Friends, after my long talks with the Zee man on Thursday, that the war will be only next week and that Jalal is not a bewakoof but is shrewdly planning and using teda tactics for the war - and after he gave the absolutely same news to both Ela and Preet who later called him - I have two choices now.
One choice I have is to see the serial as it was happening on screen yesterday and assume that the Zee man was wrong. I have to see the serial at face value where a sort of starting war was shown yesterday itself, and where Jalal was being shown as utterly foolish enough to fight with few soldiers and to so easily fall into the enemy trap of Nigar and Abul Mali.
The other way is to try and see if what the Zee man said can still be right. I have to try and see if in spite of what is being shown in the episode there is some plan of a clever Jalal working in the background. I have to see if what we saw yesterday was itself the "war" or it was just the beginning of some bigger action next week, as the Zee man suggested.
When I spoke to the Zee man he sounded so strong in his conviction that I feel as if I should try and see the serial now from the way he described it than to just see the superficialities and condemn the script. I am in my own mind also questioning if the Creatives will really show Jalal as so stupid, especially when history says Jalal never ever got caught by anyone. So keeping the convictions of both the Zee man and my own beliefs in mind, I am deliberately choosing to look at the potential positives in the script that may be hidden from our view as yet. I refuse to believe the Creatives will show such a stupid bewakoof Jalal.
So first let me take stock of what happened yesterday and try to see where Jalal could have been one step cleverer than his enemies, or why the Creatives have been showing what they did ...
Yesterday in the episode two things happened. Firstly after Jalal and Abul Mali, heading their armies, gave each other lalkaars and then gave pep-talks to their own armies, the two armies clashed on the battlefield. There were just about six people on horses, including Jalal and Mali and all the rest were just foot soldiers. Atga told a rather ordinary looking sipahi to keep close to Jalal as his bodyguard, and then went on to his own position. The two armies then clashed with swordfights, while Jalal and Abul Mali took on each other directly. Midway through the skirmish, Mali got on his horse and bolted, and Jalal did the same and bolted after Mali. Mali thus dragged Jalal to a desolate countryside spot where they continued hand to hand fight. The war front thus went out of our view, and we got to see just the close up fight of Mali and Jalal.
Some men of Mali's turned up whom Jalal started tackling in full earnest, but Mali then did a trick on Jalal. Jalal's own supposed idiotic bodyguard was nowhere on the scene. Mali shouted to Jalal that he was double-crossing this stupid girl Nigar, and he was going to see to it that she is finished off since he was just using her to start this war with Jalal. He shouted to his men to go immediately and kill Nigar, while he kept on fighting with Jalal. Hearing this, Jalal threw off Mali with great vigour and mounted his horse and ran to save his Nigar Apa who seemed to have been cheated and used by this Abul Mali and Mahchuchak. On approaching Nigar, he found her tied to a tree, but unexpectedly not belligerent. In fact she kept saying she had seen through the subterfuge of Mali and Mahchuchak and was now firmly on Jalal's side. She said she wanted to apologise to Jalal for all the misunderstanding she had about him. Jalal seemed to believe it all and was dead certain he now wanted to save Nigar from the clutches of Mali. At one point in the brother-sister talks, Nigar said "Let's go somewhere safer, let's not linger here". She led Jalal to a place she knew that would be safe and it turned out to be a sort of surang or cavern. In there, Jalal looked totally disoriented - when suddenly Nigar hit Jalal on the head felling him to the ground, and there appreared Mali beside Nigar ... and the two of them said they had trapped the great Jalal and he was at their mercy and a prisoner of Mahchuchak!
If it wasn't utterly ridiculous, this whole thing would be extremely funny! How in hell would the great Jalaluddin Mohammed Akbar of the great Sultanate of Hindustan fall so easily and so dumbly to the very "easy-as-pie" saazish of the Mali-Nigar combination? I am unable to believe this is the real Jalal and the Zee man's words to Preet is also ringing in my ears. The Zee man had told Preet especially that "Jalal was never captive by anyone and promo is twist don't investigate much on it ". The Zee man had, as you all know also told me that Jalal would never have gone into the war with so few men unless he wanted to deliberately create that impression with his enemies and the real war would start only next week..
So then I had to again put on my thinking cap and see what the twist could be that Jalal would have used yesterday? Why did he appear to make a set of very foolish decisions? Why did he follow Mali out of the battlefield to a lonely deserted patch of countryside? Which King will ever abandon the army on the battlefield to follow Mali to a separate lonely patch of land? Why did Jalal fall for the line that Mali was going to kill Nigar? Why did he then rush to Nigar? Why did he believe the sudden U-turn that Nigar took as she apologised to him? Why after that did he follow Nigar to the lonely cavern, without any of his sipahis in tow? AND MOST IMPORTANTLY ... ONCE NIGAR AND ABUL MALI HAD JALAL THERE, WHY DID THEY NOT JUST FINISH HIM OFF WHICH WOULD HAVE BEEN EASY? WHY DID THEY KEEP HIM CAPTIVE INSTEAD?
Something is fishy about this whole sequence yesterday, isn't it. The thing is that it is not only looking foolish, it is looking incredible and not real.
Alternatively, was Jalal a bit smarter than Mali, and when he went and had the talks with Nigar, did Jalal strike a new deal with Nigar to act as captive but help her double-cross Mali and Mahchuchak?
I am not sure yet what the twist may be but I cannot AT ALL believe that Jalal would ever have been as foolish as he was shown yesterday, and so I am going to wait for the Zee man's prediction that the capture of Jalal is "just a twist and we should all not investigate too much on it". The Zee man is very sure the real war will start only on Monday and that Jalal will have some teda method by which he will best his enemies with a much larger force than he pretended to have. Meanwhile I will rather stew all weekend than believe that Jalal could be really as absurd as he was shown yesterday! My own hunch is that this was all someone's dream.
Now there's this additional thing we have to factor in also. The new promo ... it appears to show the ladies of the harem changing into war clothes for a fight with the men of the enemy side. How all this fits in is another puzzle. But let's wait in suspense and see how it plays out! That's all we can do, because if we try to second guess Jalal, we wouldn't know where to begin and end the predictions!
CID
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