Friends, the episode yesterday had one main point, and one half of a main point. The rest of it was pure bhakwas and below bhakwas!
The main point was that Maham and Shehnaaz started colluding with each other. The half of a main point was that Jodha, despite being cordially invited, refused to sleep with Jalal. The bhakwas part is that the three begums were seen planning what to gift the Shahenshah during the Meena Bazaar. The below bhakwas part was Mahchuchak planning to gift her daughter to Haider Kasim.
Hope you will be terribly excited by all this ... because I am not! But anyway, let me first tell you all that happened in sequence, and later reserve my diatribe for my comments section!
What all happened yesterday:
The episode began where the previous one left off. Maham had managed to get it out of Shehnaaz that she was not really mad but just pretending to be childish and brainless. When Maham lowered her belligerence at Shehnaaz and took on an "auntie ji" type of tone, this Shehnaaz totally melted.
The silly girl then told Maham everything. She said she was Chand begum's daughter, Nigar. She had come here to search for her mother. She had even managed to find out where her mother was and had met her mother. But alas, she had planted some clues on the pathway to her mother's surang which someone had removed so she could not find her way back there. But the main thing was that she believed it was Jalal who was keeping her mother in captivity because he did not want to give her the due share of the Delhi takht as per her father's farman, and he also did not want to give her access to the khazana where Humayun had hidden loads of funds that were waiting for her!
Maham did a double take. She thought "Oh... my ... God! This is none other than Chand's daughter Nigar! And thank God she thinks it is Jalal who is keeping her mother in captivity!" Maham then instantly bowed low before Shehnaaz and said "I was your bandhi, once upon a time, dear! And now I am the Wazir-e-Aliyah. I owe allegiance not to Jalal but the whole Sultanate, and so I will help you achieve your khazana and takht and get back your mother!"
Having thus found a way to collude with Shehnaaz and double cross her Maham then told herself "What a glorious kismet! Now I can get that khazana that this silly little chit has virtually handed over to me!'
Meanwhile the rest of the begums in the harem were a bit miffed that this latest Meena Bazaar was designated for participation of only the top three begums. But when they all collectively protested to Ruq, she said "You can all help me with my gift!" and so they all shut up.
In Jodha's hojra, she and her three attendants - Shehnaaz, Moti and Zakira were cluck-clucking that Jalal had only invited his three khas begums to the Meena Bazaar. Jodha promptly decided to go and tell Jalal this was not okay, whetever time of the night it was.
Now comes the part that miffed me terribly. Jalal was almost asleep since it was getting late at night when he heard a rustle outside his room and grabbed his knife ... but it was only a sipahi come to say that Jodha was here to meet him. When Jodha was let in, she began by protesting that the Meena Bazaar was open to just the khas three wives. "It's because I want to spend more time with the three of you amidst all the other work I have to do," said Jalal. Jodha was about to then go away to give him rest after his hard day, when he grabbed her arm and said "Why don't you spend the night with me here?" To this rather open invitation the best thing Jodha could come up with was "Oh, no, I have work to do, I have to prepare for the Meena Bazaar." Jalal made one more try but Jodha slipped away from his hands, and he was left to laugh after her running away!
Now what kind of a nut loses a chance like this? My hopes of little Salim ever being born in my lifetime are slipping away. I am going to leave a farman for my great grand daughter to watch the far-future episodes for some signs of Jodha and Jalal sleeping together. Otherwise we have just one hope that somehow Salim Chisthi will see that divine chamatkar impregnates Jodha!
Accha, now the scene shifts to Kabul, where Mahchuchak is still in dialogue with the blind Fazal Beg. She says she is fed up being just Queen of Kabul and wants to rule the whole Sultanate that Jalal lords over. She says "How can we plot and plan against Jalal, when one of his close henchmen, the son of Munim Khan is forever living here in Kabul keeping an eye on us?" Fazal Beg says that is not a problem, for he knows that one Haider Kasim is ready wth a huge fauj to come to the help of Mahchuchak to mount an offensive against Jalal. But to secure Haider Kasim's loyalty it will be necessary to tie him into a secure alliance such as marriage.
Just as Fazal Beg was saying this, a daughter of Mahchuchak entered the room, whereupon her mother began ill-treating her. "Use your husn to get me this alliance with Haider Kasim" the mother told the daughter and pushed her to the floor vehemently. Fazal Beg got the message and said he would be going immediately to Haider Kasim with the idea of an alliance between Haider and Mahchuchak's daughter! Mahchuchak laughed with the glee of one sending a lamb to the slaughter!
Meawhile Ruq and her ladies club had found a good gift idea for Jalal for the Meena Bazaar. Ruq brought out a whole bunch of shamsheers and said "This is what we will give Jalal, but with something special done to the shamsheer!"
In another room Gulbadan, Hamida and JijiAnga were wondering what Salima would gift jalal. Salima demurred and said "It will something simple given as a friend. Because I actually want Jodha to win this competition!" The other ladies thought "How gracious!"
Jodha in her hojra with her three musketeers couldn't get any idea for a gift. Then suddenly Shehnaaz came up with an idea ... what about a new crown, a Taj for Jalal? Jodha's eyes lit up. "Yes indeed, what a great idea! We will give him a crown that mingles the Hindu and Muslim traditions and he will love it" she said! But as soon as Jodha was out of earshot, Shehnaaz spoke to herself "This Taj will bring kahar in Jalal's life!". And on that note the episode ended.
In the precap Jalal was seen ready and eager to inspect the gifts his wives had readied for him!
My comments on this episode:
After that dratted promo came out yesterday that Shehnaaz would lay rape charges against Todarmal, while Jalal and Jodha would look aghast if not outraged with Todarmal, my heart sank, and so did the hearts of all my frineds on this forum. We all thought "Of all people why this Todarmal as the target of Shehnaaz? If there was one upright decent man in the whole of Agra, it was he. Was it all a chaal of Maham who has asked Shehnaaz to do this to bring down two mangoes with one stone ... that is Jalal and Todarmal?"
It is obvious that if Maham knows of Adham's financial frauds she should see Todarmal as a thorn in Adham's flesh and use Shehnaaz to get rid of Todarmal on a rape charge. But simultaneously could Maham have told Shehnaaz "Let us do this so that we both get back at Jalal and hurt Jalal where it hurts most? He trusts Todarmal a lot and has a lot of respect for him, so if we blame Todarmal we can effectively shatter Jalal's trust in his closest cronies?"
Yesterday Jaya had a theory that perhaps it was good thing for the story if Todarmal is thus singled out for character assassination because Shehnaaz needs to be given the ultimate truth that it was Todarmal who safely ferried her mother across to Humayun after the war. Maybe Shehnaaz needs an eye-opener that Todarmal and Jalal are all good eggs and not having any bad intent towards her or her mother and this may be an oblique way to bring Shehnaaz to her senses that her mother's captor may be someone else and not whom she suspects!
Whatever it is, the whole promo was distasteful.
And to top it all when Jodha refused to sleep with Jalal , I started asking myself "Have I signed up to see Mahchuchak's daughter's romance with Haider Kasim or what?" Nothing, absolutely nothing, is going in the way we audiences want, so what's the whole point? And who are these TRP aunties giving the serial such high TRPs at a time like this? No wonder Zee is not even bothering to take our calls or give explanations!
Yesterday's episode was a clear Friday-quality episode, intended to make us all hang upside down in discomfort till Monday. Now all I can pray for is that on Monday we do not get a Monday-quality episode that is again a non-progressive khichdi!
I have some small feeble hope that at least on Monday prior to this Meena Bazaar, or during the Meena Bazaar, this Shehnaaz wil do this "blame Todarmal scene" (because some people have pointed out that the clothes Jalal and Jodha wore in yesterday's precap Meena Bazaar scene are the same clothes they wear in the Todarmal-wala promo!).
If that is the case then this Meena Bazaar may also witness a bhandaphod ... maybe the discovery by Jodha that Shehnaaz is a negative egg, and then the swordfight and then the revelation to Shehnaaz that Jalal is not the captor of her mother but Maham is?
As regards that spoiler picture of Ruq with the bow and arrow I have no idea what to make of that because Ruq is planning to give Jalal a shamsheer as a gift and not a bow and arrows, so we can't even imagine that she is dressing up to match her gift!
The whole of my serial watching life is in a mess because of these six or seven tracks going on parallelly in Jodha Akbar, that I am barely able to grasp who is whose mother, and who is whose rapist and who is whose grandfather! It is all so confusing now with a plethora of peripheral stories and characters , while the main leads refuse to sleep with each other, that I feel as if I am watching a story called "Extras of the Mughal Dynasty Without the Birth of Salim".
In the week of the anniversary of the show, I didn't think I would have to see something so dismally low. Dunno what else to say, life is bleak at the moment!
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