Friends, the episode yesterday (Wednesday) was not a very outstanding one, but it did nevertheless serve its purpose by taking the story forward. We saw a bit of Jodha and Jalal continuing on their dargah trip and coming across various types of situations and happily overcoming most of these well. We also got to see what was happening in the Agra palace in their absence, and that was not a very happy prospect!
Jodha and Jalal first got to see how the "mohur" of the Shahenshah was being misused to serve out orders of ill-treatment to Hindu yatris via unfair teerth yatra taxes and aggressive intimidation. They barely escaped Jalal getting whiplashed for his insolence in challenging these so called "Shahenshah's orders". Jodha removed all her jewelry in a timely fashion and paid it off as tax to secure their release. Ultimately, just the two of them got released, but couldn't release their troupe with the jewelry they had, and so the onward journey saw just the two of them going it alone.
Jalal tried to tend to Jodha's sore feet when a bit of "one-upmanship" surfaced between the two of them, but soon subsided also. They then got in with a group of Banjaras resting at a camp before their onward journey - and Jodha and Jalal's imaginations got active when the dancing started. Jalal imagined Jodha as one the dancers and Jodha imagined Jalal as one of the musicians, and there was much private amusement between the two due to the direction of their thoughts. Then Jodha got to cook food for Jalal there, amidst many eyelocks and silent smiles between them. Jodha burnt her hand in cooking which seemed like a high point in the episode when Jalal remarked about it. That sort of sums up their trip. There wasn't very much to it than all this.
But one important sentence was said by the Banjaras which seems to be critical. They said the area they were in was infested with "dakus" (dacoits) and hence they would not linger in this camp but would move on after a bit of hasty rest. Now what this news is going to be a signal of is uncertain, but there are two possibilities ... one may be that the dakus could attack Jalal and Jodha and thus Jalal may fight them and get that wound on his back that Jodha later nurses in the precap. The other possibility is that the same dakus could also kidnap and capture Ruq who has taken it upon herself to follow and catch up with Jalal!
Meanwhile at the Agra palace, Maham heard from Adham that Sharif looked very confident in prison that he would soon be released by "someone". Maham was seen wondering who that Sharif saviour could be, and she suspected Sharif was pulling a fast one ... but I fear that if Maham tries to get to the bottom of it that Jodha was the person in question, she may try to fan the story of the "Jodha-Sharif romance" to Jalal. However I also think Jalal will not buy the story as Jodha has already told Jalal transparently that Sharif was the one who tipped her off about Ben being a viishkanya.
In another part of the palace, Ruq was seen now deciding to go alone in a palki (with escort) to join Jalal belatedly on his dargah trip. Having overslept on the morning of Jalal's departure it had hit her late that Jalal and Jodha were alone together on an extended trip. Now after much crazy brainwork, Ruq no doubt thought that she could still try and insulate Jalal from Jodha by locating him somehow - if her entourage went fast enough to catch up with Jalal.
After Ruq departed Hamida was seen explaining to Gulbadan (in Maham's hearing) that Ruq was doing all this out of extreme audha-insecurity - and her trip out alone in chase of Jalal was extremely foolhardy. Hamida also said that Ruq was so jealous that Jodha may grab her own khas position in the hierarchy and in Jalal's mind, that she was resorting to such completely ill-advised and even dangerous expeditions. This explicit sanket of "lurking danger", and the use of the word "khatarnaak", now makes me feel that Ruq is going to land squarrely in "daku" territory and get kidnapped or caught, with no way of sending out an SOS ... while Jodha and Jalal will carry on blithely with their onward journey! What will happen to the waylaid Ruq is my worry. Not because I care about her so much, but because she is a distraction I don't want Jodha and Jalal to have!
The only other interesting tidbit from yesterday's episode was that in the precap while Jodha was applying lep to Jalal's wounds on his back, she was asking him why he got so angry at Todarmalji's mention of Sher Shah Suri. She was asking Jalal what information he was hiding from her? Now according to Abhay's historical information, Sher Shah Suri was the vanquisher of Humayun who captured the Mughal empire from him, sent him into exile and ruled the Sultanate for a good while. Todarmal was his courtier who later transferrred himself to serve under Jalal when Jalal recovered the lost empire. So some hint of the past catching up with Jalal now and Jodha helping him overcome this shadow of the past encroaching again on his life seems to be on the cards.
For today's analysis I don't want to get into the scenes themselves and describe them, because the dialogues between Jodha and Jalal were few and far between. But I sure want to point out some parts of the episode that seemed like highlights to me:
The jailmate of Jalal thinks he has stolen the beautiful Jodha to make her his own!
That was a cute scene where the jail cell neighbour of Jalal pesters him to say what he did to have been clamped in jail. He asks if Jalal too has a long arm and is a thief like himself. Jalal, after much nudging and pummeling, says he did "chori", much to Jodha's amusement. But on hearing that and seeing the direction of Jalal's gaze, the man then looks at Jodha and smiles as if he gets the picture!
He thinks Jalal has stolen and run away with a beautiful "almost-Rajkumari-like" woman he wanted i.e. Jodha! I hoped and thought Jalal would then say he stole not Jodha herself, but Jodha's heart, but he didn't say that ... if I were the storywriter I would have surely slipped that dialogue in.
Anway, both Jalal and Jodha seemed to find a lot of amusement in letting the man think that Jalal had kidnapped Jodha. And I agree there was a certain "story value" in the kidnapping idea which would appealed to the other jail inmate, whereas telling him that Jalal has hoped to steal Jodha's heart may not quite have been to that guy's taste ... that guy seemed to want to hear of some real macho action!
Jalal tells Jodha "You denied me the chance to get a taste of my own diktat!"
As per the previous episode's precap, the scene appears when the jailer decides to give Jalal a whipping for answering back and challenging the "orders of the Shahenshah" regarding the tax. Jodha runs up to Jalal and says "Shall I tell him who you are really?" but Jalal says "No , on my kasam, you shouldn't, because I want to see for myself how far my soldiers go in their ill-treatment of the Hindu yatris!" The man gets poised to whip Jalal, but Jodha cannot bear it. She hastily says "Stop!" and grabs the whip from his hand.
She then removes all her jewelry and says "Here's the tax you want. Is it enough for you? Now set my husband free" ... and thus she neither breaks Jalal's kasam nor lets him get the lashing. The jailer then sets Jalal free with a few parting admonishments that if in future he wants to challenge orders he should go and talk to the highest order-maker, the Shahenshah himself! A rueful Jalal then tells Jodha with a self-deprecating sneer "Very few kings get to face the punishments served by their own diktats. You have denied me this opportunity, Jodha Begum!" I thought that was an awesome piece of dialogue!
The pati wants to foment the patni's sore feet, but is afraid of getting another dhakka!
After release from the jail, the voiceover says it was going to be a long night alone for Jodha and Jalal, since their accompanying troupe could not be freed without adequate jewelry or money to secure their release. So Jodha and Jalal were seen holding hands and walking on alone through tough terrain in the darkness of the approaching night. Jalal tells Jodha that it would be unsafe to carry on and they need to find shelter - and further she has sore feet already. But Jodha says she is game to continue walking.
However, Jalal makes Jodha sit under a tree and decides something must be done for her wounded feet. He lights a bonfire, then takes off his cummerbund, wraps a stone in it and dips the whole in a nearby river and then brings it over to warm by the fire. He has created a first-aid fomentation kit! When he tries to dab it on Jodha's feet however, Jodha says it would be against Rajvanshi dharm for a patni to let her husband touch her feet. The cute and caring Jalal says "Giving first aid and touching your feet are two different things entirely. But what the heck, I can sympathise with your sentiments. And in any case, trying to touch you only gets me dhakkas". (Back to dhakkas, my dear boy?)
Jodha then takes the wrapped warm stone and dabs it on her feet herself. She is still smarting at the "dhakka" remark but is silent again on that one. She says instead "Where did you learn all these treatments?" and he says "Before I became the Shahenshah I was just a mere sipahi. I had to learn the art of tending to my sore feet in war." There was so much simplicity in this interchange between them that for the first time I got a taste of how they would relate to each other if they were totally alone, just the two of them, by themselves, with no one else around. I suspect this is their most natural conversing manner that we have just had a glimpse of - and I really like it. They are both so simple at heart, and when they are not King and Queen they are just simple folk like you and me, showing mutual concern and telling each other simple facts from their lives! Lovely!
She cooks him simple rotis, but he's more worried about her burnt hand
I loved the scene at the Banjara camp when Jodha says she wants to cook rotis for her husband. It was an endearingly "coochey-coo" request from a wife to want to do something for her husband with her own hands! The Banjara ladies thought so too! Anyway while cooking the rotis, Jodha didn't see Jalal looking at her longingly, and neither did she register the pain he felt when she burnt her hand accidentally. Later when she carries the prepared food to him and asks him to eat this simple fare, he says "First tell me, how is your hand? Not burnt badly I hope?". She is disarmed. She says "It was a small thing ... but the fact that you noticed and you ask is the big thing for me!" How sweet was that! Cutie pies, both of them!
(But notice this point, folks, they have started feeling each other's pains! He felt the pain himself when she burnt her hand, and later in the precap when she applied lep to his wound, she draws in her breath in pain even before he can react to his wound being touched! He even says "It's my wound and you're feeling the pain?" What a sweet way to show their growing "soul connection"!)
Maham sees that Hamida has got the full measure of Ruq's "dangerous jealousy"
At the Agra palace, Ruq seems all set to try and follow Jalal and catch up with him. She says to herself, "I hope its not to late to catch up with Jalal!". She had overslept on the morning of Jalal's departure with Jodha and been fully apprised of her idiocy by Maham. Now the same Maham was supervising palki and escort arrangements to somehow see to it that Ruq went behind Jalal. Maham even told Ruq in a low voice "You seem to have got your brains at last ... der aaye lekin at least durusth aaye!"
Okay having thrashed out the episode of Wednesday evening, what is expected to happen today? That's entirely in the dark for me.
I would love to know how Jalal gets that slash on his back and exactly when Todarmal talks to him about Sher Shah Suri. The precap seems like a sudden development in a new direction for which there is no previous ishara in the episode we have already seen. So something entirely new is afoot for the next episode we are going to see.
I have one theory that the dakus may have got to Jodha and Jalal and inflicted the gash on his back while he and Jodha were making their escape. But that doesn't seem to explain how Todarmal got in touch with Jalal to tell him about Sher Shah Suri. Could it be that the wound on the back is a separate daku-related thing, and while tending to it, Jodha also tries to keep chatting to Jalal about another separate development that happened i.e. that Todarmal story?
Meanwhile, its my ardent wish that the dakus do nab and imprison Ruq and her whole entourage and make sure she is unable send out distress messages, so that the trip of my dear Jodha and Jalal can go along peacefully and blissfully.
Let's see where the next episode takes us ...
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As always, Abhay (History_Geek) has some excellent background info on Sher Shah Suri. He has done a post that may throw some light on why Jalal is so uptight on hearing the name of Sher Shah Suri ... Read this post without fail :
https://www.indiaforums.com/forum/post/101170129
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Arjun
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