Originally posted by: sashashyam
Folks,
The title pretty much sums up what I felt about this set of episodes. This is beginning to be more of a chore than a pleasure, both for you and for me, seeing the kind of material we are saddled with!
So, those fed up of both Jalal and Jodha, and inclined to consign both of them to the attic, are hereby advised to proceed straightaway to the A change of perspective part, the one for Episode 60, which is guaranteed to lift their spirits, if I say so myself!
As for the rest, my doughty fellow travellers, let us soldier on, and begin with Episode 58!
Episode 58: Bhool bhulaiyya
The bhool bhulaiyya, or maze, in the title is as much, or more, in our minds as onscreen, even if there can now be none of the frenzied speculation across the forum in 2013 about Who dunnit?
There is Maham, for one thing, spinning extra layers in her web of deceit and ensnaring even her ever faithful Resham in her toils, not to speak of her brutish son. In the light of our subsequent knowledge, it is fascinating to see the extent to which Maham goes to weave alternate theories, repeatedly exculpating Jodha, and raising doubts about, say, Sharifuddin.
The way she defended her negative intentions towards ruks baby infront of resham while both side of hers inside ...that should be called an acting
Then there is the newly astute Ruqaiya, trying to drag Jalal's attention away from his current fixation on Jodha's guilt to the many unexplained instances of similar miscarriages in the harem at a time when Jodha was nowhere on the horizon.
If already had been the cases in harem then whey there was no tafteesh at all
With indifferent success, one has to note, for he is so obsessed with Jodha's nafrat for him as a motive for her being the culprit that he is loathe to move away from that, and logic be damned. This is what I meant when I wrote, in my last post, about all of Jodha's Jalal ka sar chickens coming home to roost now!
No mattered him what ruk was saying his only target is jo ...
Tweedledum & Tweedledee: The end result of all this is that the Jalal-Jodha relationship, if one can call it that, is right now in extremely choppy waters. We know that it will not suffer irredeemable shipwreck, but it has clearly gone back several steps in what was in any case always like an old fashioned minuet , in which a couple goes one step forward and then one step back.
The change now is not so much in her hating Jalal more for this latest crisis, but of his hating her with a blind, unreasoning ferocity. That is new.
This apart, as Jalal and Jodha stare at each other across the Diwan-e-Khas, the eyes of both filled with implacable anger and determination, I was struck anew by how very similar they both are, like Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Both are stubborn to a fault, indeed bull-headed, each is arrogant and unyielding towards the other at present, both are fearless. In fact, what probably riles Jalal the most -apart from the conviction that he has set himself up to be betrayed by her- is that none of his ferocious threats can frighten her. She is still clear-eyed and defiant, and has the gumption to match stare for stare with him, and declare (ludicrously, but that is not the point!) that she would not stand for it if he did anything anuchit to her father.
It is this very fearlessness, and her unshakeable inner strength, that will one day move him once more to admiration, trust and affection, and then love. Right now, they act as a red rag to a raging bull, snorting head down, nostrils flared in fury. Poor Rajat, who is so subtle in very difficult scenes, but mad rage does not suit him!
Lucid detachment: Alone among the Ameris, Mansingh displays admirable sagacity in acknowledging that given the damning evidence against the Amer contingent, the Shahenshah was not at fault in doing what he did, and then in making Bhagwan Das and the rest do the same. In 2013, I had felt let down because I had pitched on young Mansingh as the Saviour-in-Chief, whereas all he could do at the Diwan-e-Khaas was to extend a blanket assurance of innocence that meant nothing. But when he now looked at the situation with such lucid and clear-headed detachment, I was moved to admiration. The kid will do his family proud.
Escape route for Jodha: As for the case against the Ameris, it is true that by tracing the movement of thekesar and identifying all the others who had access to it from the time Bhagwan Das brought it to Agra to the time he handed it over to Jodha at the jashn, Jodha could end up as not proven guilty, for she was clearly nowhere near it till it was handed over to her to be presented to Ruqaiya. Which is not the same as being proven innocent, but something is better than nothing, especially in such terrible straits.
This is precisely the point that Hamida Banu raises, and as we saw, she finally does manage to stem Jalal's insensate rage. He does not yet believe in Jodha's innocence, but with Ruqaiya too weighing in with her suspicion of an older and more deep rootedsaazish , by a person or persons unknown, to prevent the birth of an heir, he has been given pause .
Hamida Banu: Staunch defender The CVs are obviously admirers of Jodhaa Akbar, seeing how they import every element of note from the film into the serial. For now, they seem to have decided that Hamida Banu should, as in the film, be Jodha's advocate and shield. So the gentle, twittering Ammijaan has suddenly metamorphosised into a haughty Maryam Makhani , who informs her resentful son, with unmistakable hauteur and self assurance, that her will is subject to no one's diktats, not even the Shahenshah's, and that if she wants to visit her bahu begum, she will.
The by now perennially scowling Jalal realizes that he has run into a brick wall, and it is only in his plaintive, anguished remonstrance to her: Ammijaan, aap samajhti kyon nahin hain? Humne apna bachcha khoya hai, yeh hamara dard hai! - that Rajat comes back into his own as a remarkable actor.
The one can easily felt in his eyes
The other scenes - of Jodha and her mother-in-law, and the one in Jodha's rooms as Hamida performs the pooja in Jodha's place - are warm and extremely appealing. They are obviously meant to mute the unease caused by Jalal's mindless ferocity. For Hamida makes it a point to explain that he is so because he is in a rage, and that he will see the light once he calms down , and that in any case, there has never been, and never will be, any injustice done in the Mughal sultanate, and that she will make sure of it.
Brave words, which one can trust only because, unlike Jodha, we know what will not happen, since Hamida Bano herself is all words and no action!
Cvs made her role highly limited and incredibly partial
Ruqaiya: She surprised me with her intelligent detachment, and her ability, despite the emotional storm she is going thru, to immediately perceive the true significance of Hamida Banu's words in the Diwan-e-Khaas to Jalal, about suspicious events in the past. Hamida is concerned only about Jodha and the recent past, but Ruqaiya's sharp mind goes farther back, and to very good effect. Her insistence that there is a different and far more deep rooted and older conspiracy against any heir to the Mughal empire, weighs with Jalal, and this would be of major, if unintended support for Jodha.
Plus, right now, she has the maximum influence on Jalal; he suspends the sentencing in the Diwan-e-Khas only after she nods her assent, and it is to her that he goes immediately after the hearing is over.
Jalal: The curious thing is that even after allowing for the desperate grief and the sense of loss that are the deepest for him , practically every one around him - Hamida Banu, Maham Anga, Ruqaiya - seems to be more sensible and rational than the Shahenshah. In the beginning, when the miscarriage was announced, there was a Jalal II, who stood out against the fierce, unthinking rage of his alter ego, Jalal I. No longer. The Jalal who now prevails seems like some vengeful Aztec or Inca deity, demanding human sacrifices to assuage his grief and his fury.
It was, however, reassuring that the calm lucidity of his Ammijaan's appeal did have an impact on him, despite the fact that she ranks low within his personal relationships. That showed that Jalal II, though weak as yet, is still there and will come forward eventually to tame Jalal I.
Jodha: She seems almost like a transparent sheet of glass, which, in the correct lighting, is practically invisible. She seems to understand but little of what might well happen to her and hers; even in the jaws of catastrophe, all she thinks of is the reputation of Amer and the diya bati for her Kanha not being interrupted. (why could Motibai not have done it in Jodha's place? As Sandhya notes, Kanha would hardly refuse to accept puja from a non-royal devotee!😉)
😆 😆
Admirable stoicism, no doubt - and this kind of fixation on things of little import might be her way of escaping from the horror that has suddenly descended on her - but a bit more of coherent and intelligent thinking thru of her situation might have been more useful.
So on to the next episode.
NB: Historical footnote, which might interest those outraged by Jalal's announcement about the likely death sentence by public burning.
Yes, Jalal's saying they would be burnt alive in public if they were not proved innocent sounded horrible, but then those were brutal times. Blindings, severe torture, hanging, drawing and quartering, breaking convicts on the wheel, throwing them down an oubliette and leaving them, with broken bones, to die in pitch darkness, and lifelong imprisonment in horrible prisons without not just any hearing but even without any knowledge of the charges, under the infamous lettres de cachet - some or all these charming practices were common all over Europe during this period and for nearly 150 years later, till the early 19th century, and the end of the Napoleonic wars.
Then there were burnings at the stake for religious reasons, for the so-called apostates. The Catholic Church routinely burnt Protestants at the stake and vice versa. After Henry VIII of England, Queen Mary was Catholic, then Elizabeth I was Protestant & Church of England. So Mary burnt Protestants and Elizabeth burnt Catholics at the stake, though to be fair to the latter, it was very largely for political reasons, as many Catholics were plotting to assassinate her, with the active help of King Philip of Spain.
The Spanish Inquisition, of the Catholic Church, routinely "applied the question", an euphemism for brutal torture on the rack, to suspected apostates, "to save their souls".
So burning alive must have been, for the Mughals, just a variant on their other practice of walling convicted prisoners alive. More economical in terms to wall space, I suppose (that is black humour, don't take it seriously!). Down south, they used to have the convicted criminal buried up to his neck, and then get an elephant to knock his head off.
So all this would have been par for the course then. But I still feel that Jodha Akbar is here becoming all too harsh and bitter. The conflicts in the film were more subdued, civilized, and overall far more graceful and credible.
__________________________________________________________________
Episode 59: Wuthering depths.
This was an unsettling and unpleasant viewing exercise.
I will start with two givens, and as everyone would have watched the episode, there is no need to go into the details of who said what to whom, and more important, who did not say what to whom.
The first given is that Jalal is well over the top, with a rage that is obviously not ebbing, but feeding on itself and whipping itself up to frenzy levels.
The other given is that the Amer quintet, bar the very level headed and straight-thinking Mansingh, is as silent as the grave. They have not, for whatever reason, opened their mouths even to proclaim their innocence (bar Jodha's assertion to Jalal the first night).
What I propose to do now is not to excoriate one or the other, and to eschew any kind of shocked condemnation on the one hand, and melting empathy on the other, for Jalal and Jodha respectively. It is both pointless and repetitive. Instead, I propose to take each as he/she is, and to try and see, once more, why each is behaving the way he/she is doing.
Of course I leave out the perhaps most convincing theory, that the CVs have run mad!😉
The Jalal conundrum: Those who are tired of having complicated theories trotted out for why Jalal seems to have been transformed, overnight, into a near sadist, can skip this section (Preeti, this is not for you!😉), which is an extension of The reason why part in my last post, and move on to the part about Jodha.
The rest (having been duly forewarned!), as Asrani'sAngrezon ke zamaane ka jailor says in Sholay, mere peeche aao!
One aspect is of course that Jalal is an absolute 16th century monarch, with no one around now who is capable of moderating his reactions to what he sees as betrayal. In any other such set up in that age, a Jodha would have been executed out of hand. Asoka the Great pre-Kalinga, or any of the medieval rulers in Europe, would have done the same, with no farce of a trial even. So one has to factor in the era, and the key element of absolute power as well. But that is not what I am interested in now.
Need for a sense of belonging: I think the real problem with Jalal, which makes him ultra sensitive when he, very rarely, gives his trust to another person, lies in the circumstances of his childhood and early youth. He was in constant danger of his life, not just from his enemies but from his own family, like the uncle who almost killed him as a child. He was on the run, in hiding, always at the mercy of others, always on edge.
This kind of life makes Jalal totally disinclined to trust others who are outside a closed circle - Bairam Khan, Mahaam Anga, Ruqaiya. It is natural and was also entirely necessary. Think of young princes in British history, the ones Richard III, their chacha, had killed in the Tower of London, think of Mary and Elizabeth I, both daughters of Henry VIII, always in terror of the chopping block or of being burnt at the stake. A potential enemy was not just likely but sure to exhibit a sweet and endearing appearance and behaviour, and Jalal had to be always on guard against treachery from even near ones outside the troika.
Jodha, cocooned in Amer and free from the cares and dangers of an empire in the making, could afford to babble about prem and vishwas being all important, and be ready to trust all and sundry. Not so Jalal.
Which is why the child is so important to him even at that age: which 22 year old today longs for a child? It would have represented an object of his unconditional love and trust, for it would have been all his in a way that no one else had been so far. It would, he would have assumed, have given him unconditional love and trust in return, and a sense of belonging as well. That is why the loss of that child, not by an act of God, but by the act of murder, affects him so badly.
This made me think back to Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind, after the death of his 5 year old daughter Bonnie. This is the same reason why Rhett then shuts himself up with her body, and will not let it be taken for burial till Melanie comes and persuades him to let go. Jalal now is in exactly the same state about his baby that never came into this world.
What a thorough study of ja ' s behaviour ...ur analysis is deep as well as understandable... How much it would be favourable if cvs had highlighted the thing in this way
Henry VIII never cared for a child per se, all he wanted was a son and heir. But Jalal wants a child, son or daughter, first, and only then an heir. He wants someone who belongs to him and to whom he can belong.
Evolving attitude: It is the same with his attitude towards Jodha.
From the time of the chess match, thru the fencing duel, Jodha rescuing Rahim, the Motibai affair, and finally with the lovely poem she writes for the Jalal-Ruqaiya baby, Jalal had come quite a distance, and on an unfamiliar road, as far as Jodha was concerned.
His attitude to her earlier , up to the immediate post marriage phase, was entirely coloured by what he had heard her say about him at the Amer jail, and by her very obvious distaste for her marriage to him, which she never made any attempt to camouflage. So his approach was shaped partly by a desire to dominate her and break her guroor, and partly by reluctant admiration for her beauty.
There was no personal element in it, for he did not know her as a person at all. And when he thought he did, as in the mirchi incident, his antagonism was only reinforced.
But soon enough, as he got to see a different facet of Jodha every other day, all of them positive and fascinating, Jalal began to slip into a phase he had never known before. It was not yet what is commonly perceived as love. It was rather admiration for her various skill sets, which overlapped with his own - at chess or at fencing - and to which he could thus relate at once.
However, it was only after the rescue of Rahim, then her use of the farman to save a lowly daasi, and even more so after the poem, which effected a quantum change in the way he perceived Jodha, that Jalal began, for perhaps the first time in his life, to trust in the unselfish goodness of another human being.
He was now suddenly sure that the Amer ki shehzaadi was special, that even if she did not care for him and even if she still hated him, she was capable for deep and genuine affection for the child which was already the closest to his heart. Everyone else who was close to him had always wanted something or the other from him, but Jodha was unselfish and undemanding, he believed, and so she was in a class apart.
Exactly
This shift in perception and feeling on his side was reflected not just in his private praise of the poem to her, but in his public praise of her gift at the jashn, and in the unprecedentedly high level of respect and regard he showed for her then.
How are thou fallen? : It was from these heights in Jalal's innermost being that Jodha fell, and fell precipitously, the same night when, after fighting the idea initially and threatening the Khwaja with dire punishment if she turned out to be wrong, Jalal succumbed to what seemed to be a cast iron case against Jodha. It was not circumstantial evidence but (concocted) physical evidence, the validity of which, in those days of no forensic or technical skills, was readily accepted even by Mansingh.
One can cite the Holy Bible about Satan: Lucifer, Son of the Morning, how art thou fallen? , which is mirrored in Jalal's anguished cry to Jodha: Tumne yeh kyon kiya? Tum itne neeche kaise gir sakti ho?
For Jalal, already reeling under the loss of his child , ripped apart inside by a grief that chokes him, this second shock must have been crippling. He saw himself now as a soft fool, who had succumbed to a hitherto unknown weakness, and had placed his trust in a devious murderess who had channeled the hatred for him into this crime, to hit him where it would hurt the most. I have noted this in my last post, but it bears repeating.
Whence his savage desire, no matter how many others are guilty, to hurt her as much as he can, to punish her not just for extinguishing his dearest hope and joy, but for having, as he sees it, trampled on the innermost recesses of his being, where no one else had ever been allowed entry. There is to be no escape route for this Jezebel, she has to pay and pay to the limit.
Right and wrong no longer count for him at this stage (they will, fairly soon, but we are not there yet). So it is pointless to talk of respect for women or for the rule of law. The law is in any case what the Shahenshah says it is.
Note that in every meeting with the Amer sextet, Jalal looks only at Jodha; the rest are irrelevant, and they are to be punished because that will hurt Jodha far more than her own punishment.
Refined cruelty: As noted earlier, by now Jalal's corrosive rage has turned into something perilously close to sadism. To borrow Couch_Potato's phrase, Jalal has reverted to his default setting, the one in which he was programmed by Bairam Khan and Maham Anga.
It was fascinating to watch him deal with the Ameris and Jodha - it was all so smooth and silken, and yet so much of an exercise in refined cruelty.
The message he deliberately has sent to Amer is in the same vein, to add that extra dose of second hand pain for all those whom Jodha cares for. It all made for unpleasant watching, but I was greatly impressed by Rajat, who delivered effortlessly. I can thus understand where Jalal is coming from, and make allowances for him after a fashion. And it helps that one was sure, even in 2013, that things would turn out all right in the end!
Jodha: puzzlingly passive:There seems to be less to analyse here: good people are usually simple, and lack shades and grey areas. In fact, she seems to me, and I repeat myself, almost like a transparent sheet of glass, which, in the correct lighting, is practically invisible. She seems to understand but little of what might well happen to her and hers in the present catastrophic situation.
Jodha too had been moving away of late from her earlier fixation with the Jalal the Jallad image of her husband, but not to any significant extent. She is not shown being pleased after his praise of her poem, or happy at the special regard and respect Jalal shows for her at the jashn.
She is passive and non-reactive, and even when Jalal's midnight eruption into her room brings home the terrible loss he has suffered, as also the danger in which she finds herself, she hardly reacts to either. Not then, and not later, except to stare at him in unflinching defiance at the Diwan-e-Khas and later at the private audience.
A plague on both your houses!: At the midnight meeting with Jalal to which the Amer quintet (plus Mansingh) is summoned, it is only Jodha who stays behind even after they are all dismissed, and stands up to their tormentor.
I perked up then, hoping for some lucid argument from her in defence of herself and her brothers, and there are strong arguments that can be made. But all she does is to be defiantly protective of her father, asserting that if he were to trouble her Bapusa, Hum nahin sahenge! The illogicality of this assertion when they are all held incommunicado does not seem to strike her at all.
She rounds this off by asking Jalal, in desperation, exactly as she had asked Maham during the Motibai-Adham crisis, the one question she should never have asked : Yeh karke aapko kya milega? I could have predicted his response: a long drawn out, sneeringSuko...on!
As for Jalal, he sounds, as usual, mindlessly aggressive, rejoicing in her evident distress. One despairs of both of them, and is strongly tempted to say A plague on both your houses!😡
Her default setting: One can only conclude that like Jalal, Jodha too has automatically reverted to her default setting, of hatred and contempt for Jalal the Jallad. This shuts out any possibility of her trying to understand why the man who smiled at her the previous evening with such unclouded warmth was now like a snarling wild beast, intent on destroying her and hers root and branch. And then adjusting her response accordingly.
😆 😆...default setting
Jodha now presents a strange image of unyielding courage on the one hand, and on the other, a total lack of all that an intelligent, enquiring mind would proceed to do in such a situation. She is not even shown speculating, to herself, about who the real culprit might be; the contrast with Mansingh is very sharp.
Jodha, aap bhi? : I can only reiterate that I am dismayed by and disappointed in this totally passive young woman. This is not some silly, giggling royal wench like Sukanya. This is Jodha, with the brains of a chess grandmaster and the acuity of mind of a fine duellist. What has happened to all that? She has always been a fighter - she fought relentlessly for Motibai and barged in anywhere at all without the least hesitation. Why is she now drifting with the tide? Why has all the fight gone out of her now?
At the late night meeting with Jalal, both Jodha and the Amer quartet stand around like dummies.What can an already vengeful Jalal conclude from that, except that they do not even have the conviction to protest their innocence? That he bars them from speaking out should hardly have weighed with Jodha, any more than it weighed with young Mansingh.
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
In Jodha's place, I would have looked Jalal calmly in the eye, and said: Shahenshah, hum Amer ki beti hain, aur hamare yahan jalne se nahin darte. Hamari jauhar pratha mein aur is mein koyi antar nahin hoga.
Par humein aapki chinta hai, Shahenshah. Hamari mrityu be paschaat, ek din, aapko gyaat hoga ki aap galat the aur hum sab nirdosh the. Us din ke paschaat, aap ko kabhi chain ki nidra nahin aayegi.
That would be it, and he would have been halted in his tracks and forced to think. But she does no such thing. I think she is expecting Kanha to turn up to save her a la Draupadi. But she forgets that this is thekaliyuga!
The immediate future: We know that Jodha will emerge not just unscathed but with a bright 24 carat halo around her pretty head . We also know that the respective default settings of Jalal and Jodha will be readjusted to match each other when they eventually fall in love.
Pending that, as for her forgiving Jalal for all his present excesses, if he was smart enough, which I much doubt😉, he would have simply said to her: I was so furious with you because I felt betrayed by you. And I felt betrayed by you because I had begun to admire you, respect you, and most important of all, trust you. Achche khaase Shahenshah ka tumne kya haal bana diya, Jodha! Jo bhi maine kiya, wo sab tumhara hi kasoor hai!
She would have caved in and forgiven him, because we women, all of us, are suckers for the idea that we have tamed a headstrong, rough and tough man and made him our own. 😉
Meanwhile, folks, it is best not to fret about all this, and instead to try and appreciate Rajat's convincing takes on a vengeful Jalal (when he is not bunching up his nose, that is!), and tell oneself ,when it is particularly off putting, This too shall pass! In my take on the next episode, I have tried to help this process along, and actively. So let us make haste and move on to that!
Episode 60: A change of perspective
After doing my Wuthering Depths dissertation' on Jalal's psyche and all the rest, I sat thru episode 60.
I watched the Grand Confrontation between Jalal and Jodha when he lands up in her rooms to inform her about his Sujanpur expedition. Though it would be stretching the meaning of the word to breaking point to call it that. It was grand all right, as Jalal raged in a bass timbre and Jodha wept and pleaded. Emotions ran riot , mostly vengeful and sadistic glee on his side and helpless despair on hers, for she seemed too broken to even feel any anger.
It was quite an exercise in emoting, especially the one time when Jalal's anguish surfaces, raw as ever, from under the deliberate fury. Tumne yeh kyon kiya, Jodha? That Why? Why? Why? is still haunting him, and that, as I wrote earlier, is a hurt as deep as the death of his child. To hide that hurt, the pitch of his anger has to be raised each time, and stoked afresh to white hot rage.
Morever, in spite of all this, somewhere deep inside, Jalal seems to still hope that there will be some way to restore his trust in Jodha, and this feeling fights for domination with the savage hostility he feels towards her specifically.
Thus, even as he taunts and threatens her by turns, there is no Jodha Begum, but only a long drawn outJodhaaa... with a curious underlying note that caresses the name even as he utters it. Just like his finger, delicately picking a tear drop off her cheek, in a gesture that could, under different circumstances, have been that of a lover consoling his beloved.
But as for the rest, I could not recognize this Jodha at all, and as for Jalal, I felt I had got on to a time machine and been suddenly transported back to Episode 1 & 2 (which had nearly driven me away altogether. What a loss that would have been for me, and what a piece of luck for you, my dear, long-suffering readers!😉😉 ).
By episode end, I felt weary and worn out. I suppose that is what the CVs must have aimed at, and it irritated me that I had duly obliged them.
The kaleidoscope trick!: Then, I chanced upon a kaleidoscope, and after shaking it and looking at the changed patterns a couple of times, I rewatched episode 60. Lo and behold! I was gurgling with laughter almost right thru.
For it is all a question of perspective. If you looked for the ridiculous, you could find it in abundance yesternight, masquerading as high emotion!
First, Jalal. Poor Rajat must , after so many close ups of him snarling at his begum from about six inches away, with all the ferocity of a Siberian tiger and all the assiduity of a model showing off his batteesi in a toothpaste ad, have felt like a prime candidate for lockjaw 😉 .
His lines about giving her maut ke baddthar zindagi and itni takleef doonga ki maut bhi sasti lagegi were exactly the same as those of the accusation scene in her bedroom the other day, the boudoir scene when he breaks her bangles... you can stretch the list at will.
Rajat looks as if he could recite the lines in his sleep, and he was, in effect, sleepwalking thru the whole scene: he must by now have got every sneering, terrifying smile, lips drawn back in false merriment, every hate-filled look in the over-bright, narrowed eyes , down pat thru constant repetition.
The problem is that we have got them down pat as well, and they seem dismally familiar or familiarly dismal, or both😉.
The silken menace behind Jalal's faux reasonable argument to Bharmal for the attack on Sujanpur was, well, silken, but one can have too much of a good thing. Besides, having to repeatedly watch that array of wooden Amer princes, faces set in eternal blankness whether they are being informed that they are going to be barbecued in public or to be despatched to a battle😉 , strains one's patience.
Next Jodha. Our fiery Amazon-cum -chess grandmaster has been transmuted overnight into a weak, whimpering watering pot (Aha! Neat alliteration, that!😉) . The Jhansi ki Rani (with apologies for the anachronism ) has turned into a Niobe, drowning herself, and us, in a flood of tears. Paridhi must have been wondering about when the studio supply of glycerine would run out, leaving her to fend for herself.😉
She must also have contemplated the possibility - a very faint one, of course! - of suing Balaji for inflicting on her the cruel and unusual punishment of constantly having to mouth lines that would win a Razzie for the Most Inane Dialogue any day😉 .
As Jalal promises her that Tum gidgidaogi, maut ki bheek mangogi, and parrots other equally ridiculous lines, Jodha looks at him with large tear-filled eyes in an utterly woebegone face, and pleads that only she should be punished, even with death, and not her family, as he chortles with glee.
When I was not laughing at this throwback to the worst of the villain's den scenes in the 1970s films, I felt like shaking Jodha till her teeth rattled, and hitting Jalal with something nice and hard, like a belan.
Jodha rebooted: As an antidote to the stuff onscreen, I thought up new lines for the old Jodha. She is in a terrible fix, true, but the last thing she should do now is to show Jalal any weakness or fear, and the old Jodha would have known that instinctively.
She would have retorted: Kitne baar ek hi vaakya ko dohrayenge aap, Shahenshah? Kuch toh naya sochiye! Main yahi vishay sunsunke thak gayi hoon.
Aur aap to mujhe sab ke saamne jalane waale the? Uska kya hua? Agra mein lakdi ka aabhav to nahin ho gaya hai? Hum aapke ke liye Amer se lakdi mangwa dein?
Or, when he refers to her father not having been executed or imprisoned, but instead suffering even in the lap of luxury because of what his children were being subjected to, Jodha could well have attempted a snappy comeback:
Toh aapne hamare Babasa to kaal kotri mein nahin daala? . Kyon nahin kiya aapne, Shahenshah? Hum to yeh soch kar prasanna ho rahe the ki agar aap aise karte, aur unhe kuch din daal roti par rakhte, to unki sehat ke liye kitna achcha hota! Maasa kitne hi varshon se nakaam prayas kar rahi hain unka vazan ghatane ka, aur yahan aapke prayas se ho hi jaata!
And right at the beginning, as he stomps in with a predictable Tum jaanti ho ki hamein sabse zyaada sukoon kis se aata hai? Dushman ki aankhon me aansoo dekh kar, she might well have tucked a paan casually into her mouth, with the comment: Waise to hamein Amer ke pakhwan hi bhaate hain, apitu Shahenshah, aapke Agra ke paan to atyant swadisht hain, adding, Aap kuch keh rahe the? , while raising her big dark, tear free eyes to his.
I can bet anything that looking down into their depths, Jalal would have lost all sense of where he was and what he had wanted to do!😉
Finally, when her patidev was still raging at her in the tightest of close ups, and promising her a fate worse than death, the old Jodha would have enquired, while regarding him with an expression of polite interest:
Achcha, hum bhi to sunein, kya naya socha hai aapne abhi? Ab tak to hum aapki soch ki durbalta se atyant niraash huye hein, Shahenshah! Ab to prateet hota hai, ki hamein hi aapke liye kuch sochke, aapko likhke de dena chahiye. Aap padh lijiye ga. Agli baar kaam aayega.
That would have sent him out hotfoot, unwilling to confess that he would not be able to read her draft for him!😉
This whole was exceptional aunty hilariously wov...i will express it in Randheer kapoor style SUPERB SUPERB MAZA AGAYA MAZA AGAYA ...😆😃
Then it would be more interesting to see that how he would tame his junglee billi
Uff!! Yeh aurat!: Instead, this changeling of a Jodha says Yeh uchit nahin hai, in a quavering treble.
Uchit?!? No wonder I almost collapsed in giggles. It reminded me of her old, equally ROFL mantra Aapko yeh karne ka adhikar nahin hai, when he was breaking her bangles and threatening worse. Or alternatively, her other favourite line, Aap aise bal prayog nahi kar sakte! , like someone trying to halt a bulldozer by waving the Traffic Rule booklet at it😉.
Worse. when Jalal accuses her, for the umpteenth time, of the murder, this Jodha seems suddenly possessed by the unquiet spirit of a 16th century kaala coat( lawyer). For instead of shouting as loudly as she can, Maine yeh ghinouna aparadh NAHIN kiya hai! NAHIN! NAHIN! NAHIN!, what does she do?
She offers a convoluted legal argument aboutinnocent until proved guilty. And then she offers herself as the sole object for his vengeance, par aap meri behen ke saath aisa kyon kar rahe hain? Will this woman never learn?😡
All in all, it was a most unintentionally comical display, and I am pretty sure the unfortunate actors felt the same. They of course get paid for giving us a headache. We simply get the headache!😡
A frantic Maham: The comedy track does not end with Jalal stalking off, having run out of even stale threats. It continues with Maham Anga pretending to do a Miss Marple in the harem. She is undoubtedly rattled by Ruqaiya Begum's pointed silence when Maham remarks that she too is in the shaque ka daayra.
Maham is in fact entirely unlike her usual commanding, controlled self, behaving like a headless chicken, slapping a baandi and roaring at all and sundry, including Resham . The way in which she goes about looking for a pukhta saboot, by rifling thru the contents of a chest in the same disorderly and violent manner in which Amitabh Bachchan used to search for documents in his 1970s-80s superhits😉, seems guaranteed to destroy any such saboot as might have been there. The underlying note of panic is crystal clear. The redoubtable Maham Anga is afraid.
Chor ki dadhi me tinka 😉
The other curious point is that both Ruqaiya and Maham specifically mention the possibility of Jodha being innocent. What each makes of this remains to be seen.
Well, to cut a long story short, while the changeling Jodha got on my nerves big time, and Jalal only a wee bit less, I found that seeing the high pitched proceedings from a comic track angle did help. At the end of the rewatching, I felt almost lighthearted, and ready to face the profusion of OTT stuff sure to hit us all come Monday. One has to survive from day to day, it is pointless to think too far ahead.
Questions of the day:
1) The complainants at the Diwan-e-Aam say they come from Paronkh, a village in Rajputana, right inside the border of the Mughal empire. The old man's son was murdered the day before, and he saysuse abhi kandha dekar aa raha hoon! How then did the whole lot of them get to Agra the next day? They did not look as if they could afford a relay of horses. Did they apparate in a la Harry Potter?
2) The Shahenshah is supposed to be doing thetafteesh into the poisoning case over the next 10 days (the beginning of these 10 days seems indefinite; they have all been talking of 10 days for the last 3 days at least) . Instead he is now haring off to Sujanpur at the head of an army. What happens to the tafteesh?
3) Since when does the Shahenshah have to go personally to fight a jung with a bunch of dacoits and the errant rulers of a tiny riyasat? Why not send one of his generals with the Ameris? Seeing what actually happened at the so-called Battle of Sujanpur, that might have been a blessing in disguise!
Whew! I feel tired after getting this done. I can imagine that you, my dear readers, will feel even more tired by the time you get to this point!😉
Ok, folks, bye for now, till Thursday or the Monday following, depending on when my laptop goes for its delayed repair.
Shyamala/Aunty/Akka/Di 
Indian Idol 15
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