Friends, I cannot report that yesterday's episode was brisk and full of events. In the last two episodes we are beginning to see a slight slackening of pace in the serial.
Yesterday, for instance, we made just a small bit of progress from the previous episode ...in that Hamida and Salima were discussing how outrageous was Ruq's request, Jalal himself decided to pay a visit to Ruq to prevail on her one more time, and Jodha was seen near the tarazu, mulling over Ruq's wish and trying later to explain her arguments to Jalal ... but we never even got to know what her exact decision was in the end, for the precap was deliberately left hanging in mid-sentence to create the suspense.
There was just one bit of the story at odds with this main theme of "Jodha-Jalal-Ruq-baby", and that was Maham in jail getting a visit from Javeeda and extracting a promise from her to stay loyal to Jalal to erase the "traitor daag" of disloyalty that had tainted Maham and Adham.
Considering that the promo for the mega episode on Saturday centres around Maham and Jodha and yesterday's SBS spoilers give hints that Maham may see her end very soon, I get the distinct feeling that the Ruq-baby issue is going to be a long drawn out affair of at least a month, if not more, while the Maham end of the story may see a faster end, probably escalating this Saturday and winding up by next week.
A lot of calculations that we had all made that Maham may be behind the death of the twins and may also be behind Resham's attack on Jalal/Jodha seem to be going awry as we hear that Maham death is imminent. So what now happens to the intertwining of the tracks between Maham, Resham and Ruq? There seems to be a bit of confusion now if Maham's death precedes the unfoldment of the full Ruq plan to seize the baby and the MUZ audha.
I am trying to put together all that I now know from all the most recent spoilers we have got so far, and I am able to arrive at these three points as the most likely order of happening of the impending events:
One, there is going to be Maham's death in the immediate future, the foundation of which will be laid in this mega episode.
Two, there is going to be an attack on Jalal's life where Jodha will save him (this may tie in with the historical fact that there were three attempts on him where he was saved by Jodha and this would count as the second such attempt on his life). Whether this attack will take place before or after Maham's death is to be seen.
Three, after Jodha says "Yes" to giving one of her babies to Ruq (despite Jalal's discouragement), there is going to be a major twist in the Ruq plot whereby her real colours begin to reveal themselves and she gets caught, exposed and punished by Jalal never speaking to her again. Ruq's folly will begin after Jodha has said "Yes" to giving the baby but before the baby is actually born. Maybe Ruq gets too arrogant due to her initial success and overplays her hand and gets caught. Whether there would be Maham's or Resham's role in fostering or feeding Ruq's plot is not clear.
Leaving the loose ends as they are for the moment, if I look at the top three events of yesterday's episode here is my pick ...
The real vampish face of Ruq comes out finally as she plots a deep game
After creating hungama at the DEK in the previous episode, Ruq was seen in the episode yesterday standing in her own room before a mirror and crying bitterly. She almost convinced all of us that she really did feel very bad about the baby, but then it took just under a minute for the crying to be replaced by a raucous laughter so evil, that we began to see Ruq in an entirely different light than we have ever seen before.
Up until now Ruq had always looked like a sort of semi-vamp with more greed than strategy, more ambition than intelligence, and more jealousy than ill-will. But suddenly yesterday she began to look like a full-blown vamp, utterly negative in her character, with not a trace of anything decent to talk about in her personality. Remember, we were all wondering who would replace Maham as the most vile of the women villains, but it is now clear that the Creatives have zeroed in on Ruq as the Number One Villain Choice to take Maham's place in the serial.
In the first scene where we see Ruq in yesterday's episode she is largely talking to herself before the mirror, and later she talks to Hoshiyaar to further amplify her points. The upshot of her strategy seems clear enough. She is being guided entirely by the chessboard analogy in deciding her moves. She talks of how she has already placed the first move on the board and is now just waiting for the "sheh" and "maat" stage to happen! In between her self-talks she says that she has set fire to the relationship between Jalal and Jodha and they will both burn before she is through. She says she has played using her mind knowing that Jodha will play by her heart, and so Jodha's heart has become her "mohra". She further tells Hoshiyaar that Jodha will now desperately want to redress the "apmaan" on Jalal's honour and will give one of her babies to Ruq, but the point to be watched is how soon Jalal will be made by Jodha to fall in line with her decision to give the baby. At the end of this diatribe, I saw a look of some unhappiness on Hoshiyar's face, but I don't know if Hoshiyar will ever actually go against Ruq even if he disapproves of Ruq's plan.
In a subsequent scene, Jalal is seen paying a visit to Ruq. The moment she hears that Jalal is on his way in, she quickly goes and sits by the empty cradle in her room with a mighty sad expression plastered on her face. Jalal gets straight to the point. He says "Don't ask for Jodha's baby. Ask for any other baby and I will give it my name. Or take my whole kingdom. But not Jodha's baby. It's not right!" Ruq continues her sad act of a barren woman and tries to appeal to Jalal's imagination as the broken and tortured soul bereft of a child. But, she plays a reverse strategy here from what she did yesterday. She says "I don't want any child, I want a child that is part of your flesh and blood. But anyway, I understand my mistake and I am not going to press the point that I want Jodha's baby. I know you love Jodha and don't want to hurt her. I will try my best to reconcile to what is right even if it costs my feelings dearly!" Jalal seems convinced enough that he has put the point across to her and she has understood. But Ruq seems complacent that even if she acts as if she has reconciled in front of Jalal, she has screwed up Jodha's feelings so well that she will still get her way, and baby and audha will soon be hers. There is a last bit to this scene that tells me how far Ruq has started fancying her own power as above Jalal's. She tells him "Now if you don't mind, I want to rest" and she virtually chucks him out of the room. I was astounded by this arrogance in Ruq. She now thinks she has both Jodha and Jalal exactly where she wants them!
I have two comments to make on this scene as I watch Ruq transform into a "maximum" villain ...
One, the chessboard analogy is making my antennae quiver. I feel there is some "chess-board based secret" to the way this Ruq may sabotage her own plan. Ruq started out looking at the chessboard and saying to herself "If a King on the chessboard can have two Queens, why can Jalal not have two MUZs." And yesterday, she talked of Jodha's heart becoming her mohra, and how she has taken the first step and is waiting to declare the "sheh" and "maat". Now I am trying hard to go over the game of chess to see if there are some clues as to how Ruq may be advancing her plan using chess moves as her strategy pointers. We all know that in chess there is only one Queen for the King when the game starts. But if a player is able to advance his or her pawn right across the board, uncut, till the pawn reaches the end of the board on the opposite side, then the pawn can be turned into a Queen. So how does Ruq apply that analogy to herself, Jodha and the baby? I am not able to yet see the parallel between the board game and Ruq's game clearly but I feel sure that just as she started out with the chess analogy, she may also see her end match the chess analogy. When and how will her pawn get cut and thus not be able to get to the other side to become the second Queen?
Two, despite Ruq now looking like the Number One Villain in this serial, does her character really have the calculative mind needed to go the distance with her game plan? I have some doubts here. She has started out powerfully, making all the right moves. But whether she is a "lamba race ka goda" I am not sure. Why do I have this feeling that sooner rather than later she is going to trip over her own shoe laces? Why do I have this feeling that she will lose the plot midway and get too overconfident and too arrogant with her initial successes and play a wrong hand? Why do I get the feeling that "teda Jalal" is something she has not factored in and in the end his deviousness will be far superior to any chaals she can think of? I am not sure why, but despite that loud evil laughter of Ruq's in front of the mirror, I still have that feeling that she is more full of bluster than substance. I am eager to see how and where she falls. But we may have to wait at least a month before this plot unravels, I think. The Creatives seem to be going slow and steady with this Ruq track. We will have to endure her many idiocies such as the "nazar utharofying" of Jodha and other such follies to ensure "her baby" in Jodha's tummy is safe enough to deliver the MUZ audha to her!
The Jodha arguments versus the Jalal arguments at the tarazu are interesting
After Jodha admits to Salima that Ruq's situation does look very "gambhir" and her own situation does look very "sanjeeda", she gravitates towards the tarazu to solve her uljhan much like Jalal also often does. There she seems to remember the words of Ruq uttered to her in the previous episode as Ruq put on the act of appealing to her heart and her guilt. Jodha imagines the tarazu as if weighed on both sides with her and Ruq. She herself is holding two babies and looking happy and her side of the tarazu is weighed down, while on the lighter side of the tarazu Ruq sits in despondency, with no child on her lap. Jodha then imagines Ruq's happiness after she gives her one child, and that seems to make sense to Jodha.
A little after Jodha has done all these imaginings on her own, Jalal comes up to the tarazu and says "Why are you here?" and she says "To clear my mind!". She then forthrightly tells him "Shahenshah, I think Ruq request is "uchith"!"
It is remarkable to me that at this point Jalal gets indignant and says the one sentence I always wanted to hear from him. He says "What are you saying. How can we give our child to some other person?" (Oh my God, did I hear him say "our child" and "some other person"? My God, how far these lovers have come! How far Jalal has come! He now sees himself and Jodha on one side and Ruq as the "other person"?)
Jodha then says "As far as I know Ruq, she will bring up the child well and give it love and care", but Jalal counters that saying "No wait, once you give her the child, it will become her haq!" "But it's your child too, isn't it?" Jodha asks but Jalal says "No, you don't get the point!"
Jodha then uses the hungry-parent argument saying "If Ruq is hungry for a baby she can't think beyond that and we cannot watch her starve." But Jalal says something again that shocks me to the core. He says "You are thinking of today not tomorrow. The child may start hating you if he knows that you abandoned him to another woman, and that I cannot bear to watch!" (Again that allusion to "another woman"?)
Jodha next says "But Ruq is not another woman, she too is your wife!" But hear what Jalal replies "I am not sure that child will be able to respect that other person". (Again that "other person"?)
Jodha unfortunately at this stage uses the Krishna argument, the Jalal argument and the "divine sanket" argument. I say it's unfortunate that she reverts to these arguments because many of us saw this angle coming. She says "Krishna had two mothers - Devaki and Yashodha. And you too Shahenshah were brought up by Bairam Khan and Maham. Its divine sanket that I am given two babies to carry so that God could make me give one to Ruq who has no way to have babies! And who knows my relations with Ruq may improve after this giving? Can we be happy seeing Ruq in distress?"
But then after Jalal looks at Jodha as if he cannot believe what she is saying the real truth comes out of Jodha. She says "It's not even about Ruq's need but it's about a Shahenshah keeping his word of honour given to her. As a Rajvanshi wife how can I see my husband's "apmaan"?" That seems at last to be the point on which this whole argument hangs but it did take a long time for Jodha to arrive at that point. She used every sentimental argument she knew before she could admit to Jalal and herself that it was all about "husband's apmaan". When this final and real argument came out Jalal had no reply and so he peremptorily said "You need to go and sleep, goodbye" and walked off. She had touched the raw nerve that was hurting him also for that "apmaan" issue was the one thing that was entirely about him and not about Jodha or Ruq!
I expected yesterday after I saw this scene that there will be as many opinions on Jodha's arguments as there are people in our forum. There will be those who say Jodha was too soft and spineless and giving. There will be others who say she was pure and loving and giving. And then there will be others that say she betrayed Jalal when he steadfastly holding to his arguments despite her falling for Ruq's guilt-inducements. My own feeling is that Jodha herself was beating around the bush with all the arguments of Krishna and divine sanket and all that claptrap. When she came to the point where she talked as a Rajvanshi unable to watch her husbnad's apmaan dip, that was when even Jalal realised what her real motivation for giving the baby was. Before she saw herself as a mother she saw herself as his wife!
In a way I thought the scene was very interesting - because underneath all the humming and hawing two important sentences were clear though unspoken. Jalal was saying to her, "I know you are hurting, and I cannot let you hurt your own heart to save my prestige." And Jodha was saying "I know you are hurting, but you cannot stop me from saving your prestige even at a cost to my own feelings". What lovely people these two are for they are always thinking only of each other. Every other argument at the tarazu was a waste of time trying to get to the main point. When Jodha finally got to the main point Jalal broke the conversation for he knew there weren't many counters he could give her and she would never ever let something bring his "maan" down. It was fruitless trying to convince her after that. He knew his Jodha well!
To me this conversation showed two big things:
One, the relationship between Jalal and Ruq is over. Only the formality of sundering it remains. He has totally talked of Ruq as "that other person" who is not in the circle where he and Jodha and their children are his real family! Here he not only cast Ruq into the outer peripheries of his existence with Jodha but also thought of his children tomorrow having to suffer with Ruq. He thought far ahead of Jodha and didn't want the child adopted by Ruq to feel abandoned by his own mother and remain unable to respect that "other person". Jalal's notion of who was family and who wasn't was clear.
Two, the unfinished sentence of the precap scene seen in the light of this discussion, I feel, may go like this. Jalal may tell Ruq, "Though Jodha does not want to give her baby to you, she does so not because you have a right to ask, but because she has a large heart." I don't think he is going to let Ruq have the satisfaction of hearing that he thinks Jodha did it for his "maan". He is going to make much of Jodha's generosity and make Ruq cringe at her own smallness, without bringing his twinge of rawness on the "apmaan" issue into the foreground. At least, that's how I hope he'll play it, because I too don't want Ruq to have the satisfaction of having hurt the Shahenshah and reduced him! Anyway let's see how the actual scene of the precap plays out. We'll know today!
What is cooking between Maham and Javeeda? Is there a hidden message?
I just wanted to end with a few words on this scene between Javeeda and Maham.
Although Maham says "Please promise me to never change from the bewakoof you are. Please promise me to never visit me in jail again. And please promise me to be ever a loyal wafaadaar to Jalal in order to erase the "traitor daag" that has fallen on me and Adham", did you all really think Maham means what she says ... or is this some kind of cryptic message that Maham will use Javeeda in some way to attack Jalal and Jodha and the kids?
I have a nasty feeling that Maham may brainwash Javeeda that the right thing to do "as a bewakoof and a loyal wafaadaar" is to separate Jalal from "that Rajvanshi Jodha and her tainted kids".
What do you all think?
As usual, for those who want it, here's what all happened in yesterday's episode:
Salima and Hamida are discussing Ruq' s request for Jodha's baby, as Jodha also stands there. Salima says maybe Ruq really wants a child ... but Hamida says she supports Jalal in not giving Jodha's child. Hamida caresses Jodha as she goes out, and Salima tells Jodha she understands her plight.
In her room Ruq is crying bitterly before a mirror - but suddenly changes to evil laughter. She congratulates herself for successful first step in her chaal using Jodha as mohra. She says Jodha will try to save Jalal's honour and thus decide to give her the baby ... but let's see how soon Jodha makes Jalal change his mind. Hoshiyar seems unhappy with Ruq's saazish.
In jail Maham is still hallucinating as if Adham is alive. Javeeda comes to meet her and cries at their plight. Maham tells her to promise one thing ... she must never change her bewakoofi and must always be a loyal wafaadar of Jalal so that the gaddaari daag on Maham and Adham will be erased. Maham also asks Javeeda to never come and meet her again in jail. Javeeda cries but promises.
Jalal goes to Ruq's room, where she at once sits sadly near the empty cradle. Jalal says she should not ask for Jodha's baby ... she can adopt any other baby or even ask for kingdom. But Ruq says she wants only Jalal's khoon. But she says she now understands her mistake and is not insisting on Jodha's baby anymore if God doesn't will it. After Jalal leaves she gives an evil laugh.
Jodha goes to the tarazu in uljhan. She sees vision of herself on one side with two babies while Ruq is on the other side with none. Then after she gives one baby to Ruq she sees her happy. Jalal comes there and asks why Jodha is near the tarazu. She says she came to clear her mind.
She tells Jalal that Ruq was right in asking for a baby. And she can give her one baby. But Jalal is very upset and says when the baby grows up he will feel his mother abandoned him and hate both mothers. But Jodha says its God's sanket that she is having twins so that she can help Ruq. Also Krishna had two mothers too - Devaki and Yashodha. She says even Jalal grew up with Bairam and Maham.
Then she adds the argument that Jalal's word of honour to Ruq can be upheld if they give one baby. She says as a Rajvanshi she has to do this for keeping her pati's "maan" intact. Jalal is so angry that he refuses to stay and reply Jodha and goes off in a huff leaving Jodha there.
The precap is a bit confusing because it leaves what Jalal is saying in mid-sentence. Jalal and Jodha are talking to Ruq. Jalal says "Because it involves her baby, Jodha is also part of this discussion. So while Jodha refuses Ruq's request, she has decided she herself will ..." (he doesn't finish that sentence so we are left in suspense).
Rashmi has asked me to comment on this one point: "Whether Ruq's demand was for only for the child and she did not have audha on her mind ... and if instead of Ruq it was Salima asking for the child ,then should Jodha give her child?"
My short answer to that is that Ruq herself has declared that the child means nothing and is only a ladder to the audha.
But the other point is interesting. If it has been Salima asking for the child, should Jodha give the child? Firstly, I feel it is not in Salima's nature to ask for the child. If she didn't have kids she would be philosophical rather than trying desperately to take someone else's child. But even if Salima should ask, Jalal's two arguments against giving a child are valid. The child should not feel abandoned by his real mother tomorrow and the child may not give as much respect to an adopted mother if she knew she wasn't his real mother. I think Jalal speaks from experience. He must have somewhere felt abandoned by Hamida as a child, and he sees now that he has never really been able to respect Maham as a mother!
CID
Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi 2
