Friends, today's episode was a momentum-gatherer. I can't say it was a wasteful filler, nor can I say there was any high drama. However the story did get some fillips of progress on several fronts. But the one distinguishing factor that I seemed to see repetitively in the story was that everyone seemed to be chasing the wrong clues. Here is what I mean:
Wrong Clue No. 1: Atga mistakenly thinks Ghazi Khan is the attacker of Jalal and Jodha and a battle with Ghazi Khan is now set up
The episode opened on the Diwan-e-Khas where Jalal was about to make the huge announcement on who has been identified by Atga as the attacker of Jalal and Jodha on the previous day's mandir trip. All is suspenseful and apart from all of us waiting breathlessly, Adham and Maham are seen to be extremely fidgety and guilty.
But to everyone's surprise, the first of the episode's "wrong clues" happens. Atga and Jalal announce that a Ghazi Khan is the attacker. This they have deduced by noticing the exclusive markings on the hand of a enemy sipahi and identifying the mark. That mark belongs to the clansmen of Ghazi Khan, a Muslim warmonger on whom Atga has information that he has taken refuge with the Rajvanshi Hindu Raja Ramchandra.
Jalal asks Atga to bring the sipahi to the DEK and when he is brought his hand markings are noted by all and Ghazi Khan is decried as the attacker and Jalal then orders Atga, along with the services of Man Singh to chase Ghazi Khan down and capture or kill him. After living through moments of sheer hell, Maham and Adham sigh with relief that Adham is off the hook. In fact Adham then has flashbacks on exactly how he got Ghazi Khan labelled as the attacker. In the flashback, Adham was seen propositioning one of the Ghazi Khan soldiers to do his dirty work for him (i.e. attack Jalal and Jodha) in return for a substantial bribe. The soldier agrees, and that is how Adham covers his own tracks, not worrying even if his sipahis should get caught (as one of them was).
In a later scene, Mansingh is seen wearing full armour and approaching Jodha for blessings. He tells Jodha "I am going for war on Ghazi Khan, but unfortunately he has taken refuge with Raja Ramchandra, a Hindu Rajvanshi, and so I may have to fight one of our own clansmen". Jodha tells Man Singh that war knows no religion or caste or creed. And if Man Singh has to do his duty and swears loyalty by Jalal, then so be it, if he has to take on Raja Ramchandra directly. There cannot be a quarter given to anybody when "wafaadari" is at stake. "So fight for the Shahenshah", Jodha advises.
Jalal meanwhile also approaches Jodha and Man Singh, and tells Man Singh to take a good look at the attack wounds on his own bua Jodha and to wreak revenge for these. He spurs him on to get Ghazi Khan at any cost. Man Singh, thus filled with warrior zeal sets out with a mission. Unfortunately this whole mission though is built on a "wrong clue" and it's just the first of the wrong clues followed in the episode yesterday. Poor Ghazi has already lost many of his men and may now lose his head!
Wrong Clue No. 2: Shehnaaz mistakenly thinks that Jalal has been keeping her mother captive to deny her a share in the Sultanate
Shehnaaz was seen sauntering along the terrace of the palace when suddenly she comes across a group of bandhis carrying a covered painting to a special room in the palace. When she asks what this was and where it was going, she was told it was a painting going into the Humayun Memorial Room (set up by Hamida). Very curious to know what was going on, and whose painting it was, Shehnaaz follows the bandhis right up to the Humayun Room.
There the bandhis at first try to despatch her, but when she begs to see the painting and promises not to touch anything in the room, the bandhis finally allow her to stay. The room is full of portraits of Humayun and his many wives. Among them is placed this new painting - and when it is at last unveiled by the bandhis, Shehnaaz is shocked. It is the painting of her mother Chand Begum, now rightfully given a place in this room as one of the wives of Humayun. Shehnaaz notes that there has previously been no painting or even indication around the palace of Chand Begum as one of Humayun's wives, and this painting looked rather freshly painted too, as if someone had recently awoken to the presence of Chand Begum as an important entity in this family set up.
Still in a state of shock, Shehnaaz is then seen visiting her foster mother, the daasi who brought her up and whom she calls "Ammijaan".Shehnaaz tells her Ammijaan that she was shocked to see a portrait of her mother, a freshly painted one, being kept in the room of her late father. She said she has never before seen any reference to her mother in this palace, and she suspects Jalal could be the hand behind this freshly made painting ... could it be that Jalal got this painting commissioned after Shehnaaz has dropped that paigam about Chand Begum being in distress in Jodha's palki? (We see a flashback of Shehnaaz dropping the paigam into the palki and so that part of the mystery of who wrote the paigam gets closure.) The daasi woman says "Oh, so that means this Agra family know something now about Chand Begum? It shows that maybe Jalal is himself now interested in searching for Chand Begum?"
But Shehnaaz discounts this theory. "No" she says" I am certain Jalal is behind the disappearance of my mother and is somewhere holding her in captivity. His mother Hamida may not know, but he sure is involved. Now that I've forced open the topic by sending that paigam, Jalal must be pretending to be searching for my mother. Jalal probably wants to keep my mother locked up so that the farman that gives me the Delhi takht can stay hidden from public exposure, and he need not split the Sultanate with me, his sister." The daasi woman tells Shehnaaz, "In all your hunt for your mother you must promise to stay safe", but Shehnaaz says with tear-filled eyes "I have to find my mother and locate where Jalal may have hidden her. The only place I've not looked up yet is the jails. I have this feeling that my mother is alive and well and somewhere in this Agra vicinity."
And thus goes the story of Wrong Clue No. 2. Shehnaaz is unprepared to believe the daasi's version that there's also the possibility that someone else may have kidnapped her mother or made her a ghulam. Shehnaaz is mentally conditioned to suspect Jalal, and she does not seem to want to think beyond that!
Wrong Clue No. 3: Jalal mistakenly thinks that perhaps the paigam about Chand Begum is connected with the attacks on himself and Jodha on the mandir trip
I'll jump to a much later scene in the episode when Jodha and Jalal are see looking around the room of Humayun in the palace. Jodha is seeing it all with new eyes and is thrilled to see a beautiful memorial to all that was precious to Humayun arrayed in the room. She thinks it is all the work of Jalal in preserving his father's memory, but Jalal says it was his mother's idea in memory of her late husband.
As they glance around the room, their eyes fall on the latest addition to the room, the new portrait of Chand Begum. Jalal explains to Jodha that after she got the paigam, he needed some clue as to Chand Begum's looks if he was to locate her, and so he had commissioned the painter to paint a portrait of Chand Begum from the memory of Atga and Todarmal who were the only ones who had ever seen her.
This topic naturally brings Jodha and Jalal round to the discussion of how exactly to locate Chand Begum. Jalal explains to Jodha that he has to find her, because if he doesn't , public gossip will start talking about why he was trying to bypass the existence of his step-mother Chand Begum and they will start imputing motives. But at the same time it is extremely mysterious the way she disappeared without a trace and now after so many years has suddenly surfaced in all their lives. "Anyway, we have to find her now and give my father's soul some peace" Jalal added. Jodha too searches her mind for a way to locate Chand Begum but no ideas come to mind readily.
"Could it be really someone connected with her who sent the paigam, or could it be someone playing political games with us?" Jalal suddenly asked. His mind was trying to factor in some treachery. He added to Jodha "It is after we got the letter and then made this portrait and set out people to locate Chand Begum that this attack on both of us happened on this mandir trip. Can it be that someone doesn't want us to find Chand Begum or help her? Could there be some huge secret surrounding her? Some insider from our palace could have helped Ghazi Khan do the attack on us, or why would Ghazi Khan enter our territory with such impunity? Actually I have also come to know that Chand Begum had a daughter, who must be my sister by blood. If I find them both, I want to give my sister her share of this inheritance I got!"
"I'll pray for you, and you'll soon find Chand Begum" Jodha promised Jalal, and they both seemed to be thinking deeply about this whole issue. Unforunately again Jalal seems to be barking up the wrong tree, for the attack on him and Jodha had nothing to do with Chand Begum. But at least he knows of the existence of a daughter of Chand Begum who could be due some inheritance!
Wrong Clue No. 4: We all could be mistakenly thinking the precap is a real scene ... it could be Ruq's nightmare of her fake pregnancy being discovered!
I deliberately missed out a scene in between that concerned Ruq, but I'll come back to it now in the context of this fourth wrong clue that may be misleading us viewers. In yesterday's episode there was a scene of Ruq sleeping in her room, when she is suddenly woken by the presence of Jalal entering her room. She gushes with happiness in seeing Jalal, but soon spots Jodha who has also come with him, and the happy smiles turn into disgust.
Jalal then says that Jodha has come to give Ruq a very special present. In very bad grace, Ruq tells Jodha to hand the gift over to a bandhi. Fortunately, before Jodha can take umbrage at this insult the gift is brought in by about four bandhis - for it is a big gift. By now Ruq is on her feet a bit agog with curiosity and she unveils the gift with a bit of a hasty and ungainly flourish. It is a baby's cradle. Ruq seems so happy to see this that she gives Jodha a hug of thanks. So far everything looks hunky dory, but deep inside Ruq some very uneasy feelings begin to surface. This fake pregnancy issue was fast getting out of hand if Jodha has brought a cradle for the baby and Jalal looks over the moon about it. How was Ruq going to extricate herself from this mess?
To make matters worse, Jalal goes into raptures talking of the baby and imagining how the baby would grow and hold his hand as a father and delight his days. His eyes brim over with tears of happy anticipation, and that makes Ruq feel all the more guilty and fearful of her cheating. Jalal then even kneels before Ruq's stomach and starts talking to the baby saying he was the "Abbujaan" and he was waiting for the baby to arrive fast and he hoped the baby was hearing his father's ardent plea, and his Choti Ammi was also waiting with a cradle for him! To add to all this Jodha became all melodramatic as well and said she would pray wholeheartedly for this baby. And while all these rapturous thoughts were assailing Jalal, Ruq was looking increasingly alarmed.
"I don't want the sorrow that I had last time when we lost the baby" Jalal said forthrightly and Ruq's mind began clanging. She tried to keep Jalal back in the room at the end of this whole speech, but Jalal said he had work to finish with Jodha, and so Ruq was left tasting ashes in her mouth. For what was she doing this whole pregnancy charade at such risk to her relationship with Jalal, if he was openly in favour of spending more and more time with Jodha? "Oh my God, what have I got into, and how am I going to manage this mess I've created " was the repetitive chant in her anxious mind.
This scene has a clear connection with the scene we saw in the precap. Jalal is here seen with a hakim who gives him an ark to administer to Ruq saying if Ruq's vomit came out brown in colour it was a clear indication she was not pregnant. Jalal is seen making Ruq drink that and to his utter consternation Ruq vomits and it is all brown! Now the question on viewer minds is "Is this a real scene or just Ruq's nightmare?" I suspect it is Ruq's mind playing nasty tricks with her and giving vent to her innermost fear of being exposed. I doubt if Jalal will use this ark administration method to expose Ruq. The spoilers say there will be a dramatic expose of Ruq in unexpected circumstances, and the Zee man says Maham will have a hand in this exposure. So this precap could be Wrong Clue No. 4 misleading us viewers. But the one consolation we can take is that this "exposure" is now not too far away!
Yesterday an article appeared (it may be a dubious one!) which said that on Friday when the latest promo would appear as a scene (i.e. Jodha would discover that Shehnaaz wants to kill Jalal) in the same episode there may be a twist whereby Ruq also gets exposed. Many of us yesterday therefore were wondering if Friday would be some jashn of sorts when all these kinds of high drama would happen one after another. Maybe Jalal has announced some title for Jodha and thus the jashn, or the jashn could be related to Ruq's pregnancy celebration. If indeed a jashn does take place on Frioday could we expect Ruq exposure to surely happen? I am keeping my fingers crossed on this one. More than any other track in the story, my one and only interest at this stage is Ruq exposure for I am heartily sick of this amateurish pregnancy faking taking the supposedly-shrewd Shahenshah of the Sultanate for a ride!
My comments on this episode:
What if all the wrong clues got righted in the same mega episode ... just having some fun!
First Man Singh will walk in with a Ghazi Khan, looking all beaten and bedraggled and yelling for footnotes. Then Shehnaaz will aim a dagger at Jalal and discover after the dagger has left her hand that Jalal is not the one who trapped her mother but Maham was the one. And then Jalal will hear from Ghazi Khan that he knows of no Chand Begum so what was Jalal making him a kaidi for? And finally, Ruq will vomit brown and show Jalal that she and the hakim mistook stomach acidity for pregnancy! How will that be as a mega episode?
Alas, no such multifaceted episode may happen, so we can all sit in torture waiting for exposure upon exposure to happen at a sedate pace.
The exposure of Ruq now looks imminent! Will it happen this week?
The way Jalal is already fantasizing about the child is ominous. He is so getting into the fatherhood act and even imagining how the child will hold his hand and grow up before his very eyes, that he is building up expectations too high, only to take a mighty fall when Ruq accepts that it was all a fake pregnancy. So as per the storyline we can expect some real fireworks at the time of Ruq's unmasking for we are going to have mega melodrama with a Jalal swaying between extremely emotional desperation and extremely uncontrollable anger. If I were Ruq I would already be quaking in my shoes, for the build up is now escalating too rapidly for anyone to be able to control it. As they say, when you tell lies you have some control over the lie at first, but after a while the lie takes on a growth path of its own which becomes more than you can handle. That's the position that Ruq is in.
Going by the precap, even if it is Ruq's dream, it still suggests that the unmasking of Ruq may happen very soon now. My own hope is that by this Friday at least we should get an end to this fake pregnancy track. Did you all realise we have had already three weeks or more of it? That's way too long to be carrying this saga. So I need and want and hope for a swift ending now. I don't think I can endure more twists and turns within this fake pregnancy story. Enough is enough.
We are all having so many discussions about whether Ruq's plan is betraying her idiocy, but what can Ruq do if the Creatives didn't want her to be an intelligent third factor in the triangle - and instead reduced her to a cartoon of a small-minded, small-thinking and feeble-planning person? Sometimes I feel that when there's a triangle of sorts in a story, if the third contender is shown as too ridiculously idiotic, it cuts from the relative cleverness the two main leads are supposed to have. It reduces the calibre of the union between Jodha and Jalal if they are shown as having survived the cheapest of plots by the third factor who has no brains to start with and was never any real competition.
Since we are in the throes of a multi-track storyline and there are many strands of events happening parallelly, we too are taking this Ruq fake pregnancy story a bit lightly, as one of the many tracks of the story, and therefore we are not questioning it as deeply as we should. But consider: if the story did not have all these parallel events going on and we had just the Ruq pregnancy faking to live through, would we have taken this whole chaal seriously, or would we have cursed this whole idea roundly and soundly as "desperate nonsense".
I want this stupid track to end fast, not just to see Ruq sidelined by Jalal or to see Jalal and Jodha as a couple without competition, but because the length and extension of this fake pregnancy track is straining my credulity, and the longer it takes, the more I am questioning my own brain on why I am swallowing this piece of rubbish "naatakiya roopanthar". Could the Creatibves not have thought of some other way to alienate Ruq from Jalal, that would have allowed all three players - Ruq, Jalal and Jodha - to look like intelligent people, where the better person won the game? Does Ruq have to look like a mentally below par person for Jalal to escape her clutches and declare Jodha as the only one standing for him?
I was even able to believe in the audha-fixated Ruq, because there can be real people who prefer "material power" to "love" and if the Creativves had gone along with that characterisation of Ruq it would have been far more believable than what we have now. But this fake pregnancy seems to have nothing to do with Ruq's audha fixation and actually runs counter to Ruq's audha fixation idea we have all along been shown ... for even Ruq knows well that she cannot hope for an audha for producing any non-baby! So the mere vacuous reason for this whole characde by Ruq is not for any deep personal benefit such as audha but merely "to separate Jodha and Jalal somehow". That makes it sound like audha is now less important to Ruq than just Jodha-Jalal sundering. She is looking like a person of ambition suddenly reduced to a person who does not even have that ambition now. If she really had that continuing audha ambition, would she have resorted to a fake pregnancy that would actually never help her reach that ambition? Or is it that the Creatives want us to believe she is that stupid that she can't even figure this out?
The Creatives have so botched up Ruq's character that we now have to console ourselves that she has become really mentally inept due to extreme jealousy of Jodha, such that even her previous ambitions are as nothing compared to her fear of losing Jalal to Jodha. I am not able to respect a Ruq like that. Even if her fate was to get sidelined by Jalal, I would have loved to have a character I could hate with reason if she too was a person with intelligence and some genuine motivation for some kind of power in life. I would have respected Jodha and Jalal more if Ruq had been a stronger and more capable competitor than a petty cheat, because it is no triumph to beat someone who is already scoring self-goals.
And besides everything else, I am heartily sick of these repetitive "pregnancy related tracks" at this Agra palace. Other than pregnancy does no one have any better ideas with which to capture the attention of the Shahenshah? Agreed he is dying for a child, but still how many times can we see the same pregnancy -related melodrama to play out, each time for near on four to six weeks?. And how many times are we going to have to take this "ark-vomit-in- multicolour" idea? In 200 episodes we have seen at least three ill-fated pregnancies (not counting Bakshi) and we have seen blue, brown and green vomits. Show us something new and believable, for heaven's sake!
Iss Pyaar Ko Kya Naam Doon
Jodha Akbar
