Originally posted by: sashashyam
Folks,
Shubhchintak??:@@@@@
Then she adds something very curious. That Jalal does not realise that those close to him are there only because wo shaktishaali hain (I said to myself - Atta girl!) and worse, Kyon wo un logon ki nahin sunte jo unke shubhchintak hain? To wit, herself.
So it appears that Jodha has not only given up wanting Jalal's sar but, even with the abundance of ghrina that she claims to still have for him, she is a self-professed shubhchintak of Jalal's! Now this is something for the record books, though Jodha does not seem to have realized that she is contradicting herself blatantly.
@@@@@ Here Jodha probably thinks about the good intention with which she wrote her poem in which she whole heartedly blesses the unborn baby. So she wonders why Jalal did not believe or have confidence in her, even after she was proved not guilty.
The pity of it is that this momentous revelation is not known to Jalal, who, not surprisingly, is still operating from the premise that she wants to get back at him for the humilation she and her family has suffered, by mujhe apne hi nazaron me giraakar, ie by the accusation against his Badiammi.
To revert, Jodha has no plausible answer to Motibai's valid question as to why, if she hates Jalal so much, she keeps thinking about his loss and about him, and why she cannot leave the matter alone for him to handle. So Moti is, along with us, treated to the same old spiel about why Jodha is so angry with this vivekheen purush that she has had the misfortune to marry, and a reiteration of her determination to keep plugging away at her recalcitrant patidev still he is forced to believe in Maham's guilt.
Not for nothing do I always say that our Odd Couple are each exactly like the other above all in their bullheaded stubbornness!😉
Perhaps, who knows, their horoscopes might have perfectly matched with respect to all the 18 requirements!
5) Jodha-Jalal- Rahim : A grand fiasco!
By now, this has started bordering on comedy, rather like a Pat and Mike or Santa and Banta cross talk act😉😉.
Jodha turns up like the proverbial bad penny in Jalal's rooms, reinforced with a fresh determination: Is baar Shahenshah ke saamne sakhsya lekar jaayenge.
He goes into his predictable spiel about Aapko iski kadi sazaa milegi if she accuses Maham again, to which she responds by trotting out her humein dandh se koyi bhay nahin hain mantra, , and jo baat kehni hai wo kehte rahenge!
In the supposed absence of scriptwriters at that time, I guess the actors were asked to deliver the lines that they had repeated often and knew by heart!
Adding for good measure that he does not know anything but to hand out dandh to nyaay-seekers ( Jodha, apparently, does not believe even her BFF Salima about the release of the little Hindu boy's parents, as that would have spoiled her idee fixe about Jalal, nor has she, characteristically, checked up on it)
When Jalal warns that her good fortune in being saved twice (once by Ruqaiya and once by Maham) is unlikely to last, she comes back with another snappy one liner : Bhagya ki chinta kaayar karte hain, jo hum hain nahin. In his place, I would have retorted Kaayar to nahin, par aap dheeth zaroor hain!, but Jalal is not known for sharp repartee, alas!
Jodha's clear eyed retorts to Jalal's huffing and puffing are a delight to behold. By now, his threats affect her as little as the water that runs off a duck's back. When he is warning her about, if I am not mistaken, Jalal ka qahar, she looks at him with the detached interest of an entomologist looking at an unusual specimen thru a magnifying glass😉.
The sakshya that wasn't:So on to the promised sakshya ( I often wonder about how well Jalal/Jodha each understands what the other says, for their lingo is as far apart as can be. This must have been a contributory factor to their perennial mutual misunderstandings!), little Rahim.
Unfortunately, Rahim lands up just as Jalal is snarling at Jodha that in the Mughal regime, the guilty are not spared, even if they are relatives. The child is, unsurprisingly, petrified with fear, especially when Jalal asks him point blank whether he took the dibbi. He does not mean to frighten Rahim, whom he loves dearly, but the tone of his voice is a carry over from what he was barking at Jodha, and it must, unfortunately for Jodha, have dried up anything Rahim might have been intending to say.
He can only blurt out, his eyes huge in his tense little face: Maine nahin churayi! Hum chor nahin hain! Humein sazaa mat dena!
So, despite Jodha's coaxing, and later her leading questions to Rahim: Tumhein wo dibbi kahan se mili? Kaun tha wahan par? And the most ill-advised of all, Kaun us mein se dature ka ark daal raha tha? Bataayiye!, the whole exercise ends in a fiasco.
Jalal, unsurprisingly, snaps at Jodha: Use behakane ki koshish mat kijiye! Hum us se bat kar rahe hain nai?, before turning to Rahim: Kya tumne yeh dibbi li thi?
That does it. As Rahim simply reasserts the one point relevant for him: Humne nahin churayi! and adds for good measure: Hum Chotiammi se baat nahin karenge! Chotiammi buri hain!, before bolting from the scene, Jodha's discomfiture is complete.
Still unbowed: But I was impressed by Jodha's making a recover even after this comprehensive collapse of her hopes. She knows that she is in the right, and she will not let anything, not even such a major setback, stymie her.
So, she does not let either Jalal's sarcasm: To yeh tha aapka gawah?, or his accusations that she had put pressure on a 4 year old to get him to tell lies to implicate Maham Anga, that too about things like the dature ka ark of which the child would know nothing, get her down. Not even when her assertion, Sach to sach hota hai, Shahenshah, chahe use bade kahein ya koyi bachcha!, is capped by Jalal's clever quip: Sach to wo bachcha keh kar gaya, ki aap buri hain!Wo bhaga aapki makkari dekh kar, Jodha Begum!
Instead, she declares, with unimpaired self-confidence: Bhool to hamari hai, hum aise vyakti ko ujala dikhane ki koshish kar rahe hain jisne apni aankhon par andha vishwas ki patti baandh rakhi hai.
Then comes the punch line worthy of her Kanha himself : Sachchai jaan ne ke liye, apne saare sambhandhon aur moh ko swayam se door rakhna padta hai. Aur jab tak aap aise nahin karenge, aap kabhi bhi sachchai tak nahin pahunch paayenge!
If Jalal did not want to accept Jodha's charge against MA, even after she brought before him the sakshi, he could have gone to Salima's hojra and talked to Rahim later and got clarified .
Theory and practice!: It is another matter that Jodha - who routinely issues blank cheques to all her sage sambandhi ( I including Ratan Singh simply because he was to join her family!) , who keeps saying that the Ameris were accused akaaran, disregarding the whopping sakshya that the ark was in their kesar, and insists that they should be believed because her family is above suspicion- herself consistently disregards her own lofty maxim in practice!
Weary resignation: This was all mild, relatively speaking, for a Jodha-Jalal encounter, and contrary to one's entirely understandable expectations, the Agra palace roof was not shaken by any fresh explosion of Jalal ka qahar. Clearly, Jalal had decided to spare his vocal chords, and had also realized - der aaye durust aaye - that there was nothing to be done with this Amer ki mirchi but to disregard her buzzing around like a persistent mosquito.
We were then treated to the equally unfamiliar sight of Jalal wondering, once he had got rid of his persistent spouse: Pata nahin Jodha Begum Badiammi ke peeche kyon padi hui hain?, with the trademark puzzlement of the male of the species confronted with the inexplicable ways of women. There was a surprising degree of normalcy, so to speak, about that wry comment, very typical of a harried husband with a stubborn wife. Rage and frustration seemed to have given way to weary resignation!😉
Typical modern day husband caught between the mother and the wife!
6) Jalal-Bhamal & the farewell scene: Saving face:
Jalal does himself proud throughout this longish scene. Setting aside his cares of state - Minister Shamsuddin has a whole laundry list of problems for him about disaffection in various parts of the empire - Jalal still receives his father in law promptly and with respect.
In his scene with Bharmal, Jalal shows that he is that rara avis, an emperor who has the humility, the candour and the good sense to openly acknowledge his mistake, accept a reproof from his father-in-law, request him not to take it personally but as something due to reasons of state, actually seek his advice, and promise to take it in good part and not to repeat his mistake.
I cannot think of any other monarch as powerful as he is who would do even a fraction as much, capping it by going to see Bharmal off at the gates of Agra Fort. He does not let his imperial ego stand in the way of his desire to make amends for the wrong he has done, and that is both admirable in itself and very rare, both in his era or in any other.
Pompous pronouncements: Bharmal, worried about his family's reputation, goes into a spiel about choti and badi patthar ki lakeer, and his desire that Jalal should go down in history as a just king by repairing the injustice done to his innocent children by a greater act of justice. I could not make head or tail of what he was proposing, nor, I suspect, could Jalal. Nor, come to think of it, could Bharmal himself, though he was carrying on as if he was the direct descendant of Manu the Lawgiver himself. 😉
Jalal of course does not remind him of his folly in contracting an alliance for Sukanya with a bandit masquerading as a prince. Nor does he point out that while Jodha and her brothers might have turned out to be innocent in the end, the evidence against them was so strong that their being held under nazarband was not a whim but natural for so serious a crime.
Listening silently to Bharmal's vainglorious pronouncements that he could have taken out his sword and stood against Jalal - we all remember what happened the last time Amer stood against Sharifuddin😉, and also why Bharmal effectively forced Jodha into this marriage - Jalal does not permit himself even the smallest of knowing smiles. In his place, I would have smiled overtly, so incredibly foolish did it sound.
Instead, his eyes lowered half the time in overt awkwardness, Jalal nonetheless looks Bharmal full in the face, and without openly apologizing for his mistake (which an emperor cannot, any more than a government does these days when it eventually releases the wrong murder suspect) , he does everything just short of that.
Rajat is superb throughout this scene, with every fleeting nuance crossing his face reflecting the varying emotions he feels.
We should take this scene as a prelude to Jalal's effort in fixing Sukanya's wedding with Dabalgarh(?) prince.
Incomprehensible humility: I was left puzzled as to why Jalal goes so far and bends so much to placate Bharmal. That he was in the wrong means nothing; powerful kings do not even acknowledge their mistakes, not to speak of showing their regret and their desire to make amends. They would see any of this as a sign of weakness, to be avoided at all costs.
Even when Bharmal says, when bidding farewell and in response to Jalal's (quite unnecessarily) wanting to extend the hospitality of Agra to him once again, that he hopes that Amer will always be able to stand with Agra, there is not even a flash of anger at such impertinence from the king of a tiny principality that Adham or Sharifuddin, given a free hand, could flatten in three days. Is it that Jalal is so weighed down by regret, or is it that he does not want his experiment with the Rajputs to fail prematurely?
Probably both, with the Jodha factor as a supplementary tadka, but even so, the depth of his evident desire to make amends was surprising.
All the more so when Bharmal too talks only of restoring the lost reputation of Amer and does not say a word about the tragic loss of the emperor's child. Plus, both he and his daughter seem to have a fancy for the word vivekheen, and Bharmal uses it to Jalal's face. No other emperor, or even a plain son in law, would have stood for it. Most would have reacted harshly, which would have been no more than Bharmal deserved.
This is India in the 16th century and the son in law is the most powerful ruler in the land, while the father in law is the ruler - by the grace of the son in law- of a small tin pot principality, basically because he wanted to marry the daughter. What would their equation be like, and this no matter WHAT the son in law had done?
Bending too far: The way they have shown Jalal behaving is highly unrealistic. Like governments these days, sons in law then NEVER said sorry for anything, never expressed regret, and the fathers in law were subdued and accommodating. That was the situation.
It was foolish of Jalal to give anyone so much bhav. Itna bhi kisi jo sar par nahin chadhana chahiye. No wonder Bharmal goes on an on preaching at him.
If Jalal had informed him, calmly but clearl: Look, the evidence against your children was such as to convince anyone. So I had to incarcerate them but even then I did not imprison them, and I personally conducted the investigation and exculpated them in the full court. You have to remember that this was a capital crime.As for your prospective son in law, I am surprised that you chose such a thug for Sukanya, no matter what the problems. I will try and find an excellent husband for her very soon. Goodbye!, it would have been both fair and sensible.
It would also have been befitting the dignity and status on the Shahenshah-e-Hind. As I have said above, it is not at all credible for an emperor to bend so much, whatever wrong he might have done. Think of Louis XIV of France or Henry VIII of England or even his far less choleric daughter, Elizabeth I. None of them would have tolerated any such lecture from an outsider, which is what Bharmal is. He would have found himself, in short order, in the Bastille of the Tower of London.
Hamida-Bharmal jugalbandi: The prolonged love feast between Bharmal and the predictably gushing Hamida Banu during the farewell was enough to set even the most tolerant king's teeth on edge -especially when Bharmal talks of feeling at ease in Amer because Jodha has her as support in Agra. Any average son-in-law, especially a Rajput king, would have reacted sharply and said something cutting in reply. But not our Jalal.
Though he is clearly far from pleased, either with Bharmal or with his Ammijaan, and no wonder. His reaction showed his mounting exasperation at what is, given the circumstances, a veiled insult to himself. His adaab after that to Bharmal is very curt, and he leaves as soon as the latter has left, without even waiting for his Ammijaan.
It is probably the accumulated exasperation of these passages with Bharmal and Hamida that primes Jalal for a near explosion when Jodha and Maham Anga land on him, and Maham's operatic aria is played out with full force.
I used to wonder how the ladies talk and cry at the same time.
Questions & contradictions:
1)How is it that the CVs do not even seem to have noted the clear contradiction between the chortling now between Maham and Resham about the the earlier miscarriages of Jalal's other expectant begums, courtesy Resham, and Maham's earlier assertion, to the selfsame Resham, that she could never, whatever her hatred of Ruqaiya, have plotted to kill the child of her beta Jalal? The notes about that earlier episode had clearly been lost!
NB: Maham is now plain awful, and as the only reason for her having bumped off all the earlier babies can be that she does not want Jalal to have an heir, I am forced to believe what I could never believe of an intelligent woman like Maham: that she can be demented enough to think that Adham can somehow be made the emperor.This makes me think even worse of her; a clever villain is one thing, no matter how depraved, but an unbelievably stupid one is insufferable.
In this context, it is good that the Rahim factor has been brought out into the open, for if Maham had cottoned on to him earlier, she would surely have dis posed of him and made it look like an accident, perhaps by drowning him in one of those water bodies.
But all said and done, I think Maham's resentment has to do more with her being, when the chips are down, only a daayima, not a begum, not to having had to neglect Adham to care for Jalal.. Which is why she is so rude and overbearing to the daasis, and very bigoted towards the Hindu ones. The latter is because she resents having been a hunted refugee in Rajput palaces, in Umarkot and in Madhya Pradesh.
2) During their family consultations, when Bhagwan Das is persuading Bharmal to leave for Amer, Mansingh, while praising his buasa, notes that Shahenshah ne na jaane kitni baar unpar krodh kiya, lekin unhon ne uska datkar saamna kiya. Wo dari nahin. How does he know that? Jalal's threats to Jodha were all delivered in private.
3) Jalal to Ruqaiya: Hamare pas dil to hai nahin, lekin unhon ne (Jodha ne) us par nishana lagaya hai jo hamare dil ke sab se kareeb hain. (?!?)
Ok, folks, this is it for now. Bye till Sunday next!Thank you!
Shyamala/Aunty/Akka/Di
Ghum Hai Kisikey Pyaar Meiin
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