Folks,
The title comes from the two strands of the narrative in this triptych, one of which, centred on Mainavati's lecture to Jodha in the Diwan-e-Khas, brought some clarity: to Jodha as regards her situation, and to Jalal as well, that sending the Amer ki mirchi back to Amer was not going to be as simple as he had thought, especially for him. The other strand led thru Jodha's attempted suicide and its aftermath, and left them both, and Jalal in particular, confused as to their feelings, both per se and of each towards the other. Their forthcoming joint pilgrimage to Ajmer Sharif, which neither wanted, was an added complication.
I am fully aware that to Preeti, and a whole lot of others, nothing matters but that splendid ride back together😉, but there are other things besides that, so let us plough thru them, beginning with episode 76.
Episode 76: Realism at long last
Our favourite melodrama was seriously dramatic here . I do not propose to recount the happenings except as reference points, but rather to set out a few reflections on what these goings on mean - on the surface and on the subterranean plane - and about how they lead to my title.
Mainavati: I always knew this was what she would say, and she is brutally frank about it - Tumhare man mein yeh ichcha aayee bhi to kaise?... Pati patni ke beech anban hoti hai, par uska yeh arth nahin ki tum apne maike laut jao. Tumhein apne pati ko samajhne ki aavashyakta hai, unhein badalen ki aavashyakta hai (here comes the dratted haivaan se insaan mantra again!). Har sawaal ka hal hota hai, Jodha, aur tumhein wo hal dhoodna hoga. .. And then the clincher. Jab beti parityakta ke roop mein wapas aaye, to hum wo rah bandh kar dete hain.
What Mainavati tells Jodha in the court are her real reasons, not the sugar coating she puts on it while talking later to Hamida Banu. And who shall blame her? That is the code by which a Rajput girl in that era was taught to live, and this all the more so when she was a princess, and now a queen. Frankly, I was very skeptical when Jodha was assuring Jalal that despite the disgrace they would face, her parents would take her back and try their best to keep her happy. It sounded remarkably like someone whistling in the dark to keep her spirits up and fear at bay.
There was speculation in the forum, in 2013, that her family would feel morally bound to take her back as they had emotionally blackmailed her into this marriage. This was missing the whole point: that it was, in their code, Jodha's duty to obey her parents and make this sacrifice willingly. In the normal course, she would never have been asked, only told to do it.
Over and above all this, I was very pleased when someone, and it was perfect that this someone was her own shocked and embarrassed mother, informed Jodha bluntly that, as my favourite Vicki (Morons ki Mallika) put it back in 2013, Marriage is not a joke, and it is not a boxing rink either . Marriages are not sliding and revolving doors that you can walk in and walk out of at your whim and fancy. Which is why she asks Jodha: Did you actually work at all on this marriage?
Anachronistic script: The fact is that the CVs' treatment of the pre-marriage shenanigans by Jodha was very unrealistic for that age, and seemed like a concession to modern feminist sentiment more than anything else. It was the same as regards what followed the marriage, in terms of Jodha's endless, acidulated confrontations with her patidev. If she had uttered a fraction of the things she tells Jalal to Maharana Udai Singh of Mewar, for example, she would have been jailed and/or banished. The patnidharma for Maharanis those days was crystal clear - they had to obey their royal spouses unquestioningly in all things - and the Maasas would have drilled their daughters in it from the time they were 3.
Now, at long last, like two slightly oblique lines intersecting far down their length, a dose of realism has come to Jodha Akbar, whence the title for this episode. Never fear, it is not going to make things more logical or sensible! This is merely a reasonably plausible plot device to justify the suicide attempt, and once that is past, we will revert to the earlier pattern of a 21st century female plonked into Jalal's harem as a reluctant spouse.
In 2013, I was mildly pleased with the success of my prediction that a refusal letter from Bharmal to Jalal might be the trigger for Jodha opting for a watery grave a la Ophelia, but of course far more turbulently, as is her wont. Instead of Bharmal, it was Mainavati, but the principle was the same!
Jodha: A one track mind:I am not about to explore the ethics of suicide or suicide attempts, or to anguish over Jodha in her misery, for there are others enough to do that. Besides, the CVs have, for once, got it right. They have built the walls of the cul de sac high enough and narrow enough so that Jodha cannot even breathe.
For hers is a one track mind, and the track so far has been that she has the worst husband in the whole world. So she lashes out at him time and again, like a furious kitten out to draw blood. She was never one for introspection re: her own actions and their repercussions, in a purely practical fashion, about whether a shift in her ways of thinking might help her. The escapism of suicide is the inevitable result of such a state of mind.
So I was not in the least surprised by Jodha's despairing tears once she is back from the Diwan-e-Khas session, and her boiler plate accusations against the Shahenshah. She has so far never made the slightest commitment to this marriage, and one does not expect the public prosecutor- which is her self-assigned role - to suddenly start looking at things from the POV of counsel for the defence. No, there was nothing new there.
Still, some of what the Yellow Jodha says, in her first response to the Green Jodha, was interesting. Na humein Amer ka chhoda na humein Agra mein apnaya. So all that Hamida and Salima have done to make her feel at home in Agra counts for nothing; all that matters to apni Jodha is that Jalal ne use Agra mein nahin apnaya. Of course she does not spare a thought for whether she had accepted him!
Then the accusations that he did not live up to his vachans, ki wo humein prasanna rakhenge, hamare vishwas karenge, hamara sammaan karenge. It is clearly Jalal's lack of vishwas in her during the dature ka ark affair that rankles the most. Whence her outburst to him then: Humne bar bar saugandh khayi ki hum nirdosh hain, humne kuchch nahin kiya, par aapne hamari ek nahi suni. Ab Ruqaiya Begum ne kaha ki koyi aur gunehgar hai aur aap maan gaye?
The Green Jodha: A refreshing alter ego: To revert, what was new was the blanket condemnation of her whole approach to Jalal by her alter ego, the Green Jodha (neat and telling choice of colour; remember Jalal's Humein hara rang khaas pasand hai. Use pehene rahiye).
It was as brutally frank as what Mainavati had said in the court : Prarambh tumne kiya! Tum ghrina lekar aayi thi apne man mein. Tumne kabhi unhein nahin apnaya.Unhon ne tumhari har baat maani - and here she covers even the latest permission to celebrate Holi - phir bhi tum Shahenshah ke baare mein aise sochti ho? Phir to tumhein sach mein yahan rehne ka koyi adhikar nahin hai! .. Then the most telling and pointed jibe of all: Baar baar vidroh karke apn aapko aur doosron ko dukhi karna bandh karo, aur Amer laut jao!
But the Yellow Jodha's idea of a tolerable life in Agra is to carry on as before, boycotting Jalal and any overtures he might make, overlooking anything positive he might do, and making sarcastic remarks to him whenever the opportunity, public or private, presented itself, while basking in lovefests with his Ammijaan. Whence her current complaint that Shahenshah chahte hain ki hum Agra chhod dein, which is far from the truth.
When Jalal offered her his 2 choices, he pulled the plug on this convenient scenario from the Agra end. Now her Maasa has done the same from the Amer end. It was only to be expected that Jodha would outdo Niobe in the tears department.
Crisis & course correction: The point to be kept in mind is that so far, Jodha has been presented only as the spunky, independent Rajputani standing up to an oppressive and unfair husband. Now this is not really correct, for she had brought a lot of negatives to this relationship, beginning with her eternal ghrina mantra, plus she never tried, honestly, to make it work.
As even my very dear Vicki, who loved Jodha dearly, wrote eloquently back in 2013:
"Aaina mujhse meri pehli si soorat maange,
Mere apne meri hone ki nishaani maange."
Well, sometimes, you just have to see the mirror. Or even if you don't want to see it , the people standing in the mirror shove some harsh home truths right down your throat - even if you are unwilling to see them or hear them. Mirrors that tell you that wherever you are today may be fate's decision, but what you have made out of it is entirely your handiwork.
Jodha's fault has not been her pride and prejudice, if you come to think of it. Her fault has been expectation of rights without putting responsibility and duty adjacent to them. I mean, today, when she talks about being abandoned by Jalal or not being wanted by him... you recall that child in a candyshop who wanted all the candies but did not know that he had to pay for them." No one else could have put it better!
Jodha wanted the status quo to continue till the end of her days. But if this were to happen, firstly, we would, one by one, drop out of sheer fatigue at the endless and meaningless fights between them, and secondly, why would Jalal, or any husband for that matter, put up with such a state of affairs from which he gets nothing except periodic dressings down from his own wife, including in public? And in the 16th century at that!
So, there has to a course correction, and for this to happen, two things are essential.
One, a reassessment by Jodha, the first ever, of where she has gone wrong, whence the Green Jodha, so that it is not an outsider, but a part of herself who holds a mirror up to the Yellow Jodha. The latter has not yet used that to work out a sensible way out of her present predicament, but still this will have its uses when the time for that comes.
Two, a crisis situation which drastically rearranges the outlook of each towards the other. Whence the pool dunking to begin with, and then Mohan in the offing. Cinematic, true, but always effective!
Unexpected, ruthless logic: Whence the unexpected clarity and ruthless logic of the Green Jodha, which took me by surprise. And since she was only a partial manifestation of Jodha's inner voice, we arrive at the momentous discovery that Jodha had been feeling all this, at some subterranean level, of late, but suppressing these inconvenient truths and clinging for dear life to the Yellow Jodha.
I had, during these early parts of Jodha Akbar, been wondering about the total absence of scenes showing Jodha talking to herself, which would have given us clues about the inner workings of her mind. Here, we got it in spades, and with a solid dash of realism too!
So there is hope for our Amer ki Mirchi yet, and though her sudden embrace of Varunadev might seem OTT, it was really the best thing she could have done at this stage in terms of clearing the air with Jalal, preparatory for a fresh beginning en route to Mohan. It would also have been useful in giving him a salutary fright!
Plus, as the heroine, she could not have died in any case, this not being Romeo-Juliet or Heer-Ranjha! Come to think of it, it must be hard for a swimmer like Jodha - remember her rescue of Rahim? - to die by drowning. A swimmer's body fights on its own, using familiar techinques, to survive
Incidentally, Jodha sets a sizzling pace to the pool, probably she has had a lot of practice in 400 metre dashes to save oppressed pigeons!😉
Jalal: Blindsided: Jalal was clearly taken aback by Mainavati's public refusal to take Jodha back. He responds unapologetically to her initial references to the nazarband of her sons ( please note that she does not include Jodha in this, for in Mainavati's eyes, Jodha no longer belongs to Amer, but to Agra and to Jalal), and is almost blunt in what he has to say about Jodha: Agar gunahon ki tehreez (? Putija, please come to my rescue!) na hi khole jai to behatar hoga! Then the clincher: Amer ke shehzaadon ko nazarqaid karna ek Shahenshah ka farz tha, aur Jodha Begum ko wapas Amer bhejna ek shauhar ka farz hai. Aur wo khudh wahan par wapas jaana chahti hain.
But Mainavati's appeal to him, with folded hands, not to send Jodha back to Amer, is acutely embarrassing, and he at a loss how to react, till Jodha rescues him from his dilemma. Then, he is again at a loss, this time about what to do with Jodha.
Instinctive protectiveness: At the very end of the darbar scene, after his parting salutation to Mainavati, Jalal looks across at Jodha, who is wiping her tears. His expression is no longer angry, or even upset. It is puzzled and worried, with a tinge of sadness. His reaction is part instinctive sensitivity and part a kind of helpless protectiveness , even if he could not do anything to ease things for her. Perhaps, if she could only read his face, Jodha would have realized that the husband she detests does feel for her. But given her general attitude and her state of mind then, if he had gone to her, she would have rebuffed him brutally, so the pool it had to be.
Lurking fear: Later, once again blindsided by the news of Jodha's disappearance, Jalal reacts at two levels. On the surface, he is bound to stick to the Mughal sultanat ki shaan ko barkarar rakhna routine, and so he does. Inside, especially after Ruqaiya fulfills her sole purpose in that scene - that of bringing up the suicide theory - he is really frightened, for this is a situation he had not anticipated.
But still, it is characteristic of the man that he will not panic, but is doubly determined to salvage the situation by finding Jodha and bringing her back. Use hamare saath nahin jeena hai to teekh hai, par Mughal sultanat ki izzat ki khatir hum use marne nahin denge. Hum use dhoond kar layenge! Why finding her is so important to him is another matter, but he has this ready explanation for public consumption!
Welcome realism: I found all of the above refreshingly realistic. Firstly, contrary to the conviction of the romantics here, Jalal was quite ready to let Jodha go back to Amer. This was only natural; an emperor does not beg to be cared for by a wife who constantly proclaims how much she detests him. There is something about her that pulls him, like a hidden magnet, and this has been so since the time he ventured on that risky trip to the heart of Amer just to catch a glimpse of her. But that does not mean that he cannot master that longing, or the desire to make her care for him.
Secondly, while he tells himself, and others, that he will not let her die so that the pride of the Mughals will not be besmirched, the fear that lurks behind the determination in his eyes in the last shot tells its own tale. Rajat was tops in that frame.
Mainavati- Jalal: The angle of vision : In 2013, myviewprem had protested strongly against what he saw as Mainavati insulting the Shahenshah by telling Jodha that her father had had to make great sacrifices and endure deep disgrace because of this marriage, that he had been ostracized by the rest of the Rajputs, and that it was becoming almost impossible to find husbands for Sukanya and Shivani because of the Jalal-Jodha marriage. He had pointed out, correctly, that it was not Jalal who had sought the marriage from Bharmal, it was the other way around (he had of course conned Jodha's Bapusa into doing that, but that is siyaasat!)
I beg to differ. This sort of thing is like a kaleidoscope, what you see depends on the angle of vision.
Firstly, even granting all that myviewprem has said, it still makes no difference to Jalal. In fact he would hardly let on that he had noticed these remarks and taken them as jibes directed at himself; it would have been beneath him to retort to any of them. He would have been very ill-advised to have done anything like that.
It would be the same with the rest of the court, whose POV would be exactly like that of Adham Khan when he was jibing at Mansingh and Bhagwan Das. Something like: Beti dekar Amer to bacha liya inhon ne, besharam kahin ke, aur ab dekho kya rona dhona apni baddimaag ladki ki vajah se!
One has to understand the mechanics of the scene and the situation. Jalal silences Mynavati on both the points on which she addresses him, regarding her sons and Jodha's failings, and she has in the end to beg him with folded hands not to send Jodha back to Amer. So, who do you think came out on top?
Lastly, I do not think that Mainavati meant all that she said as jibes at Jalal, for after all she wants to leave her daughter there, and it would hardly be advisable for her to anger the son in law-cum-emperor. I think she just got carried away in her litany of woes to make sure her daughter understood the seriousness of the matter.
The rest: They don't count. But I loved the indiarubber fashion in which Javeda bounces back, unfazed, after each encounter of the close kind with her thug of a husband. Some female, this!
Question for the day: Why on earth were the personal affairs of the Shahenshah - he himself says sending Jodha back to Agra was his duty as a shauhar, so there was nothing either siyasati or riyasati about it - up for discussion in the Diwan-e-Khas, which is meant only for high political affairs of state? It was ludicrous, like a circus.
Oh well, I suppose it is the 16th century imperial equivalent of the catechism scene of the heroine in a regular soap, with the whole family - husband, wife, kids, in laws, siblings of both genders and their kids, plus of course the family matriarch - all lined up on sofas in the living room of the mansion (which expands, like something under Hermione Granger's Undetectable Extension Charm, to contain this whole horde😉)!
Point of the day: I distinctly remember Jodha her glaring at her Kanha with unaccustomed hostility, at the end of her behas with the Green Jodha and the Maroon Jodha, and asking him a question that sounded decidedly cutting. That was probably why she did not lug him along to the pool, for otherwise, she is always shown with her Kanha, like Jalal with his shamsheer!😉
Now on to Episode 77; the forest pool awaits us!
Episode 77: Beloved enemy
I am sure that even with a re-run, most of you - where are you, Preeti?😉 - are still in a romantic daze over the joint ride back to the Agra fort! I hope that the roseate mists have lifted by now, and that all concerned have come back to terra firma, so here goes.
The title might seem a tad premature as far as the beloved part goes, for the CVs have brought our self-crossed (not star-crossed, for as Shakespeare puts it, The fault, dear Brutus , in not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings ) lovers back into bickering mode, especially Jodha. But it sounds so appealing, and so I sacrificed accuracy for catchiness!
The pre-pool doings - Jalal: I liked the way Jalal snarled at Moti & Co. for leaving their mistress alone ( they could hardly have flouted her explicit command to that effect, but a man in panic mode is hardly logical!), his rage in direct proportion to his fears. I liked it even more that when Moti petitioned him tearfully to look for the heartbroken Jodha himself as only he would be able to do find her, he actually listens and then moves swiftly into action.
By contrast, his patience with the hapless guard who was unable to stop Jodha from leaving the fort on horseback was exemplary. Here is a just ruler, who does not penalize an underling for failing to stop something that was beyond his ability to handle.
Jalal's action plan was impeccable, but still, it was pure serendipity that he happened to land on the same track across the hills that Jodha follows, and that too well in time to see her do that jump (not a dive, a dive is what Jalal does) into the deep water. But then Lady Luck, though a fickle jade, must have a soft corner for handsome young men!
His shouting after Jodha, who is doing an Usain Bolt to the pool, Ruk jayiye Jodha Begum!Yeh hamara hukum hai! was proof positive of how a person can be hard wired, in this case to command. I have not laughed so much since Alakh made Jodha lecture Mohan about his being ehsan faramosh (krutagnata heen, to be precise), unlike the atyant krutagna Ameri variety of sher!😉😉
The pre-pool doings - Jodha: It is a relief that the Agra fort security was not to blame for Jodha's careening off into the wild blue yonder, and that it was merely our Amer ki Mirchi almost riding down the guards.
NB: Did any of you notice the difference in the way Jalal rides and Jodha rides? Jalal is at one with his mount and the two move as one, gracefully and in perfect sync with each other. Jodha, on the contrary, though she keeps her seat well, is out of sync with the galloping horse, and so she bounces up and down constantly. I have done some riding, and that happens when you do not rise and come down in the saddle in the same rhythm as the horse.
To revert, the only significant point in her repeated flashbacks during the ride was that Jalal's long ago assertion, that he married her only because he has beinteha nafrat for her, ranks, in her zehen, on par with her mother's homilies, as the trigger that drives her to such despair. Usually, it is she who dishes this line out to him; it is the first time that she is shown to be obsessed by his hatred for her. Very interesting.
The pre-pool doings- Mahaam: Jalal's Badimmi proves once more how remarkable is her understanding of the vagaries of the human heart, when she warns the purblind Ruqaiya that Shahenshah khudh nahin jaante ki unhein Jodha Begum ki parwah hone lagi hai. No wonder she has ruled the roost in Agra for so long! Ruqaiya , for her part, proves the truth of the old adage: None so blind as those who will not see.
And if I am forced to listen once more to her Jalal ka dil hi nahin hai.. aur unke dimaag par meri hukumat chalt1 hai, I shall summon the spirit of Ruqaiya Sultan Begum to clobber the CVs!😉
The pool and its aftermath: Three rounds of solid applause would be the minimum due for Jalal's comprehensive dressing down of an ungrateful and resentful Jodha (I would not hold that against her, for no one attempting suicide is grateful for having been saved; usually the opposite). To borrow Vicki's mirror motif, Jalal holds up a mirror to Jodha with pitiless logic, going one more than the Green Jodha in sheer vehemence . What he tells her is well worth a full transcript, so here goes.
Bas! Ek lafz aur nahin Jodha! Jab dekho shikayat, jab dekho taane, ki kabhi humne aapke saath yeh kiya, kabhi humne aapke saath wo kiya! Kabhi ki humne aapko aapki zindagi se cheen liya hai, aapko akela kar diya hai! Lekin aaj tak - and up comes his forefinger in savage emphasis - aapke man mein jo aaya aapne wo kiya, aapke dil mein jo baat thi wo aapne keh di. Humne aapki saari shart maani, aapki saari khwahish ko qubool kiya. Yahan tak ki tumhare Amer lautne ki khwahish ko bhi humen poora kiya (turning the tables neatly on Jodha!). Lekin hum aapko yeh bewaqoofi nahin karne denge!
Then a most salutary and violent line: Aap apne aapko samajhti kya ho!!!
Hum maante hain ki apni zindagi par aapka haq hai, lekin Mughal sultanat ki izzat aur uske rutbe ko kaayam rakhna hamara farz hai Jodha!Aur hum aapko uski izzat aur uske rutbe ki ruswayi nahin karne denge! Hum maante hain ki Ruqaiya Begum ke maamle mein humse galti hui, lekin jaise hi humein us galti ka ehsaas hua, humne fauran qubool kiya zur sab ke saamne aapse maafi maangi! Lekin aapke dil ne kabhi yeh zehmat uthane ki koshish ki hai ki izzat aur guroor sirf aapke pas nahin hai, baki sab logon ke pas bhi hota hai? Attaboy, I said to myself, that is the stuff to give her!👏 Not that it is going to have much effect, but it was good to hear him telling her a few home truths.
The same old spiel:The rest, about his having married her because he has beinteha nafrat ( this is, by now, being repeated almost as often as the other staple, Jalal ka sar!), her having started the jung ki aaghaaz and challenged the lion in his den (what is maand, Putija? Den? ), his merely taking the beizzati ka badla for what she had done to him in the Amer prison, and wanting to make her suffer for that, is all old hat. He concludes with an unapologetic: Hum aapko tadpaana chahte the, aur humne aapko tadpaaya to kya galat kiya?
His blaming her for putting a sword to the throat of the Shahenshah is illogical, for she did not know then that it was he, and he should be grateful for that. If she had known it, he would surely have had no head at all, and thus no way of yelling at her now! 😉😉
His anger spills over further: Agar aapke walidein ne aapko le jaane se inkaar kar diya to isme hamari galti nahin hai Jodha! Aur hum us galti ki sazaa nahin bhugtenge, aur na hi apne khandaan aur Mughal sultanat ki izzat ki badnaami hone denge!
And finally, to round matters off satisfactorily: Humein chid hai aapse, aapki zubaan se, aapki aankhon mein bhare sawaal se ( what on earth does this last mean?) Hum nafrat karte hain aapse! (He forgot to add beinteha, but never mind!😉). As to why he cannot oblige her by putting an end to her existence, as she demands, Kyonki agar aisa hota to is nafrat ki jung mein aap jeet jaatin, jo hum nahin chahte! A more goofy comeback I never heard, but Jodha, who is even more illogical, swallows this without a blink!
Generous reassurance: Be that as it may, he makes it a point to reassure her: Agar aapke walidein ke ghar main aapke liye jagah nahin hai, to Mughal sultanat ki begum ke liye uske mahal mein baaqaida jagah hai. Bhale hi hamare beech shauhar aur biwi ka rishta nahin ho, lekin aapko wo saari sahooliyatein muqammal ki jaayengi jo ek begum ke liye hoti hain. That was very thoughtful and indeed kind. I had hoped, back in 2013, that Jodha would think things over later, and concede, at least grudgingly, that it was considerate of him to have welcomed her back, and that too in a matter of fact manner that would cause the least embarrassment to her. But of course she did no such thing!
He finally warns her, with a carryover of his earlier sternness, never to let anyone in the palace know that she had tried to commit suicide. I was duly grateful that he said this with once again dragging in the Mughal sultanat ki shaan, izzat, rutba aur guroor!😉
A defence mechanism: Jalal's rage after dragging Jodha out of the pool is directly proportional to, first, the fear he felt, and then the relief he now feels. Both speak to his zehen, and clarify for him what exactly this tiresome, obstreperous, infuriating wife of his means to him.
But if the Shahenshah harps repeatedly on the Mughal shaan and guroor theme to explain why he had rushed to rescue her, adding a categoric refresher about how much she gets on his nerves and how much he hates her, why, that is the only defence mechanism he has!
He could hardly confess, even to himself, that when Ruqaiya had finished with her dire warning, the breath had caught in his throat as an insensate fear of loss had clamped icy fingers around his innermost being. So the Amer ki Mirchi had to be paid back in her own coin, sood samet.
As for Jodha, if only the Green Jodha could have had a go at her again, she would have realised that there was someone who not only cares whether she lived or died, but was prepared to rescue her from herself. The romantics could then have rejoiced. As could even accredited realists like yours truly!
NB: I have to confess that even amidst all these high-voltage doings onscreen, I was thinking of the extra strain the joint dunking would have put on the JA wardrobe section! 😉The curious thing is that their outfits - especially Jalal's, for he seems not to have changed it at all till his later scene with Maham - seem to have dried out remarkably fast. I never knew there were drip dry fabrics in the 16th century!
The ride: An affair to remember!: Ah, the ride! Straight out of the 1950s Errol Flynn golden oldies of Hollywood. Jalal and Jodha looked spectacular together, even in the less than optimal situation of being sopping wet. But for this, one had to watch them long distance, as the amused peasantry was doing. Their indulgent smiles proved anew that all the world loves a lover, and if there are two of them, why they love them twice as much!
We were not so fortunate, for close up, Jalal's face was grim and set, and Jodha , apart from peeping up at him hesitantly once, looked as crabby and sullen as is her wont when with her patidev. It resembled nothing so much as a truant schoolgirl being taken back to school under duress .
An impression that was only reinforced when he drags her thru the khufiya raasta back to the palace. Her hanging back and demanding to know where she was being taken was silly even by her recent standards. What did she think, that he was going to feed her to Mohan in the forest?
Secondly, one wonders what happened to the other horse that Jodha abandons, but I presume Jalal takes Jodha with him on his so as to prevent her from running away again.
Remarkable thoughtfulness: It was again thoughtful of Jalal to have thus shielded Jodha from the endless, and often malicious questions and lamentations that would have bombarded her if her suicide attempt had become public knowledge. He does not want it known for his own reasons as well, of course, but he does make sure she is spared a very rough time of it by keeping out everyone, including even his Ammijaan and Motibai, and proclaiming that Jodha was being punished for playing truant from the palace.
I loved the way in which, despite his welling irritation - which, in such cases, is only redoubled by the relief felt after the crisis is past - Jalal took the time to reassure a weeping Moti about the welfare of her Ranisa (a graceful adaab to Rajput mores), and even more so his proud assertion Mughal sultanat ki begum hai, implying that he would not allow anything to happen to the Mughal sultanat ki begum.
Questions of the day:
1) How does Jodha, who can hardly be familiar with the topography of Agra and its surroundings, know the location of the forest pool so well that she makes a straight track for it?
2) After sighting Jodha's horse, why does Jalal get down from his mount and run after her, instead of riding after her and catching her before she reached the pool, or even while she was standing on the little hillock and thinking of the flashbacks? That would have been far more sensible, and it is not as though Ekta's directors were planning a Raj Kapoor style wet sari scene for their heroine!
So, folks, en avant to Episode 78, with Ajmer Sharif beckoning, and a possible shift, even if only slight as yet, away from the "enemy" and towards the "beloved" !
Episode 78: Matters of the heart & the Hand of God
This episode falls roughly into two halves, one in which much happens, and another in which much is realized. This time, I am not going to save the best for the last!
Matters of the heart: The piece de resistance in the whole episode is the incredibly moving scene between Jalal and Mahaam, which is really between Jalal and an invisible Jodha. Jalal's thoughts flowed on and on, unaffected by anything that Mahaam had to interject and to object. His eyes, still and introspective, with a clear, unveiled sadness in their depths, reflected every shifting nuance of feeling as he talked.
What he said was apparently to his Badiammi, but really to himself, as he dissected, with the precision of a surgeon's scalpel and the honesty that is one of Jalal's main traits, what he felt about Jodha and about himself, and how distinct the similarity was between their respective fates and their present/ past situations.
The strand of hair: I would like here to make a point re: Jalal reminiscing about Jodha as he is winding that long strand of her hair on his finger. Let us go back to the episode of Jodha's payal, during Jalal's secret incursion into the heart to Amer to catch a glimpse of the registan ka gulab. I had then written:
He does not kiss the payal as any ordinary lover would. It would be not be like the Shahenshah at all. He tosses it up in the air, but he always catches it, and when it falls into the fire, he burns his hand to retrieve it. This is not so much, as some have thought, a sign of passion for Jodha. He is not yet aware that he is falling in love with her, he does not know what love means. It is rather the possessiveness towards her that, as the line has it, uske parvaan chad gaya tha. For him, the payal symbolizes Jodha, and he will not let go of it or her, even if he has to burn his fingers to secure it.
Much has happened since then, much has changed between Jalal and Jodha, and within Jalal's persona as well. But some things are still the same. True, he now sees her as a person, not as an object to be acquired, but his possessiveness towards her is unchanged.
Also unchanged, and here I foresee agitated protests from the accredited romantics in the forum , is the fact that he is still not, in the accepted sense of the term, in love with her. The deewangee that will, one day, lead him to count his whole world well lost for her, is still in the future.
So, I would rather interpret the whole scene - beginning with the strand of hair that he instinctively hides from Mahaam's sharp, inquisitive gaze, as being too personal for outside scrutiny, but which is not the conventional love token - as a revelation not of a romantic longing for Jodha, but of something rarer and more precious. A revelation of a sense of kinship with her. It is significant that the flashbacks he sees here are all fit into this template. They are about her defending him to the praja at the Ambe Mata temple, about her recognizing him in his disguise, and lastly, her desperation and anger, then and during their ride back, at his having snatched her away from the release she had sought thru her death.
The loneliness of the soul: What Jalal now feels is rooted in the perception that Jodha and he share something crucial, the arid loneliness of the soul that comes from not belonging anywhere or to anyone. His words bring all this to life with startling sensitivity and clarity.
Hum samajhte hain ki aisa unhon ne hoshohawas mein nahin kiya. Pichle kuch dinon mein jo bhi huwa, un sabka bahut gehra sadma laga hai Jodha Begum ko. Unke walidein ka unhein Amer le jaane se inkaar kar dena Jodha Begum ko tod gaya hai.
The mellifluous Urdu brings out what he wants to convey - not to Maham but to himself and to the Jodha who is not there - with a delicacy and a level of sensitivity that the English translation can never convey.
Sab kuch hote hue bhi kuch na hona, rishtey sirf naam ke bankar reh jana, har or ruswayi, har or akelapan. Aisi haalat mein kisi par kya beethti hai yeh hum se behatar koyi nahin samajh sakta.
Aaj pehli baar humein ehsaas hua hai ki hum aur Jodha Begum, donon ek hi kashti mein sawaar hain.
Responding to Maham's strong protests, he goes on, his eyes reflecting a sadness too deep for her to grasp: Badiammi, kya Babur-e-Azam ke khandaan mein kisi ko dard nahin hota? Hum maante te hain ki hum Humayun Shah ke bete hain, aur Mughal shehzade the. Par phir bhi,hamare haalaat Jodha Begum se juda kahaan?
Humein bhi hamari Ammijaan ka saath nahin mila, Jodha Begum ki tarah.
Saare rishtey naate hone ke bawajood, hum tanha hain, Jodha Begum ki tarah.
Jodha Begum ka rishta Agra aur Amer donon se hai, par aaj na hi wo Agra ki hain, na Amer ki. Jaise ek waqt hum bhi na Dilli ke the, ne Agra ke, na Kabul ke.
The tanhayee , the loneliness inside him that he is referring to, is of now. It is in the present.
And then, as Maham pleads desperately : Jalal, itna mat sochiye!., he turns her down: Sochna laazmi hai, Badimmi, and goes on: Hamare aur Jodha Begum ke rishte chahe kisi bhi maqaam par hon, lekin haqeeqat to yeh hai ki hum unhein nikaah karke, begum banakar Agra lekar aaye hain.. Wo Mughal sultanat ki begum hai, isiliye humne khud unhein dhoondne ka zimma uthaya. ..Jodha Begum Mughal Sultanat ki begum hai, aur hamesha rahengi.
No wonder that when he leaves abruptly, telling Maham Badiammi, hum kuch der tanha rahna chahte hain,Maham feels a cold fear creeping into her heart and mind. For though she is herself heartless, she understands the matters of the heart like none other, not even Jalal himself, not to speak of Jodha. She can see what lies ahead, for Jalal and Jodha, and for herself as well. And she is terrified by what she sees.
Jalal: A revelation: To revert, what the above tells us of Jalal, as he is now, is as incredibly moving as it is almost unbelievable. He has a degree of sensitivity, of the ability to see things from the other's point of view, to get into another's skin, so to speak, plus a degree of honesty, of candour, in disclosing his secret sorrows, that is unbelievable in such an accredited alpha male, and that too one who is an emperor to the purple born. He can not merely understand Jodha with his mind, he can feel what she is now feeling, with his heart.
Ah, yes, Rajat as this Jalal. What can one say of him, except that one could, after the first few seconds, no longer make out where Rajat ended and Jalal began, or vice versa? The deep set eyes looking inwards into his own zehen, the level voice, factual and devoid of self pity and despite that intensely moving. There can be no greater tribute to Rajat's skills than that he made us forget him and see only the Jalal that he unveiled for us.
To revert, it is this deep feeling of kinship, and the solidarity that comes from such kinship - which Jodha too will come to recognize and share some day soon - that will set their love apart, on a plane high above that of a standard issue romance.
Jodha: Empathy-proof: Jodha is not there, at this level of sensitivity, as yet. I would have expected her to remember what she had learnt of Jalal's terrible childhood and extrapolate from that to some measure of understanding, and even a degree of empathy, for his present temperament. But she does not possess the gift of getting into another's skin, and there seems to be no immediate likelihood of that happening.
For the present, therefore, given the armour plating that walls Jodha's heart all around where Jalal is concerned, and his reactive determination not to expose anything of his inner self to her, we are stuck with repeats, in varied formats, of the acid exchanges between them, largely, these days, on her side, that we have grown to expect. I never had any hopes of Mohini (the snake) as an ice-breaker, but even Mohan the Magnificent fell down in this department. So let us do the only thing left to us, possess our souls in patience!
Aftab ka pehla noor: A dreamy scene, that, the door of that room being unlocked by Hoshiyaar (did Jalal leave the key in the lock? Unlikely. Which means that Ruqaiya has duplicate keys for all the locks in the palace), to reveal Jodha sleeping like a tired child in the aftab ka pehla noor. Whence the Hand of God that cannot be denied.
I will pass over Hamida's gentle reproof to Jodha (but how does Hamida know of the suicide attempt , as seems clear from the conversation? Ruqaiya might have guessed it, and Jalal tells Mahaam, but not Hamida), full of the by now staple Amer ki aan (one would have imagined, seeing the way they all go on and on about it, that Amer was a powerful kingdom like Mewar, which it assuredly was not) and Agra ki shaan, a formulation almost as bad as the Jalal ka sar of recent memory!😉
The one thing that stood out in that scene was the guilty, pleading, shamefaced look on Jodha's face as she stands up to greet Hamida and Ruqaiya. Paridhi gets that to perfection.
Ruqaiya: Jalal comes first: I loved the way she is shown as being reconciled to Jodha going to Ajmer with Jalal, because she believes in the Pir Baba's edict and is genuinely concerned about Jalal's safety and well being. One could see, from the way he looks back at her retreating form, that Jalal feels the same. This little vignette underlines, after a long time, the special quality of the bond that the two share. Jodha will one day be the love of Jalal's life, but she cannot become the friend that Ruqaiya was and is to him.
Salima: Gentle grace: She is like a still, limpid pool, transparent to its utmost depths, with water that is crystal clear and sweet to the taste. She has unshakeable moral certitudes, and it was wonderful to see her setting Jodha right on the Ajmer Sharif issue and, earlier, Maham, on the aftab ka pehla noor one.
Finally, to lighten the tone of this piece, let us now go to the concluding Jalal-Jodha scene in the garden (and in full, spilling over a bit into Episode 79), and talkOf pigeons and barbs: I don't know about you folks, but to me, the barbed Jodha-Jalal exchanges in the garden, just before the RK Films logo stunt, did not sound like light nok jhok. Jalal clearly did not want Jodha to come to Ajmer with him, which is understandable. Why would he saddle himself with this unpredictable hedgehog of a begum,😉 of whom all he can be certain of is that she will make things uncomfortable for him? (Which, by the way, she does, except that the correct word would not be uncomfortable, but life-threatening!).
Plus, he suspects that what she will end up offering there would be not a dua for him, but a baddua. Whence the sharp, overt bitterness of his Aap wo aakhri shaksiyat hain jis se hum apne liye dua mangwayenge.
As for Jodha, one wishes that she would brush up on her basic manners and do at least a pranam to her husband when she meets him. The way she stands there, stone-faced, in front of her maids, looks very bad, like a sulky, bad tempered schoolgirl. In fact, Jodha is becoming that most disastrous of things for a character, predictable, and thus boring.
Plus here she looked, in that armour plate-like necklet and her stiff costume, almost like a stuffed Thanksgiving turkey.😉 Her face, set in resentful lines and full of disdain when rubaru with Jalal, seemed to hint at an impending attack of the mumps. Her lovely, big eyes were puffy and narrowed.
Finally, she invariably has a fluent, self-justificatory, soul-improving lecture ready for Jalal. Today's was about the Raja-praja equation, really meant to make it clear to him that Yeh mat samajhiyega kis hum wahan aapke liye prarthana karenge. Hum to, Mughal sultanate ki Begum hone ke naate, aapni praja ki bhalayi ke liye apne poore man se prarthana karenge. Iske maadhyam se aapka bhi bhala ho jaata hai to humein koyi aapatti nahin.
I really wished that he had not caught her when she slipped. But then, the JA budget would have come under stress, with the additional cost of a grand new joda for Jodha, so I suppose that was out!😉
I begin to think Suryabhan was better off sar ke bina, all things considered😉. Bechara Jalal to phans gaya; gale mein akti huyi hai yeh Begum Jodha, ne nigalte bane ne thookte bane.
The RK Films logo: It was a very charming scene, lit up by Rajat's mischievous smile, and the comic element was delightful.
Along comes Begum Hoity Toity, her disdainful nose well up in the air, affecting to ignore the fact that her obnoxious patidev is openly contradicting his earlier assertion and niharofying her unblinkingly😉. She sails past him with no acknowledgement of his existence, the ungrateful little wretch, and bingo! Fate deals her a googly, and she slips, right into the aforesaid patidev's arms. Poetic justice, if ever there was one! Jalal, being a Rhett Butler in temperament, was enjoying himself thoroughly!
Jodha being back in sniper mode, as I had predicted, was only to be expected, and she sounded extra peevish and illogical, for I did not understand what a kaanta had to do with her slipping on wet grass. The girl was evidently at a loss for a snappy comeback, plus she is now clearly on the backfoot.
I loved even the takeoff on the RK Films logo (the man holding the girl bent backwards over one arm, and taking her as low down as possible without dropping her ) as much as all of you will be doing tonight all over again, but perhaps for a slightly different reason.
This is such a tired staple of romantic scenes in films, and even more so in TV serials, that is it very difficult to keep oneself from laughing at it. The poor actors, especially the girl - who is stuck in that that awkward position for as long as 2 minutes at times just because that is the director's idea of the high romantic - struggle to look lovelorn. All the while, the one is hoping that he does not suddenly drop her, and the other saying to himself Lord, she weighs far more than I would have imagined!😉
But Jalal and Jodha manage to make even this old chestnut look fresh.
Lastly, it does not hurt that they are a remarkably handsome couple. It was noted by a film critic, after watching Jodhaa Akbar with Hrithik and Aishwarya, that Salim must have been the most beautiful baby in the whole of the Mughal empire. One could say the same of the Salim-to-be here, but unfortunately we ended up with a lemon! 😉
OK, folks, it is time for you to heave a sigh of relief and relax ! 😉Au revoir till next Thursday.
Shyamala/Aunty/Akka/ Di
Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi 2
29