Originally posted by: sashashyam
My dear Saraswathi Akka,
As I wrote to you before, you praise me so abundantly and extravagantly - to quote from Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru's last will and testament to the people of India - that if I could blush, I would by now be closely resembling an over-ripe tomato! I cannot thank you enough.
So you have found out what akhada means! I had fun reading all those impassioned mails, and for two pins, I would have girded my loins and waded into it, but I restrained myself. It is too tiring, for my fingers, though much better than the truly scary condition they were in a month ago - I could not even extract a tablet from the Al foil wrapping - are not normal, and then again, the steroid pills will be stopped next week, and I am concerned about what will happen then. So I did not want to overdo things; my response to Lavanya the day before was already too much! Besides, after a while, one starts going around in circles, like a man in a fog.
I hope you liked the part The darkness descends. I absolutely loved that episode, and I took extra trouble over that section to try and get it just right, which was not easy, and I hope I managed it. The trouble is that most people concentrate only on the supposed Jalal-Jodha love story, gush over (mostly imaginary) romantic moments, and do not even see when there is something exceptional in the script (that is rare enough, alas!) which is of the non-romantic kind.
Actually, Akka, I am more than disappointed with the so-called epic love story the second time around. I think it is because the first time, I had the hope that it would, even if it took time, be something exceptional, though by the time we got to the Sujamal episode, I had lost that hope. This time, one knows that nothing exceptional will come of it, and so there is not even the pleasure of expectation. So it palls very soon if one watches a number of episodes together.
As I wrote to young Devki above, last night I was watching all the episodes after these 3 up to No. 90, and the Jalal-Jodha scenes were, to be frank, predictable, with Jalal pulling her leg and she puffing her face up as if she had been stung by bees before flouncing out. And thus boring.
There is nothing at all of genuine romance between the two of them in the whole of this show, and I have not missed a single episode other than the mirchi war week, and then the chudail and the British traders track at the end, because even I could not stand them! I hung in there with grim determination even during the Khyber track!
Between these two, there is no frisson at the other's touch, no meeting of eyes across a room that speak without words, no desperate yearning to be with the other, no pain of the kind that turns one inside out. At least not on Jodha's side, for Jalal clearly goes thru hell when she is dying, and again during the track I had covered in my Shakespearian heights post. There is no delicate coquetry on her side and no ardent wooing on his. The CVs idea of a romantic scene is a tel maalish, probably because Dabur's Lal Tel was one of the sponsors!đ
When Jodha is back in Amer after the Sujamal track, she is never shown thinking of Jalal or missing him, unlike the Jodhaa in the film, who is visibly restless and unhappy. This Jodha seems perfectly comfortable and settled at Amer for keeps, even after her mother hints broadly to her that she should go back. And when Jalal, after scouring the whole country for her, and abasing himself before her at Mathura, comes to Amer badly wounded, she does not show even a sliver of caring for him. It was very off putting.
In fact the only segment that was real in the show so far was the one in the forest as Jodha is trying to save Jalal from dying. That was gritty and honest and desperate, and it got to me, as you would have seen from this post.
But that was not part of any love story. Part of the problem in Jodha Akbar is that one has no idea what Jodha feels at any given point of time, the Green Jodha being a one shot exercise. And when she opens her mouth, the effect is, more often than not, disastrous. Just wait for the part where, after Hawaii gets violent and attacks Jalal, she goes to him and effectively tells him that it would be best if he was killed elsewhere than in Amer, so as not to affect her sister's wedding. At such times I dislike this Jodha so much that I have to curb myself when analysing her behaviour (though you might not feel that when you read my posts, I am restraining myself at times!đ )
Then, all of a sudden, they jump into what one can only call old shoe love, the sedate affection between two people who have been happily married for a long, long time. Some of those late scenes were charming, but again, that is not an epic love story!
So, when I write about these two, very often I am cooking up things that exist only in my imagination, for if I did not do that, I could not get anything out at all. There is no grand amour here, no lovers who are each the missing half of the other, there is nothing of the kind of love that comes not cock a hoop with feathers, but slowly, dragging itself on bleeding feet.
This Jalal is eventually in love with Jodha, and this Jodha is in love with herself and her Amer and her sas. No wonder he ends up as a compliant poodle, worshipping at her shrine and periodically flagellating himself emotionally. He actually offers to do it actually, after she comes back to Agra from Amer! And soon he seems to be doing nothing but hanging around Jodha Begum's hoojra, ending up pressing her feet (not that there is anything basically wrong with that bit, but it was so contrived and so fake!) while the empire is, presumably, on auto-pilot!
By way of contrast, I would like to share with you what I had written, in February 2014, in the Jodha Akbar forum about another show called Ek boond ishq, which I used to watch for about 10 months before I quit.
"But give me Viraf Patel's Mrityunjay in Ek Boond Ishq, and his Tara any day! The screen is literally lit up by their deep, total emotional dependence on each other, and their desperate caring for each other. No one else exists for either of them. That is le grand amour, not this amar prem that is forever in the making. Alas, Viraf is reportedly quitting that show soon for Bollywood. Good things, it seems, never last!
I wonder how it would be if Rajat got a heroine who could match him nuance for nuance, or at least project the kind of healing warmth that he could feel a mile away. That would be something. You should see the Tara of Ek Boond Ishq. When she looks at her Mrityunjay from 20 feet away, you feel that she is cuddling all 6' 2" of him in her arms and trying to shield him from every ill wind. Thus would Savitri have been with her Satyavan. It warms my heart to look at them together.
Every time I watch them, especially after the desperate search for each other that ends at the mandir, my heart goes out to the poor kids. The way Mrityunjay swallows, his Adam's apple going up and down in sheer relief, as soon as he sights her was a treat to watch.
Also the scene when a desolate Tara walks away, going past him and Radha, and he stretches his hand out to hold her back and nods in the negative, ever so slightly, to reassure her.
I am so happy with Ek Boond Ishq these days, but I am sure it is not going to last, alas!"
And it did not, but not because the love story went wrong. It was because the boy was killed,and in the most gruesome fashion. I could not stand the long drawn out, sadistic horror, and I quit. It seems he was resurrected in some odd fashion later, but by then I was no longer interested. In any case, I never went to the Ek Boond Ishq forum for doing any episode analyses. I did that only for two shows, Pavitra Rishta and Jodha Akbar. Coincidentally, both of them were Balaji shows!
Well, that is enough of that. I think I am missing the debates and all the fun we used to have when I did the daily analyses for Jodha Akbar two years ago. That is why I do not like to go back to places where I have enjoyed myself a lot; it is almost always a mistake. Would you agree with that, Akka?
Shyamala
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