Originally posted by: sashashyam
Jodha Akbar 104: The tilting of the scales, or the Sri Jodha Tulabhaaram
Folks,
No, it is not me behaving like an opera prima donna, making repeated farewell appearances!I think our Balamuralikrishna also did like that. He announced his retirement and did a few kutcheris after that.
Young Lavanya was very rusht with me for bowing out suddenly, so to placate her, I posted this one as a response to her. Then I felt that having posted it there, I might as well put it up as a separate item for others too to read, if they are interested.I am definitely one of the 'others' who is interested.
So here goes, folks, with the one of my favourites among the light episodes in Jodha Akbar, Episode No. 104, that will come up tomorrow on Zee Anmol.
In the whole of Jodha Akbar to date, in the context of the epic love story that we have been promised, but which seems to be perennially receding like a mirage in the Sahara, there was one remarkable scene in this episode that re-anchored this promise firmly in the fabric of the narrative. Its symbolism was so heavy and in your face that it was inescapable; it practically knocked one over!😉The very strange thing about this symbolism was that when this episode was first telecast, while there were several multipage theses littering the forum dissecting each eye glance, each word and each facial muscle twitch of Jalal, Ruqaiya & Jodha, past, present and future, no one, bar a single member@ who started a practically unnoticed thread on this point, seemed to have given the real significance of this seminal scene even a passing thought.
@ Not difficult to guess who that was!
I remember thinking then that if the CVs did scan this forum, they would have been bitterly disappointed at this near total disregard of their tour de force!😉 And so I had bestirred myself and written a post specifically to boost their morale!😉
En avant, then, with the
Sri Jodha Tulabhaaram: I know, I know, it does sound rather sacrilegious, equating even our Amer ke Registan ka Gulab with her aaradhya Lord Krishna, but I am sure the Lord with forgive me for this, seeing how great a bhakt of his Jodha is.
So then, we have this unprecedented event in the Agra palace, with Jodha Begum being weighed, a la the Ameri practice on her birthdays, in a tulabhaaram, against jewels, gold, silver, and other assorted bundles of no one knows what in velvet pouches.
The donors include not only her adoring saas and the rest of her Three Musketeers - Gulbadan Begum and Jijianga - but Salima Begum and Bakshi Banu (her shauhar Sharifuddin glaring from a distance in impotent fury at this supplementary waste of his hard-earned wealth!😉).
I thought this was due to the sunlight!
Then there is a gaggle of Jalal's courtiers, obviously shanghaied into making donations for this good cause and undoubtedly worried, as they dropped their pouches into the overflowing bucket on the scale, whether this depredation on their purses was to become an annual feature😉.
Even after all the pouches are in place, the scales are still tilted by a good 5-10% on Jodha's side. Assuming that she weighs 125 pounds, normal for a woman of her height, and adding the the 25 pounds that would be a conservative estimate for her heavy joda and jewellery, we arrive at 150 pounds in all. Taking even the lower figure of 5% , the collective offerings fall short by at least 8 pounds, and very likely more.
Keep this in mind, for here lies the crux of the tale as the CVs saw it.
At this point, when the donors are all done and no more nazraane are in the offing, the Shahenshah rises from his faraway seat and moves towards the platform, on which all this is going on, at a stately, unhurried pace*. He arrives at the tula, casts a considering look at the opposite pan, and at the tilted beam. He does not look at Jodha Begum at all.**
* 😆
** I don't think so. He looks at her but not smiling at her. He does this ritual mechanically in the same way as we do in the celebration of our South Indian Hindu wedding when the bride and the groom sit on the jhoola!
He then deliberately removes a single ring, a heavy, ornate one, true, but a plain gold one that could not have weighed more than 70-80 grams at the most. He circles it 3 times round Jodha's head in the traditional nazar utaarna, but he neither smiles at her nor does he meet her eyes, though she has been looking up and around, wondering what he is going to do.
He moves to the opposite scale and, very gently, places the ring in the pan with the other gifts. Lo and behold, the 75 gm ring suddenly weighs more than 8-10 pounds, for the beam tilts sharply away from Jodha! The loyal courtiers break into relieved (as no supplementary offerings will be expected of them now😉) exclamations of Subhanallah, subhanallah!
When I was reading this passage for the first time last year, I was roaring with laughter and my grandchildren were taken aback and came rushing to my room to see what was going on!
Jalal does a Rukmini: Shahenshah-e-Hind Jalaluddin Mohammed has, unbeknownst to himself, done a Rukmini .
His heavy gold ring might not have been as dramatic as the single tulsi leaf with which Rukmini outweighed her Lord in the tulabhaaram scales at their palace in Dwaraka, thus shaming the arrogant Satyabhama in the Sri Krishna Tulabhaaram katha, but the spirit behind the two scenes was the same.
The parallel was crystal clear and inescapable: that Jalal's devotion to Jodha outweighs (or would eventually outweigh) even the collective affection and caring of all the others, just as Rukmini's single tulsi leaf outweighed the combined offerings of not just Satyabhama but all of Lord Krishna's other queens (oh yes, he had many of them in Dwaraka, 16009 if I am not mistaken, even if not quite 64000, like the gopis in Vrindavan. But then the Lord had a great advantage over poor Jalal; he could be with all his wives at the same time if he so chose!😉) .
Or rather, it should have been crystal clear and inescapable, but apparently was not. Either way, it was an exquisite piece of scripting, and executed to perfection by Jalal, with such impeccable dignity that Rukmini would have approved.
But curiously enough, Jodha, such a devout Krishna bhakta, never seemed to note the symbolism that practically jumped out at her. Instead, with her usual obtuseness, she was cribbing that the Shahehshah was not likely to give her anything more than jewellery. For someone who professes to despise expensive gifts, she does not seem to find it incongruous that she is always decked out like a Christmas tree on December 25!😉
A few supplementary points: Firstly, those of Jalal's begums who were not part of the event, for obvious reasons, were probably having a meeting of their own, to set up a little trade union to demand, with justification, identical treatment on their saalgirahs, complete with their being weighed solemnly in gold ornaments, not in some downmarket stuff like sugar! 😉
If their hopeful programme were accepted and implemented, Jalal would have very soon run out of rings, and the Mughal treasury would have been emptied long before Shahjahan got around to nearly bankrupting the Mughal Raj while building the Taj. 😉
Secondly, the whole tulabhaaram scene was OTT and not at all credible. It would have only stoked general resentment in the palace against this obvious and excessive favouritism being shown to a begum who had, so far, done nothing extraordinary to deserve such pampering. It was not as though she had produced an heir for the throne, after all!
Jalal and Hamida could, if they had wanted to, given Jodha lavish gifts privately, but a tulabhaaram ceremony? This copying of the Ameri custom would not have gone down well with 90% of the palace.
Morever, did they do it even in Amer for Sukanya and Shivani? Not that one knows of.
The true significance of the Tulabhaaram : But this criticism, valid though it is, misses the whole point of the exercise, as the CVs visualized it. That was to underline that Jalal's love for Jodha would, in due course, be as strong, as undemanding, and as totally absorbed in the beloved as that of Rukmini for her Lord.
To cite a nazm that brings out this deewaangee, but in different words, and those of you who are aficionadas of such things will love it.
Ek boond ishq pe hoon zinda, Ek boond ishq pe hoon zinda
Yaar mera Kaaba Kashi, Yaar bin khali rooh ki pyali Yaar mera Eid Diwali, Yaar ke bin yeh tan man khali
Yaar basaaloon rom rom, deewaani ban jaoon, Aur kahan rab dhoondoon, yaar mein rab paoon Tu karam hai, tu dharam hai, tu hi mera kalma hai, Teri khatir, tere dum se, raahe ishq pe chalna hai
Tu hi saaya, aks bhi tu, Rooh mein bhi tu rehta hai, Tu hi main ho, main hi tu hoon, Tera haaji kehta hai
Ek boond ishq pe hoon zinda, Ek boond ishq pe hoon zinda
Our Jalal is not quite there still, of course, for one does not see even ek boond ishq coming his way as yet. 😭
Plus a lot of messy, ugly things will still clutter Jalal's path to this state of self-sufficient bliss, but he will get there eventually. I am not all that sure of Jodha, neither now nor any time soon, but that hardly matters. I suppose she will get somewhere halfway to this, and if Jalal is content with that, who am I to quibble that my boy has been shortchanged ?
That, to my mind, was the sole point of this episode.
The rest, which I will cover for the sake of form, hardly mattered. In fact, the desperate eagerness to decipher the Jalal-Ruqaiya-Jodha equations, now and in the future, that was so evident across the forum in 2013, reminded me of nothing so much as the medieval theological debates in Europe, in the Middle Ages, as to how many angels could dance on the head of a pin! No, I am not joking; this was seriously debated by monks and the clergy in those days!
Jalal-Ruqaiya: I have always liked and respected Jalal as a character, and I always believed that having had very few relationships in his very troubled life, he attaches tremendous importance to maintaining those that he has, and right now that does NOT include Jodha.
One can love a person, or be obsessed with that person without understanding or being close to, or even liking him/her. But friendship is different, especially one of such very long standing as the one he has with Ruqaiya, who has been with him thru thick and thin. Whereas Jodha has not, and in fact so far she has done nothing but take from his, mostly with little or no gratitude.
So, if Jalal were to ditch Ruqaiya now for Jodha because he is of late obsessed with the latter, I would lose all respect for him. So, I am glad that he is not doing any such thing.Very logical rating.
He realises that the lady doth protest too much. That what Ruqaiya asserts is not true at all, that what she fears in the innermost recesses of her being is precisely that she will lose him to Jodha. Not so much in the physical sense - she does not mind that - but in the psychological sense of having decisive influence on him and his thinking. And that she cannot stand.
I thought that he was pitch perfect with Ruqaiya in both their scenes together, especially the second one. He soothes her the way one soothes an angry, miserable child which feels that the parent does not love it.
One more point. Jalal knows Ruqaiya inside out, and so he probably discounts her frantic insistence that the only thing she resents is the possible loss of her auda in the palace/harem, and that she is NOT jealous and NOT afraid of losing him to Jodha.
Which is why he repeatedly tries to get her to come out and acknowledge that she is indeed jealous of Jodha, and by extension that she cares for him, Jalal, at the emotional level as well. Maybe he does that because it would be cathartic for Ruqaiya.
Maybe he does that also because, after having rejected the very idea all his life, he now seeks and needs that expression of emotional attachment to him from his dearest friend. Jodha does not love him or even care for him, and he cares nothing for any other begum. So perhaps, now that he has hitherto unknown feelings for Jodha that are clearly one-sided (as yet), he also has this strange new need for emotional support and caring. And for that, whom else can he turn to but his Gatti?
Lastly, he very likely sees that this whole balancing and adjusting exercise as vital for preventing Ruqaiya from going off the rails, and perhaps taking her fury and her frustrations out on Jodha.
I do not see what Jalal is doing as a preparatory exercise to help Ruqaiya adjust to a life without him .She will always be a part of Jalal's life, and a very dear one, as his chief begum. She is not going anywhere. Jodha will have her own compartment and Ruqaiya hers. But Ruqaiya has to be brought round to accepting and not furiously resenting the very large part of Jalal that Jodha will eventually appropriate.
That is what Jalal is now working towards, even as the contours of his eventual relationship with Jodha are as yet unclear. He needs to keep his Gatti on a reasonably even keel all thru and that will take all his skills at cajoling, charming and persuading her that her importance for him will never be diminished come what may.
And if in the process, he has to indulge in a bit of suppressio veri at one time (as not revealing to Ruqaiya that it was he who told his Ammijaan about Jodha's birthday) , and a bit of suggestio falsi at another, why, one never tells children more than what is good for them, does one?I loved this scene between Jalal and Ruqaiah. Both of them were superb in showing their emotions, and we could feel not only the intimacy between them as a husband and wife , but also the comradery between them. I could see Jalal fulfilling all her three requirements she expects from him , i.e., as a shauhar, a dhost and a Shah en shah in that scene effortlessly and without even revealing that he is doing it for that reason. His patient approach to pacify her with his gesture of giving her the gulaab ka sherbat, is a treat to the eyes of the viewers! 👏 Nothing is out of place there!
Titbits from Episodes 101-104:
The separation of siyaasat and mazhab: Yes, I know that this does not belong with the titbits, but that was exactly what it looked like on Tuesday night. It should have been a seminal scene, hyped in advance and given star treatment, but alas, it was anything but that!😡They rushed it thru - rather like the way budget bills are often passed by the Lok Sabha in the last minute - and treated it like a casual, clever trick played by Jalal on the maulvis. And with Jodha Begum second guessing everything the Shahenshah did, as if she was Chanakya reincarnated!😉
This was probably because, as I was assured in 2013 by knowledgeable forum friends, the bulk of their audience could not care less about this "heavy" topic, especially when they were getting set for the Jodha maa bannewali hai track!
I myself suggested that someone should try out a test case for this forum. Write 2 paras about the false pregnancy track, no matter what it is and no matter it if makes any sense or not, and then post it. In 2 hours. there will be 2367 viewings and 89 Likes. Then write a 1 page piece about how this separation of church and state principle, perhaps one of the most crucial decisions of that era, affected the future of the Mughal empire and how it should have been covered better. After a full day, there would, if the writer was lucky, have been about 900 viewings, if that, and about 40 Likes.
Vox populi, vox Dei. The voice of the people is the voice of God.
As for Jalal's new ruling against the ulema, and exiling the 2 worst troublemakers, that would have made them lie low for a while,but they would still have been on the lookout for the next big slip up from his side. It is one thing to announce a rule or a law, and another to implement it across a huge empire. And also to keep rumours in check.
The British knew that well, yet they never saw the 1857 uprising coming. Akbar had simmering problems all his life with the religious malcontents, and it must have been like constantly putting our brushfires so that they did not ignite a raging inferno. But the religious tolerance and inclusiveness he introduced started waning after his death, and in 50 years was practically gone.Saanjha dastarkhana: This was a charming segment, and I was quite in charity with Jodha for behaving rationally and decently for a change. Like a cat which has swallowed all the cream it can stuff in, true, but she was pleasant to Jalal throughout, and looked vastly better than when she is projecting scorn and ghrina, so it was a relief!
This whole sequence was as light and airy as a successful souffle. But it was more because of the nuances Rajat brought to Jalal than because of the visible changes in Jodha. The look on his face as he says To hum aapka saath dete was fabulous in its candid, still conviction. The boy is a wonderful artist. He makes Jalal look genuine and a labyrinth at the same time!
Of payals lost and found: While it is always charming to see a lover fasten a payal to his beloved's ankle (hopefully a shapely one, and no cracked heels to scratch his fingers either😉), the scene of Jalal, still on his knees, offering to do so was incongruous for 2 reasons.
First, it is not in private, which would have been the correct place for such a loverlike gesture. Emperors don't kneel in public at the feet of a woman to fasten her payal. Nor any kind of king either. This must be the imported 21st century mentality that is always trotted out to explain any such blooper. Secondly, they are not yet lovers. and so it would have been strange even in private.
It was of course necessary for him to tell her that he has the other lost payal, but that could have been done while handing it back.
But I must say that Rajat's Jalal manages not to look foolish even when on his knees dangling that payal from his fingers and grinning crookedly up at Jodha. That was quite an achievement!
I was surprised that Jodha did not get up when the Shahenshah came near, which is unthinkable for a proper Rajput wife with her husband. 😒That was a clear slip up. As it is not in private, but in public, it was all the more important that she should have stood up.
The Ghajini effect: Jalal and the moon: A propos Jalal's statement to Jodha (in the garden) that he had never had time to pay attention to the beautiful moonlight, and he did not see the point in wasting time looking at the full moon, Sara (smile.sara) had cleverly pointed out that this is completely at odds with what the selfsame Jalal said when Atgah Khan proposes the boat ride on the lake to him. I had missed it, but she remembered that Jalal then specifically says that to be on the lake in the moonlight ka lutf toh kuch aur hi hoga.That time, of course, Jodha Begum did not seem to derive any of the aseem shanti from bathing in the moonlight that she was talking of this time, as part of her bhashan of the day, or rather of the night. Instead, she had muttered audibly : Kitne vichitra manushya hain Shahenshah! Itni ratri ho gayi hain, aur inhein nauka vihar karna hai!
This time, her one man audience did not remind her of that, for he was presumably suffering from short term amnesia, like Aamir Khan's character in Ghajini!😉
Jalal: Undesirable weakness: Overall, Jalal is becoming an obsessive, whatever the excuses he gives himself and the audience. His not sending a servant to get his khanjar** from Jodha's hoojra is a case in point, like his kneeling at her feet and offering to fasten her payal, which took me aback . He cannot stay away from her, and as she does not reciprocate this even 10%, he is ending up looking weak, as when he was searching for the dagger. This is not my idea of a proud emperor.** Shyamala I remember that someone pointed out in this thread last year that the servants were not supposed to keep track of certain personal possessions like his dagger, sword and his crown of the sort and that even if he had sent his servant there, he would not be able to identify the khanjar .By the way, I am surprised to see the dagger lying on the floor in the same place the next day where Jalal dropped it the previous night! Which speaks about the work of the servants in the harem !It is also poor tactics, strange in such a smart political player. If he ever hopes to get Jodha to care for him, she first has to miss his company. For that he has to stay away and give her a solid dose of benign neglect. Not that this is going to happen.
The way Jodha snaps sarcastically at him when he turns up in her rooms, as if he was some undesirable who had sneaked in (she even gets up only as an afterthought, and this is her patidev! What sanskaars is she talking about?), and the payal part the day before, make him look like a besotted chokra. Not like a Shahenshah, though he is so fond of repeating that to her and others.
As I wrote once before, it is not enough for him to keep saying that he is a Shahehshah. He has to behave like one - be commanding, imperious, maybe wrongheaded and abrupt at times, but never brooking impertinence or contradiction from anyone. This Jalal is very far from being any of this.
Moti 1: What a loss! :One thing that struck me when I watched these episodes, 101 to 104, was what a delightful comic streak this Moti has. Whether it is dangling the restored payal in front of Jodha with a naughty smile, or nodding her head knowingly as Jodha is explaining why she is being so well-behaved with the Shahenshah of late, or slipping in mischievous asides about the benefits of a couple eating from the same thali, she is simply wonderful. What a loss it was when she was suddenly replaced by that wooden Motibai 2!
Thank you Shyamala for the High-tea-like review! Not very heavy but enjoyable!
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