Folks,
First of all, let me wish you all a very happy and auspicious Saraswati Pooja and Vijayadashami today. It is a rare occasion when both these fall in a single day, so it must be doubly auspicious! May Vijayadashami bring you all, and your families, the best of everything in the year ahead.
Next, our show. From Tuesday, we entered, alas, on very unpleasant ground, with the overall tone of the proceedings becoming not just over the top, but plain hysterical, and nastily so.
There was Jalal, maddened by grief and loss, like a raging bull, head lowered, eyes slitted, spitting out pure hatred toward Jodha and her brothers, and thirsting for vengeance for the death of his unborn baby.
There was the wooden quartet from Amer, seemingly incapable of not just stringing some sort of coherent defence together, but even of showing any understandable emotion when this toofan hits them out of the blue.
And lastly there was Jodha, who, after the initial spell - when Jalal barges into her rooms in the middle of the night, shamsheer in hand - of pure terror that was most convincing, retreats into blank-faced incomprehension. Incomprehension both of what has happened to her and why, and of why Jalal, who went out of the way, at the jashn the evening before, to show his regard for her, was now behaving like this. Her sole concern seems to be for Kanha's diya bati and for the reputation of Amer!
The sole bright spots in the proceedings were, in that order, Hamida Bano and Mansingh, but of that more later. For starters, let us spend a minute on the last pleasant sequences that we will see for a week and more, from the episode of Monday, Episode 55.
Episode 55: Mridu gati malaya sameer
The title means, as many of you might know, a gentle wind that blows down from the mountains. And that is just what the jashn to celebrate the advent of a baby for Jalal and Ruqaiya was like.
Premature rejoicing: I have a major caveat about such premature celebrations. The baby is still several months away. No one knows if it will be a boy, and thus the waliahat and the waaris to the Mughal throne, or a girl, in which case Jalal will have to start all over again.
In any case, our elders, much like the ancient Greeks - who were afraid of rejoicing too openly at any piece of good fortune for fear of offending their jealous gods - traditionally thought it inauspicious to talk too much too soon about an impending birth, for fear of attracting an evil eye. But here, in Agra, they hold a jashn and start babbling of the waaris as though everything was already signed sealed and delivered!
A special regard: This said, there were some very pleasing things that Jalal did at the jashn that gladdened my heart. For one thing, carrying over from that very cordial meeting with Jodha in her rooms to understand the full meaning of her poem, Jalal makes it a point to greet her as he arrives, lingering an extra moment to do so, as she does her pranam in return. Ruqaiya is quick to note that gesture, and it was plain that she did not like it one bit!
What he does when Jodha and her brothers offer the gift of the kesar from Amer needs no elaboration, for we all saw it in full. When he says Jab mauka hai, to ummeed ka daaman kyon thaamna, Jodha Begum?, and asks her to feed Ruqaiya the kesar mixed in milk rightaway, it is a special and significant mark of his new found regard for her.
Jalal does not stop there. He produces the silver spoon that was Jodha's gift for the baby to come, and holds it up for all to see. For an instant, Jodha looks dismayed, thinking that he is making fun of her and her gift. But of course that is not so, and when he goes on Yeh tohfa kitna hi chota kyon na ho, lekin iske peeche ke jazbaat bahut bade hain. Hamare honewale waaris ke liye is se bada, is se naayab, is se khoobsoorat tohfa kuch nahin ho sakta, Jodha smiles in relief while Ruqaiya, predictably, looks as if she has bitten into something especially bitter! And the rest of the assemblage, especially Maham, looks bemused at this sudden elevation in Jodha Begum's status in the Shahenshah's eyes, as well they might!
The final scene, of Jalal dancing with little Rahim, is so charming, so unabashedly emotional, that it is no wonder that Hamida Bano, Gulbadan Begum and Jijianga all take balaiyaan, with tears in their eyes at Jalal's affection for the little boy. For they see in it a foretaste of how he will be with his own child.
Now on to tragedy and horror, on to Episode 56.
Episode 56: In the vale of tears
The image from Tuesday night that haunted me was not that of Jalal blossoming into an expectant father, wrapped up, to an unbelievable extent, in the child whose arrival he awaits with such eagerness. So eagerly that he is prepared to put off his campaigns of conquest, and sheath his shamsheer till that happy day. So eagerly that he rates even the prospect of having an heir, for the empire he rules and the even more vast empire he is sure he will rule, lower than the happiness of being a father.
It is rare, even today , for a father to be so emotionally dependent on the child he hopes to have, so think how much rarer this must have been in those days! The Shahenshah has turned philosopher in this unexpected flood of happiness: Zameen khudh chunti hai ki us par kaun hukumat karega. Takht apna shahenshah khudh chunta hai.
Uncontainable joy: Nor that of Jalal, restless from a variety of unfamiliar emotions that do not let him sleep, that make him unsettled whether alone or in company, assembles the 4 senior women who are the closest to him and seeks answers to why he feels the way he does.
It is a lovely scene, with Jalal's uncontainable joy brimming over, and being reflected in the four affectionate, indulgent faces of these women - his Badiammi, his Ammijaan, his Gulbadan phupha and his other wet nurse Jijianga- for whom he has been the apple of their eye since his birth.
As he walks away, they form an arc of empathy as they gaze after him, and I could almost believe that all their smiles are genuine. But even in 2013, the doubt still ate away at me from inside - is it really all, or all bar one?
Unbearable grief: Nor even the image of Jalal breaking down completely in his Badiammi's sheltering, warm embrace, weeping like a lost child as the truth of the tragedy seeps into his consciousness. As he looks up and accuses the Almighty of having let him, and even more so Ruqaiya, down so cruelly, anguish and anger fight for dominance in the upturned face.
It was rather the slightly earlier, fleeting shot of Jalal's face as he stands outside Ruqaiya's rooms, having been expelled from them by Maham Anga in anticipation of the arrival of the Khwaja. It shows, for the first time ever, fear. A fear that he does not try to hide as a sign of weakness, for he is beyond any such petty considerations. A naked fear that desperately seeks reassurance, and negation, from his Badiammi's eyes.
When it dawns on him that this is not forthcoming, that something has gone very badly wrong, the fear dissolves into despair, and the taut, tense face crumples into sudden, gut-wrenching grief and tears.
It was an incredibly nuanced performance from so young an actor, who could hardly have drawn on his own experiences for such scenes, but would have had to fall back on his imagination.
In the whole episode, Rajat's Jalal walked thru this vale of tears with amazing conviction and credibility, so much so that by the end, when Ruqaiya demands justice from the Shahenshah, one has almost forgotten that there is an individual called Rajat Tokas. There is only Jalal. That is perhaps the ultimate compliment that one can pay to any actor.
A "perfect" case: The case against Jodha and her brothers is not merely a circumstantial one, be it noted, but one backed by solid evidence (that is to say, evidence that has been carefully tweaked to seem so to even the most skeptical judge). In those days, without the aid of modern forensic science, such "evidence" would have earned a capital sentence in any royal court of justice the world over.
There is the dature ka ark in the kesar from Amer. This is proved by Maham Anga's genuine swooning after she eats the kesar from Amer. They show her surroundings going out of focus in her eyes as she sways; naturally, for the dature ka ark in the kesar is real.
Then there is the smell of datura on Ruqaiya's breath and traces of it in the blood that has seeped out of her body. She has ingested the ark, and it is that which has caused her miscarriage.
Finally, there is the Khwaja's assertion that this ark is not found in the Mughal dominions, but only in the dry areas adjoining its borders, and that only expert hakims from the old royal families know how to extract and prepare it from the datura.
NB:It is as well that Jalal does not know about Mynavati's dismay at the prospect of a queen of Jalal's other than Jodha bearing the heir to the throne, and thus ensuring that Jodha would not become the Mughal equivalent of a Rajput Patrani!
But even in depths of such overwhelming grief, Jalal, at the beginning, balances the distraught father on the one hand, and the Shahenshah as the impartial dispenser of justice on the other, to perfection. Despite the apparently watertight case against Jodha, he does not accept it at once, but threatens the Khwaja with death if she proves to be wrong.
But she is unshaken.
Jalal I & Jalal II: One can almost see two Jalals struggling within him for domination within him.
There is Jalal I, whose insensate rage against the woman who seems to have killed his child threatens to sweep all before it in a mad, murderous rush.
Then there is Jalal II, who cannot accept the awful possibility that this selfsame woman, in whose goodness he had placed his trust, the woman whom he had begun to admire and respect almost despite himself, could have so betrayed that trust and perpetrated this vile deed. It is this idea of the pristine image he now has of Jodha being lost and degraded that hurts him almost as much as the loss of his child.
Matters are made tougher for him by the fact that no one accuses Jodha directly - neither the Khwaja, nor Maham Anga , who in fact goes one better and exclaims Par Jodha Begum aise kyon karegi? In fact, as the net of the physical evidence is drawn tighter and tighter, it closes inexorably on Amer, and thus on Jodha, and it is then that Jalal is forced to arrive at the same suspicion, that soon becomes, in his mind, proof positive.
Still, Jalal does not rush to judgment and charge off to Jodha's rooms to punish her. He goes to Ruqaiya's and tries to soothe her and get her to act rationally and soberly, for Jalal II is struggling still within him to find a way out for Jodha. His inner sense tells him one thing, and the evidence another, but the inner voice is not strong enough to overcome the pitiless logic of Ruqaiya's demand for justice against Jodha, who she genuinely believes is a devious murderess. Thus we arrive at the precap, a cliffhanger if ever there was one.
Hamida's no show: Strangely enough, Hamida Banu, who might have spoken up for Jodha with conviction and strengthened Jalal II's hands, is nowhere to be seen just when she is needed the most. Not just here, she was nowhere to be seen when Jalal was distraught with grief after learning from Mahaam Anga, that his child was no more. Or anywhere else before or after that, for that matter. No wonder she is invariably so ineffective and lacking in influence on her son!
Maham: a superb performance: After Jalal, if there is one character who deserves applause for the sheer ability to carry conviction whatever her inner thoughts and her actions, it is Maham Anga.
But let us digress a bit, and go back to some of the fun we all had in 2013, playing endless guessing games and devising endless scenarios and counter-scenarios to try and pin down the real culprit. Now, of course, we are, sadly, denied all that pleasure!
Speculations in 2013: I still believed, back then, fairly firmly, that the whole was Maham's doing and I had said so in my post for this episode. Mansi (skanda12) had argued in favour of Sharifuddin as the culprit, but while she had many credible points to back her theory, I felt that for a man, especially a warrior like Sharifuddin who has no link to medicine and the pharmacoepia, to know about an aborifacient, for that is what it was, did not sound likely. It pointed more to a woman familiar with pregnancies and childbirth.
Nor was there anything to show that Sharifuddin had gone back to Amer in the few days since Ruqaiya's pregnancy was announced, to get hold of the ark, and to believe that he kept it by him from earlier of the off chance that he might need it defied belief.
For the same reason, I ruled out Adham, who also lacked the subtle mind needed for such a coup. That would seem to leave only Maham Anga, who, as she supervises everything to do with the security of all that Ruqaiya eats, would be the best placed to add the ark to the kesar. It is, as a Tamil saying goes, like the fence eating the crop.
She has the resources to procure it even after she saw that the Amer gift was the kesar, and it was not necessary, from her point of view,that it should be ingested that very day with that kesar doodh. Any other day would have done as well, for the kesar would have been in Hoshiyaar's custody and would not have been checked again. Jodha would have been the prime accused in any case. Two prize birds with one stone is par for the course for Maham Anga.
The Adham factor: Then there was an extra trigger, so to speak, if at all one was needed, in the scene between her and a sozzled Adham, who laments: Aaj tak humne Jalal ki ghulami ki hai, Ammijaan, lekin ab uske waaris ki bhi karenge.. Lagta hai Jalal ko doodh pilate pilate, aap apna khoon ka rishta bhool gayi hain! Maham eyes are wet with tears as she listens to her son, and maybe, just maybe, she decided to act , and fix both Ruqaiya, with her ambition to oust Maham from the post of Wazir-e-Aliya, and Jodha whom she hates so much.
But the curious thing is that despite all this, I am sure that when she is beaming with joy at Jalal's happiness (which she knows will be very shortlived), and again when she holds him close, cradling him in her arms, as his whole being is racked with grief, and talks to him with deep affection and understanding, she is not faking the empathy in either case. It is almost as if she has a split personality, the one who loves her erstwhile nursling, and the other who will do anything at all, even at the expense of the same nursling, to protect her interests and those of the son whom she cares for above all else.
Ashwini Kalsekar brings all her experience and skills to a role which, for all its occasional excesses, is far more nuanced and demanding than anything she has done so far. Remember the look on her face as she tells Jalal Kyonki aap apne andar ki khushi samet nahin pa rahe hain! .. Maa bachche ko janam deti hai, lekin walid bhi bechain rehte hain apne bachche ke liye! It was a delightful expression. At that moment, Maham was being quite genuine.
Ruqaiya:a bereaved mother: I was struck by the fact that for all her obsession with becoming the mother of the heir to the Mughal throne, Ruqaiya, when faced with the destruction of her ambitions, does not, as I had expected dissolve into furious rage, rant about having lost the chance of becoming the Mariam-uz-Zamani, or rush to berate Jodha and accuse her of being a murderess.
Instead, she keens over in unbearable, genuine grief, her body bent double, her voice dissolving into inarticulate sobs. In that instant, she is just a mother who has lost her child, and that trumps every other consideration.
From that to her demand for justice, not of her husband but of her Shahenshah, against the woman she believes to be guilty, is but a step. And it is this implacable voice of a bereaved mother that defeats Jalal II, who has been fighting hard till then solely on the strength of the conviction that comes from his heart, the conviction that despite all the appearances to the contrary, the Amer ki shehzaadi is innocent.
So, when Jalal I takes over in the precap, there is no way he can be berated for what he does. I was glad to see even in 2013, that among all the helpless lamenting in the forum about Jodha, almost no one blamed Jalal for believing that it was she who had done it. Confronted with that pile of evidence, not even a saint would have exculpated Jodha.
And so on to Episode 57.
Episode 57: Confusion worse confounded
Jalal I: Jalal II having apparently become roadkill, his fierce alter ego, Jalal I. was the dominant presence from beginning to end here. He was raging like a rampant bull, accusing, manhandling and threatening Jodha, shutting out all debate in the Diwan-e-Khas and violating Mughal legal norms in his mad rush to railroad Jodha and her brothers to the worst possible punishment for their crime' (but not death, be it noted, for Jodha).
He is impervious to anything and everything : pleas and gentle arguments from Salima Sultan (though it is odd to see her citing Bairam Khan, whose patent solution to most problems was kisika sar kalam karna, as a model of fairness and farsightedness for Jalal! ), appeals for keeping a cool head from his mother, the citing of the norms of Mughal justice by his Ministers, and stubborn counter assertions from Mansingh. Any attempt to speak up for Jodha acts as a red rag to a bull .No one, it seems, can reach him and pull him back even an inch.
The reason why: Nothing of what Jalal does in this episode is acceptable behaviour, much less what one expects from an emperor who is the embodiment of justice for his subjects, but that is the way he is now, and there is a reason, or reasons, why he is so.
Jahnvi (soapwatcher1) had offered an interesting idea in my old thread on this episode about this, which I am citing now for whatever it is worth. There could be a subterranean reason for Jalal's insensate rage, she felt, for it is a personal battle that rages within him, rooted in his inability so far to have an heir. That is why when he is told Ruqayya was expecting his child, he is so jubilant, for he has overcome a personal failure, the failure to father a child. What is the use of so many begums and a harem if the Emperor, THE Man among men, could not have a child? This, she felt, was the reason for Jalal's overwhelming joy, and also the reason for his current rage.
A sense of betrayal: This is possible, but for me, the real reason lies elsewhere. The most important, to my mind, is the element of personal betrayal, as he has now come to see it, by a woman he had grown to respect, admire, and care for. Jodha.
The line between love and hate is a very narrow one, and Jalal has now tipped the other way. What does Othello do to Desdemona, and on what evidence? Nothing stronger than this one; was it not? In fact it is much weaker. So it is with men and women alike when they as if possessed. If Othello could be so frenzied with jealousy on the basis of such thin evidence when it concerned a beloved wife, how much more of insensate rage can Jalal feet at what he sees as a vile crime triggered by a woman's hatred of him - a factor which has been stated out loud to him time and again - and on the basis of much stronger evidence?
But there is always a reason for a sudden and drastic change in any person's behaviour,both for the better and for the worse. Just before disaster struck, Jalal was unprecedentedly well disposed towards Jodha, though she had done nothing positive towards him personally, and always seemed to be averse to having him anywhere around her. That was a sudden, positive change, triggered by that poem. Now it is a sudden and drastic change for the worse, triggered by the death of his child.
There is a very interesting post on the thread It is Jalal, not Akbar, by one Couch_Potato at
https://www.indiaforums.com/forum/jodha-akbar/3725394/this-is-jalaal-not-akbar
Do take a look at it if you have the time, and my comments on it as well. You might not agree with all of it, but some of the points made by her are very relevant, like the one that goes as follows:
Moreover, him lashing out like that made complete sense. Of course when traumatised to his core, Jalaal would leave all rationality and reason and revert to his default setting. One Bairam Khan and Maham Anga have groomed and nurtured since childhood - that of a raging, bloodthirsty warrior that attacks first and asks questions later. To fall back on those principles now would give him a sense of direction and as he hopes some respite from the torment he feels inside.
Somehow, I also felt that somewhere and in some ways, Jalal holds himself responsible too. He blames himself for not seeing it coming, for not being better prepared, for not protected his unborn baby and perhaps the worst sin of all - for softening up. Something Bairam Khan had always cautioned him against.
A non-starter: Finally, it is most emphatically NOT a question of Jalal being illiterate, which argument, advanced by many in 2013, is really a non-starter.
One cannot equate illiteracy with the absence wisdom and a sense of balance and moderation, and by inference, education with the presence of these very qualities. Jalal's rooh may have said that as he feels bitter about what he has not learnt, but that does not make it correct.
It is a fallacy to assume that education automatically broadens the mind and makes one wise, tolerant and compassionate. Aurangzeb was very well educated, and so were Stalin, Hitler and Franco. Mao Tse Tung wrote fairly decent poetry as well, and many of the worst Nazi mass murderers were great devotees of the German classics and of Wagner's wonderful operas. Did that make them any less of bloodthirsty, conscienceless killers en masse?
On the contrary, many poor, illiterate people in the rural areas are wise and compassionate and generous. I have personally known any number of them, both men and women.
OK, now let us move on.
Jodha: Given no opportunity to speak, Jodha can only stare at Jalal's furious visage thru her veil. Even if she had been allowed to speak, what could she have said except that she is not guilty? This apart, she seems blank and shell shocked, and there are no nuances of any kind in her expression.
It was also strange that whereas she is full of sympathy for Ruqaiya on the loss of her child, Jodha does not seem to even realise that it is Jalal who has suffered the far greater loss, and that he is consumed by bitter grief. She can, it seems, share the sorrow of Ruqaiya, who hates her openly and strongly. But she does not share the agony of her husband who, just the day before, had shown so much warm appreciation for her caring for his child, and had done her unprecedented honour at the jashn.
Her comment about Jalal blaming her family without reason is bizarre, seeing that he has told her that the poison was in the kesar they had brought from Amer. It is very odd that she expresses no shock about this, nor does she wonder how this could have happened.
As for Bhagwan Das and his brother and cousins, they all seem to be assiduously imitating wooden statues. Mansingh, on whom I had set my heart, let me down badly, for he does nothing but put up Jalal's back even more with his blanket expression of faith in his buasa's innocence. I would have hoped that he would at least set out the case against their having had any opportunity to poison the kesar after it had been tasted, and then handed over to the keeper of the gifts. But he did no such thing, and it was all left to Hamida Bano.
Coming home to roost: I could not help thinking that all of Jodha's chickens - the endless assertions that she hated Jalal and wanted Jalal ka sar - were now coming home to roost, and to deadly effect. For Jalal believes that she killed his child out of her hatred for him , to hurt him in the worst possible way. Tum mujhse nafrat karti ho na? To mujh par vaar karti. Mere bachche ko kyon mara?
To this belief there is no counter. Jodha has herself made sure of that.
It is this belief that fuels the blind rage that shuts out Jalal's sense of justice, his sense of his responsibilities as the final court of appeal, leaving only a burning thirst for revenge. A thirst that is all the more implacable because he knows that lurking in some corner of his being, there is Jalal II. He wants to disown Jalal II completely, along with the growing softness he had begun to feel for this woman who, he is now convinced, has destroyed what he had wanted and loved more than anything else, his unborn child.
Hamida Banu: Jodha's lifeline: With Maham Anga keeping her head low, despite being apparently convinced, as she says to both Adham and Resham, of Jodha's innocence, and Salima routed, it is left to Jalal's softspoken Ammijaan to go to bat for Jodha in the Diwan-e-Khas. She does this with a clarity of presentation and a non-confrontational persuasiveness that seem, at last, to give Jalal slight pause.
It is not clear from where she has learnt of the mirchi incident, but it is stil a telling point that unsettles Maham visibly. Curiously enough, it seems to occur only now to our tubelight, Jodha Begum, and someone had tampered with the khana she had prepared!
But the key point Hamida Bano raises effectively is that the kesar was tested and approved on arrival, and then handed over to the Mughal keeper of the gifts till it was produced in court at the jashn. Did Jodha, she asks, go and add the poisonous ark to it there ? From this to her assertion that it is all a plot against Jodha is but a step.
But even so, all she seeks is a chance for Jodha to state her side of the case, and as noted above, I do not see how Jodha's denial of any guilt, which is all she can offer, can help exculpate Jodha.
As for Jalal, it does not seem that he is convinced, but at least he will now not pronounce an immediate punishment, which is a major gain. Hamida Banu could not prove Jodha innocent, but she has bought her some time. Time during which Jalal's red hot rage might cool down somewhat, and prise open the door that he has shut in the face of justice and the rule of law.
A lost luxury : To sum up, we have, for the immediate future, gone several steps backwards in the Jalal-Jodha story. Earlier, she had the luxury of hating him without any qualms, while he allowed her to do so without imposing himself on her. He was fitfully irritated, at times teasing, and of late even admiring.
All that is now gone, and there is, in his eyes, only a relentless hatred that outweighs anything that she might ever have felt towards him. For it is not an abstract concept, but a real feeling rooted in a real, terrible, personal loss, and a horrible crime of which he holds her guilty.
It will be interesting, and revealing, to see how this hatred against her will affect Jodha, and not just because of the Damocles sword now hanging over her head. It is time for her to wake up and smell the coffee!
That is it for today, folks. My laptop has to go for repairs tomorrow, for the fan is not working properly and it is overheating. I will thus not be able to post anything on Monday, so my next post, all going well, will have to be for 6 episodes. Which is no great loss, seeing what we will have to deal with!
But I will try and reply to all your interesting comments on my last thread tonight, so please do check that thread again tomorrow. Adios!
Shyamala/Aunty/Akka/Di
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