Friends, there has been no power all night and there's just about 40% power in my laptop battery so let me do a shorter post today before the power goes ...
...there were two clear halves to the episode yesterday. One half was all about Jodha and Jalal and the name "Akbar" ... and how Jodha was too shy to say the name of her husband but gave him some tight hugs instead. The second half was about the much-promoted entry of Begum Mahchuchak, the renegade wife of Humayun, who lorded over the Kabul territory and kept under her firm thumb her own son Hakim Mirza as well as her son-in-law, the one-eyed Abul Mali.
The first part of the episode was sweet, but the second half was so OTT that I couldn't believe the kind of entry the Creatives had actually planned for this Mahchuchak. I think the Creatives wanted to show her as "khoon pyaasi" and a cruel boor, untamed and merciless and brutal. But the whole entry scene, to me, looked so way over the limits of believability that Mahchuchak looked more funny than fearful.
The ultimate aim was to show us that she was a force to be reckoned with that even the men under her feared so much, and that if she had Jalal in her sights, she would not be content with ordinary torture for him. She would be especially venomous with Jalal as she hated him. All this we were intended to decipher from the way she tears into even lesser prisoners.
Let me describe the second half of the episode first just so that we can all re-enjoy this "ridiculous entry" one more time ... and then I'll go back to the sweeter beginnings of the episode.
The entry of the buffoon of Kabul!
Yesterday about one half of the episode nearly was eaten up between Sharif, Abul Mali and Mahchachuk, as she made a totally circus style entry into the serial. Just to show us what a jallad she was, we had that godawful scene first of Sharif with Abul Mali. Sharif was looking increasingly impatient with Jalal's recent success with his praja and was hoping to bump off Jalal as fast as possible to get to the takht. But Abul Mali said "Fear not, we need not kill Jalal to get what we want, we can bring him down to his knees".
Sharif said "What? Bring Jalal down to his knees? Is that ever possible? You know what a warrior he is!" But Mali continued "The person to do that is the world's greatest barbarian and jallad, the ruthless, the invincible, the infamous, the malevolent, the vindictive, the cold-blooded, the sadistic, the "jalal-hater", the eyesore ... Begum Mahchuchak - Jalal's own Kabul based stepmother! She has already despatched her "fauj" in four or five direction to surround Jalal!" And then Abul Mali gave an ugly glint of his one available eye.
I have given just a few of the many great descriptions that Abul Mali wanted to give about his mother-in-law. Actually I think Abul Mali gave at least twenty more to fully impress Sharif on the completely bad egg his mother-in-law was! Sharif got the general idea, after first goggling that this creature thus described was a woman!
Then as if to show us how horrible this Mahchuchak really was, we were taken to the snow bound slopes of the Afghan mountainous territory presumably around Kabul. Mahchuchak in fiendish fur clothes and snow boots, looked like a local Afghan warlord cum circus clown. And she rode a mean looking horse. She then approached her group of men all wearing gas-mask-like things on the faces so that their teeth and noses were hidden from view.
The men had strapped a poor guy - a candidate for torture - upside down... and even as this poor man kept begging for mercy, the group of sentries waited for Mahchuchak to arrive. When she arrived, she did not even dismount her horse properly, she just sort of slid down the horse in a totally ungainly manner and went up to the hanging man. She then pulled out her dagger and slashed the man vertically through his stomach and chest and so oozing with blood he groaned.
Mahchuchak then slashed the blade of her knife to cut the ropes suspending the man and he fell to the ground, his head conveniently near the chopping block. "Now let's make this death blow as "absorbing and exciting" as possible" Mahchuchak said to her men, and they all looked down at the ground. Presumably that was their way of assenting. Then with a hard blow of the poor man's neck with a sword, one of the sentries beheaded him and the man's blood splattered everywhere copiously. Mahchuchak bared her 282 teeth and guffawed with glee!
This was the fat and jolly Hakim Mirza's dear mother? Incredible!
What else happened in the episode
OK, so much for the second half of the episode. In the first half of the episode, we had entirely different scenes. First Jodha came to Jalal's room and hugged him ... twice! Yes, folks, twice. That first hug was apparently because she was so moved by his gesture of distributing the sikkas and then making a fabulous speech and then getting the title of Akbar! "You brought religions together, I am terribly impressed" Jodha said to Jalal. He then suitably praised her back, but then he thought of one wish he wanted from her. "Call me at least once by my own name?" he asked. Jodha immediately refused saying Rajvanshi patnis don't ever call their husbands by name! But Jalal kept insisting which made Jodha very shy ... and so she then went and leaned on him for the second hug!
Later Jodha took the help of Zakira to write the Urdu letters of the word "Akbar" on a scroll of paper and carried it to show Jalal. Jalal meanwhile was getting hugged by his mother who was tearful with happiness at her son's new title. "When you were an infant I always dreamt you would great one day. Wish your father was here to see you" said a sentimental Hamida. Jalal wiped the tears from her eyes, just as Jodha came in. Hamida slunk out to give them both some privacy. Jodha then showed Jalal what she had written, "It's your name " she said. "But what is this, is it allowed for you to write my name but not say it? " asked Jalal. "When you had ghrina on me every second day you kept referring to me in anger as Jalal, and now that you are in love, the name has vanished from your lips?"
"See this... what I have written" Jodha said, "I can only tell you ... it's your name" Jalal then decided to make Jodha utter the name herself. He pretended not to know what was on the scroll and made some wild guesses like "Shahenshah" and "Jalaluddin" (taking advantage of his inability to read) but then out of frustration Jodha said "If you cannot even guess that its "Akbar" what can I do?" Out came that name from her mouth and she realised Jalal had trapped her into saying it! Are we to therefore assume that while Ruq called him Jalal, Jodha would always call him "Akbar"? Awww ...!
Anyway Jodha and Jalal soon veered to the question of Chand Begum still not being found. Both were seen to be looking totally perplexed yet about her whereabouts.
Meanwhile Maham herself was in the surang, asking Chand Begum if she could recognise herself (i.e. Maham). Seeing however that Chand Begum still seemed stark raving mad, Maham got all miffed and pulled and shook her by the hair and then walked out of the surang in frustration, with the disguising blanket on her head. Just outside the surang, however, she saw some marking freshly made on the wall and got a frisson of alarm "Someone else seems to have found this place" she said to herself in fear!
Accha, after all these benign scenes we got the Mahchuchak entry as I have described above. The episode ended on Mahchuchak's belly-laugh after the beheading of her prisoner.
Then in the precap we had a scene of Jalal with Jodha and Hakim Mirza (yes he is back now that his very funny mother is in the picture). Jalal was telling Jodha he didn't send Hakim to her, and that Hakim himself had gone to Jodha to tell her of Jalal's love for her.
Oh -ho ... so while the mother is slaughtering men in the snowy slopes of Kabul, the son here is trying to look snowy white to the Agra family? Wonder when he is going to turn negative and show his true colours, as history says he will!
My comments on this episode:
The possible reasons for this way out entry of Mahchuchak
Folks, I jut wanted to point out that the actress the Creatives have chosen for Mahchuchak is not as naturally big built as Maham was, and is of a more slender size. I think therefore a lot of padding is needed to bulk her up a bit if she is to look menacing. That could be one reasons for her clothes looking seven sizes bigger than her.
Also acting wise, since we have got used to the "villainish-style" of Maham, and Maham's teeth-baring laughter and ultra-shrewd eyes, it will take us a longer time to accept Mahchuchak in the villain gap that Maham creates by vacating the spot soon. I personally found this new actress to be less menacing in looks and I felt as if the Creatives were over-dramatizing her entry in order to compensate for the natural lack of manly belligerence needed for the character of Mahchuchak.
If Mahchuchak were shown as far-thinking, plotting and mentally calculative, this actress would have fitted the bill. But if Mahchuchak needed to look more masculine and physically barbaric, she needed to be bigger built than even Maham ..., and so the discrepancy in the fit of the actress to the role seems to hit me hard.
Maybe over time, she may be shown as less physically aggressive and more mentally ruthless, and I will get used to seeing her as the believably evil vamp! Right now she looks like an incongruity to me ... I don't know if you all feel this way.
I know the actress is good at acting in vamp roles, but what kind of vamp is she ideal for is the question. It certainly did not look like she was fit to be a manly vamp! Let me wait and see, for sometimes the entry is over-hyped and later the character settles down to a more believable level!
Mahchuchak's impact on the storyline of Shehnaaz and Chand Begum?
I have a feeling that we will now see the meshing of the two tracks ... ie. Shehnaaz-Chand-Begum-Maham track and the Sharif-Mali-Mahchuchak track. I would add Hakim Mirza to this latter track a bit later - as I feel that after the uncovering of Shehnaaz's truth Hakim may emerge as a villain instead of a positive force in the story.
I think the precap yesterday was laying the foundations for us viewers to get shocked by the sudden negative turn of Hakim Mirza, because the precap was deliberately overplaying his "niceness".
It should be extremely interesting to see how the teda Jalal handles the onslaught of all 6 or 7 villains and vamps if the two tracks do mesh. I am more interested in seeing how Jodha and Jalal as a team handle the battalion of evil ones, rather than speculating on exactly what the evil ones will individually do.
It is overall clear that all the evil ones want the takht, whether separately for themselves or in cahoots with each other. Given this common aim, they may all gang up in full force, but it should be really eye-opening to see how shrewd Jalal is and how he and Jodha may handle all this.
The lingering issue of Ruq's faking!
Meanwhile the issue of Ruq hangs in the balance and one doesn't know if part of the villain exposure game will also expose Ruq?
The sudden appearance of pictures yesterday showing Ruq ready for archery seemed more comical than a real crucial part of the story. I got the feeling that maybe Ruq will be shown as ready to take on Shehnaaz in this catfight between the women, and after Ruq fails miserably in front of Jalal, Jodha may restore sanity by bringing on her superior skills with the sword and bow and arrow and she may vanquish Shehnaaz. Thus Ruq may get one more reason to hate Jodha for exposing her ineptness before Jalal and impressing him with her own hunars!
How this will all help in the open exposure of Ruq's pregnancy faking and how Jalal will punish Ruq eventually still remains a lingering unclosed loop, and I can't think how that may all come to pass unless Maham opens her mouth and betrays Ruq at some point.
I wait in agony, for I so want Ruq to be sidelined by Jalal openly. I do not like it that time and again Jalal is shown as a lily-livered person unable to punish her outrightly, no matter how much he hesitates to carry things to an extreme with his childhood friend. I can see the logic when people say he has some corner of gratitude to Ruq for the earlier days, but still I like to see the leads without a triangle spoiling the fun for me.
About the awkwardness of Jodha-Jalal hugs
I want to say one last thing before my computer battery runs out totally! Many people have complained about how the hugs of Jodha and Jalal look very platonic and there is no chemistry at all. Whereas when Jalal hugs Ruq there is definitely more push and pull vigour in the hug!
I have a theory here why this may be so. I think it's the same nose ring type of factor. The nose ring is accepted by all of us as the thing that makes their mutual kissing impossible, so that Jodha has to kiss the air near his hand or face if any kiss is to be shown. In the same way I think that since both are of nearly the same height, it becomes difficult to show a hug where Jalal is seen slightly taller than Jodha.
Each time they hug, Jodha has to lean against his shoulder with her head bent to reduce her height, and Jalal has to put one arm round her shoulder and face forward to the camera, also raising his face to look upwards to create the feeling that he is slightly taller than her. This awkwardness of their heights being equal makes it impossible for the director to make every hug look different, so we are ending up with just one repetitive camera angle formula for their hugs (ie. leaning on him style of hug with one arm of Jalal's around her). Other angles of showing the hug may not be working out properly for the camera to create the illusion of relative heights being slightly different.
This is my theory. Does anyone else have a better theory for why the hugs look so platonic?
I don't think Paridhi and Rajat are against hugs, they seem OK with them ... so I am assuming it is something to do with the limitations on the camera angles that the director is facing! For the same reason a hug with Ruq looks more like a tight hug, because Ruq fits within Jalal's frame, looks shorter than him and Jalal is able to use both his arms for the hug!
I can only explain this much with my own limited understanding of hugs. I am however planning to d my PhD on Hugology and after that I will try to explain more fully using animated drawings and chemistry equations!
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