Jodha Akbar 97-100:Snakes and ladders; Episode 104: Page 8 - Page 4

Aunty,

My dear Bindu,

It is very nice to hear from you again, child, and I am glad you enjoyed this one, and especially The demands of rajadharma part. It was nowhere near as popular as my usual posts when I wrote it as an afterthought, whence the numbering, Jodha Akbar 100b.

The thing is that most readers want the romantic or light stuff, not serious historical analysis. I do not blame them, for they are here to enjoy themselves, but when you are watching what purports to be a historical show, there has to be some historical stuff too! That it interested you and made you think pleases me no end.

As for what the solution could have been, there are two possibilities.

1) Jodha, out of gratitude to Jalal for all that he has done for her family, offers to convert. After all, she must have had that possibility in mind when she decided to abide by Hamida Banu's choice.

I agree with you that the way the selfsame Hamida Banu made a 180 degrees about turn in the Shah-i-Iran track was very odd, especially the way she was bullying and emotionally blackmailing Jodha. By the time it all flopped for the 3rd time, including this time now, the maulvis must have become very wary of accepting any invitation from the imperial family to induct Jodha Begum into Islam!

Or a more pleasing alternative:

2) Jalal takes the maulvis on now itself, just as he does later when he announces the separation of the State from religion (which was shown in a most slapdash manner for such a momentous initiative by the Shahenshah, and that too with Jodha Begum sitting there and second-guessing him as if she was Chanakya reincarnated!😉). He could have been shown seeking the support of Sheikh Salim Chisti, instead of his mother doing it. After all, he must be having the same or swifter means of communication that she has!

As for the Ruqaiya, Hamida Banu and Jodha comparison, that was not meant to demonstrate that Ruqaiya did not attach a lot of importance to her audha as the Begum-e-Khaas, which would be automatically linked to Jalal's audha as the Shahenshah. She does.

What I was pointing was that one should not make the knee-jerk assessment that everything she does is due to this one sole factor. To drive this point home, I gave comparative assessments of the behaviour of the other two -Hamida and Jodha - Hamida in a similar crisis, when Jalal was thought to be dying, and Jodha in general, to show how their behaviour too could be interpreted exactly as that of Ruqaiya was being interpreted. Such comparisons help bring out the fallacy in simplistic judgments.

Morever, it was revealing of her love for Jalal that in the post-narnaal crisis, Ruqaiya wants to be the first to die with him. As I wrote in my post on that track, on Episode 83, in the sub-section entitled The Mughal jauhar,

Nor would I mock Ruqaiya for asserting her precedence even in death. She has seen her identity always in that framework, and it is to her credit that she has the pride of her position to buttress her unquestionable love for the Shahenshah.

And even more so that she does not spare even a passing thought to some siyasati chaal that could help salvage something for her out of the wreckage of the Shahenshah's passing. For anyone aspiring to the throne of Agra would have been to glad to buttress his claim by marrying her, given that she is a paternal granddaughter of Babur-e-Azam, and of the pure nasl-e-Timuri.

I hope your studies are going well. Take care, my dear.

Shyamala Aunty

Originally posted by: Bindu_nhbr

Aunty,

A fantastic post!!👏

I was not here in 2013 nor did watch the show then,but I must say I've never given a thought to the aftermath of Jalal giving up his throne just to keep up his zubaan to Jodha.

Thia is what makes your posts interesting and fascinating😃

Thnx for the beautiful explanation on this aspect,Aunty😊

But,what could have been the solution as Jalal can't force Jodha to convert and Jodha never willingly accepts to convert😕,at this stage.

The same Hamida Begum who was a pillar of support to Jodha forces her to change the religion in Shah-E-Iran track😡 that too when Jalal is already in the battle fighting for the rights of his awaam and his begum.

You may be right in saying Rukaiyya's concern was same as that of Hamida's post tiger attack.But the viewers can't be expected to think otherwise as we have always seen her attaching utmost importance to the power, not to forget even when she knew about her pregnancy😡.

Not everyone can analyse the characters the way you do,Aunty,not our fault😆

Your take on the black cloth is awesome.CVs are too intelligent😆

Jalal looked extremely handsome in that tent scene,wind blowing his hair.

Jalal proved again that no one can read his mind with the qila issue👏.Jodha's dialogue to Maham is so apt "Shahenshah ka man kaun pad paaya hai aaj tak?"

I too liked Sukanya's expression of gratitude when he gives the farmaan.

These CVs are confusing to me😕,they write such wonderful script in few scenes and immediately show all illogical stuff

Amer gang and Jodha not expressing gratitude is really disappointing.Even I wish we got some self talk from Jodha's side too.This was limited only to the soul talks😔.

I've not written in any order,sorry for that.

Sad to know that ur pain has resumed,please take care aunty.

If you decide to stop these posts,pls give us the links of 2013 posts.I don't want you to stop them but health comes first😃

The poem is so beautiful👏 and reminded Deepa di's poems which I'm missing.Thnx for posting it,aunty😃

Sandhya my poppet,

It feel so good to see you back here, and in top form too! It makes me believe that things are improving at your end and might soon be normalised, even if the Tamil Nadu government seems to have fallen flat on its face.

I am keeping my fingers crossed for no fresh bout of heavy rainfall to materialise there. Here, we have a bad water shortage and water supply is only every alternate day. I remember,even in 2004, how bad it used to be in Chennai, when one had to store water in large drums. That was before water harvesting became mandatory. Now it is the other extreme.

As for your comments, I agree with them in toto, and have nothing to add to them, except that your uncle's reaction to the Ratanpur qila track and to Rajat is very interesting, and revealing too. Do take a look at Saraswathi Akka's super-enthusiastic response to the same segment. When he is listening to the Rat King raging at him, Jalal's face, seen only in profile, speaks volumes.

I shall wait for the rest of your comments. Take care, my dear.

Affectionately,

Shyamala Aunty

Originally posted by: Sandhya.A

Originally posted by: sashashyam

No, Akka, I did not leave out anything I wanted to say. I would not have done so in any case, for I love debating. See my latest response to Gargi at the top of page 4. It will interest you. To revert, I think it is just that we were on the same page about all the matters you touched on.

I think it is a good idea to leave out the parts of my posts to which you are not responding. The comments stand out more and the whole post is easier for me to read. Sometimes, people make a single, 2/3 sentence standalone comment on the post as a whole, but do not cut out the post itself. The comment, due to the queer formatting adopted in the IF for the first response, goes to the bottom of the post, not the top. I am then left to scroll down the whole of my post - for I do not know if there are or are not comments on the individual sections - before I get to the bottom and see those 2/3 lines.It would have been far better for that person to hit Post Reply and put in the comments,leaving my post out altogether!

You should not worry about arguments about anything you choose to comment on. It is your forum as much as anyone else's and you have every right to your opinion on anything.

The funny thing there was that Jodha woke up wearing a different, yellow joda, not the one in which she staged that satyagraha under the tree, where the odhni was dark blue. So someone, very likely Moti, must have dressed her in this joda. If Jodha had been a proper Hindi film heroine, she would have opened her eyes and immediately asked: Main kahan hoon? Next: Mere kapde kisne badale? Jodha deviates a bit from this template and asks: Mai yahan kaise aayi?😉

Besides, I do not see why Jalal could not have hugged her very close under a heap of blankets, and transferred his body warmth to hers without all this fuss. It is like mouth to mouth ressuscitation.

Exactly the same thing I wanted to say. Actually, Jodha must have been revived by the body warmth of Jalal, but he does not want to reveal it to her due to obvious reasons. If he had used layers of black blankets, he must have needed the help of Moti at least. He cannot leave her and go in search of them. Also we do not see any such blankets lying around either before or after.

To an immediate retort by Jodha the next day, he does not reply that he used blankets as the first aid. Only after leaving Jodha in a dilemma for a couple of days, he tells her about the Kala kapda which would have been his after thought.

And also later, he may be telling the truth, perhaps partly, when he is confessing before Hamida that he was with Jodha on that night.

The core factor in all this shindy is Jodha's fixation on the physical side of a man-woman relationship, and her curious idee fixe that Jalal has nothing else but, to borrow her pet phrase, vaasana poorti on his mind, whereas the truth is that it is constantly on her mind. That is why I wrote, in the Mohini segment, that Jodha is devaluing her significance to Jalal by reducing herself to just a body.

Vicki's candid and pithy comment that Jalal was not into necrophilia, which I have cited here, said it all!

When I watched the whole body heat segment the first time, I was amused by the sheer idiocy of it all. I had no idea that it was going to lead to the even more crass stuff trotted out during the false pregnancy track.

I was intrigued by your saying that "Whenever I read about or come across any incident or news, I usually compare it with similar ones in a different context.". I do not know if you are an Agatha Christie aficionada, but that is exactly what her second most celebrated detective, Miss Jane Marple, 70+, does. She solves cases by drawing parallels between the individual dramatis personae in the murder mystery, and the people she has dealt with in her home village of St. Mary Mead. If you have not read any, I would suggest A Murder is Announced, or The Body in the Library. You will enjoy them, that is a dead cert!

Thanks for the tips Shyamala. I have read some of her stories years ago, but I am not a fan of her. I love James Hadley Chase for his characterisation of most of his characters in his thrillers. Unlike other such writers , you will not get any clue about the crime suspect anywhere! And I like E.S.Gardner for his narration of court proceedings.

Now I have to see where my copy of Sivagamiyin Sabadam is. Thanks for letting me have the exact location of this sentence! The whole passage is beautiful, especially the contrast between all the emotions Sivagami could portray when she danced, and this deliberate lack of emotion now.

But Jodha's blankness is not of this deliberate variety. It is involuntary, and arises from a total lack of comprehension, understanding and empathy.
It is natural on her!
Shyamala

Now this is the perfect set of deductions to be made from the available (and missing) evidence! Between us, with you doing 70% of the analysis, we have solved the Mystery of the Missing Kaala Kapda, and also of the missing grey cells of the CVs!😉

Now why could they not have shown all this with a neat voice over, in a G-rated exercise?

As for what Jalal tells Hamida later, that is of course to get Jodha off the hook, seeing that Hamida is literally telling Jodha to go and drown herself in some water body so as to spare the imperial Mughal family this disgrace of the infidelity of a shahi begum.But what he says might, going by this analysis, have been technically correct.

As for Erle Stanley Gardner, I have the full set of his Perry Mason mysteries. I have been reading them off and on since I was in my teens, and they still stand the test of time. Recently, I discovered a Bangalore-based publishing house, Master Mind Books, who sell very neatly printed and bound Perry Mason mysteries for around Rs. 75/- each. I filled all the gaps in my collection from them 3 years ago. Of course the later ones are not as well plotted and finished, but all in all, they are very good, and very demanding in terms of reader attention to the complex legal points. One of my favourites is The case of the terrified typist.

I have read some of James Hadley Chase, but I am not too fond of the tough guy school of detective fiction. I liked even the Sam Spade stories by Raymond Chandler much more as the movies with Humphrey Bogart,who was one of my long ago crushes! Especially John Huston's The Maltese Falcon.

Shyamala

Originally posted by: karkuzhali

Shyamala,

See my comments in red.

Saraswathi.

Originally posted by: sashashyam

Folks,

And so on to Agra.

Aching tenderness: But for Rajat's star power, and his exceptional mastery of facial nuance, things would have been infinitely worse. The expression in his eyes as he looks at the sleeping Jodha, the delicacy and the hesitant gentleness with which he almost pats back a tendril of her hair, the worry and the kashmakash in his face as he strokes her forehead towards the end , are all like illustrations for aching tenderness.

Not to speak of the long lingering close up shots of his face, hair blown about artistically by the wind, looking for all the world like a Van Dyke portrait or a matinee idol with whom the camera has fallen in love.

"My love is like to ice, and I to fire

How comes it then and this her cold so great

Is not dissolved through my soul so hot desire,

But harder grows the more I her entreat?

Or how comes it that my exceeding heat

Is not allayed by her heart-frozen cold,

But that I burn much more in boiling sweat

And feel my flames augmented manifold?

What more miraculous thing may be told

That fire,which all things melts,should harden ice,

And ice, which congeals with senseless cold

Should kindle fire by wonderful device?

Such is the power of love in gentle mind

That can alter all the course of kind.

_ "My Love is like to Ice" by Edmund Spencer

For his Achilles' heel is this: he wants her to care for him, for what happens to him, even more than to satisfy the undoubted physical attraction he feels for her.

Oh Jalal! Eventually it will come true!

" With drum beaten

Conches blown

They were married

Under the ancient Banyan tree

sit the "Kosar" tribesmen

from four villages

Their kind words

uttered publicly

seem to come true O friend

The man wearing

a lovely anklet of brave ( sic)

Carrying a spear with

red blade

and the woman wearing

many bangles

on her hands

Her friendship with him

Has now turned true! "

( English translation of a poem by Avvaiyar taken from the Sangam poetry "Kurunthogai" which speaks about love and separation)

PS: A little bonus for those of my patient readers who are perennially exasperated by my sardonic comments about Jodha Begum! I do feel for them, believe me, for all that I cannot alter the way in which this Jodha forces me to look at her. But Vicki (Morons ki Mallika), whose flowing romantic takes on Jodha and Jalal I used to love, had this to say about Jalal's Jodha. You will love it too, guaranteed!

"Rehna tu, hai jaisa tu
Thoda sa dard tu, thoda sukoon
Rehna tu, Hai jaisa tu
Dheema Dheema jhonka, Ya phir junoon
Thoda sa resham, tu hamdam
Thoda sa khurdara
Kabhi tu ad jaaye, Ya lad jaaye
Ya khushboo se bhara
Tujhe badalna na chahoon
Ratti bhar bhi sanam
Bina sajawat, milawat
Na zyaada na hi kam
Tuhje chaahon, jaisa hai tu...

This song , I feel , has always aptly described a man's feelings for a volatile woman with a candyfloss heart. That is how a man accepts his ladylove as a complete package - with her vices and virtues - smiling and shaking his head at her naaz-nakhraas, airs and graces , arrogance , aggression, vanity. Then, getting amused and touched by the softening of her countenance , her sudden, startling displays of heart, and her mysterious and twisted expression of the feelings of a 'beloved'.

A man who doesn't really believe in taming the shrew - but loving the shrew as she is - Volatile. Unreasonable. Unpredictable. Flaming. Beautiful. Intense. Passionate. Surrendered in love.

This is how Jalaal sees Jodha AT THE MOMENT. This is how Jodha is AT THE MOMENT.

Ego, arrogance , aggression are not always vices or makings of a villain or a vamp. Sometimes, they are defence lines, fortress walls guarding an extremely vulnerable heart. Attitude trying to envelope and safeguard an innocence , a compassionate heart that is not fit to be exposed to the world. "

I must add that I do not buy this highflown version - if one is to believe my dear Vicki, this Jalal must be shaking his head in bewildered acceptance of this Jodha so often that he must by now have become a Noddy😉,and I am yet to see any "sudden, startling displays of heart" from Jodha towards Jalal - but it is beautifully written, and should be a salve for all those feeling bruised by my takes on Jodha Begum!😉

Shyamala Aunty/Akka/Di

You know, Akka, you are a daily revelation! Both these are very good fits, especially the first. I loved the part that goes:

What more miraculous thing may be told

That fire,which all things melts,should harden ice,

And ice, which congeals with senseless cold

Should kindle fire by wonderful device?

Such is the power of love in gentle mind

That can alter all the course of kind.

I do hope that some more of our friends here see Edmund Spenser's take on love. This is the Elizabethan poet, right?

Shifting to something else, it is now clear that this series is on its last legs, Akka There are simply not enough readers to justify the effort put into each post - the number of Likes is not even 30 as yet. I always knew it would come to this, only first Mandy and then Donjas would not listen. It is good to be proved right, even if it has taken over 4 months for this to happen!

Moreover, the pain in my hands is increasing, so I would have had to quit sooner or later even if there had been far more readers. I have thus decided that once my guests have left, I shall do a farewell post, bringing it up Episode 114, announce the closure of the series, and write FINIS, as they used to do in the old books!

Shyamala

Originally posted by: karkuzhali

Dear Shyamala,

I was looking for some poems that would suit the sequences of events in these episodes. I think they nearly fit into the situation.

Saraswathi.