Friends, first of all let me apologise for yesterday's fiasco at my end. Hardly had I posted my take than I lost the Net connection and couldn't even send out PMs to those on my Buddy List to inform them that I had made my post. And then it took the whole day to set the connectivity failure right and it was almost 10 pm by the time I got my Net back. Sorry for the inconvenience to you all, and for my going gaayab after making my post!
Anyway, yesterday's episode was wonderful, don't you all agree? It was completely unexpected for me, because I never expected Jodha to say the "prem" word so soon to Jalal. Plus of course, there was this wonderful repartee from Jalal to Ruqaiaya, putting her firmly in her place after her tantrums at being left out of the boatride.
There are four sentences that will keep ringing in my mind from yesterday's epsiode:
First, the guard who had stood outside Jalal's door and taken the Ruqaiaya boatride invitation to him, was later called in by Jalal to sort out the confusion about which wife had issued the invite. The guard clarified that the praja now thought Jodha was the "Khas Begum".
The guard said "I told you Shahenshah that it was Jodha Begum who invited you, because the message said your "Begum-e-Khas" wanted a boatride with you. But it is well known to me and all the praja now that all three Begums - Ruqaiya, Salima and Jodha - are now referred to as "Khas Begums" by you yourself. Moreover, in recent times, you have always gone on outings with Jodha Begum, and you even took her with you to Pirbaba Salim Chishti ... and further, all the people do think of Jodha begum as the "most khas". So naturally I assumed it was she who was inviting you and not Ruqaiya Begum!"
Jalal then told a fretting Ruqaiya, this man had done no "galat" it was all just a "galat faimi". And to add to this, Jalal actually looked amused that Jodha was now the "Khas Begum" even in the eyes of his people and not just to himself! Ruq sensed this and fumed "If you yourself now see her as your "Khas Begum", what can one do! What is left for me?"
Second, Jalal in the midst of telling Ruqaiya that the guard was not wrong, then turned round upon Ruqaiya herself and pointed out her own audha-driven high-handedness in this whole boatride invitation fiasco.
He said to Ruq forthrightly "If it was such a private outing, why send the message through a baandhi, should you not have come yourself to invite me for the boatride? After all if you are the Begum-e-Khas, you have free access into any chambers anywhere in this Palace? And even then, why not send a message with your own name? What was the point of just referring to yourself by your title?"
I thought this sentence was the complete sum and substance of Ruqaiya's problem. She had been imperious in her invitation. She had pompously included her title rather than her own name to give the whole boatride an audha-related stamp of power and ownership of Jalal's time, and she had further sent the message through a baandhi, which hit her husband as a very third-person way of inviting someone for a private evening out!
The problem was not one of protocol, it was one of audha-consciousness and imperiousness. And Jalal showed Ruq that he stood taller than her and she shouldn't have tried to exhibit rank when inviting someone out for the evening, especially her own husband! There is an etiquette of formality and titles to be followed for stangers , and an informality of personal names to be followed with near and dear ones, and Ruqaiayya, didn't know the difference ... or didn't want to or choose to!
Third, Jalal told Jodha it was not her fault at all that all this mix-up happened. She was feeling rather bad that it may have all happened from her own fault as she had perhaps butted into Ruqaiya's "terrtitory". But Jalal clarified that he was no one's pet poodle!
I loved the way Jalal told her "You know that there are at least 5000 women in this harem. Who I choose as my partner for the evening is entirely my choice and no one can complain that my choices should have been different. No one has the right to complain who I choose to go with, be with or consort with!" This was a fabulous sentence for me because it showed me that once and for all Jalal had put an end to this debate we all had whether Ruqaiya from childhood was having a grip on his life, his time and his freedom.
Jalal told Jodha in so many words that no woman, however close she may be to him, could believe she owned him, much less Ruqaiaya. She may be a "khas friend" or even a "khas wife" but he could do as he pleased and she had no room to call him to account for his actions. Especially being with any woman he chose was not anyone's to declare as okay or not. Many of us often felt that Jodha being very sensitive, may shrink away from Jalal just because she feels he belongs more to Ruqaiya. But yesterday Jalal qauashed any such "hichkichaahat" from Jodha saying he was not Ruqaiaya's property at all! He was freely available!
What's more we now understand why Ruqaiya kept saying "He can sleep with whomever he likes as long as my audha is intact!" We now can see that she had to swallow his sleeping with others because he gave her no room to feel she could control his freedom! It was not hers to give him any permissions! And even if Jalal sometimmes irritated us viewers by acting as if he favoured Ruq, he was even then doing so only if he wanted to and not by compulsion. (So the next time he sleeps in the tent and lets Jodha sleep outside we should not assume he was being forced by Ruqaiaya. He is doing whatever he is doing from his own free will. Even Jodha has to remember that he can never ever be caged! Not even by love!)
Fourth, the sentence by Jodha in reply to Jalal's query of how she was different from Ruq was sensational. It was a seminal moment in the serial when Jodha said the "prem" word to Jalal - something he has been yearning to hear all these days since he first realised he love her!
Jalal was telling Jodha she needn't feel responsible for all that had happened, but in a way even Ruq did have a right to feel miffed. He said "Ruq had issued the invitation to me and suddenly found at the last moment that someone else had taken advantage of all the arrangements she had made for a private outing. Now if you had been in that same position you too would feel the same way, isn't it, if your invitation was taken over by someone else at the very last moment and they went out for the evening in your stead after you have taken so much trouble in the preparations?" Jodha said "Yes, that is true!~" So Jalal then said "Then where is the difference really between yourself and Ruq?" He meant that anybody would have felt the same way!
But Jodha replied "There is a difference between me and Ruq. I would not have felt bad after the fiasco because my audha became eroded or my "khas-ness" became less in your eyes. It would have been all about "prem" for me! I would have felt that "hamare prem ka apmaan hua"!" Jalal's face was a picture of absolute unbridled delight! He stopped short when she first used the word "prem" and couldn't believe she had done so. His look was a mixture of incredulousness and happiness. But when she amplified that she would have felt hurt because her "prem" was insulted, it was everything he ever wanted to hear in this world. The girl he loved had said in as many clear words to him as possible that she did have "prem" for him, and any "insult to that prem" would have been unbearable. She had said to him that other things would not hurt her at all - things like titles and audha and "khasness" ... but "prem" was so precious that the heart would have felt it all more than the head!
In the moments after she said this, Jodha herself did not seem to realise that she had said the word "prem" to him. He was continuing to look at her as if the whole world was now in his hands. But she still didn't quite catch on that she had let slip something precious, something he never thought he would hear from her lips so soon. He kept on staring at her with his heart in his eyes, and she lingered to keep wondering at his look. She then left the room, but he was still in the daze of of the moment that had just happened. Folks, they both have now as good as declared their love ... he said it in a soul talk, so we don't know if she heard it. But she said it first so openly that we know for sure he has heard her!
Okay, so much for my four best sentences of the evening! The episode largely was centred around this boatride conversation between Jodha and Jalal (that I am detailing below) ... plus it had this showdown conversation between Ruq, Jalal and Jodha (that I am also choosing to detail today).
For the rest we had Ruq serially slapping everyone in sight in her room including baandhis and Hoshiyaar, we had Ruq spewing venom at Jodha in her room, we had Maham and Resham sharpening their ears for any more interesting fallouts of their chaal, and we had Sharif just mercilessly slitting the throat of a sipahi who failed to tell him of the boatride of Jalal!
We also had a precap where it looked like another big blowout between Ruq and Jodha can be expected soon. Ruq seemed to be supporting some marriage between someone and someone, which was planned when they were very young, when they were good friends, (just like the Ruq-Jalal marriage exactly). But now the boy concerned seems to have fallen in love with someone else. Ruq says they should marry as pre-planned in their childhood, while Jodha supports the boy in wanting to marry for love, not just old friendship. It seems like an exact enactment of their own situations. Ruq decries "love" as a criterion for this marriage and swears she will force the pre-planned marriage to his childhood friend! Jodha seems opposed to it because it was not a love match. This gives Ruq a chance to vent against "love" - a commodity absent in her life!
Okay, here now are the two scenes I want to detail ...
The boatride conversation between Jalal and Jodha ... it was mundane but it was also poignant!
I thought the boatride conversation that Jodha and Jalal had was very normal and cozy. It was like old married couples would talk to each other sitting by the fireside, years after they were first married! First of all there was too much distance between Jodha and Jalal to allow any touching - and even eyelocks would have been tough at that distance. But it was a cozy atmosphere, and the silences were full of mutual smiles, so Jyoti and I have forgiven the distance at which they were sitting from each other. Here we both wanted more phsyical interplay between them but there they were at least 10 feet apart, so what could Jyoti and I do except grin and bear it?
Jalal first talked to himself saying "She could have talked to me anywhere, so why did she invite me for this boatride? Why are you so silent, Jodha Begum?" And at the same time Jodha was thinking "He calls me for this boatride and then doesn't say anything. What is on his mind?" Was it then synchronicity that both spoke the same sentence together "You are not saying anything ...". When they realised they had spoken identically together smiles broke on their faces.
Then Jalal amplified " We both seem very similar Jodha Begum. See this boatride for instance, we both seem to like this kind of outing a lot!" "Yes", she replied. "I do love being outdoors close to Nature!" He then said "Me too!" and she replied "Yes I know, whenever you step outside the Palace you become a different person!" Jalal then said "Looks like you too love going out right?" and she replied "Yes, like I just told you I love being outdoors where nature is at her best".
Jalal then went back into his taana maro-ing mode (he can't resist it, can he?). He said "Maybe that is why you are so surly inside the Palace?" Jodha was quick with her reply "I said you change a lot when you go out but one thing always stays unchanged - your habit of taana maro-ing!" "What can I do Jodha Begum" he says with a broad smile "but habits of childhood don't go away so easily!" She smiles at that and says "Oh, so even as a kid you gave people a lot of trouble?" and he said "But my mischief doesn't seem to be too unpalatable to you ... or you wouldn't have invited me here like this today!"
Jodha looked perplexed at that for she had not invited him. She thought he had invited her here. She said "I called you? No, it was you who had sent the invite via a daasi!" Jalal seemed to see a return of Jodha to that state of "Yes-No" dithering that he always thought she did (ever since that dhakka?). He thought to himself " She's back at it again, saying Yes and then saying No!" And then he gave her a wry smile as he shook his head and said "Understanding you women - especially you Begums - wth your Yes-No games is so tough, really!" She just sat on silent, still confused by what he was saying. He continued "Jodha Begum, I am puzzled, you always say Yes first and then you say No ... what kind of talent is this?"
Just then they heard a bit of noise that alerted him to some stick like object standing tall in the water. He slashed at it with his sword and said "You there, reveal yourselves to me" and found two of his sipahis (looking like drowned rats) bobbing out of the water and saying they were silent sentries sent for his safety by Atga! Jalal just shoeed them off saying he was okay, he was "mehfooz". But Jodha found it funny to see Atga go to such lengths to protect Jalal, and Jalal said that Atga did carry things too far some times!
She then asked him "How did you spot those guys so easily? How many eyes do you have?" And he replied "Till now I had two, but now it looks like I have four eyes. But even two is enough for a born sipahi like me. "Dushman, hatiyaar and jung" have always dogged my life. I have lived more among enemies that near ones. I've received more "bad dua" from enemies than I have received good wishes from my near ones. Now I've got used to it all". Jodha looked very moved to hear all this. She said "How strange it all is. You seem to love your weapons more than your own people." He agreed "I love my people but not more than my shamsheer - I love this best and it loves me. It's the one that never leaves my side!"
Then again he shrugged his shoulders and said "Anyway, I must say I loved this outing you have invited me on" but she again said emphatically "I told you I didn't invite you". He said "Oh, come now,, I have begun to understand your Yes-No methods better now." "Why don't you trust my word?" she asked, "it was you who invited me!" Jalal again said "No Jodha Begum, I was merely replying your invite." "But I never send any message ..." she cried plaintively, by now completely puzzled. "Okay I get it", he replied, some one who wanted us to be together must have sent that message in your name - maybe my mother or Salima or Moti?" Jodha seemed to think so too as her eyes gleamed with some dawning understanding of what may have happened.
Then he started chomping on an apple asking her also to help herself to some eats, saying it felt good to eat on an outing like this. They both kept smiling at each other as they looked now and again away from each other and then their eyes got drawn to look at each other again. And thus ended the scene and the evening.
I was a bit upset that they were sitting so far away from each other that the conversation looked a bit impersonal. But then they were on such homely, comfy, cozy terms with each other and smiling so much at each other throughout that I felt that bond between them despite the distance. It was after all a semi-formal date, and so they maintained decorum, I suppose. But still there was warmth in their eyes, ease in their conversation and a sense from both sides about how similar were their tastes and sentiments and world view.
Thanks, Creatives, for giving us emotional closeness even if you couldn't give us physical closeness. Next time, I would advise you all to try and be more bold. No point feeling shy! C'mon, you can do it!
Ruq drags Jodha to Jalal for the "boatride fiasco showdown"- and ends up with egg on her face!
An irate Ruq was still fuming in her room when she came to know from Hoshiyaar that the two boatriders had returned from the "date". She stomped off to Jodha's room , while Jodha was praying to Kanha with some unease in her heart. Ruq then proceeded to accuse Jodha of usurping her place at Jalal's side when it was she who gave the invitation to Jalal for the boatride and made all preparations. Jodha insisted that Jalal was the one who invited her to go, which made Ruq even more furious! She grabbed Jodha by the hand saying "Then let's have a showdown with Jalal!" But Jodha wrenched her hand free and said "I can walk there by myself, thank you. And you'd better stay cool till the truth is known." Maham and Resham meanwhile were watching the two wives marching to Jalal's hojra and congratulating themselves.
Ruq entered Jalal's hojra with a confused Jodha in tow. She said peremptorily "Shahenshah, a decision has to be made here! " He seemed not overly moved by this display of fury but casually put on his overcoat and dismissed his staff. "What's now happpened so early in the morning that brings you both here?" he asked. Ruq then grabbed Jodha by the hand, dragging and dumping her before Jalal, which he did not like one bit. "This Jodha has insulted me" Ruq began her tirade "she has usurped my place beside you. It was I who sent you that invite for the boatride, but she cleverly put herself in my place and even managed to go off successfully on that boatride with you. And when I tried to accost her, she has the temerity to say it was you who invited her!" Jalal replied "Yes, indeed I did reply her message with a positive answer!"
Ruq became more furious by now "What? You sent her a reply to the message I sent you?" she asked. "OK wait" Jalal said and sent for the guard who gave him the message and then told the guard to repeat the message he got the day before. The guard said "The message, Huzur, was that your "Khas begum" wanted to take a boatride with you." Ruq pounced on the guard with venom "When you know that I am the Begum-e-Khas, how did you tell Jalal that the "Khas begum" was Jodha who sent the invite?" The guard said "I am sorry Ma'am, The Shahenshah has given all three of you the Khas audha - that is yourself, Salima Begum and Jodha Begum." (Jalal smiled at that!) The guard continued "In recent times the King has only taken Begum Jodha with him everywhere, even to Baba Salim Chisti. Everybody in this Palace and even the awaam now consider Jodha to be the "Khas Begum". That's why I thought this message was from her".
Ruq startedshouting at the guard for his mistake, when Jalal stopped her summarily. He sent off the guard as Ruq turnedupon himself to shout ""The guard made such a big mistake and you pardoned him?" Jalal coolly replied "He did not commit a "galti" it was a "galat faimi". And yesterday evening itself in the boat I had heard from Jodha that she had not sent me the invite. I thought it was the work of someone who wanted to see me and Jodha Begum together." "But what of me Jalal?" cried Rukqiaya, "why am I bearing this "sazaa"?". Jalal replied "But why do you think of it as a sazaa?" Ruq replieds with pompous overtones even while in tears "Because I am the Begum-e-Khas here."
But Jalal turns the argument back on her head. He said "Okay, now if you are the Begum-e-Khas, you know you have free access into any room ...so why did you not come yourself and invite me, why send a baandhi with a message ... and why not mention your name on the message, why did you need to refer to yourself by your title?" She reverted "Because I thought I was the only "Khas Begum" in your life! But you looked at the message and acted like you could only think of Jodha in that khas position, and you went on the boatride. You are right, how can I fault the guuard when the Shahenshah has himself started considering someone else as his "Khas Begum"?" ... and with that she walked out in a huff. Jalal looked like the realisation had dawned on him finally regarding how audha-fixated Ruq was! Yet there was also a half-smile on his face. He was least fazed by Ruq's rantings and walkout.
Jodha meanwhile, immediately after Ruq left, seemed to be feeling guilty. She apologised for the fracas and was about to go - when he caught her by the arm and stopped her. Then he asked her to sit down quietly. "Why do you feel guilty about someone else's mistake?" he asked. She replied "Because I am responsible somehow for the fracas. I do not want to come between you and Ruq".
Jalal then with a smile told her "Do you know that there are 5000 women in this harem, and I can go to anyone, be with any one I choose and no one has the right to complain or curtail my freedoms? And thinking about it, Ruq too is right in her own way. Imagine if you had made all the preparations for that boatride and invited me, but at the final moment someone else had taken your place, how would you feel?" Jodha conceded "Yes, I would as a wife feel very bad, even knowing that you could be with whoever you please whenever you want."
"Then how are you different from Ruq?" he asked. "There is a big difference" she said, "I would be angry not because my rank would go down or you would think me less of a "khas begum" ... but because of "love". I wll surely feel bad that "hamare prem ka apmaan hua!"
My God, folks, the look in Jalal's eyes was to die for. He sat upright, his eyes gleaming with heartfelt satisfaction and relief. He even smiled broadly but she looked initially perplexed at his look and his amsement, perhaps not realising what she had said. Or did she? I couln't tell.
It looked to me like she was not fully aware of the import of what she had said and the words had escaped her heart and mouth. She then left the room, but lingered near the door quite a bit before she left. And all the while he sat in an incredulous daze like a man who had heard from his love that she loved him back!
What a moment in this serial! We were waiting to see who would fall in love first, but the tarazu of love is even handed. He first realised he loved her but he didn't openly say it (it only came out in his soul talk). But she was the first to say it openly even if she hadn't articulated it to herself so openly within her own heart!
Creatives, thank you again, for making one speak inside his own heart of love - but the other speak out in the open about her own love. Now we have no more doubt as to who fell in love first. They were both first in their own way.
Geet - Hui Sabse Parayee
CID
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