Originally posted by: sashashyam
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.
Thank You Aunty. Wish you and others a happy (belated) Saraswati Pooja and Vijayadashami too.
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.
Jalal in his Rudravatar...😳...RT was nowwhere seen. It was all Jalal and only Jalal. Very few actors express rage so easily and convincingly...(and look all the more handsome at the same time...🤪)
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.
They would have surely looked as blank if Jalal HAD really burnt them alive. Even while burning I wonder if any of those actors would have displayed some emotion!😲 They are princes born to uphold honour and how can they take such a blame hands down without EVEN AN ATTEMPT to assert their innocence, whether it would have had any effect or not.
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.
Jodha/Paridhi was excellent in that scene. She was peacefully asleep and was jerked awake at the Emperor's arrival at such a late hour and did not even know why Jalal was angry initially. The initial shock, confusion and terror at being blamed and manhandled was displayed so well. 👏
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!
Concern for the reputation of Amer is understandable, but Kanhaa's diya baati!😲 Couldn't Moti do it!. Surely, Kanhaa doesn't expect diya bati only from Royals!
I would have been happier if Jodha was shown to think! Think of how the ark could have made its way into the kesar after it was tested or assert that neither she nor her brothers could have had access to it after it was tested. After the initial shock, surely she had the time to use her brains for which she was praised throughout the show! Wish she had bombarded the question stated by HB to a mad-with-grief Jalal! Wish she was shown intelligent too instead of merely mahaan! Most of the times she has been shown to wriggle out of tight spots by luck or Jalal or someone else and hardly her own resourcefulness. It is a pity that throughout the show she was shown dumb and being praised for smartness !
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.
Start all over again! OMG !🤣
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!
Wohi to! Like the ghanan ghan rejoicing in Lagaan seeing some clouds!
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.
The entire proceedings and Jalal's brimming joy was so pleasing to watch! The joy on Jalal's face crossed over the scene and extended to us!
Earlier, Jodha's genuine joy at Ruqaiya's motherhood (after she heard about her tears from Salima) was so pure and lovely too. Not all of Ruqaiya's haughtiness and meanness had the slightest effect on Jodha's exhuberance which truly set her apart from the miscellaneous begums that stripped Jalal of every disapproval he had of her. Her expressions as she explained her verse were so radiant and pure. This was Jodha at her best in the entire show (according to me). What set her apart and high and unique among all! Not all can feel genuine happiness in the joy of another, especially when it doesn't concern them directly! Of all the reasons for which Jalal must have softened for Jodha this was the most persuasive and potent. Talents and smarts...Jalal must have witnessed in abundance. Goodness and honesty and her ability to care were Jodha's USP and nobody came close to her in Jalal's circle.
Now on to tragedy and horror, on to Episode 56.
Episode 56: In the vale of tears
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?
Ofcourse 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.
One of the precious scenes of the show where everything was just perfect. Only you could praise it so perfectly!👏
RT just doesn't enact a character. He talks it. Walks it and lives it. The Emperor who can face an army without the slightest fear is stiff scared at the prospect of a loss! He staggers as he walks out of Ruqaiya's rooms when the doc examines her! The royal walk is gone. The speedy sprightly commanding walk is not there. This man gripped by fear feels weak in the knees! RT was brilliant here. Just like he walked with a slight hunch as elder Salim's father!
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!
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He would have sent his sipahis to have her burnt along with her sons and blamed her for manufacturing the ark with such ulterior motives and sent through her sons!😆
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.
He hopes against hope that his recent softening is justified! To save himself from guilt for having opened the avenue for the accident by his trust in the enemy, first his political trust in the Ameris and then his personal trust in Jodha. But when the evidences are mounting and Ruqaiya's tears unbearable, his guilt and anger opens up the Vesuvius in him!
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.
Tum itni kaisi gir sakthi ho Jodha! - How can you fall thus from the pedestal I placed you on! Shame on me that I trusted you! That I thought that you were genuine and exceptional and laudable! How clever you have been and taken me for a ride and what a fool I was! You pretended goodness and I who have been impregnable to every gentle feeling that weakens men, fell for your act and gave you the chance to attack me where it hurts me most! I have behaved like an emotional fool and allowed you to have your revenge on me! Khan Baba! You were right! Baadshaahs are made of sterner stuff! I have paid the price for having overlooked your commandment! Now back to your mould! Sar kalam, zinda jalana, haath pair gala kaatna and so on.😆
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.
This is the sad thing of repeating a watch or a read! Reading the HP series now is nothing like it was as and when the books were released! The anticipation, the wait, the speculation...makes it more special.
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.
That is the pity about Ruqaiya. Inspite of her positive qualities she lets every other consideration overpower them and turn them negative.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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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.
This struck very odd indeed. Almost like an out of tune sur in flowing music. Anyway knowing how bizzaire and tuneless the rest of the notes were, this was nothing!
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.
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.
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Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi 2
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