Originally posted by: sashashyam
PART 1
Folks,
This somewhat edited and partly rewritten re-issue of my posts about the most delightful track in Jodha Akbar bar none - the Jalal-Jodha pilgrimage to Sikri - written exactly 2 years ago, is a small Valentine's day gift from me to those of you who will, hopefully, make time to read it and use it as an aid for savouring these episodes all over again .
That it is a day late should not be taken amiss, for gifts are not bound by schedules, but only by sentiment, and I have a lot of affection, and gratitude, for all my kind and patient readers. Moreover, Zee Anmol has covered only Episode 171 last night, so this is still in time for most of the track!
Thank you sooo much for this wonderful post Aunty. I was dying to read an episode analysis from your pen.š³
The idea of Camelot: For any new readers curious about the title of these analyses, Camelot was not only the castle of the mythical King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, but a place, like Shangri La, where all is forever calm and bright, and serene minds and hearts are in perfect harmony. When I wrote these analyses, I was convinced that both Jalal and Jodha were, on this journey together, approaching their personal Camelot.
So that's the reason of this name.So beautiful. Thank u for depicting the significance of the title too aunty, as I doubt how much I would understand the significance of the title alone.š
It is another matter altogether that this eagerly anticipated progress was inordinately delayed as the script meandered thru one distasteful melodrama after another. But the abundant, simple, unaffected charm and the tremendous appeal of this track are still as fresh as they were 2 years ago. It was perhaps serendipitous, but it then seemed entirely appropriate that the cutest, sweetest and most unaffectedly and gently romantic episodes in the whole series - beginning with the angoori bagh episode No. 169 and ending with their return to Agra in episode No, 174, - should have flanked the 2014 Valentine's Day !
The most soothing, lively and romantic track...How I wanted this track to continue for some more days and another commoner track after some more days with increased comfortableness and some mature romances.š
Nothing even remotely like was even attempted thereafter, as the show dragged itself thru another year and a half, to Episode 565. It should not have gone beyond half that number, but then I suppose it would not have yielded any profit for Balaji, for it was an expensive production, not like the 3 years plus Pavitra Rishta, made with a couple of chawl sets and not much else!š
Prologue: So let us begin with the two part curtain raiser in Episode 170: the scene in the Diwan-e-Khaas when Jalal seeks Jodha's forgiveness for having endangered his life and thus hers, by refusing to listen to her warnings about Benazir, and then the one in Jodha's hoojra.
There were those who complained in 2014 that Jalal was not apologetic enough, but I frankly cannot understand what they wanted. That he should go down on his knees bhari sabha mein, like the disastrous assertion of Mirza Hakim's about mohabbat ek Shahenshah ko bhi itna kamzor bana deti hai, made to Jalal?š”
Sandhya would of course comment at this point that Jalal did that often enough later, but not yet, and not in public!
The expression in Jalal's eyes as he tells Jodha what he is seeking from her was like a poster for sincere repentance, and yet it was controlled and dignified. 
(Courtesy munni_rajatfan)
As was his saying that he would not give her anything as a return gift for saving his life, kyonki wo uski tauheen hogi. The contrast with Ruqaiya offering Jodha a one time boon for saving Jalal's life could not have been more marked !
One of the great quality of show's Jalal is he never let his ego to come forward while seeking apology to anyone, no matter who, when he has done any mistake. Here too, I think no other style of repentance would have been so sincere, generous and dignified than this. The emperor named the whole new-built city in Jodha's honor, what else would have given much respect to Jodha? And throughout the whole scene, the repentance did not dimmed the spontaneous majestic aura of his face.
Jodha's response to his announcement about Fatehpur Sikri being built to celebrate her victory over death itself was just as controlled and dignified in its muted gratitude, and her body language as she sat down with visible difficulty was perfect as well. As was the charming, sideways smile with which she receives his oblique reference to the arrow attack on him during the river crossing with Benazir; it marked a new level of tacit understanding between them.
Jodha's eyes were depicting the happiness and gratitude for the respectful and dignified gesture of the emperor.š³ All the traces of resentment has been swiped out from their mind.
But it was the subsequent scene in her hoojra that was pure delight.
Jodha's face brightens visibly as soon as Jalal is announced, and if a lamp had been lit within her. From then on, as she engages in a spirited debate with him to assert both her right and her desire to accompany him to Sikri, they were both on a roll. The wide-eyed candour with which she insists that if no one else was accompanying him, it was all the more important that she should go along,kyonki aapka dhyan rakhne ke liye koyi to chahiye!, was so enchanting that it was no wonder that Jalal was bowled over, and was niharofying this new avatar of his Jodha Begum as wonderment and a welling, if tentative joy chased each other across his face.
As Jodha is busy recruiting Hamida's support to make Jalal take her along, he is still gazing at her with sharp, narrowed eyes, trying to make out what exactly is making her tick just then. He is not about to anticipate too much - the memory of the dhakka is ever present in his zehen - but there is a dawning hope that will not be gainsayed. Rajat was fabulous in this little snippet, and as Hamida speaks to him, he drags himself back to reality with an almost visible jerk.
The scene was so delightful, and automatically brings smile in lips.
OK, so let us also take the road to Sikri with our newly minted proto-premis!
Jodha Akbar 171: On the road to Camelot
Originally posted: 12 February 2014 at 5:43am | IP Logged
This was originally put out very late, with my apologies, because I did it, so to speak, only on popular demand. My thread before this one, Sunshine on a butterfly's wings, on Episode 169, had grown, to my considerable astonishment, to a gargantuan 64 pages, and a little post I had made there, on this episode, for the habitues of my threads was getting lost in the jungle. So, I was asked - no told! - to put it up separately, and as I love being bullied by young people, I hastened to comply! š
Please take this not as one of my usual productions, but rather as a series of points, put down in no particular order, for further discussion. It is not an exhaustive analysis, either chronologically or theme-wise.
Jalal the teddy bear: Rajat's Badal does look portly, and there was then a good bit of secret heartburning among the vast tribe of his deewaanis in the forum about that. They would NOT accept it, or if they did, only reluctantly and not without producing a string of mitigating circumstances!š
But I am now convinced, contrary to what I had felt then, that the Teddy Bear Sethji was not really due to the lack of exercise after Rajat had cut his foot yanking Benazir - I was afraid for his back at that time! - out of the water body, or to a water retention problem. It was mostly due to padding in Badal's costume - to make him look like, what else, a good khaata peetha vyapariš - and the square beard on an already square (but not chubby) face.
This is clear from the scene in Jodha's rooms just before their departure from Agra, where Jalal looks absolutely normal, both as regards the body and the face. His features are as clear cut and sharp as ever. Then again, when they are back in Agra, and he has discarded the Sethji's outfit, he looks exactly the same as before their departure.
Of course his features look different from different angles, and also depending on the taj he wears - the one which covers most of his forehead, and the Sethji's pagdi here, do not really suit him. Then again, he did not have enough muscle definition in the abs, and he is generally square built, whence my somewhat disapproving comments about his hamaam scenes! š
But I am now sure that he had not put on any undue extra weight during the Badal-Kajri track. At Gangaur, Jalal looked young, eager and rakish, checking Jodha out with bold eyes that panned her from head to foot. Now he is too taken with her, and looks more adoring than boldly admiring. If they had dressed him as he was dressed at Gangaur and cut him loose, he would have looked just the same.
This apart, it is amazing how the planes of Rajat's face have changed between the teenager and Jalal. It is now a sharply etched bone structure, with deep set eyes and a profile like that of the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, in his equestrian statue in the Roman Forum.
However, I liked the 'golumolu' cute sethji along with his beautiful sethani very much.š³
Delights abounding: I thoroughly enjoyed this episode for the many marvellous little snippets it offered.
- Jalal finally pinning Jodha down about her teerandazi against Benazir: The scene was handled very neatly, and I loved the off hand thank you from Jalal. That was as it should be: if there are to be no sorrys and no thank yous between friends, what then about spouses about to become a romantic couple?
Plus, he tripped her up neatly by turning aside and asking the boatman to get going again, just when Jodha was all set with a forceful comeback, which thus remained unsaid. It was proof of how indulgent she has now become towards him that she took in good spirit, even biting back a smile.
Then there was the procession of shifting expressions on Jodha's face, from total, deadpan denial to quizzical acceptance that it was she. It was a treat to watch, especially as she takes a deep breath and comes out with the truth. Paridhi is clearly on a roll these days!
- The Rajasthani dialect bit: This was very good fun, Jalal's sethji dominated his sethani with comic panache, and both of them were delightful to watch. And the way Jodha was nodding her head in dutiful acquiescence while Jalal was instructing his fauj was exactly like an army sergeant with his major!š
I loved the rajasthani dialect part. It was simple and super sweet.š And Jodha's hidden admiration in her surprised eyes after hearing Jalal's perfect delivery of dialogue was a treat to watch.
- The face in the water: And of course the payal scene, and the flashbacks to Gangaur, for Jodha first and then for Jalal.
I had written at length about the meaning of the payal scene, especially Jalal's rescuing it from the fire at the cost of burning his hand, in my first ever post here, on June 30, 2013. Here, it was charming to see how Jodha, now smiling openly and affectionately at her husband, feels so shy when she saw him staring at her pretty, alta decorated feet, complete with the payals, that she hides them under her ghagra. How times have changed, indeed!
But as for the memories of Gangaur, I always wondered why they never again showed a flashback of Jodha dreaming of Jalal's face in the water after Gangaur, in the water in the Amer palace pools. She dreamt of that unknown face even when she was engaged to Suryabhan, and when she closed her eyes, it was again that unknown face that she saw.
That was a very powerful concept - that his face haunted her waking hours - and they completely lost track of it, alas! Even in this episode, along with Jodha reminiscing about Gangaur, there should also have been flashbacks of the face in the water that she continues to see long after Gangaur, so that the fey quality of Jodha's inexplicable obsession with the unknown face in the water comes out clearly. Jalal was always her destiny, and her subconscious mind perhaps knew that then itself, though it took her half an age to realise it and then to acknowledge and accept it.
I agree with you fully about the part of Jodha recalling jalal's face instead of her fiance in the water... That scene was one of my favorites-even more than the famous scene of Jalal seeing Jodha in the reflection of water for the first time. This scene is a proof of Jodha's obsessive attraction for that unknown youth in her sub-conscious mind, which is not less of Jalal's obsessiveness for the beautiful princess of Amer.
- Wifely wiles: I loved the way in which Jodha realises that Jalal is tired and should take a break, and also that he will never acknowledge it and call for a halt. So she says she is tired and forces the halt anyway. Quintessential wifely concern and feminine wiles!
Jodha was so adorable throughout this track. This was the best characterization of Jodha ever in the whole show!
- Sarai squabbles: The now you win, now I win, seesaw at the inn where they have a meal, with the innkeeper's wife acting like a Greek chorus. The voluble lady was, firstly, displaying a solid streak of female chauvinism in her putting Jodha Rani on a pedestal (so what is new with that?š) and at the same time trying to put her husband in his place good and proper.
As her henpecked spouse gushes that Jodha Rani must love the Shahenshah a great deal, Jodha looks her most demure, eyes firmly lowered while the face shows subtle but definite pleasure. Jalal looks at her, unsure if this is for real, and yet eager to believe it. But he should not worry. This new Jodha of his is a completely reformed character.. She now spends most of her time niharofying her patidev, looking at him soulfully when he is not looking at her, and at times even when he is!
It was a delightful scene indeed.š
Jalal's play on words as he "proves" that Jodha Rani was the more mahaan (the chorus of delighted approval from across the forum 2 years ago must have raised the roof!š) was, in its convoluted logic, worthy of a medieval theologian!š
ššš
I was in stitches when Jalal asked who Satyavan was.
And of course the adiyalon ke sultanat ki malika bit. It all showed a surprisingly high level of comfort between them, which could even manage to sidestep the second reference he made to the dhakka, as Jodha got away by equating it to his kathorta towards her in the old days.
As for the khamoshi ki deewaar that Jalal is apprehensive about, it is not about any new misunderstanding but about a new jhagda.
(Courtesy munni_rajatfan)
The Letter & The Shove: Jodha must have realised by now that there is something really wrong here, and she must also have long since abandoned her SKLL (stree ke liye lalasa) theory. But so long as she does not find out that he cannot read, she cannot crack this one.
I had, by this time, changed my mind and come round to the point of view - in contrast to what I wrote in my Sunlight on a butterfly's wings post - that the Mystery of the Misleading Missive had to be sorted out. For Jalal simply cannot let it be, even when he sees his remixed Jodha Begum being so meherban towards him. He refers to it twice here, and when he says, in the boat, Aapne hamein dhakka dekar apne se alag kar diya, it is a very revealing and bitter turn of phrase, for all the superficial lightheartedness in which he camouflages it.
It is, to my mind, pointless to debate about what hurts him more, her apparently leading on and then humiliating him, or the fact that she rejected him as a lover. It is like the proverbial chicken or egg question. It is obviously a deep hurt, a nasoor that needs to be lanced and cauterised by the truth. For if not, Jalal would, I concluded, always feel, in some corner of his heart, that there is in a Jodha a wilful, capricious and cruelly insensitive woman who might resurface some time , and he would never again be able to trust her fully, without needing any proof, as he did during the false pregnancy track. And that this would poison their relationship.
I had expected in 2014 that the fact that he cannot read would come out on this trip, and then the penny would drop for Jodha. But of course that did not happen, not then, and in fact never as far as Jalal was concerned, though Jodha found out about it very late in the day. So Jalal must have consoled himself with the begumon ke nakhre explanation, till the bond between them became so strong that no explanation was needed.
But the letter part should have been cleared to jalal at least. Will he never get to know that how his emotions had been used by his so-called mother?š”
The Shahenshah resurgent: Another major disappointment for me, and I am sure for all of you, with the follow up to this track was that the teerth kar abolition, which should have been announced on their return to Agra, dropped out of a sight for an unconscionable length of time, till just before Jodha returns to Agra after her prolonged Mathura and Amer-vaas. For it seemed clear to us in February 2014 that Jalal chose to travel as a Hindu merchant on a pilgrimage because there would have been no other way for him to get at the truth of the way his Hindu subjects were being oppressed by the laws and the representatives of the Mughal empire.
Right you are. They should have shown the track of pilgrimage track abolition right after this. It would be an apt timing and much more interesting than the time it had been shown in the show. They completely copied the pilgrimage tax part from the movie, and created such a situation mixing Jodha's anger and Jalal's repentance with this that it demeaned Jodha's position as a lover at the end of the day.
They must have been show the tirthkar track just after Badal-kajri track and could have shown jijia abolishing at the time of Jodha's 'mayke chali jana' in the show.š
An immediate abolition would have been the only logical outcome, for Jalal is here shown reacting to this matter without any need for Jodha to prod him. He should thus have also been shown taking the pilgrimage tax abolition decision too on his own, out of his intrinsic sense of justice and the religious tolerance that was inbuilt in him. As I wrote in my Gordian Knot post about his visit to the Kali Maa temple at Amer:
"He sees the whole of the Hindustan that he wishes to unite under his rule, not by brute force,but thru willing acceptance. Na ki shamsheer ki dhar se, par rishton ke reshmi dhagon me piroke.To win the heart of this Hindustan, he knows now what he has to do. For them to accept him, he has first to accept them. ... (As he went down on his knees and paid obeisance to the Devi) The Gordian knot of incomprehension, of a sense of acute oppression, of discrimination, and of the resulting hostility and hatred, that divided Jalal, and the Mughal rule he embodied, from the Hindustan of his dreams was sliced thru as surely as the original one had been by Alexander's sword. "
You write so beautifully aunty!š³
There have been very few such rulers in the whole of known history.
Really...
The civil disobedience crisis: In 2014, after watching the precap to Episode 172, the most popular option for resolving this problem was the gold bangles prediction - that Jodha would quietly pay the tax with her gold bangles - but I rejected it as too predictable and tame, thus maintain my sterling record of being almost always wrong in the matter of plot predictions! š
I too didn't predict about this straight-cut solution of the scenario. I expected a more melodramatic one.š
The other hopeful scenario of Jalal doing a lot of dishum dishum and beating up the daroga and a whole lot of guards to boot, was, I had to concede with regret, not at all realistic, seeing that he did not want to reveal his identity. He was not carrying his shamsheer either (NO, Sandhya , NO! Not a word about his shamsheer having gone rusty from lack of use! Get thee behind me, you imp!š)
Plus, how would Jalal beating up the daroga help solve the real problem, which is the unjust pilgrimage tax? After all, the daroga was merely implementing the law as it existed at that time
So, the conundrum at the end of Episode 171 was this: Jalal had to be freed by the daroga - for we could not have our Shahenshah whipped by this chap, could we? - and he would not pay up to go free, nor would he let Jodha reveal his identity.
The perfect alternative!: At my wits' end as to how to square this circle, I cooked up the following scenario, with my tongue firmly lodged in my cheek. Do read it in the same spirit, and please do not berate me for being so frivolous about even the new Jodha ( of whom I have become very fond) !šSo, with this statutory warning, here goes.
Jodha goes and clings to Jalal from the back, shielding him from the lashes. He will not be able to shake her off as his arms are tied. The guards will thus be forced to stop whipping Jalal.
This one is good.š Full on drama.š
In short, Jodha as Savitri lite.
She will then put down her portable soapbox, clamber on to it and give a rousing bhashan about the daroga's anyay, kroorta, niyamon ka ullangan, Shahenshah ke prati vishwasghaat (for shaming him in the eyes of his people, as they would think that it was all happening with his knowledge and approval), ityadi, ityadi.
The unfortunate daroga will be so shellshocked and deafened by this relentless flow of accusatory words that he will immediately have Jalal set free, and will beg him to take his wife away and to please not come back by the same route. He might add a man-to-man commiserative comment:Pata nahin tum roz roz is biwi ke saath kaise jujte ho! Tum par wakayi taras aata hai. Jiski aise ladaku biwi ho, use kya aur sazaa diya ja sakta hai?
This one would have been most apt, with Jodha being faithful to her extraordinary 'hunar' of lecturing.ššš
Voila, another hunar of Jodha Begum's, to be inscribed on a tablet, like the Ten Commandments.š
But I really want to know what happened to the poor bodyguards of emperor and empress, who were also arrested along with them?šHad Jalal remembered about them after returning back??
Payal chor ya dil ka chor?: For now, we have Jalal comfortably seated on the floor of the jail, looking across at his sethani, seeming to be on the verge of responding to his fellow jailmate's eager query Kya churaya? with Ek nakchadi rajkumari ka payal churaya!(credit to Tripti). While his eyes signal to his Jodha Begum, Kaash uska dil bhi chura pata!
Shyamala/Aunty/Akka/Di
PS: A likely side benefit of this whole passage, apart from the then anticipated, but then inordinately delayed abolition of the pilgrimage tax, is that Jodha will finally understand that a ruler does not necessarily know, or specifically authorise, all the injustices being done in his name, something directly relevant in the context of the looting of the Kali Maa temple by Mughal soldiers , for which she still blames Jalal totally.
Well said.š
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