Jodha Akbar 79-81: Darkness before the dawn - Page 8

Aunty, I was one of the two to whom you wrote about your disappointment with the "epic" love story.

shyamala jaya adi khushi lavi and sandhya..my visit to india is next year by end of september and have taken a month off! will keep you all posted as the time comes and will surely meet🤗

Yes, Devki, your take on this subject is very different from mine,as you can see from my comments below, which are not made in a contrarian spirit, and are mostly factual.

It never jelled with me, this love story, and I deeply resented the way in which Akbar the Great was reduced to a hanger on of Jodha Begum, singing her praises with or without justification, and seeming to have no ideas that are not suggested by her. Why, by the end, his government seems to be on autopilot, while he is loitering in Jodha Begum's hoojra, pressing her head and her feet.

To my mind, the romance was a totally one-sided affair, with Jalal doing all the loving and Jodha simply being loved. That is not my idea of an epic love story, especially as the Rhett Butler I had signed on for was steadily eviscerated and ended up more wimpish than Ashley Wilkes!

But to each her own. There is, it seems, simply no meeting ground at all between us.I leave you to your happiness in this show, and you can leave me to my acute disappointment.

Shyamala Aunty

Originally posted by: devkidmd

Aunty, I was one of the two whom you wrote about your disappointment with the "epic" love story.The reason I did not touch on it was because I have a very different view.

For me the epicness in a love story does not lie in the frisson of touch(which by the way was shown and very beautifully IMO) or the meeting of eyes across a crowded room. Those are your everyday things which happen in every love story. Pretty cliched.

It might be cliched, but some cliches are needed in any love story. Here we had only tel maalishes and distant (literally) embraces! And Jalal literally begging this wife of his to stay with him for the night, while she offered a hundred and one excuses and then stayed for a while as if she was doing him a great favour!

For me the epicness lay in the way these two different indivisuals from such diverse backgrounds in such tough and I would say religiously intolerant times came together and blended so beautifully.

For me, they never blended. Jalal was swamped and overwhelmed by this Jodha, who was actually shown as having saved his life twice by fighting literally with weapons, while he was helpless, and was moreover credited with everything of significance that was ever done by Akbar. That coin issue scene was the limit!

I gave up counting her hunars after a while, and I was daily expecting her to walk on water! It was ridiculous, the way this woman was built up, with Hamida Begum as her Cheerleader No.1, and the emperor was steadily whittled down to a joru ka ghulam constantly proclaiming that Jodha Begum could never be wrong!

The temple incident in Amer, the Ajmer yatra, the Chisthi yatra, namaz together, the aarthis. These were the spiritual aspects.

Yes, but what is there surprising about this? Every successful cross religious marriage in any age must have had such aspects. And in the Kali Maa temple scene, which I had covered in my The Gordian Knot post, that was superb, but only as far as Jalal was concerned. Jodha neither understood its epoch-making significance, nor did she react positively to it.

Of course the very fact of such a marriage having taken place for the first time ever was a landmark, but that does not necessarily make for an epic love story. The scenes you have mentioned were beautiful because they are a very good-looking pair, and Rajat is a very nuanced actor.

Then come the familial things which both did for each other. The ratanpur qila: whatever said and done Jalal did do this for Jodha's family to keep their izzat.

Yes , and how did Jodha react to it? She did not show even an iota of gratitude. Instead, after the Hawai incident, she effectively told him to go and die somewhere else than at Amer, so as not to create problems for her family or her sister's wedding. That was crass even by her standards.

And how did she react to his telling her why the Ratanpur fort was so important for him because of its connection with his father? Nothing. She simply walked away.

-Jodha's advice to Jalal in the Tasneem track and then the Rukaiyya false pregnancy. Of course many think that these were more about her mahanta than anything else. But not so to me.

I liked her in the latter sequence, where she was, for once, simple and convincing and protective of Jalal, but not in the first one, where she preached away to glory, as in fact she does all the time.

-Jalal's advise and encouragement to Jodha during the harem elections. Yes, but that is not necessarily love. It is the kind of encouragement a school teacher gives a bright pupil. And then she gives it up without a word to him, if I remember it correctly, and then it morphed into the disaster of the Sujamal affair.

-Jodha's giving up of one twin to Rukaiyya. Again this may seem like Jodha mahanta to some but for me it was actually a very selfless thing for someone to do that for her husband. And such things have happened in real life too. My own grandmother has given up her oldest son(my mama) to her husband's sister who was childless.

She was not doing it for her husband, who was dead against it, and rightly so, for he knows Ruqaiya. She was doing it against his express wish, and she forces him to accept it. It was pure mahaanta,and of course it backfired, as Jalal had foreseen it would.

And what about the way in which she treats Jalal , not just in Mathura, where one can let it pass, but even when he lands up in Amer, wounded? She does not give a damn about him. In fact, she is perfectly comfortable in Amer, and does not miss him one bit. But when he abolishes the pilgrimage tax, Madam immediately perks up and decides to return to Agra. In fact, when Shaguni Bai is telling her the time has come for her to go home, Jodha thinks only of the Amer palace, not of Agra.

What kind of love is this, if one party is perfectly comfortable away from the other for keeps? And this after Jalal had abased himself trying to get her to return. I liked what Mainavati told Jodha, that no Rajput husband would ever come looking for a wife who had left her sasural, all the way to her maayka.

There are many more incidents. And what I actually liked is that Jodha was not the epitome of goodness all the time. She was shown immature and holding on to her prejudices and her grudges and many times her narrow thinking. I loved the many conflicts that Jalal faced as a young ruler trying to do the right thing. Be it in the divorce situation or even the Todarmal situation.

Look, in the Todar Mal track, which was godawful, Jalal was shown as a helpless wimp of an emperor, letting this wife railroad a man whom Jalal admired and trusted,and of whom he knew in his heart of hearts that he could not have done any such thing, to his death just on the testimony of Shehnaaz. If you admired the bullying, hectoring Jodha in this track, I wash my hands of you!

Earlier, when Shehnaaz almost throws Rahim off that parapet, the way in which Jodha is allowed to behave is unbelievable. The real Akbar would have booted Shehnaaz out pronto and told Jodha to shut up.

And in the divorce track, Jalal looks like a prize idiot, who has apparently never heard of laws never being retroactive, and is actually planning to split hundreds of thousands of families across his sultanat by declaring the marriages of the parents void. He should have been given a Razzie for governance!

I just wish they had not shown him tied up in the Mirchi war. I wonder why they would think of such a thing??

Why, how else would Jodha Begum fight and win a mirchi war? It is not as though this was about Akbar, it was only about a terminally foolish Jalal. The way in which he was trapped by his Nigar Apa was pathetic.And then, after all that boiling water poured on his head, he came out looking as fresh as a rose!

For people who are familiar with hindi soaps and EK, Jodha may seem like your typical EK mahaan heroine but for someone like me who has never laid eyes on a daily soap hindi or otherwise both the leads and their love seemed very natural and beautiful.

I suggest you watch the re-runs of Pavitra Rishta for a while . You will recognise Jodha Begum in both Archana and Purvi. Both are always right, are simply overflowing with mahaanta, have a 24 carat halo in perpetuity, and have reduced the men unfortunate enough to love them to wimps doing their gungaan.

Where I feel cheated is after the deaths of the twins and with the leap(the small and the big). I agree with you on the point that the transition from initial love to old shoe love was just not there. Nothing to show the gradual progression.

Only the years of the petticoat government were shown and then the leap to Chitthor, little Salim, big Salim and CRASH!!!

I felt cheated all the while, and more by Jalal's literally falling in love, to unsuspected depths, than even by Jodha's bhashans and her self-righteousness.

Aunty one thing is coman in ektas serial heroine bas shadi ho gayi kam pe lag jati hai sab ko sudhar ne ka ,nothing but hallow ,to me ektas jodha is nothing but pain and so was archna and purvi,musibat ha pahad

Yes, my dear Amina, but others can have very different views, and that is their right. But we too have the right to our views.

Shyamala Aunty

Originally posted by: amina1

Aunty one thing is coman in ektas serial heroine bas shadi ho gayi kam pe lag jati hai sab ko sudhar ne ka ,nothing but hallow ,to me ektas jodha is nothing but pain and so was archna and purvi,musibat ha pahad

Yes Aunty if girls or guys follow tv serial no one will get married,it will frighten all ,not to mention it takes a year or two to mmake it work😉

Now this, Amina, is a very novel point of view! I agree with it in toto.

Shyamala Aunty

Originally posted by: amina1

Yes Aunty if girls or guys follow tv serial no one will get married,it will frighten all ,not to mention it takes a year or two to mmake it work😉

Devki,

Originally posted by: sashashyam

Folks,

I felt pretty much the same this time around, only more sad than angry to see how Jodha was devaluing herself. On Saturday last, I was lamenting Jodha's lack of basic manners in not greeting her husband when he came up to her in the garden. On Monday, I was appalled anew as she left all that in the dust, as she plumbed new depths of indelicacy, indeed coarseness as well. And the lovely, feisty, intelligent, and withal cultured Amer ki Mirchi was reduced to a terminally stupid, vain, self-centred, delusional nitwit of a woman, whose mind seems to be fast resembling that of what Mahatma Gandhi once called Katharine Mayo, a drains inspector.

She was at her worst behaviour which could only be equalled by her own appalling behaviour in Amer, especially 'go die anywhere exept in Amer', SKLL accusation Todarmal and Shehnaaz affair, Mathura track and such others.

What one cannot understand is what follows. With the fluency of a soapbox orator and the vehemence of outraged virtue threatened by stree ke liye laalasa (or SKLL for short. Do try and remember it, for it features prominently in Jodha's future sniping at her lawfully wedded husband!) she reels off a long spiel about her fears about his intentions in insinuating himself into her tent under the pretext of suraksha being justified, and about the shame of the Shahenshah of such a huge empire , whose duty it was to protect all women, indulging in such ashobaniya vyavahaar. She winds up her peroration by proclaiming that though she was married to him, she had never given him those (marital) rights and never would, and he had better understand that and leave. Is tarah chal prayog kar kee humein hathiyaane ki koshish( not prayaas? You are slipping, JB!) karna band kijiye aap!.

In 2013, I thought that something was seriously wrong with this girl - I loved her till then.

Here, there is one thing that needs to be remembered. Any marriage - love, arranged, political, alliance, whatever - automatically implies the exercise of conjugal rights by both spouses. Neither spouse, in this case Jodha, has the right to deny this to the other indefinitely. This is so even today, and the persistent denial of conjugal rights is still one of the grounds for divorce, and the courts can also pass orders mandating the restoration of conjugal rights, with non-compliance leading to penalties and, if the other party desires it, divorce.

Exactly.

Maybe, as young Khushi has suggested on my last thread, Jodha wants Jalal to make advances to her so that she can have the pleasure of humiliating him by turning them down (provided always that she could manage it, which is far from certain!) . So when he shows no signs of obliging her, she prods him with such rants so that he is enraged enough to react as she wants him to.

Highly possible.😆

But then, she starts arguing with him in public about the matter, unthinkable in a queen. Next, when he gives her a hearing after dismissing the courtiers, she actually exculpates the assassin for his behaviour, which she apparently sees as fully justified given that the other Rajputs were deeply upset about their marriage, and asserts Yeh jo bhi kuch horaha hai, uska kaaran aap hain, Shahenshah!

I think it was this episode precisely that caused my u-turn in my affiliation towards Jodha.😈 And on what grounds does she acquit her precious bapusa and her entire family of forcing the marriage upon her?

Jalal: An excess of "understanding": The Shahenshah is fast becoming a candidate for sainthood, and it is tough to tolerate too much of saintliness.

😭

At this rate, after so much practice in "understanding" Jodha Begum for feeling lost and unwanted (of course in the lap of the imperial luxury that he provides her, but never mind!) and thus needing to let off steam in so many varied but uniformly unpleasant ways (one would have thought she was the only unhappy woman in the whole wide world!), we should soon have him embracing even Adham Khan and "understanding" his desire to send Jalal to rejoin his Maker in short order.

🤣

After all, Adham Khan has also been feeling lost and unwanted, and for much, much longer than apni Jodha. He believes that his Ammijaan has always loved Jalal more than she loves him, and he is bitter that he is treated like an underling (which is what he is) by Jalal.Worst of all, he is suffering cruel and unusual punishment in being saddled with Javeda, who would drive the mildest of husbands batty. 😉

😆

Episode 80: The turning of the tide

Methinks the real key to Jalal's behaviour with Jodha - during the tent squabble, after the snake episode, and at the dargah - lies in his perception that he and Jodha share a sense of being rootless, of not belonging anywhere, of having no one who really cares for them, that he describes the other day, ostensibly to Maham, but really to himself and perhaps to an invisible Jodha.

Because of this feeling of kinship, and because he thinks he can understand her hidden desperation that surfaces in illogical, immature and even ugly reactions, like an obstreperous child having a tantrum and drumming its heels on the floor, Jalal goes the extra mile, not to be provoked into retaliating in kind, and being accommodating to a fault with her.

Did he have a nap under the Bodhi tree before the changeover- it seemed sudden and out of sync, surely the feeling of kinship would have stopped him from further troubling her and being accomodative of her pain, but certainly not such awful behaviour. Why not let Jodha behave circumspectly and voice all she ranted as of in her thoughts? It would have spared her of impropriety and Jalal of sainthood!

NB: Here folks, is the first reference, and by Jalal himself, to the never before sighted, and in fact non-existent Zubaan No. 1. From now on, this will gain in strength and solidity, ending up as a paththar ki lakeer that Jodha will throw in Jalal's face time and again.

This fetches him the unexpected bonus of warm praise from the guardian of the dargah at Ajmer Sharif, for having come so humbly, like a common man, without his shahi pagdi! Talk of undeserved encomiums!😉

Also it fetches him with a lovely cloth pagdi that makes him look extra handsome.😳

The fact is that Jodha is a very warmhearted and good girl, but she is opinionated, unyielding in her prejudices, and with no understanding of anything beyond her Amer, like a frog in a well. She is like a small town girl pitchforked into the capital of an empire, with none of the understanding of the complexities of imperial governance that the gentle and equally goodhearted Salima has.

Yes.

Quiz for the day: Guess the number of times Jodha uses the words nirdosh pashu in the hunt segment. No cheating by rewatching the episode and counting!

Half a dozen? Another half a dozen in her various explanations to HB and Ruqaiya.😆

Entries will be received till I put up my next post on Sunday.

Prize for the closest count: The winner will be given a chance to attend the 16^th century PETA General Assembly at Amer along with Jodha Begum.

Alternative prize: A shikar trip with the Shahenshah, with the winner acting as his caddy (in golf lingo), and carrying his shamsheer for all eventualities (this is subject to His Imperial Majesty's consent, which is still awaited)

I am willing to forfeit the prize, if I win to any nirdosh pashu pakshi lover and opt for the alternative prize. 😳

The heart of the matter: For me, the core of the beautifully conceptualised and superbly enacted episode lay elsewhere than in the shots of a distraught Jodha consumed by guilt and fear that she might have ended up getting Jalal killed.

I loved Jodha/Paridhi in this segment...her guilt desperation and determination to save him.She was very good.👍🏼 The first deep positive feelings she ever felt for the man. The blood sindoor was also well concieved. Also when Jodha mounts him on the horse behind her, and she pulls him closer to her to tie him with her, there is a pause for a brief moment at the first instance of physical closeness. It was well directed and well done by Paridhi.

But I couldn't help wonder, why she didn't use her dupatta to tie him with her and what happened to her yellow one that she was wearing when she came for the shikar which could have come in handy. That would have been more secure than the twisted twigs.😕


Jalal in extremis: But in the final analysis, the segment belongs to Rajat's Jalal, who dominates it even though he has to be mostly passive. Rajat's take on a Jalal at death's door is superlative. When he graduates to films, as he is bound to, he will be magisterial in the death scenes.

⭐️

And it is revealing, especially in a man said to be heartless, that he does not regret the loss of his empire, or the failure of his dreams for a Mughal sultanate that would unite all if Hindustan under his aegis. All he can think of before he passes out is to spare his loved ones the grief of losing him. And all he regrets is the manner of his dying.

It is such details that we tend to overlook, that makes your posts brilliant aunty.👏

Maham Anga, though shellshocked, can still think of the paramount need - now that there is no Bairam Khan to hold the fort till Jalal recovers - for her to step into the breach and keep the wheels of government turning, so that the enemies of the Mughal sultanate do not think of attempting a coup. She might, in some recess of her being, be also thinking of what Jalal's passing might mean for her son, but right now she is hardwired to handle any crisis, with her sole focus on preserving and protecting the interests of the Mughal sultanate.

If it were to get out into the streets, the scandal would shake the Sultanate. It is not a question of Jodha, but of the prestige of the Shahenshah, and of the repercussions for his reputation even if he were to survive, as the man in the street would believe his Rajput wife tried to kill him. But Jodha, in an agony of self-reproach, has no comprehension of the gravity of any of this.

HB and MA were admirable here.👏

So Mohan would have to fall back on our Odd Couple, and if he had the misfortune to try and eat Jodha, he would expire on the spot from metal poisoning, given that she was, even on shikar, doing her best to look like a Christmas tree on December 25.😉

🤣

Sound advice for Jalal:

My dear Jalal (not Shahenshah, as I am old enough to be your mother and, at a pinch, with early marriages in your era, even your dadijaan),

I have watched in steadily mounting exasperation as you make a mess of every chance you get to bring that akdu baddimaag Begum Jodha of yours to order.

Instead, she is running rings round you, and you barely escaped having that expensive glass vase hurled at your head yesterday. Yes, I know you have guaranteed turban protection, and a very thick head underneath, but it might have shaken up your already scrambled grey matter and made a bad omelette of it. Which would never do for the future welfare of your millions of subjects.

So, while your artisans are melting the glass pieces and making an identical vase with which you can get the better of Jodha, you clearly need some lessons in how to handle obstinate and spoilt young women who do not know what is good for them. And that is You, bewakoof bachche!

So pay close attention, and I will tell you how to tackle the tiger in the offing with maximum effect and minimum damage (to yourself, of course). This will be the first in a series of lessons, so save this in the 16^th century equivalent of a hard drive for future reference, just in case the tiger seeks a postponement.

1) Make sure the tiger goes after her first. Wait till the very last moment, to make sure that the wretched girl is really scared to death, and cannot say, after you have rescued her at great risk to life and limb,

Yeh kaunsi badi baat thi, Shahenshah? Hamare Amer mein to bachche bhi bagh ko dande se bhaga dete hain, toh aapko use parajit karne me itna vilamb aur itni kathinayi kyon huyi?

2) Push her behind you and advance a good way from her and towards the tiger, which will be stunned at the vision of a man actually coming towards him. More important, Jodha cannot then hear what is going on between the two of you.

3) Look the tiger in the eye, and tell him: Mere bhai, aap bhi bahadur aur hum bhi, isliye aapko ek achchi salah deta hoon. Is aurat ko mat khayiye. Ye abhi bahar se hi mujhe roz jhagda kar karke pagal bana rahi hai, to sochiye aapka andar se kya haal karegi?

4) The tiger will turn tail and run for his life. But before he does that, ask him, as a quid pro quo, to wrestle with you for a couple of minutes, and inflict 3 bad gashes on your arms and chest, calibrated to bleed heavily and picturesquely without causing any lasting damage.

5) You can then pick up your fainting begum and return to your camp in triumph. Make sure that as soon as you have deposited her on whatever is available, you collapse artistically on the ground, with blood all over you, and await further developments with your eyes strategically closed.

I can guarantee that this will work, provided you do exactly as I have told you. Apne dimaag par zor dene ki koyi zaroorat nahin. Is ladki se joojhte joojthe aapka tez dimaag sunn pad gaya hai, nahin to Sujanpur me jo hashar hua, wo kabhi nahin hota!

No need to thank me either, but I shall wait and see if you have followed my instructions to the letter before deciding whether to help you in the future, so watch out!

🤣

Yours affectionately,

Shyamala Aunty

Originally posted by: sashashyam

My dear Sri,

You made my day, do you know that? 🤗I wrote to two people conveying my sadness about the way in which this "epic" love story had turned out, and neither, in their responses, touched on it at all. I am very pleased that you feel the same way I do.

Talking of great love stories, Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Saraswatichandra had exquisite romantic scenes that were beautifully conceived, superbly written, and perfectly enacted. Any time Jennifer Winget begins her next serial, I am going to be there! Of course after about 6 months, it degenerated into melodrama with the heroine marrying another man, then divorcing him and marrying the hero after all, it seems.I say 'it seems' because I quit when she married the wrong guy!

As for your very warm comments about my writing, I accept them with becoming gratitude. Yes, I try to cover all the characters, at times to highlight a comic element, at times to discuss their character traits, and I am glad you enjoy that. I also write a good part of the time with my tongue in my cheek,and I am extra pleased when someone spots and appreciates one joke or the other. Which is not as often as I would like it to be!😉

As for my language, I love words for their own sake, and they, in return, are sometimes kind to me!

Thank you again, Sri.

Shyamala Akka