko bachana chahti thi. Wo jeet gayi!Jalal and Jodha: The two portraits: First things first. Suryabhan Singh is not going to be elected to the Lalit Kala Akademi any time soon. His likeness of Jodha makes her look as if she is coming down with an attack of mumps😉. It says much for the tender feelings she is evidently developing for him that she nonetheless looks at it with patent admiration .
The other one, Jalal's Jodha, a shamsheer-wielding tigress, is a passable likeness, but just about. However, seeing that Jalal seems to think that his very broad, generic descriptions of her eyes, her hair (why do poets, and Jalal here - insist on describing the invariably black hair of Indian women as sunhere bal? It is a mystery!) and her fierce expression would suffice for a portrait, one has to commend the skill, or perhaps the imagination of the lady artist in managing to produce something that is recognizable as Jodha.
She must also have been a remarkable woman to have been a travelling professional artist in the 16th century, a rarity anywhere in the world of those days.
It is revealing that her praise of Jodha's qualities of head and heart produces no reaction at all from Jalal, not even the slightest responsive gleam in his eyes. His response to her rather self-serving comment about Jodha's regard for artists is decidedly ironic Hum bhi kadardan kuch bure nahin hain ! Fankar achcha hona chahiye.
Then comes the shocker. After barely casting a look at the finished portrait, and dismissing the artist, Jalal proceeds to burn the canvas with every evidence of fierce, lingering satisfaction. There are some things, he tells the mystified Abdul, that are made only for the pleasure of turning them into ashes. I thought back to his face earlier that day, as he looked at the payal that he had retrieved from the jewel case: it was not gentle with remembrance, but furrowed and taut with anger. It thus seemed to me that right now, the only emotions that Jodha evokes in his mind are a sense of humiliation, and anger, at having been held at sword point by her, a mere woman.
Other, gentler feelings will surely come, but that is far off as yet. What is there right now is a desire to dominate and tame her. Combined with the fact that on her side, the obsession is with getting his head on a platter, literally, the road to true love promises to be not just rocky, but strewn with boulders!😉
Maham Anga: the intrigante: She is of course a schemer and plotter sans pareille (unequalled).
But as for this round of Maham vs Ruqaiya 1, it is rigidly low key saas-bahu stuff, with nothing very new. Maham is helped a lot by Jalal being so kaan ka kachcha. He should never have dragged either Ruqaiya or Bairam Khan to the DEK. Even a subordinate is best scolded in private, there is then no sense of public humiliation that rankles and becomes a nasoor, and one gets the thing better sorted out. Instead, he displays a Pavlovian reflex, with Maham pushing his right buttons. So Maham' s success is directly due to Jalal's folly.
It is the same with Bairam Khan. His overweening pride, and his refusal to bend before his pupil play into Maham's hands. With a more subtle and devious opponent, Maham would have had a much harder time of it.
Questions for the day: Jodha is shown celebrating what is apparently Deepavali in Amer. The Yamadwitiya is the day after Deepavali, and is popularly known in North India as Bhaidooj. She is carried in a palki all the way from Amer, with a longish halt in Bhanpur, to Mathura.
How then does she manage to reach Mathura for the Yamadwitiya? On a Nimbus 2000 broomstick, or by apparating there, a la the folks in Harry Potter?
And how does Sujamal, with whom she has no way of communicating (except by owl post, perhaps?) , also turn up there on the dot?
Joke of the day: Suryabhan Singh, on hearing of the falling out between Jalal and Bairam Khan, proclaiming: Bairam Khan se alag hokar Jalal aur bhi (?!?) kamzor ho gaya hoga. Aur ab usko harana zara bhi mushkil nahin hoga.. and of course to fulfill his promise to Jodha about, what else, getting her Jalal ka sar. I almost fell off my chair laughing. Famous last words!!
Pleasing moment: When it was finally made clear to the viewers that Ruqaiya, as the granddaughter, in the paternal line, of the Emperor Babur, is Jalal's equal in birth, and not some airi gairi childhood playmate who got to marry him.
OK, folks! This is it till Thursday next, so you can relax, read this very long post at your leisure and, hopefully, not just hit the LIKE button, but post some comments as well.
Shyamala/Aunty/Akka/Di
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