Folks,
I do not know quite how to describe this quartet of episodes, except to say that it resembled nothing so much as a yoyo or a seesaw, now up, now down. Anyhow, let us start with Episode 89.
Episode 89: Chudail shehzaadi!
This very charming one was like one of those pink, spun sugar candy confections that vendors at a mela sell to kids, which melts scrumptiously in the mouth, but offers nothing much to sink your teeth into and chew over. Still, I have some points to make and a few comments to offer, which I am putting down , and in doing this, I am assuming that all of you would have seen the episode, or that you remember it from 2013.
Jodha-Sukanya:
1) Jodha does acknowledge to Sukanya that her sankalp (re: the infamous Jalal ka sar) had been fulfilled. It is a great pity that she is interrupted before she is able to respond to Sukanya's Kaunsa sankalp?, or elaborate on it, but it is clear that she sees the issue as having received closure thanks to Jalal's matha tekhna before the Kali Maa.
Sau sau koti dhanyavaad Devi Maa ko, ki is sarphiri ladki ko itni sadbuddhi to pradaan ki aapne!😉
2) Jodha, driven on the backfoot when she is, after some fruitless dodging and feinting, forced to confess to Sukanya that her marriage is hollow, tries to salvage the situation by making a couple of explanatory comments.
One, the difference of their dharm excuse, for which some might criticise her seeing the generous, unconditional acceptance of her Hindu identity by both Hamida Banu and Jalal. But I do not feel that Jodha meant to convey any negative impression here . It was rather that she has to say something that would sound at least halfway convincing to Sukanya, and she cannot think of anything else right then.
Plus she does not want to rake up her ghrina mantra now, when Jalal has made such a major gesture for her sake (or so she would assume, not factoring in the Hindustan ka dil jeetna angle) , and run the risks about which Maham has since briefed her in stentorian tones.
Two, she offers the Aur abhi hamare vivah ka samay bhi to bahut kam hua hai na! excuse, thus clearly hinting, and this to herself as much as to Sukanya, that her present alienation from her husband is but temporary. Given Jodha's attitude to her marriage this far, this is no less than a quantum change in her mindset.
Jalal-Jodha Scene No, 4: The chhoti fauj
4) I was glad to see that at least something out of Mahaam's tirade about the risk to Jalal from the temple visit has penetrated into Jodha's normally firmly closed mind. When she voices unprecedented concern about the fallout for Jalal of what he had done in the temple, he should have been elated at this first ever sign that his begum cares about any potential troubles for him. However, he seems too tired to even notice that, not to speak of pulling her (undoubtedly pretty) leg about it.
5) There were so many very funny and charming moments in the Jalal-Jodha segment in their bedroom, but my own favourite is still the one of Jodha sensing that there was someone outside and asking Jalal, in a stage whisper, to go and find out what was happening. It reminded me of nothing so much as a wife waking up her husband at 2 am on a cold winter night and asking him to investigate a noise in the basement!😉😉
Her face, and Jalal's, as he looked at the khanjar his begum had handed him, accompanying it with nayanamudras straight out of a Bharatanatyam recital, to encourage him to get on with it, were an unalloyed delight!
6) The heart of a child: Jalal delights in the company of children, whether little Rahim in Agra or the chhoti fauj here in Amer, because their affection and admiration for him are both unconditional and unstinting, without any ulterior agenda. All the other relationships in his life so far have been barter deals: caring and affection, yes, but in return for what he can provide. Remember the time when Ruqaiya (the original one) admires his get up (at the time of the Farida affair) and he asks at once Tumhein kya chahiye?
But when the littlest one here says Hum to bas aapko dekhne hi aaye hain! Aap kitne sundar dikhte hain na!, he basks in her admiration like a sunflower in the sunlight (that Jodha, with a side glance of proprietary pride at this point, looks almost as pleased as Jalal does is another matter altogether!😉).
That the children delight in his company moves him as very little else, which is why he speaks later, with touching candour, of the sunheri yaadein he will take away from this time spent with them.
There is, somewhere inside the Shahenshah, the heart of a child.
7) Chudail shehzaadi: The bedtime story is unadulterated fun, and as Jalal goes on and on about the gussail shehzaadi jo hare rang se nafrat karti thi ( he never misses a single trick, does he?), the fluctuating expressions on Jodha's face are a treat to watch.
Photo courtesy munni_rajatfan
I was as pleasantly startled as Jalal must have been by her sudden, rippling laughter. The last time we saw her laugh so much was after his offer of the talaq-e-khula, and then it was awash with pure bitterness. Now it is unclouded amusement, and she looks so joyful and so pretty that Jalal's breath must have caught in his throat. After all, this is what he had been striving for for weeks now, that she should be comfortable with him, at ease and relaxed. No wonder, then, that he smiles broadly in triumph!.
Perhaps because of this newfound confidence, when she asks him to sleep comfortably and not fall ill, for that would worry her Bapusa, his standard complaint Ab bhi aapko apne Bapusa ki fikr hai, hamari nahin! , has a new sound to it. As he tilts his head back against the bedstead and looks up at her, his words have no tinge of sarcasm, or even of teasing. His gaze is direct, and his eyes are asking a question.
Her eyes look fully into his for one long moment, and though she says nothing, there is something in their depths that was never there before. A hint of a smile, as if to say Kitne bewakoof hain aap, Shahenshah! Har baat kahi nahin jaati. Kuch baaten apne aap samajhni padti hain!
This is perhaps the first insider joke between our Odd Couple!
Rating for Jalal-Jodha Scene No.4: 10/10, and divided equally between them.
8) Teerbaazi: I was relieved to see Mansingh in some action at long last, and greatly amused by the Jalal-Mansingh man to man joking about Jodha's dhauns jamaana! Mansingh has come a long way from his aggressive near impertinence towards the Shahenshah during the Jalal-Jodha marriage.
Interestingly, what Jalal tells Mansingh to do - Tumhein hathyaar ko apne shareer ka hissa samajhna hoga. Apne dimaag, apni rooh ko us se jodna hoga. Phir nishana lagaana! - is exactly what Maharishi Vishawamitra teaches the young Rama, and Dronacharya teaches Arjun. It is the essence of concentration, with a focus so laserlike that it shuts out everything else around but the archer, the arrow, and the target. Mansingh listens to his shahi ustad with grave and unwavering attention, and of course he hits the bullseye immediately afterwards.
Lastly, does Jodha have to pull a 1970s film heroine stunt at least once in every episode? What was it with the narrowed eyes and the puffed up face, the snippish behaviour and the sarcasm after Jalal had praised her various hunars with such evident sincerity ?
That there seem to be far too many of these hunars is another matter altogether. Does she have to be such a sarvakalavalli? All that remains is for her to walk on water!😉
To revert, Jodha here looks ridiculous and sounds worse. But because she laughed so prettily the night before, I will cut her a bit of slack, and pass it off as payback for his chudail shehzaadi crack!
Rating for Jalal-Jodha Scene No. 5: 4/10.
Joke of the day: The ragtag bunch of Rajvanshi chamchas of Kunwar Pratap, looking for all the world like the villain's 5th to 8th sidekicks in a 1970s film togged out as downmarket royals, arguing loudly, right inside the Amer stables, about their proposal to bump off the Shahenshah. Whatever Bharmal's suraksha prabhand might be like, his intelligence network is kaput. Otherwise, the first securityman masquerading as a stable hand would have rushed to him with the news of this Keystone Kops venture!😉
Episode 90: An apology of an apology
There were only 3 significant scenes in this one, and I shall take them up ad seriatim.
Jalal, Jodha aur thakurji ka bhog: The earlier part of this scene was charmingly quasi-domestic, especially Jodha scolding Jalal for not having listened to what she had said about their having to share the kheer. Her aap sadaiva apne hi dhun mein rahte hain na? was pure wifely nagging.😉
But Jodha generally looks, whenever she is saying anything to her presumed life partner for the next 6 janams, as if she had a toothache😉. If, for example, she had smiled even slightly while asking him if he now trusted her not to poison him, think how much more delightful the scene would have been,and this without the least slippage on her side towards affection or caring, only towards mischief!
Jalal's sudden look of trepidation, as he bats his eyelids and looks back at Jodha after having gobbled up all the kheer, like a little boy caught in mischief , is delightful. It resembles nothing so much as Jodha's Kanha as a makhan chor😉.
One question here: Why does Jodha not eat the spoonful of kheer that she is still holding in her hand, and fulfill her dadisa's desire that she and Jalal should eat it together?
Rajvanshiyon ka gungaan: Jalal is here, like Darcy when Elizabeth comes to Pemberley (in Jane Austen's very famous Pride and Prejudice), determined to be pleased with the Rajvanshis, as he knows that is the one sure fire way to please Jodha. So he launches into extended praise of their manifold virtues, carefully avoiding anything the least negative.
His earlier reference to her triple bullseye in archery, which he cites as proof that she would never try to do him in by staging an accident, is plain ridiculous, but I suppose such folly is to be expected in one new to feelings that are alien to him, and which he does not as yet understand.😊
Jalal next moves to the sketch of Prithviraj Chauhan on the wall. He is so taken up with what he call the aankhon ki chamak aur painapan in Prithviraj's black and white profile, despite the fact that he can see only one eye and that too not full front, voicing his certainty that the subject was a undha sipahi, ek jaanbaaz jungbaaz, that one suspects part of his gushing is Rajat's own nostalgia for his spectacular debut as the young Prithviraj !
One would have almost assumed, listening to such lavish praise from an emperor who must have been familiar with the best that the Persian miniature school of painting had to offer, that he was admiring an Albrecht Durer (one of the most famous of medieval German artists, specializing in etchings and very fine brush work), whereas it was a pretty ordinary effort by an amateur artist, Suryabhan, done in pencil, its most striking feature being the proudly twirled (half) moustache.
I suppose one should be grateful that Jodha did not provide that choice bit of information at this point!😉
The apology of an apology: Jodha listens to all of this with a face that shows very little warmth or even appreciation; she seems to take it as no more than what is due to her race. One would have expected at least a pleased smile and a dhanyavvad, but no, she continues to look at the picture with her chin up and her eyes narrowed.
She then launches, using Jalal's encomium to the warrior in the sketch as a basis, into a lavish tribute to Prithviraj Chauhan. The sonorous periods and classical phrases roll off her tongue with practiced fluency, but alas, her enthusiasm gets the better of her, and the speech ends, unfortunately, in her hoping for more such Rajvanshi veer yoddha, " jo Mughalone se hamari raksha kar sakein".
In that one sentence, Jodha cuts off not just Jalal, but also Hamida and all the other Mughals who have been incredibly kind and accommodating and affectionate towards her, shuts them into a circle marked "ghrina ke patra" , and distances herself from them en bloc. No wonder Jalal's face looks like a thundercloud.
That her comment is made after Jalal had been extra generous in his praise of the Rajvanshis makes it all the more ungracious. Moreover, it reveals what Jodha really feels, as a man might do if he is drunk. That she sees Mughals as a monolithic group deserving nothing but hate, forgetting not just Hamida but the many others in Agra who have been so kind to her.
This is what hurts Jalal, and when he says that despite her having no bow or arrows, Aapki har ek baat seedhe nishane par lagi!, that bitterness and the hurt shows plainly. Which is a mistake on his part, for the more he shows that she is his weakness, the more she will snub him. In his place, I would have turned away and cut her off without a word.
Graceless reaction: Any woman with some sensitivity would have begged pardon again and tried to soothe his hurt. Not Jodha, for she is self-righteous to a fault, and can never say sorry from the heart, for she does not feel sorry at all. Her apology, which is in fact an apology for one, looks and sounds proforma because that is what it is. Hum kshama chahte hain, Shahenshah, hamari mansha aapko thes pahunchane ki nahin thi! That she was so carried away by the subject ki hum apne vash mein nahin rahe!
Note that Jodha does not, as she should have, immediately qualify her statement, by at least adding that she meant only oppressive Mughals like Sharifuddin, and that she loves his Ammijaan and so many others in his household. Instead, she immediately switches back to singing Prithviraj's praises, as if her faux pas was a bagatelle, not worth bothering about any further.
It was hardly enough for her to say that she did not mean to hurt Jalal. Everyone is responsible for the effects of his/her actions, whether they are meant or not. That is why the law has a manslaughter charge for those who kill another without meaning to do so. They cannot walk free saying that they did not mean to kill that person. But then Jodha got away with getting Jalal almost killed, and was actually lavishly praised for having saved his life, after first endangering it thru her unthinking folly.Uske saamne yeh kya cheez hai!
Rating for Jalal-Jodha Scene No.6: 6/10, most of that for the nok jhok about the kheer.
Skewed responses: In 2013, I was intrigued by the fact that Jodha was generally indulged beyond all reason by the majority of the forum, rather like the way Hamida Banu treats her. Every small decrease in her rudeness to Jalal was hailed as if a comet was blazing thru the skies heralding good fortune for all!😉 When this decrease was, soon enough, cancelled by her next bout of rudeness, that was promptly enveloped in a soft cloud of "understanding" and explained away. It was the same with this bloomer of Jodha's.
Whereas Jalal was relentlessly pilloried, no matter what he did or did not do, and the praise for even his tremendous gesture at the Kali Mandir was tepid. Whence my fruitless hope that Jodha should become better acquainted with the likes of the villainous Rajput Raja of Bundi, so that she learnt to appreciate her lot in life! 😉
The Gifts: I loved Jodha's reminiscing, for once with a half smile when remembering Jalal, about the bedtime story, and her looking pleased when Jalal's chotti fauj is visibly gaga over him and his gifts.
In her rushing to publicise her Ammijaan's Rajvanshi connections, and by extension, Jalal's as well, one sees some slight sense of identification with her in laws. Maybe she feels a tad ashamed about what she had blurted out to Jalal a little earlier, and about the residual bitterness in his face even after her tepid apology.Perhaps that sense of guilt is also the reason why she wears the green joda gifted by him later in the day, puffing Jalal up no end!
But what is it with all those long Ameri faces on sighting the green joda? Has Shivani - who goes one better by complaining audibly to Sukanya about this - not been taught that a wife is supposed to adjust to the tastes of her husband and her sasural? And this in a 16th century Rajput royal family! Why does Mynavati not pull up the stupid girl, at least after Hamida & Co have moved on ? If a daughter of mine had made such a disastrous remark within eye and earshot of my son-in-law's family, I would have sent her to bed at once without lunch or dinner.
Then Mainavati softsoaps the whole to Jodha, practically pleading with her and saying that gifts from the sasural should be respected. If this is the way she has brought up her daughters, no wonder Jodha is the way she is with Jalal!
Moreover, I do not remember Jodha objecting to the rich green joda that Hamida had gifted her for the jashn held immediately after her marriage, which she received with becoming gratitude and then wore without any fuss.Why all this fuss now? Bizarre!
Maham's incendiary quid pro quo: Even before she gets to this, Maham, by ostentatiously stressing that two other gifts are from the Shahenshah's Begum-e-Khaas Ruqaiya Sultan, and his doosri Begum Salima Sultan, obviously wants to rub it in that Jodha in only No.3 among Jalal's begums. I thought that was a neat jab, but what surprised me was the way in which Sukanya, Mainavati and Jodha's bhabhis were exchanging dismayed looks, while Jodha lowered her eyes. Surely they must have known about Jalal's earlier begums?
When Maham, after asking Jodha to come to her room, and uttering some snappy preliminary remarks, deliberately burns the outfit gifted to her by Jodha's dadisa, her behaviour, though ill-mannered and petty, is no different from that of Jodha when she burnt the shaadi ka joda chosen for her by Jalal. Jodha was in fact worse behaved, as she did it in front of all the Mughals, as Maham does not fail to point out.
So Jodha sounds hypocritical, to say the least, when she now talks of Maham's soch, for what about her own kaand earlier? What is sauce for the Amer ki Mirchi is surely sauce for the Wazir-e-Aaliya, as Vicki pointed out in 2013. What goes around comes around, and Jodha's fishwife like behaviour, totally lacking in royal dignity and self-possession, has now boomeranged on her.
I doubt, however, if she will learn anything from this lesson. If only she had said to Maham, with impeccable dignity: Maham Angaji, wo toh meri bhool thi. Par aap to mujhse badi hain, aayu mein , jeevan ke anubhav aur gyaan mein. Agar aap bhi meri us samay ki naasamajhi aur nirankush krodh ko dohrayengi, to yeh aapke aude ka maan karna nahin hua na? Of course after providing her with a handy lexicon for shudh Hindi words!😉
An excess of posturing: The chausar face off between Pratap and Jalal ended, or rather was cannily terminated by Bharmal, when the scores were even. The loaded remarks exchanged between Jalal and Pratap were predictable, and after a while, tiresome. The only noteworthy aspect was Pratap's remarkable ability to utter a veiled challenge with all the verve and panache of someone reading aloud from a dictionary😉.
This apart, I have never understood why a chausar game is presented as a test of the players' skill, when the truth is that unlike chess, and like all dice games, it is governed very largely by Lady Luck. This is why I am sure that if they had continued, Jalal would have won, for she would inevitably have favoured him over the wooden and charmless Pratap😉!
So on to Episode No. 91.
NB: A historical footnote about Prithviraj Chauhan, for those interested.
There is not the least doubt that in terms of his sheer bravery and his dauntless fighting spirit, Prithviraj Chauhan was all that Jodha says in his praise, and then some more. That is he is up there in the patheon of our heroes for all times to come.
But one thing that Jodha fails to mention, in her paean to Rajvanshi valour and intergrity, is that the chal that trapped him was that of a Rajput, his own father in law, not that of an Afghan. If only Jalal ahd known that, he could have made an innocuous looking interjection about Raja Jaichand, and stopped her in her tracks!
Secondly, that for all the well merited idolisation of Prithviraj, the fact remains that he lost the second battle of Tarain in 1192 because the other Rajputs would not unite under his banner, any more than they did with Maharana Pratap against Akbar. The fact is that as Maharana Udai Singh is shown lamenting in Maharana Pratap, the Rajputs were disunited and quarreled among themselves over trifles, which is why they wasted much energy fighting each other, making it easy for the outsiders to defeat them.
Thirdly, if Prithviraj had not been quixotically generous and let Ghori go free after he defeated him in the First Battle of Tarain in 1191, he would never have been defeated the next year, and all the atrocities that Ghori then inflicted on the whole of North India would never have happened. This, I would like to add, is the commonly accepted version of what happened in 1191 and 1192.
That was irresponsible and unthinking generosity towards an implacable and terrible foe. Prithviraj should have imprisoned Ghori if he did not want to execute him; he had no right to take such chances with the safety of his people, protecting whom was his primary rajadharma. His uncalled for generosity had terrible consequences for hundreds of thousands of innocents, and his personal sufferings, huge as they were, and his heroic end, do not compensate for what his people suffered because of his tragic error of judgment.
Episode 91: The turning point, or a mirage?
Here, what stayed with me was not the understated, tentative steps - mostly taken by him, true, but not entirely one-sided - towards overt caring between Jalal and Jodha.
- Jalal waiting, openly and without any pretence, for Jodha to come down. How many contemporary husbands would do this, without complaint and without hustling the spouse? How many would not fight shy of stating plainly what they were doing? And he is a 16th century emperor!
When Jodha finally appears, Jalal eyes her steadily, from head to foot. There is a smile in his eyes, but deep down, not on the surface. He is clearly pleased at seeing her in the green joda of his choice; murmuring to himself : Yeh kaunsa hunar hai Jodha Begum ka, inkaar karke bhi wohi joda pehna! (But what inkaar is he referring to?).
His stealing a march on Jodha by proclaiming, when Sukanya wonders about her wearing green, Sukanya, unhon ne hara rang hamari wajah se pehna hai! Jodha's lips are half open to protest, but then she thinks better of it!
And when he follows this up with Humein hara rang pasand hai, aur khaskar Jodha Begum par!, her involuntary preening in pride at the compliment is as instinctive as the proprietary pride in her sidelong glance when the chotti fauj raves about Jalal's sundar looks.
- Jodha stealing a look at her relaxed, smiling happy husband during the banjara dance. It is noteworthy that he is not then looking at her, so it is not a reaction on her part, but an initiative.
- Most revealing of all, the sheer terror on Jodha's face as Jalal grapples with the rampaging elephant and , at one point, falls down. It is true that anyone would have been panic-stricken at the sight, as all are the onlookers, especially the women. But there is an edge to the blind fear and foreboding in Jodha's eyes as her breath is caught in her constricted throat, which seems deeper than the normal human reaction to another human being in mortal danger.
Even after Jalal has managed to climb on to Hawai's back and is soothing it down, the terror and shock on her face are still there, as if frozen in time. Maybe, in those few instants, it was brought home to her what that man - not the Shahenshah - who was defying death to save the others in the pavilion, and also his beloved pet, meant to her, and what kind of void he would leave behind in her zehen were he to be killed in this dangerous enterprise. At least I had hoped that in 2013.
Rating for all these bits, clubbed together as Jalal-Jodha Scene No. 7: 6/10.
Reluctant admiration: I had felt, in 2013, that it would have been rather nice if Kunwar Pratap, setting aside his enmity in this crisis, had helped Jalal with tips on how to control a rampaging elephant, and they had thus developed a solid respect for each other. But it did seem unlikely to me even as I wrote that, for Jalal would surely know Hawai inside out and would need no back up for dealing with him.
As things turned out, Pratap merely kept up a running commentary with his chamcha-in-chief, like Harsha Bhogle at an IPL match😉, and finally, once Jalal had calmed Hawai down, announced pontifically: Shatru hai , par maan na padega ki usne bahut achchi shiksha payee hai. Jalal ek shreshth yoddha hai.
NB: This is what we call in Tamil: Vasishtar vaayaale Brahmarishi, ie to be declared a Brahmarishi, the highest level among ascetics, by the most revered Brahmarishi Vasisht himself. This expression is derived from the gratification of the Raja-turned-Rishi Viswamitra when he finally received this accolade from Maharishi Vasisht himself, something for which he had striven very, very hard. Of course Jalal knows nothing of Pratap's assessment of him, but if he had, I am sure he would have appreciated it.
In the event, I was very happy that Jalal defused the crisis on his own, coaxing the maddened elephant away from the terrified crowd (why can the director never produce a convincing scene of crowd panic? The helter skelter running around they show always looks fake), and then slowly reasserting his affectionate equation with it by the tones of his voice alone, till it lets him climb up to its back and soothe it back to normalcy.
Sharifuddin: Unrealistic leering: Going a little back in the episode, I found the sudden spike in the creepiness quotient in Sharifuddin eyeing Jodha to be highly unrealistic.
It does not at all matter what he felt towards her in the pre-marriage period when he was squeezing Bharmal and hinting darkly about not having even touched Amer ka asli khazana. Why on earth would he, naturally a cautious man, now run such a risk by leering at Jalal's begum, and to what purpose? How can he be sure, seeing how soft Jalal is towards her and the fact that they share his rooms, that Jodha will not tell Jalal about his unpleasant behaviour? He knows full well how Jalal would then react, Bakshi Bano or no Bakshi Bano. It is bizarre.
Curiously enough, whereas I would have expected our Amer ki baaghin to look daggers at the obviously leering Sharifuddin, if only to let him know that she has read him aright and will not take such impertinence lightly, she looked uncomfortable and awkward. That was precisely the wrong signal to send out to a lecherous creep, because it eggs him on to push his luck the next time around. Jodha will soon realise that she has made a mistake.
As for Bakshi Bano, with her doormat attitude and her eternally weepy eyes, she gets on my nerves big time😡.
Comic asides: There were many curious and unintentionally comic things in this episode:
-Kunwar Pratap redefining woodenness with a finesse that would have given solid oak an inferiority complex, 😉 -Pratap's court jesters hissing into his (undoubtedly tin) ear,
-Jalal and the rotund Ameri halwai (the CVs have obviously forgotten that Jalal had already forgiven him at the Shahi Shaadi, when he poked the halwai mischievously in his tummy), - Adham waving that red bandanna at Hawai, possibly confusing him/her with the proverbial bull😉, and finally, -Jodha in the precap, looking, despite the seriousness of the moment, very funny in that shahi pagdi.
The precap: The turning point, or a mirage?: That is what I had felt in 2013 as Jalal, expatiating with unsparing candour about the risks he runs daily, made Jodha face up to the kashmakash of being an emperor. What is more, he was clearly treating her as an equal whose advice he seeks. She was thus at the foot of the wall, and with no easy refuge in a retreat to ghrina or by deliberately misunderstanding him, she would, it seemed, have to stand and deliver.
It should be a salutary Lessons in Leadership 1.0., I had felt, coming on top of Maham's little tutorial of the day before on the Art of Receiving 2.0 ( which I feel was a contributory factor in making Jodha wear Jalal's green joda, along with Jodha's residual sense of shame at having made that comment to Jalal about Mughalon se raksha).
Back then, my good friend Moontide, reading Jodha's face in that last shot, was sure that she looked absolutely ready for Bhashan number 234567890! 😉I did not agree with her. It seemed to me that Jodha was shellshocked by the implications of what Jalal had done - put her in the judgment seat - and by the brutally frank dilemma he had set out for her to resolve.
She should, given a modicum of perceptiveness, have finally come face to face with the self-evident truth- i.e. self-evident to all but herself - that in an emperor's world, it is but rarely a choice between black and white, between good and bad, between right and wrong. It is almost always a choice between two shades of grey, between the bad and the worse, between the lesser wrong and the greater wrong.
So I had hoped that Jodha would, for a change, be sensible, sensitive, perceptive, and supportive. That she would respond that his pride and his stature as a Shahenshah were paramount, and so they should stay there and fight it out with Jalal's enemies, together. I could not have been more wrong.
Episode 92: A mirage after all!
In 2013, after watching this episode, I could not remember when I had last felt so dispirited about Jodha Akbar. It was a major letdown, that scene between Jalal and Jodha, and then from there, we were, without warning, suddenly pitchforked into a mehndi ki rasam, with Jalal,like a Peeping Tom, secretly watching Jodha's nritya.
I felt the same this time around.
What dismayed me the most was a Jodha who does not seem to have a thought to spare for the dangers threatening the man she has married, except to categorise him as a pariah she wants to shoo away, since his very presence would endanger the welfare and the good name of her beloved parivaar and her even more beloved Amer.
If you feel that I am over-reacting, let us, as all good analysts do, refer to the documents in the case, viz Jodha's own words, taken verbatim.
Jalal is clearly not expecting her, which says something about the extent of caring and worry he thinks she will feel because of the Hawai crisis. Nor is he pleased to see her, for he has other things on his mind. So he greets her with a curt Aap yahan? .. aap yahan kyon aayi hain? Over now to Jodha Begum.
Hum aapse vinati karne aaye hain, aap yahan se chale jaayiye! And responding to Jalal's Kyon?, she goes on, with gathering force and emphasis: Sab jaankar kyon anjaan ban rahe hain aap? Dekh nahin rahe hain aapka jeevan sankat mein hai yahan par? Pehle jheel mein nauka vihaar karte samay, aur ab yahan pandal mein!Do baar ghatak aakraman ho chuke hai aap par! Aap yahan se chale jaayiye!
So far so good. At this point, Jalal, driven by an urge he cannot control, and evidently encouraged by what seems to be an indication of her concern for his safety, asks her Kya aapko hamari fikr hone lagi hai, Jodha Begum?
Now, I can understand that she does not want to say Haan, and go down the road that opens up. That is to say, if indeed she feels that way. Or even if she does not feel that way at all. In either case, Jalal's is clearly a question that has to be finessed without giving him the impression that Jodha is now falling for him. And it is not as though this cannot be done. All that she has to say is:
Shahenshah, aap hamare pati hai, aur hamare sanskaron ke kaaran humein to aapki chinta to rahegi na? Aap ke oopar huye in aakramanon se humein bhay lagta hai, ki kahin phir se koyi kuch na kar de! Aur phir aap hi sochiye, Shahenshah, aapki suraksha ka daayitva hamare Bapusa par hai. Agar aapko yahan kuch ho jai to wo to jeete ji mar jaayenge! Humein galat mat samajhiye, par humein lagta hai ki aapko yahan se chale jaana chahiye!
But what does Jodha say and do?
Heedless cruelty: She responds with a resounding Nahin!!! And she continues in an even more disastrous fashion: Sukanya ke vivah ki chinta hai. Jalal's gaze is now level and still.
Amer ki chinta hai. Ishwar na kare aapko yahan Amer mein kuch ho gaya, Sukanya ka vivah rukh jayega! Amer ka harsh shok mein badal jaayega! Aur us anhonee ka kalank hamare parivaarwaalon ke maathe par lag jaayega! Aur phir na jaane kis kis sankat ka saamna Amer ko karna padega! Isiliye hum aapse haath jodkar - and here she suits her action to her words - vinati karte hain ki aap yahan se..
So the sum and substance of what she affirms - after having seen him close to death just a little earlier - is that she is not concerned about him, and that her only worry is that nothing should happen to him in Amer, so that her loved ones do not suffer any after effects from his being assassinated there.
The only possible inference to be drawn from this is that it is perfectly all right for her if he is assassinated away from Amer . Jahan jaakar marna hai mariye aap, par hamare Amer mein nahin!
But the sheer callousness, and the crass self-centredness with which she said all that to him did not surprise me. In fact, like Jalal, I was glad and relieved to have my assessment of her confirmed.
His words are as searing as his eyes as he cuts her off in mid-sentence: Khuda ka shukr hai, Jodha Begum! Varna humein ek pal ke liye laga tha ki aapko hamari fikr hone lagi hai! Shukr hai aapka ki aapne hamare yakeen par se yakeen uthne nahin diya! ... Humein khushi is baat ki hai aap (hamare) un dushmanon mein se hain jo hamare saamne aakar apni nafrat zaahir karte hain. Jodha of course looks uncomprehending.
There were, in 2013, those who took the line that she needed more time to disengage herself from her ghrina for him. That her pride would not let her climb down so soon. They of course carefully avoided the sticky question of why it was necessary for her to be so brutal when she says, in effect, It does not matter to me what happens to you, so long as it does not happen in Amer.
I was proud of Jalal in that scene, for he took all of her heedless, cruel selfishness and the total lack of any concern for him - I do not even think of caring - on the chin and did not flinch.
Hopeless quest for understanding: Even after all this, he is able to surmount his bitterness, and to my astonishment, he still tries to make her understand the kashmakash he faces, togging her up in the imperial get up taaki aap ko is baat ka ehsaas ho ki Shahenshah banne ke baad kaise lagta hai.
He treats her like an equal, who he hopes can see things as they are, and understand the dilemmas he faces day in and day out, including the present one.
Agar hum Amer chhod kar jaayenge to riyaya ko yeh paigham milega ki hum dar gaye hain. Jo khud dar gaya, wo riyaya ki hifazat kya karega?Aur doosri taraf, agar hum yahan rukhte hain, yeh jaante hue ki hum par koyi bhi hamla kar sakta hai, koyi bhi Rajvanshi, koyi bhi Mughal... kisi bhi cheez ko hamare khilaaf hathyar bana sakta hai.. To aise waqt mein humein kya faisla lena chahiye, ...humein yeh batayiye Jodha Begum!
Jalal rates Jodha too high, whether on her poltical intelligence or on her understanding of the realities of kingship. As she cops out without even trying, Hum nahin bata sakte!, I for one was not disappointed, for I knew that all her unda taleem and all her hunars would not be anywhere near enough to cope with the daily demands of a Shahenshah's life.
Jalal is not disappointed either- Itni hi ummeed thi aapse, Jodha Begum. Koyi nahin samajh sakta! Faisla use lena hota hai jiske sar par yeh taj ho! - but then he makes the mistake of telling her about the sab se badi kamzori that goes with this libaas, that the wearer never knows ki uske aasteen mein kaun saanp hai aur kaun nahin - that he can trust no one. Kya ab aap samajhin?
Sneering condescension: Bas, phir Jodha Begum ka agla bhashan to shuru hona hi tha! Possibly ashamed by now of the awful things she had said to him, Jodha tries to recover lost ground by taking refuge in condescending pity. Her peroration is only an amplification of what she had said to him when he seemed to be dying on the jungle floor: Agar sabhi ko aapse bhay hoga, to aapke saath kaun chalega? - substitute shaque for bhay, and it is the same thing.
The difference is in the context. Then, she was voicing her sincere take on the life of the King of fhe Jungle, not to pity him, but to stress the need for for even him to have in his life someone who cares, who will stand by him come what may. Now, she is sneering at the Shahenshah and the life he has to live, supplementing the cruel dismissiveness of what she had said earlier.
Perhaps she is doing this is to drown out the small, still voice in her heart that is condemning her. And in doing so, she blurs both the facts and their import. But the net impact is to make her look even worse that she was already.
Aaya samajh! Aur aaj humein aap par ghrina nahin, daya aa rahi hai. Yeh jeevan bhi koyi jeevan hai? Kya labh hai is shakti ka jisse har pal aapka hi dum ghut tha ho? Kya labh hai aise padh ka jiske kaaran aap apnon par hi vishwas nahin kar sakte ? Na mitron par, na parivaar par, yahan tak ki apni parchayin par bhi nahin? (Theek waise, jaise iske Sujamal Bhaisa apne hi Kakasa par vishwas nahin kar sake!)
Bahut peedha hoti hogi na aapko? Ki sansar mein koyi bhi nahin jo aapse prem karta ho? (How the devil does she say this? What of Hamida, Bakshi, Maham, Ruqaiya, Salima, Rahim, all of whom love their Jalal in their varying ways? What of so many others who are ready to die for the Shahenshah?) Sach mein, Shahenshah, bahut hi kathin hai aapka jeevan. Hum to ek pal bhi aaisa jeevan nahin je sakte! Aapka jeevan aap hi sambhaliye!- she returns all the imperial regalia to Jalal, and turns to leave .
While walking away, she repeats, with her trademark narrowed eyes, her lips twisted in a condescending sneer: Humein to kewal aap par daya aati hai! So much for Jodha's vaunted goodness of heart, and the generosity of spirit that Hamida lauds constantly!
Destiny's child: I was glad to hear Jalal's voice cut like a whiplash when he told this ignorant, self-obsessed princess, from a petty, tinpot little principality that exists only on his sufferance, that he would not tolerate her trying to pity him.
Aap kabhi bhi hum par taras khane ki gustakhi mat kariyega; hum use apni tauheen samajhenge! But what a fool he is, to talk as if this woman has the least concern for her husband's aan, baan aur shaan! All this is reserved only for her parivaar and for Amer!
Kya aap jaanti hain ki sab humse dushmani kyon karte hain, sab humse nafrat kyon karte hain, sab humein maarna kyon chahte hain? Kyonki hum ek Shahenshah hain, Jodha Begum! Hamari aur sher ki kismet ek hi hai. Usmein sirf ek cheez likhi hai, akele chalna. Aur hum apni kismat ko nahin chunte hain, balki kismat humein chunti hai, Jodha Begum!
That his having to walk alone in life, and to be able to trust no one, was linked to his imperial destiny, and that destiny had been chosen for him by fate. He does not expect such a frog in the well to understand imperial concerns.
Rajat's Jalal was superb in his controlled bitterness.
Earlier too, I admired the calm certainty with which he refuses Atgah Khan's plea for him to be cautious after this incident. And even more so the affectionate warmth of his concern for Hawai: Sach kahein to hamlawar se zyaada humein Hawai ki fikr ho rahi hai. Aaj hamari wajah se wo bezubaan takleef mein hai. And heis later telling the hakim: Hum khudh use wo ark pilayenge.Shayad hamare choone se uski takleef kam ho jaaye.
Jodha: A hatchet job: As for Jodha, she made me feel sick after this scene. She was appalling, and what appalled me even more in 2013 was those who approved of her behaviour, of course with a gentle little caveat to say that it was ok, all that she said, only it should have been said a little more gently. I am sure that even had she stabbed him with a stiletto, it would have been said in her defence that she had spared him pain by not hacking at him with a blunt axe!
Paridhi is not capable of going beyond the script as Rajat can so effortlessly, so she could not invest this Jodha, that she has been handed, with any shades that might soften the blow. She looks, in that order
(1) blank as he expresses relief that she did not let him down
(2) narrow eyed when he classifies her among those who hate him upfront
(3) supercilious when she is briefing him about how sad his life is and finally
(4) blank again as she leaves, and when he holds her back and tells her not to dare to pity him.
Then she promptly forgets all about him, and goes on to dance as merrily as a cricket at the mehendi ki rasam.
Rating for this Jalal-Jodha scene No. 8: 10/10. It was like something out of Who is afraid of Virgnia Woolf? 8 of those 10 points are for Jalal.
A bad letdown: As for Jalal, by episode end, I came down with a thud after the high of that wonderfully bitter take he gave to his scene with Jodha, where one could see the man who was truly destiny's child and knew it. I could not believe that he would be so lost to all sense of self respect as to go and ogle her dancing away without a care in the world.
I was not sad about the Jodha we were shown earlier, for I never really expected either sensitivity or empathy from her. It is more about the Jalal we were landed with by episode end. He made me feel distinctly queasy. How are the mighty fallen!
Here is the Shahenshah-e-Hind who had, just a little earlier, proudly declared that he walked alone and would brook no pity, suddenly, without warning, reduced to a Peeping Tom secretly watching the woman who clearly did not give a damn if he lived or died, so long as the latter was not in Amer. I do not know precisely what this says about him, but whatever it is, I do not like it.
Hope belied: Surely something better could have been thought of instead of this Salman Khan style stunt (in Hum Aapke Hain Koun; I suppose one should be thankful that Jalal had not hidden his shahi taj in a dupatta and sneaked into the dance area itself!), to be followed by the even worse Govinda style stunt with Jodha (in the next episode)!
There was a charming suggestion, in my 2013 thread, that Jodha could have had a follow up meeting with Jalal when he was feeding Hawai and reassuring his pet. Just think of what a lovely, heartwarming scene could have been written that way, which could have wiped out all the harshness of the earlier encounter! Both of them could have been shown reassuring and petting Hawai, who could have been shown taking to Jodha instantly, as a rare exception to his usual wariness of strangers! Nothing of that sort happened, of course.
I am sure there will be many who would be able to romanticize over an emasculated Jalal trying to win over this girl despite everything, but I will not be one of them. I would hate that kind of Jalal far more than this kind of Jodha.
I came on board for an emperor, and for Jalal to be one, it is not enough for him to repeat that he is one thrice or more in an episode. He has to act like one, to be imperious and dominating and proud, not a man so pitifully weakened by an obsession that he runs helplessly after a woman who talks to him as Jodha did here, like a poodle or a lap dog.
I know that I sound harsh, perhaps excessively so, but I am afraid that is how I feel right now.
OK, folks! This is it for now. I had not bargained for yet another mahaepisode on Friday, so we are now only up to the Saturday evening episode. See you on Thursday next, when I hope to catch up with the telecasts, if only that once!
Shyamala/Aunty/Akka/Di
Ye Hai Mohabbatein
Mangal Lakshmi
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