Friends, yesterday's episode of Jodha Akbar seemed the exact opposite of the one on Monday in terms of speed and all that happened. Suddenly, as it were, the first segment saw the fall and arrow taking of Sujamal; the second segment saw the revelations of Sujamal and the penny dropping for Jalal; and the third segment saw Jalal making his way back to the palace, finding Jodha there and having an apology-cum-kissing-cum-hugging session with her. There was so much action at such speed that a lot of us, including me were kind of left in a mighty daze!
Was the whole track over? Was it all finished off so simply? How could it be? Is that all that needed to happen to put a full closure on the Sujamal track? What of all those spoilers that said Jodha will be missing, she won't go to Amer, she'll go to a jungle and then to an ashram and meet with an abduction attempt half way there, and then she and Jalal will find each other eventually and meet a sadhvi at the ashram where Jodha takes refuge ... my God was all that a truckload of misleading rubbish? Can all the newspapers and article sources have collectively misled us? And was Jodha going to let Jalal off the hook without even so much as a whimper of protest? Something fishy was going on, surely? But on the other hand, would all the main newspapers of the country have given this "kissing scene" so much of hype if it had not been part of the "real" happenings and was just a "dream" sequence?
The questions in my mind were many, and I spoke to many of my friends on phone saying "What did you guys make of all this?" Everybody was as much in a daze as I was, and were all alternately laughing hysterically and yet in a sort of mental disbelief!
I was very happy that the Sujamal fall and revelation scene happened almost to the word exactly as I had predicted. But I was flabbergasted with the final hugging scene for it looked like Jodha had not left the palace in anger against Jalal, and she gave him a very easy time of it in the "kiss and makeup scene". I had so wanted Jodha to at least put up a strong resistance to Jalal and not give in so easily!
Later in the night, after many of my friends had time to think over things a bit, SMSes were flying to me from many of them, notably Diksha, who kept asking if the kissing scene was all a dream of Jalal's? I was still not convinced ... I wrote back to her saying "I don't think it's a dream because the publicity surrounding the kissing scene had been so heavy in almost all the big newspapers that it would be like cheating the public". But still my own mind kept questioning the whole premise! It was an uneasy night.
But what do I see this morning? There is a big fat article from Times of India that this whole kissing scene was in fact a dream of Jalal, and in actual fact he is going to find Jodha missing, he is going to run to Amer to find her not there too ... and then a huge hunt for her will be on which may also include perhaps an abduction attempt by Sharif.
So I am now in two minds. On the one hand I am still in bewilderment after seeing the whole episode yesterday ending so tamely, and yet another part of my mind is thrilled that my prediction still seems to be on the right lines and things may still happen exactly as I had written. Am I happy or sad about it? That's the part that I am not able to decide! I am, as I said, still in a trance!
OK, OK, OK, so it was all Jalal's dream. The faster I reconcile with that, the sooner I can get back to reality. I have no choice but to settle down with that ... and so I take an analytical look at what all we saw yesterday with an effort to swallow what happened!
There was an unnecessary opening scene with Salima, Hamida, Gulbadan and Ruq all discussing Jodha's purported infidelity with this "Rajvanshi man", when Ruq got a chance to show off some new clothes and to air her gripe against Jodha. But Hamida refused to believe ill of Jodha and Salima supported Hamida in holding an optimistic view that things will settle well for Jalal and Jodha. After this one useless scene, we then went back to catch up on the action on the Sujamal hunt front.
Now there were principally only two big scenes after that ... one was the Sujamal arrow-taking and the subsequent speech he gave before going away; and two, was the desperation with which Jalal went to Jodha's hojra and there happened a kiss-and-make-up scene that was slightly unsatisfactory to some and OK to others (and anyway it has been declared a dream scene, so we have to wait for the "real thing" much later and hope it is far better than the romantic scene we saw yesterday!).
For my analysis today I want to cover these two big scenes ...
Sujamal, the hero of the hour and the man for all seasons ... he gave Jalal an eye-opener!
The episode started tracking the Jalal chase of Sujamal from the point where it had left off on Monday. Jalal's horse closed the distance between him and Sujamal, and when Jalal was within arm's range of Sujamal, he knocked Sujamal off his horse, dismounted himself and unsheathed his sword and held it to Sujamal's neck as Sujamal lay on the ground. But then with some deft moves Sujamal was on his feet again and he too unsheathed his sword and a swordfight between two able sipahis began in earnest. There was a lot of vaulting over trees, and some attempted strikes and parries from both sides, and also a bit of lalkaaro-fying from both sides, till Sujamal lost his sword ... Jalal then did the noble thing of throwing down his own weapon and opting for an equal hand-to-hand fight. He started pummelling his enemy, holding him up against a tree, and Sujamal gave no resistance ... so very soon, Jalal was relatively without wounds, while Sujamal's face and nose were badly bleeding.
Just then Sujamal spotted a masked man hidden in a tree trunk with bow and arrow aiming at Jalal, and the arrow swiftly was despatched in Jalal's direction. The archer was Sharif saying to himself "I will kill Jalal and the murder charge will fall on Sujamal". Sujamal just shouted a "Chale jao" and pushed Jalal aside just in time to himself take the arrow meant for Jalal. The arrow felled Sujamal to the ground. Jalal was disoriented by all that had happened but he gathered his wits quickly enough to see a masked man lurking away through the thick forest undergrowth.
Meanwhile Adham, Atga and some sipahis came running and Adham held out his sword to finish off the fallen Sujamal, when Jalal held his sword blade with his own hand to stop him. "No Adham, no!" Jalal said "You all please run after that guy who tried to kill me with this arrow". Atga, Adham and gang dispersed with speed, as Jalal held Sujamal's head in his hand gently but said with pent up aggressiveness "Why did you save my life? I wanted to kill you!". Sujamal, through a bloodied nose and mouth barely uttered the words "Because I gave my sister Jodha a vachan that I would save her suhaag at all costs."
Jalal was shocked to hear this. "Who are you, tell me, who are you?" he shouted and the fallen man barely let out his name "Su...ja...mal". "What? You are Sujamal? Jodha's brother?" Jalal asked again. Suddenly a whole series of flashbacks came to Jalal. Flashbacks of seeing Jodha with this man, of accosting and berating Jodha and her refusal to say who this man was, his accusations of infidelity on Jodha's part which were so wrongly attributed, and especially memories of the way he had thrown questions at her to which she had given true but partial answers - whereupon he had asked her to leave Agra before sunrise the next morning!
The scene then shifted to a riverside where presumably Jalal had taken Sujamal's unconscious body to bathe his wounds. Jalal was sitting by the river bank waiting for Sujamal to regain consciousness where all kinds of self-accusations started torturing him. "Oh my God, what have I done? Jodha was meeting with her brother, and I thought all kinds of things" he said to himself. "Forgive me Jodha Begum, I have done a big gunah against you. Give me the greatest punishment in the world, but forgive me. If only, Jodha Begum, you had tried to tell me at least once what was the truth. If only you had thought me fit to have your trust."
Adham walked towards Jalal, and despite Atga saying Jalal wants to be alone, Adham insisted on going up to Jalal and asking him "Shahehnshah,, I don't understand you. This is the same Sujamal who killed our soldiers in Mewat. Instead of punishing him you are tending his wounds?" Sujamal was partially awake to hear Jalal reply "Yes we need to give him an answer for Mewat, but not here, not like this, not like cowards taking vengeance on a hurt man." Sujamal was already smiling to himself to hear this when Adham again asked Jalal, "But this man also attacked you on that jashn night?". Jalal replied "A man who saved me today could not be an attacker of mine that night. There's something more to that story ...we have to get to that real culprit." Sujamal was almost beaming at the sight of Jalal's astuteness.
Just then Sharif appeared before Jalal, asking for footnotes on whether the "Rajvanshi man" had been captured ... Jalal gave him a dagger-like glance and said, "There was even an attempt on my life as we were after Sujamal, but where were you all this while?" Sharif concocted a story about being on the farther edge of the forest hoping to nab the Rajvanshi man as he exited. Jalal did not sound 100% convinced. Just then a siphai interrupted to say Sujamal was awake now, and on hearing Sujamal's name being taken, Sharif realised, to his own peril, that Jalal was getting to know too much and may get the rest of the story too from Sujamal!
The scene then shifts to a palace room in which Sujamal has been laid on a bed with a hakim tending to him. He refuses an ark prepared by the hakim for his swift recovery, but Jalal enters the room and insists he drink it because "dua and dawa" have to be honoured when wounded. Sujamal takes the ark. "How are you now?", Jalal then asked Sujamal, as Atga, Adham and Sharif also came into the room. "I am fine" said Sujamal. But there were too many questions in Jalal's mind that needed clearing. So he asked Sujamal "Did you not feel strange entering my palace in the garb of a khwaja sera, being a sipahi such as you are?" Sujamal replied without once taking his eyes away from Jalal's "Yes it was a bad feeling. But I am a Rajvanshi, and keeping vachans is in our blood. That is what forced meto accept all of it as necessary."
Jalal said "I don't understand". Sujamal then continued "I gave Jodha a vachan that I would always protect her suhaag. When she drank the poison, I had to come to Agra to see how she was. After meeting her at the mandir and seeing she was fine, I was on my way back when I suddenly chanced upon Abul Mali plotting with someone from your palace about making an attack on your life at the jashn. And so I stayed back and attended the jashn. In fact I also sent a paigam to Atga Saab via a small boy that your life was in danger and needed to be protected."
"Oh so that was you?" Atga asked. "Yes, it was from me" Sujamal confirmed. He then continued "At the jashn I caught and killed the man who made an attempt on your life, Shahenshah, but unfortunately the whole blame was turned on me as if I was the attacker." (By now Jalal was getting more and more alarmed and curious, while Sharif was squirming wondering what more would come out next.)
Sujamal went on "Who was behind all this from the palace? I had to stay back and find out so I continued to stay on in Agra. And so I took the disguise of a khwaja sera. But before I could ferret out the culprit, you started having suspicions on me. You know what happened after that. I am not trying to defend my actions here except to say that my intentions were noble, and I never looked at any of the harem ladies as anything but a sister or mother. "
Jalal was still looking in a daze as he heard all this, but Sujamal then went on to say "And yes, one more thing. You have a wonderful sister Bakshi Bano. Whenever I remember my own sister Jodha , I will surely be reminded of her also." (Sharif looked more squirmy than ever!)
Adham then intervened, "You are an enemy of the Mughals, so why did you save Jalal's life?'. Sujamal said with unblinking eyes, "Even today the Mughals are my enemies, but we Rajvanshi's kill our enemies in straightforward battles, and not from hiding. And secondly, the Shahenshah is my sister's husband. I cannot do anything to harm her suhaag."
Jalal has a reasonable doubt. "As you say, I am still your enemy. If you were to meet me on the battlefield what would you do?" "On the battlefield, all enemies are the same. Killing them and gaining victory is the birth-duty of every soldier" Sujamal replied. Jalal was wearing a look of respect in his eyes for this man. Sujamal then said "I do not wish to tread further on enemy hospitality. I must go now. Either you capture me or let me go." So saying he made to stand up and wrapped a shawl over his hurt and bandaged body. Adham and Sharif still barred his way.
"And why do you think I will let you go?" asked Jalal. Sujamal turned to look him straight in the eye and said "Because till now you have not tried to capture and arrest me. And one more thing, being such a great warrior yourself, it will give you no satisfaction to capture an unarmed man so easily, nor are you the type to do peet ke peeche se war! So let me go now. We will next meet on the battlefield where my sword will talk."
Jalal stood up almost ready to let him go but one question lingered in his mind. "When I asked Jodha so many times, why did she not tell me the truth about you?". Sujamal quickly replied "Because she too is a Ranjvanshi, and I made her take a vachan never to tell you about me." Jalal remembered the scenes with Jodha when she kept saying she could not say more because she was vivash!
Jalal then made an eye signal to Adham and Sharif to let Sujamal pass and with that Sujamal walked out with his head held high! What a man!
Sharif then asked Jalal "How could you let go an enemy trapped in our hands?" and Jalal replied "Yes, because he was a true soldier. But the real culprit is a gaddaar living under my own roof and trying to kill me. Atga Saab, Adham, try and catch and kill this traitor, but make sure you do nothing unless you have absolute proof against this man." (Did you all notice that he did not include Sharif in this order?). With everybody gone from the room Jalal thought to himself "I have to meet Jodha urgently!"
My comments on this scene:
Folks, if ever I had any doubts on whether I liked Sujamal or not, I have now discovered that I am almost on the verge of wanting to give him a few hugs myself. What a proud man he was, how beautifully he stole the show, and in that speech he gave Jalal, there was no question who was the taller man, literally and figuratively.
Jalal looked more and more broken with every word that Sujamal uttered that showed his sense of personal guilt juxtaposed against Sujamal's Rajvanshi pride, his nobility, his great intentions and his ability to back up his intent with firm action. He showed that he was a man ready to do what it takes in life - even masquerade as a khwaja sera - at any cost to his own life. How many chances he had of fleeing - and yet he showed Jalal how every time he had put his own life on the line to stay on in Agra and complete the job he needed to do for his sister's sake.
What could Jalal have done other than to look downcast and stare at the ground through many parts of this Sujamal speech? In contrast Jalal had let circumstances get the better of him and he had behaved abominably with Jodha.
I particularly loved three parts of Sujamal's speech...
a. I liked the way he remembered to say "You too have fine sister in Bakshi Bano and I'll remember her whenever I remember my own sister Jodha". What a wonderful brother to have! What magnanimity there is in this man to show his care and concern for Bakshi at a time like this? And how wonderful to interject all the harsh stuff he was telling Jalal by giving everyone, including us, a glimpse of his very soft inner core of love for his own sister in particular and all sisters in general! No wonder Jodha loves this brother of hers best of all. He is a warrior with a soul!
b. I loved the way he talked of Rajvanshi pride in himself and in Jodha and said "We Rajvanshis keep our vachans". Contrast this with the bunch of boorish treacherous men that surround Jalal as his relatives and you get a picture of direct opposites. Sangeetha once told me that Jalal will get so fed up of his own clan and its treachery that he will soon start feeling that his real family is the Ameri family. I am so happy that he has finally met all of them, including the one that he always missed meeting - Sujamal - who is the epitome of everything "Rajvanshi" that I can think of. He is fearless, honour-bound, a bad enemy and a good friend! This is the stuff one has heard of the noblest of Rajvanshis ... and I am glad in this story we have one great example of this kind of chivalrous man!
c. I loved the way Sujamal in the end said "I do not want to waste a moment more accepting the hospitality of those I consider my enemies - the Mughals. Either you capture me or let me go. I'll meet you next again on some battlefield where my sword will talk. Outside of battle you are all my enemies except for the Shahenshah who is my sister's suhaag and who I will not harm. But on the battlefield, it's a different thing. Everyone is the enemy to a real soldier and no quarters can be given even to relatives." Folks, did you see the respect grow in Jalal's eyes as every word was nailed by Sujamal. He showed Jalal that with a treacherous enemy within his own four walls, the last thing he needed to do was to get distracted by a well-meaning honour-bound Rajvanshi!
All through his speech, the remarkable thing was the calmness in Sujamal's voice that betrayed not an ounce of fear or hesitation. He was open, forthright, frank, and bold. He spoke making direct and unflinching eye contact with Jalal ... and the sheer sincerity of his sense of valour showed with his every choice of word, and even in the way he chose to narrate his whole story. His thinking was so clear ... he neither went up and down with his statement not betrayed even a quiver of uncertainty. He remembered every point he had to make and he made it with the swift strikes of a heavy hammer on a small nail head!
Even in good times, Jalal would have stood and applauded such a man - a real soldier, as he later called him - but Jalal was not in the best of times, so every word of the supremely forthright Sujamal must have felt to Jalal like he was whiplashing him! Fabulous, fabulous speech, I thought!
Jalal and Jodha and the dream kissing and hugging scene ... was it as good as expected?
Taking a long walk through the maze of pathways and corridors to Jodha's room, Jalal walked with a purposeful and urgent gait. There was evocative music in the background as the emperor made his way to Jodha's room , contrite, remorseful and feeling all the weight of the injustice he had done to Jodha. He did not know what would be right for him to say to her to beg her forgiveness. Finally, finally, the long walk ended as he neared Jodha's room.
In the room, Jodha was decked as finely as a new bride, wearing heavy jewelry and fine clothes. She did not look one bit like a princess wronged and accosted so violently and vehemently by her husband just a day before - and she certainly did not look like a woman asked to leave the palace. Moti ran into the room and Jodha urgently asked her "What has happened to Sujamal? Has he been caught?", but Moti was all smiles as she reassured Jodha "All is OK now Jodha. The Shahehnshah has caught up with Sujamal and he now knows Sujamal's identity and the whole truth. The matter has been amicably settled. You can now relax. Doubtless the Shahenshah will now try to come to talk to you, so please do not be rude or abrupt with him. Give him a chance to speak his mind to you and ask your forgiveness." Jodha nodded in agreement and looked at Kanha, silently thanking God for this turn of events.
Jalal just then entered the room and as he stood at the entrance, by the swinging curtains, his look was one of deep love and deep remorse at the same time. Jodha too was standing by her mirror, looking at him with her eyes wide with love and apprehension and anticipation. They both walked towards each other and stood just a few feet apart from each other, each one silently entreating the other with their tear laden eyes.
Jalal said "You have no idea, Jodha Begum, how happy I am to still see you here." Jodha said to him "What did you think, you would just ask me to go and I would go away?" Jalal spoke through a choked voice "Don't remind me of that moment Jodha Begum, I am ashamed of it. I have committed a very big gunah. If it is possible, please forgive me", and with that he sank to his knees before her.
Jodha gently lifted him up again and said "What are you doing Shahenshah? You are my pati. You don't need to ask for pardon.". Jalal looked at the ground as he said with self-derision "But I am still your guneghar." Jodha said with a happier tone "Please forget all that happened It was a trouble spot. But it is now cleared. You are my pati and not an apradhi. By asking for forgiveness you are making me too a baghyadaar in the paap that has happened. "
They both see tears streaming down each others cheeks. Jodha nods to him to stop weeping and wipes his tears "But I have hurt you so much Jodha Begum" he says barely able to speak through the tears. "Please do forgive me" and he then starts wiping her tears. He then pulls her towards himself, kisses her forehead and then hugs her close, both of them still weeping. Then putting her a bit away from him he notices tears running down both her cheeks, and he kisses away these tears. She looks at him with tears in his eyes too, and likewise she kisses him on both cheeks to wipe away his tears.
She then looks at his hand still bearing the scars from the way he had hurt it against the wall on that evening of the big fight. She kisses his hand. "You have always applied balm to my wounds, and here I have given you such a big hurt?" he says still filled with a lot of self-loathing. "Please try to forgive me". She nods her head and says "There's no need for that. I can understand how you felt. At that time, anger made words fall from your mouth. Bas."
He hugs her close and the scene ends there. The next episode will probably open with this scene?
My comments on this scene:
I feel like hitting myself, folks for not reading the signs in this whole scene that showed it was a dream sequence. Now that we have been told it is all Jalal's dream, it is so easy to spot how unreal was this whole scene.
First of all Jodha was so decked up in fine clothes and heavy jewelry, when Jalal came to her hojra, that it simply did not fit the fact that she had only yesterday got such an abusive volley from the mad Jalal. The way he had razed her to the ground yesterday, would she even have slept that night, was the doubt many of us had yesterday. Forget about sleep, she even had a dream speech with her antaratma which was itself hovering between two extremes of what she should and should not do.
The antaratma first said "Go and seek peace with Jalal, tell him all." Then later the same antaratma said "Have you no shame in loving such a man that you are not even feeling bad that he has treated you like this. Go away from this place at once." Jodha then follows the first advice of the antaratma to try and make peace with Jalal by telling him the whole truth and breaking her vachan to Sujamal. But Maham stands in the way and does not give access to Jalal. So then how do we guess Jodha decided to take the second advice of the antaratma and go away?
When we finally saw a fully dressed up Jodha waiting in her hojra, and attempting to go nowhere and just waiting for news of Sujamal, we should have heard alarm bells that it is all a dream, right? I should have! But I didn't ... because I thought even if the smalltime gossip media had got the spoilers wrong, the mainline media would not publish dreams as real sequences for it would be like cheating the public!
One more thing made me doubt if it was a dream. That little bit where Moti tells Jodha "All is now OK between Jalal and Sujamal." ... I was thinking "How could that also have been part of Jalal's dream?"
But now I am thinking ... maybe Jalal was having wishful thinking ... maybe he thought that Jodha would be waiting for him, all-forgiving ... and maybe he thought that Moti would have told her everything is OK now ... and maybe he thought so she would have gone nowhere ... and maybe he thought she must be ready to receive, caress and forgive his taunted soul. So the fantasies of Jalal that Jodha would be ready to forgive may have run like a full story in his mind! That's the only explanation for the whole scene!
There was also this other issue that cropped up last night after the show ended. A lot of people were feeling that this much-vaunted kiss scene was very "thanda". It lacked the sizzle and pop of magnetic chemistry. Everything was there ... her kisses on his tears, his kisses on her tears, his kiss on her forehead, her kiss on his hand ... and a couple of sideways hugs ... but it all lacked that passion, because it looked too much like acting and less like real life. Were the actors uncomfortable with each other? Was the direction bad? Or was it given second-rate treatment because it was only a dream ... and would that therefore mean that when the real thing happens there will be more genuine fervour between the actors?
Also one thing seemed clear. The forehead kiss and the hand kiss were by these actors themselves as the long shots showed. Even in that, Jalal merely kissed the jewellery on her head and she kissed the air a few centimetres above his hand. But the cheek kisses could have been any body. All we saw was a moustache touching two female cheeks on which there were tears, and when she kissed his cheeks we only saw a nosering getting in the way and suggesting that she kissed him. It may have been them or may have been body doubles. So was it body doubles?
My argument is that it was body doubles in those ultra close cheek kissing shots ... if Jodha has really kissed his hand and not the air above his hand I would have accepted that maybe the cheek kiss was not a body double. But when I saw Paridhi not even ready to kiss his hand, I thought "For sure the cheek kisses must be body doubles!"
Anyway, let me put this whole thing aside and leave the whole scene as an unsatisfactory experience. In the final analysis, it was obviously a dream scene (as confirmed in today's papers), it was shot with some discomfort in the actors, it lacked that spark of real chemistry and the actors were kissing the air when they had no choice but to kiss. The rest of the ultra close ups were clearly body doubles. Unsatisfactory as all this is, we now have the prospect of this whole track elongating till the end of the IPL season. Jodha will disappear, Jalal will hunt for her, Sharif may try a kidnap and the route to Mathura may go through Amer (and thus my prediction of yesterday may still stay largely intact).
Thank God I got at least part of the prediction right, even if I got the whole dream scene part totally wrong! But I seriously hope that when we get the real scene it will be at least 100 times better than this dream scene!
P.S.: In the precap, folks, we had a glimpse of Ruq chastising Maham for missing the point that this "Rajvanshi male" was after all only Sujamal, the brother of Jodha. As is to be expected Maham feigns any prior knowledge of this and puts on an expression of shock and surprise! What else did we expect?
Cricket
