My dear Vinita,
First of all, thank you for your concern, but I am afraid that with rheumatoid arthritis, there is no such thing as feeling better, it is simply a struggle, as the Red Queen says in Alice in Wonderland, to run fast enough to stay in the same place, and not let one's joints deteriorate. I am doing my best. Let me see how long I am able to continue with these posts.
Thank you also for liking this post so much. As for your comments, I agree with you 100% about Ruqaiya, especially that thanks to his indulgence, her ego is bigger even than Jalal's. Also about Maham Anga.
As for Jalal, I do not see how he could have expected Jodha to do anything else but hate him, for he got a candid account of the depth of her hatred for him on his Amer escapade, not to speak of her pre-wedding behaviour . Perhaps that actually added spice to the idea of taming her. I think what angered him the most was that Jodha's rejection of him came to him thru Ruqaiya, and that hurt his ego more than anything else.
As for proving to Ruqaiya that he is not weak, how would she know what happened between Jodha and Jalal that night, apart from the fact that he came back to her? I doubt if he would have given her a blow by blow account.
Actually, his rejection of Jodha is a last minute face-saving gesture to pay her back for the revulsion she shows when he draws near to her. If she had not displayed that revulsion, but only shyness or even fear, he would not, for all his harsh comments of a moment earlier, have left her
hoojra at all that night.
But it is about Jodha's reaction that I have to differ from your take and stick to my own, and this not because I cannot accept a contrary view. If Jodha had been afraid of what Jalal might do to her - despite his elaborate affirmation that he would never even touch her, and that she would get all the respect due to a shahi begum in the harem and outside it - what she says to Moti would have been something like :
Mujhe is Jallad par tanik bhi vishwas nahin hai, Moti. Na jaane hamare saath kab kya karega yeh dusht. Humein pehli baar bhay lag raha hai, Moti, hum ab kya karein? And there would have been on her face the fear that is there when Jalal is crowding her and breaking her bangles.
But that is not what she says, nor is there any fear on her face, but only abject misery. As for what she says, which I have deliberately reproduced
verbatim, it conveys only the sense of her life having become pointless, of every moment being hard to get thru. This when what Jalal says about the way he, and others will treat her jells so perfectly with what she wants. He will leave her alone, and the others will accord her the due respect of a shahi begum. That should heaven for her, for given all this, and no matter what he
says, how can he make her life a
narak? But it is not.
My take is the only one that holds water, for all that Jodha does not realise it, and will not realise it for roughly another 250 episodes!
Shyamala
Originally posted by: vinitaj27
Hello Shyamalaji!
I hope u feel better soon. Ur analysis was great to read as always.
I agreed with most of it but as far as jodhas reaction to jalal's drunk declaration I think more than anything else it was sadness n helplessness mixed for she realised how alone n helpless she was and that jalal could anytime do whatever he wanted with her n she could not prevent it. I think the feeling of fear for the first time in her life was what broke her more than jalal declaring that he didn't want her. For the first time in her pampered n loved life she has faced pain n fear so I think her reaction was more towards what the future held for her rather than the sadness of being rejected by jalal.
As for ruqqaiya her ego is bigger than jalal n she feels she can play him any way she feels like. What she doesn't realise is that by instigating jalal against jodha she is in fact bringing more attention towards jodha than she should. Her constant tricks to remind jalal of jodhas mistakes n ego are only succeeding in making jalal more aware n attentive towards jodha even if it's in a negative manner. Instead of trying to make him forget abt jodha like all his other wives she is herself reminding jalal of jodha constantly.
As for Mahamanga she is the only one in the palace who can see the future n knows that the non existence of jalal's 'dil' is not true. I loved her dialogue saying that love n hate both reside in ur heart itself.
As for jalal I do think that he can't handle the fact that jodha doesn't realize how great he is. I also think that his anger was not only for his ego getting hurt by the rejection but that he wanted to show ruqqaiya that he is not weak.
Kabhi Neem Neem Kabhi Shahad Shahad
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