Friends, the big Wednesday came and went when we were told that there would be a great "deedaar-e-yaar". Right up to the end of the episode we saw other Agra scenes interspersed with some really moving Jodha and Jalal tadap scenes. But when it came to the moment of both of them dipping into the Holy Yamuna, they both stood there with just about three feet distance between them, and yet not looking at each other. The episode froze at that point, and we are left wondering "W*F"? Is it going to be today when they turn their heads towards each other? Or when? Good question. No answers!
Actually I am fairly motivated to write today's post because although yesterday I felt as if they were showing too many random Agra scenes to "kheecho-fy" the track, a penny has dropped in my mind as to why the Creatives have done this. I have written about this revelation of mine in some detail in my section called "My comments on the episode" at the end of this post.
I have to say that in between whatever other scenes we were being shown, the shots we saw of Jalal and Jodha - they were very sentimental and beautiful, and never over the top. Both of the actors played out the sadness in their souls just right. There was no unbelievable melodrama or overacting. Their faces and eyes and drooping shoulders said it all for them ... both were pining for each other, pining for home and pining for a resolution of this problem, and although we viewers could see that they were often so really near each other in physical distance, in their minds they had not yet found each other and so pain and longing and fatigue etched their features.
For today's analysis, I am not able to pick any one scene that stood out above the rest, so I thought I'd do a quick recap of all the scenes and give my comments on the overall episode at the end.
Shaguni Bai makes an appearance but a bit too late for me!
How much I was waiting for Shaguni Bai to meet Jalal, but alas that never happened at all! Instead, a weeping and wailing Mainavati summoned Shaguni to the palace at Amer and almost fell at her feet asking for a prediction. (Mainavati was again with her sister-in-law with no sign of Dadisa or any other Amer women, so like Radhika said yesterday, maybe Balaji's budget is a bit constrained at the moment?)
In return for all the supplication of Mainavati, Shaguni had some harsh words for her at the beginning. She said "If only you had more sense than to close the doors of Amer in your daughter's face, your daughter would have come here for refuge. What a stupid thing to do, to tell Jodha she is not welcome here! Where will a girl go when in trouble if her maayka is not a welcoming place and her own family shun her?"
Mainavati must have felt as if Shaguni was rubbing salt into her already raw wounds. She agreed with Shaguni and that seemed to calm Shaguni a bit. Shaguni then went on to say the things Mainavati wanted to hear.
She said two or three key sentences "Jodha is safe wherever she is. In fact she's ultra safe. This is all "kismet ka khel" and could not have been averted. Jodha and her Shahenshah will soon be united, and this time from real prem. Jodha is being helped by her "ishta devata" Lord Krishna as he is also being helped by his God! " So saying, Shaguni walked away.
The tears on Mainvati's face gave way to smiles. She and her sister-in-law cliutched at Shaguni's words with fervour - and as the scene faded we viewers too got our sanket that "soon they will be united in prem". Thanks Shaguni for telling me that, although I really wanted to see how the scene would be if you spewed all your anger and then your predictions on Jalal. I am all remorse that the Creatives denied me the scene of the Jalal-Shaguni meeting.
Jalal barely misses Jodha ... but hears of her Kanha murthy!
A weary Jalal is riding his horse with a look of deep pain across his face, as he shows that his searches for Jodha thus far have been in vain. Then he chances upon a village where at first the villagers run away from him in fear of the Shahenshah. But to Jalal's credit he reassures all of them that his mission is peaceful and he needs their help. They gather closer around him as he asks one of the men there if they had seen Jodha.
In fact the way he asked the men was itself interesting. He said "Have you all seen a "khatun" here who I am looking for. She is very beautiful to look at ...and new to these parts" With just that much of a description, the men seemed to think they had seen a "stranger" in their village recently, and they further offered the tidbit to Jalal that the woman they saw had a murthy of Kanha in her hand as she was roaming their village.
That was enough of a clue to Jalal. "I know you are nearby Jodha Begum" he thought to himself.
He asked the men again where that woman now was, but they said she had left the village on her own without saying anything ... and so while Jalal knew he was definitely on her scent, he had no further idea where she may have gone. She could have departed in any direction.
But at least the mention of the Kanha murthy in her hand gave Jalal the sense that in her state of mind she must be clinging to Kanha for protection and for guidance. That was not much of a clue yet, but the sense that Jodha would be found somewhere in the vicinity of Kanha's abodes must have hit Jalal. That was enough to go by!
What is Maham searching for in Hamida's room? What farman?
Oh my God, at the Agra palace what a frightful fracas was happening. Resham came to peep into Hamida's room to see if she was still there. As Hamida walked out with her bandhi, Resham signalled Maham that the coast was clear, and in rushed Maham in a frenzy. She searched the place upside down saying "Where is the dratted farman? Where has Hamida hidden the farman?"
What farman? Regarding what? And why had it become so urgent? And why would Hamida have secreted a farman within her own room? I became all agog and got into the spirit of the search with the worked-up Maham.
Maham then found a big box with a smaller box inside. But alas, it was locked. Then she found a third jewel box with a key and the key fitted the lock of the second box. She opened it with glee, but the glee lasted just half a second as there was nothing but more jewels in that second box too.
Maham became even more frenzied like a bloodhound on the trail of prey. She looked round and round the room saying "Farman, farman, farman" but turned up nothing. Meanwhile Resham got the scent of danger as she saw Hamida returning. She tried to tell Maham to hurry, but Maham was more interested in giving a small last-minute speech standing there than in running away fast. No farman was found, but Maham has sure got me curious about what she was looking for ... any guesses, folks?
Let's be off to Mathura, Jalal tells his men ... and never mind Abul Mali!
We see more of Jalal and his small troop of men traipsing through some fields and rough terrain with their horses, when they come upon another travelling group going in the opposite direction. Jalal does his usual. He dismounts wearily, and with the pain still writ large upon his face he says for the umpteenth time to these people "Have you people seen a "khatun" while you were on your way, she must have been carrying a Kanha murthy with her!"
The villagers say they had seen no such thing, and that they are off to Mathura, the temple town that was the abode of Kanha's famous mandir. They take their leave of Jalal. For just a moment, Jalal looked despondent that he had again turned up a blank on his search for Jodha - but then the penny dropped. That was it. Mathura was where Jodha would be likely to have gone if she were looking to be closer to Kanha. He signalled his men that he was turning his horse in the Mathura direction and made to gain some speed in getting there. There was a new verve in Jalal that somehow the pieces of the jigsaw seemed to be coming together.
But his men were cautious. "We can't go to Mathura with such a small troop, Shahenshah", they said. "Abul Mali is known to have his hideout there and it would be very dangerous for you to go alone and unguarded in to that territory. But fear of Abul Mali was as nothing to Jalal in the face of the prospect of finding Jodha. He overruled his men and set forth.
So what does this mean, folks? Are we about to see an Abul Mali-Jalal encounter somewhere near Mathura? Will there be another attack on the life of Jalal, thanks to Jalal himself arriving conveniently at the doorstep of Abul Mali? And would Sharif hear that Jalal was in this vicinity and start searching for Jodha also in the same area? Is this kidnap attempt spoiler on the cards?
Ruq tells Rahim a "harem story" ... but he especially hates the heroine!
Ruqaiaya Begum is sitting in her room getting her legs massaged by Hoshiyaar and smoking a "badly made up hookah" that she cribs about, when she tells Hoshiyaar that life is intolerable with Jalal having gone away for so long in search of Jodha. "Why could he not have sent some sipahis?" she wails. Hoshiyaar tries to butter her up saying "Yes, and that too when you are such a delightful prospect for Jalal to keep himself occupied with here."
Just as this dialogue was happening, Rahim runs into the room. He tries to sit on Ruq's lap with the same freedom that he sits on Jodha's lap, but Ruq immediately starts telling him to be careful about the preciousness of the material her skirts are made of. None of that cuts any ice with Rahim who just makes himself utterly comfortable, and then demands a story "just like the lovely goodnight stories that Choti Ammi Jodha Begum used to tell him".
"What kinds of stories did Jodha tell?", asked Ruq. Rahim said "They were stories of the Shahenshah!". Now surely Ruq knew enough stories about the Shahenshah because she had literally grown up with him? How long would it have taken her to rack her brains for a nice juicy story about his childhood exploits. Instead Ruq said "My mind is blank about the Shahenshah. But let me tell you a story of a "begum in charge of the harem" ... and no doubt she filled Rahim with a rambling story of her own heroic exploits on her own coveted turf - the harem.
If I were Rahim I would have surely yawned at these kinds of stories and run off to bed out of sheer boredom. But instead of feeling sleepy, Rahim in fact was quite wide awake and mortified. "I don't like your story, and most of all, I don't like the heroine. You are not a patch on Jodha Begum and her wonderful tales" he said with disgust, as he ran from the room. Ruq covered her hurting ears with her hands and said "Jodha, Jodha, Jodha, is that all I will hear from everybody?"
Shehnaaz is smart and almost traps Jodha and her "fiction" twice!
Back at the ashram in Mathura Jodha is reminiscing of little Rahim. (I also suspect she was reminiscing about the not-so-little Shahenshah!). Shehnaaz who is sitting nearby catches sight of Jodha's sad tearful expression and her little sighs of anguish and asks Jodha what she is thinking about ... or rather, who she is thinking about?
Jodha says "I am thinking of Rahim!". No sooner has these words popped out that the rather sharp Shehnaaz asked "Rahim? But that's a Muslim name. I thought you were a Rajvanshi?" Jodha immediately covered her tracks after realising that beneath her childish and innocent looking exterior this Shehnaaz was walking about with a highly intelligent mind and was rather quick on the uptake. Jodha said "I was thinking of Rahim my neighbour's little boy to whom I used to tell bedtime stories!"
"What stories did you tell him" asked Shehnaaz still wearing a childish expression but asking pointed questions. "I used to tell him stories of the Shahenshah" replied Jodha, before she realised she had fallen into Shehnaaz's trap a second time. "The Shahenshah?" she asked again. "Yes the Shahenshah of the Mughal Sultanate" Jodha said. "But how do you know stories about him?" asked the relentlessly probing Shehnaaz. "Oh, I make them up from my own imagination, as anyone can!" Jodha tried to reply with a put-on nonchalance. For the moment Shehnaaz seemed to buy that explanation, but it must be noted here that Shehnaaz was far too shrewd if she trapped Jodha twice in the space of a few seconds, and Jodha was far too lax if she fell into the trap time and again.
This scene was a good indicator of how sharp Jodha needed to be if she had to avoid too much close questioning about her private life from this Shehnaaz. But for the moment the two women seem to be sharing a nice bonding and Shehnaaz has not shown any negativity yet in addition to her curiosity, so all is so far so good.
Dubkis in the Holy River Yamuna leave us all feeling incomplete!
And now we come to the scene we were waiting for all evening! Jalal has changed into the clothes of a local peasant to avoid detection and he has reached the temple town of Mathura and is roaming the streets in search of Jodha. He is sure she must be somewhere nearby and this was the place that would have definitely attracted her to find refuge in. Jalal is right, because as he roams the town centre, in a shop very close by Jodha is buying flowers for Kanha's aarti.
Jalal and Jodha walk almost parallel to each other, plus or minus a few paces, when both head out towards the Yamuna River to get a quick holy dip. In fact Jodha and her troop of ashram women (which includes Shehnaaz) are already in the river for their dubkis, while Jalal stands at the river bank (changing his kurta for a draped over angavastra) when he reminisces about a previous occasion when he and Jodha were sitting at a waterfront and Jodha was telling him how she and her brothers used to do dubkis in the Yamuna to wash away their "sins" and acquire "punya". Jodha had in the flashback memory told him that although doing dubkis as a group had its own salutary effects on the soul, doing a dubki alone was also a great thing because it would grant one's deepest desires!
Yes, Jalal did want his deepest desires fulfilled ... so he changed clothes and wore the angavastra as he went in for his dubki alone in the Yamuna. (I must admit folks that I was so focused on the fleeting glimpses of Jalal's bare body under the angavastra that I did not notice the exact moment he got into the water!)
Anyway both Jalal and Jodha were barely three feet away from each other but had not spotted each other. As he did his dubki and arose in the water, she did her dubki almost as if they were doing it to a kind of sync ... where his rise saw her dip, and her rise saw his dip. Thus they couldn't see each other, and he prayed to Allah "Please God, help me find Jodha!" That last prayer seemed to be the sanket to me that maybe they will meet (or their eyes will meet) in the next episode.
I was on edge almost shouting at Jalal through my TV screen "Look left, old chap, she's there ... on your left!" Jalal didn't hear me or see Jodha! The episode froze before I could exactly point out to Jalal where Jodha was !
Mysterious Maham threatens "somebody" at the surang that she will reach her goal!
The precap is also frightfully interesting. "Frightfully" is the operative word. Maham was seen standing - I think - at the mouth of the surang shouting at somebody inside "I won't let you go, do you hear? I will reach my goal!". Was she talking to a person there or just throwing her dhamkis into the air with bravado? I wouldn't know ... for I have no clue.
There was a lone sipahi behind her who may have been mightily impressed with this "exhortation".
What is going on here with farmans hidden in Hamida's room, surang visits of Maham, paigams that she retrieves from the surang and then her barely veiled "goal speeches" at the mouth of the surang? Can anyone tell me where all this is leading?
Could it be the Delhi takht issue that she's working on in Jalal's absence, trying to make the most of the time that Jalal is away from Agra? Who is standing in the way of her "goal" that she feels the need to warn off?
Yesterday we had some predictions that maybe Maham and Shehnaaz are in some way connected, but from this precap I would say Maham is on her own trip ... while Shehnaaz is another mixed bag on her own. They don't look like part of the same conspiracy!
My comments on this whole episode:
I have two comments to make on the story so far from two angles - the Jalal angle, and the Jodha angle ... I will refrain from saying anything about the Maham angle which I thought I will do tomorrow.
I will also refrain from saying anything on the Ruq angle because it was a total waste of time. These days I just wait to see if Rahim is anywhere near the dhakka paigam and its retrieval. If he is not, or if he comes into the scene for some other reason I tune off. When will Rahim realise what I want him to do? I need him to search for and retrieve the dhakka paigam and not waste his time on "harem ki mallika" bedtime stories! C'mon Rahim, do what's important!
Anyway here's the "two angles" analysis!
a. From Jalal's angle ...
I think Rajat is doing a fantastic job showing his pain and sorrow but in an extremely restrained way. He is not succumbing to bouts of unmanly depression, instead he is showing that every inch he is a practical-minded sharp man, despite his personal grief. He keeps his sorrow in his heart and sometimes on the lines etched on his face and in the depths of his eyes. But he is also action-oriented. He is purposeful and not losing his head or his sense of direction.
The Creatives and the Director of the serial are also doing a good job, in that they are taking Jalal step by step towards Jodha in a logical fashion that seems so believable. First Jalal looks for any signs of a "travelling woman" that the local villagers may have seen. He has no other information to give other than that she's a stranger travelling alone and a beautiful woman. When he turns up no answers, or keeps finding the wrong women, he then goes to Ajmer to ask for guidance from God.
From that point on his feet are on the proper path, thus showing the divine hand at play. He reaches a village where people are able to tell him they saw a beautiful stranger - a woman - carrying a Kanha murthy. And that takes Jalal a step closer to his destination. Armed with that knowledge, he asks the next group of people if they have seen a woman carrying a kanha murthy. He then hears from them that they are bound for Kanha's mandir at Mathura. That gives him a clue of where to look for Jodha, for in her distress, it occurs to him that she will cling on to Kanha harder than ever before.
He reaches the temple town of Mathura, and despite the threat of Abul Mali nearby, saunters to the very river where devotees may be doing dubkis to wash off distress and get wishes granted by Kanha. He is thus step by step closer and closer to Jodha and now we are in a state where all he has to do is turn his face left to see that she is barely three feet from him.
I know many of us are cribbing this whole week saying why are they giving us episode after episode of non-events, when actually, folks, if we think about it, the Creatives have done a good job of taking us in believable steps towards a Jalal-Jodha meeting. If they had hastened these steps it would have seemed incredible. If there were not so many in-between Agra scenes punctuating this search for Jodha, it would have seemed as if Jalal found Jodha all too quickly and his "tadap" would not have been visible and marked.
But I must congratulate the Creatives that in about three or four episodes, they have shown us clever intercuts of Jalal and his varied expressions and his varied forms of searches, so that it looks like Jalal has been through a lot of pain to look out for Jodha and the effort has been sizeable.
It would have looked too easy-peasy if Jalal had found Jodha any faster, and we ourselves would have said there was not enough "tadap" that he went through. Even now there are many of us who say he should have more "tadap" moments even after meeting Jodha, and she should not relent in a hurry. So overall, on the Jalal angle I would give the Creatives a good score. I am quite satisfied with the way they have shown us the characterisation of Jalal and given us just the right amount of "tadap" to make it look real.
b. From Jodha's angle:
Jodha's misery too has likewise been beautifully muted. They could have shown her as a cry baby and a complete emotional mess, but instead they have shown us a brave and purposeful Rajvanshi woman, who all through this ordeal of leaving home has never once betrayed any fear for her own safety.
Jodha has a natural ability to mingle with the common folk and that has been played up wonderfully well by the Director and the Creatives. We do see scenes of her feeling her pain, weeping silent tears when alone, remembering scenes and people she has left behind and praying her heart out for Jalal and his welfare despite all that has happened between them. But not once can I fault the episodes for taking things over the top.
The way Jodha reached her destination at the ashram is also a beautifully done step by step process. Her natural "bhakthi" for Kanha seems to be taking her straight to his abode at Mathura in just one or two moves.
In Jodha's case the divine hand at play is seen right from the moment she stepped out of Agra.This is further amplified by the fact that she carried Kanha's murhty with her right from the start and so she has his protection all through the way. She was never really at risk. Jalal on the other hand did end up with a few vain searches till he thought of applying to God for help at Ajmer. Since then God has been protecting and guiding him too.
It is an interesting Creative idea that while they both are lost to each other and in search of each other, this "divine hand" idea has been used nicely by the Creatives to show us, the viewers, how God is magnetising them towards each other. It is as if we are getting a bird's eye view of their paths, and we can see them growing closer and closer even if they can't see each other yet.
The bonding between Jodha and Shehnaaz is another very interesting twist that has happened as a starter for a whole new track. One of the good things the Creatives have done is to delay the advent of Todarmal in this ashram, although we know he is the owner of this place. In the interim we are getting to see the Jodha-Shehnaaz bonding in such a way that slowly the character and possible identity of Shehnaaz is unfolding again step by step.
We are being shown Shehnaaz through Jodha's eyes. We saw in the previous episode glimpses of a childish "sadma hit" Shehnaaz who is almost like an adult regressed into childhood. In this episode yesterday, again through Jodha's eyes, we see that Shehnaaz is not all that childish as she looks. She is too intelligent and sharp to be dismissed as an "innocent". She has the knack of asking all the right questions and trapping Jodha in her answers. Thus even the "sadma hit sad forlorn girl" image is slowly going away. Despite her sadma, which may or may not have made her regress to childhood, she has not lost an ounce of sharpness of mind!
So then who is she? A genuinely troubled soul or a too clever impostor? The whole mystery is delicately poised, and at least the way the story is unfolding the mystery track is keeping us on our toes. The Shehnaaz mystery track is in fact also making sure that the Jodha sorrow track is not being overdone!
Folks overall, I'd give the Creatives good marks for the Jodha angle also. They could have reduced it all to a melodrama about loss and grief and the pain of separation and loud weeping ... instead they allowed the characters of Jodha and Jalal to grieve privately while keeping their wits about them. They introduced the Shehnazz mystery in just the right doses and kept Todarmal away for the time being so as not to muddy the plot too much with too many things happening simultaneously. And even though we crib about the needless Agra scenes, if those scenes were not punctuating the Jodha-Jalal scenes, the time elapse factor would have strained our ability to believe the characterisation. We needed the Agra scenes to show the lapse of time that makes Jodha and Jalal's separation feel long enough to cause enough angst and "tadap" in them, and we needed to see also that people like Maham are at play in the background with their own agendas.
If you really look at it, this week has had three episodes only so far, but the Creatives have successfully created the impression that Jalal has searched long and hard and Jodha has suffered long and hard too, and in the meanwhile she has got distracted now and again by the revelations of Shehnaaz;'s character which we are seeing entirely through Jodha's eyes!
Good job done, I feel. What do you all think?
Anupamaa
