I was mightily pleased last night to see that at long last, most of my predictions in the main post on my last thread have been proved right in toto. Since it is not often that this happens, I am breaking open the bubbly. In any case I will need at least 3 champagne flutes to get thru what awaits us tonight !
Let me refresh your memory about these predictions;
1) Rajat pulling out all the stops for Jalal's Majnun act &
2) Jalal being lectured by Hamida Banu, Salima Begum, Jijianga ,and possibly Javeda and the palace cat as well (someone actually asked me whether there was a cat in the palace!), about what they will insist was his unwarranted cruelty towards Jodha, and the need for him to make immediate reparation. Since he will feel exactly the same by then, he will cry a few more bucketfuls.
The Soliloquy: I was so pleasantly taken aback, and hopeful, as were so many of you, seeing the unusually clear and logical phrasing of Jalal's soliloquy in front of Jodha's portrait, which was in fact unbelievable by JA standards. As also by his intensely moving, and dignified vilaap - candid and holding nothing back, offering no facile excuses, but not letting her go scot free either.
The deep voice rose and fell, at times thickening with pain and regret, at times almost too husky to make out. The little catch in it as he says that as it is his pehli mohabbat, he has no mohabbat ka tajurba, is so understated, and it is such a throwaway line, and yet it made my heart turn over in empathy.
His face was furrowed with both grief and plaintive protest, but it retained its dignity and never descended to being maudlin. . I was left wondering who had written those lines for him.
This was regardless of my reservations about his assertion that she had always sambhalofied him, as they were a happily married, well adjusted couple of longstanding, and as if there had never been nasooors like the dhakka between them. Not to speak of the edgy tentativeness of all their interactions, with absolutely no demonstrative affection, or even ease from her side, and the constant worry about being accused of SKLL on his.
What this showed is that Jalal is now clearly inhabiting a vision of his life with Jodha that is a pleasing, though fictional mental construct, no more. But the point is that he has begun to believe in this version, like man lost in roseate opium-fuelled fantasies.
He was also going on about her vafadari aur mohabbat, which too made wonder what he had been smoking. For to the best of my recollection, there had been no asareeri (voice from the heavens) informing him that Jodha Begum had now discovered that she had abundant prem for him.😉
But of course, as is invariably the case in this benighted show, Jalal's good sense and logic were short-lived, and withered and died under the blast of his Ammijaan's fiery (and totally inconsistent, but that is the one consistent element in Jodha Akbar!) rhetoric. He promptly started giving his best take on an ice cream left out in the sun.
It was pathetic, his inability to point out to his foolish mother - with whom he can be as distant and cutting as he wants when he so chooses, even recently - that he had had ample reason for what he did, and that he had been unbelievably patient for so long.
As for her comment about the need for him to be able to recognize good from bad, the track record of the family in the matter of sons in law does not inspire confidence, does it ? And then he could have told her that when she herself had made the same accusation against her Jodha beta, it was he who had stood by Jodha, and that too without any evidence.
In Majnun mode: The Majnun part, with Jalal watering Jodha's scrawny tulsi plant with his tears (and thus practically ensuring its imminent demise😉) does not merit any comment, except that this kind of constantly watery-eyed grief does not suit Rajat, otherwise a master of emotions at any level. I might be a jurassic specimen, incapable of appreciating the Sensitive New Age Man (well, medieval man, to be precise!), but I do not like men crying.
The scene where Jalal vainly tried to catch his mother's eye before mounting his horse was the worst of all. I am sure Rajat could do a magisterial take on inner pain, guilt and despair with dry eyes, and do it a lot better than this whipped schoolboy act. But he will not be allowed to try that, more is the pity.
Ruqaiya-Salima: As for the accompanying, and entirely predictable pronouncements by Ruqaiya and Salima, they do not merit any comment either. The latter is now setting up as the resident Obi wan Kenobi of the Agra palace, with the active backing of Jalal (and Jodha too once she is back).😉
Her vicious jealousy of Bairam Khan's first wife, Rahim's mother, right up to the latter's death, is now long buried and forgotten. But I do wonder how supportive of Jodha she would have been if she had wanted Jalal for herself as a real husband. Not much, I would bet! Now that would have been an interesting twist!
What stayed with me from this segment was Ruqaiya's silent double take when Salima tells Jalal that she knows ki aap Jodha Begum se behad mohabbat karte hain, and her lifeline of a dil- less Jalal is lost for ever. Another was the genuine, frozen despair in her face as Jalal announces that he will go in search of Jodha and will not return without her. She has guessed this already, and said as much to Mahaam, but coming face to face with it is something else.
Wild goose chase to Amer :Jalal riding at breakneck speed to Amer, only to draw a blank there. This only shows that his pehli mohabbat has sadly depleted his grey cells.😉 The shrewd and savvy tactician he once was would have remembered Mainavati's last bhashan, that she would close her doors to a parityakta Jodha, and concluded that Jodha would never go there. He could have spared himself (or rather his horses) the trouble.
My bet is that Mainavati will blame Jodha and Jalal will defend her, while indulging in yet another bout of self-flagellation. The Amer lot, especially Bharmal, will curse Sujamal, roundly and with good reason, for having created this imbroglio, while Jalal defends Sujamal as well and lauds him for saving his life.
So off Jalal will go now, on the real chase, which in practical terms, even today and so much more so in that age, would closely resemble searching for a needle in a haystack. He will of course find her, safe and sound, but that is only because the CVs will it so. It is NOT what is the most likely fate to befall her.
Jodha:What Jodha has done is not just childish, it is profoundly irresponsible, She, a lone and beautiful woman, wandering all over the countryside with no resources , would be exposed to all sorts of very real dangers that could end up destroying her body and soul. It is exactly like a teenager today who runs away from home in a huff, and if he/she is not lucky, ends up as the puppet of a criminal gang and is used for their sordid ends.
But of course no one is going to point that out.
Right now, Jodha seems ensconced snugly atop a haystack, thus going one up on Nirupa Roy, who generally restricted herself to city pavements😉.
She is presumably subsisting on fresh air and the abundant prem she suddenly announced that she now feels for the Shahenshah.😉 (I was dumbfounded by this sudden, giant leap from bhavanayein putting out their little shoots like snowdrops after winter, but bahut prem? Does she even know what that is? )
This despite the Shahenshah having given her bahut dukh by not looking deep into her eyes (courageously risking another dhakka ) and divining that she meant something very different from what she said and what she did not say.
The best form of defence is offence: Jodha has by now refined and finalized her defence strategy, which consists of going on the offensive without the least hesitation. Gone with the wind is the confession to her antaraatma that it was her silence that was the real cause of all this mess, and that given the circumstances, Jalal's anger was only to be expected.
Now, it is all Jalal's fault for not divining, in a burst of clairvoyance, what she had really meant.
The funny thing is that 450 years down the road, Jodha's rooh is if anything even more aggressive in pursuing this line of attack Aapko dekhna chahiya tha, par nahin.. Aapne hamare moun ko hamaar apradh samajh liya..aur hamare prem ko paap. Bang! Knockout blow!
And Jalal's rooh is as submissive and as ready for self-flagellation as ever, closely resembling a Chinese Communist Party cadre at a public, self-corrective exercise.😉
A question about Jodha: But the question that haunts me, and to which I seek an answer is this. Does Jodha, so ready to feel her own, and justified outrage and pain, at all understand what Jalal must have been going through these last few days because he loves her? Does she even glimpse, not to speak of grasp, the horrendous agony that racks him because of what she has been doing, which drives him almost insane with jealous rage? Does she understand how she is in good measure responsible for what he does in the end?
It does not seem to me that any of these questions can be answered with a Yes. If not, then what sort of a love is it that she now claims to feel for him, a love that cannot read the heart of the loved one, cannot see things thru his eyes, cannot perceive and will not heal the hurt that lacerates his whole zehen?
It would be a childlike, innocent love, to be sure, dewy fresh, affectionate and charming, but lacking in both depth and deewangee. Not the love of a Laila for her Majnun, for all that Jodha was prepared to die for Jalal. Which is, in one sense , the easiest kind of love.
I for one shudder at very thought of Jodha Begum's Grand Homecoming to Agra, with Jalal playing the Reformed Sinner (now graciously forgiven by her, as predicted by Salima) to the hilt, while Hamida and her cohorts fawn all over The Paragon. We will be drowned in treacle and mush , and might all end up becoming diabetic.
But the fact is my problem is not with this sort of unquenchable optimism, or even a kind of starry-eyed hope for genuine romance. My problem is with what Jalal has become. At the rate at which he is setting my teeth on edge, it is my dentist who is going to go laughing all the way to his bank!😉
Not even the incredibly talented Rajat - forced deeper and deeper into the Majnun mode, for all that Jodha is no Laila - can salvage this show if this sort of thing continues, and the present state of affairs becomes permanent.
As for me, if the current avatar of Jalal is going to become a permanent fixture, I will not give a damn if he gets her or she gets him, for she was never of much interest to me, and he will now follow suit. I do not like men to be wetrags. I watched the old Jalal in one of Jodha's flashbacks tonight, when he is offering to help her off a podium - that roguish, Rhett Butler look was such an unalloyed delight!
Then I watched the present avatar, watering Jodha Begum's tulsi with his endless tears. And I felt like weeping as well.
But don't let me dishearten you folks, carry on! Only, re: the Grand Reconciliation, don't get your hopes up for any real hugs, not to speak of a kiss, tauba, tauba! After watching the fantasy love scene the other day, I marvel at the unquenchable optimism of those awaiting any such demonstrations.
This said, for all your sakes, all I wish with all my heart that I am proved wrong, and you right, and that Badal and Kajri are resurrected in Mathura. For I have grown so fond of so many of you that I would rather be wrong and have you happy than the other way around.
Shyamala B.Cowsik
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