Friends, this week looks like it's going to be a bit racy-pacy because Diksha just messaged me with the information that the CVs are going to complete the unmasking of Ruq by this week itself. I had previously thought that (going by the promo) Zeenat would be caught by Friday (Dussehra Day) and then the next week Ruq and her machinations may get exposed and the death of the twins also may have been shown. But now it looks like the exposure of Zeenat as well as the unmasking of Ruq may all happen at top speed this week itself.
Last week when I had spoken to the Zee man he too had additionally confirmed that October 3rd would be the day when Ruq gets exposed, but I was waiting to see if we got similar information from other sources as well in confirmation - and I think Diksha has also got similar confirmation, so we can expect some action in our most-wanted direction this week.
I have two topics to discuss for my analysis and one prediction to make on how we may see this week unfold, so here goes ...
Ruq's ugliness and the haste for finding a dai maa leads to an unsuitable choice!
Folks, I found Ruq more than disgusting yesterday. Not only was she rude to Jodha and generally behaving at her most boorish, the girl has not an ounce of motherliness in her and thinks she's handling a lifeless doll when she's trying to manage Hussein. On top of everything else, she's on this trip of desperately establishing herself as Hussein's mother, despite everybody around her wondering which mother of a real child would this inept in handling the child. Ruq is on the defensive and therefore at her ugliest best!
Right at the start of the episode we had this scene of her being unable to manage the crying Hussein. The child was probably hungry and although Ruq had possessively picked up the child and taken it to her room, she seemed not to have the requisite dai maa in place to feed him, and she desperately did not want Jodha to feed him. The child was thus bawling away in hunger, and some ridiculous measures like getting Hoshiyaar to sing a lullaby didn't work. Some smirking harem Begums then offered Ruq unsolicited advice that the child should probably be returned to Jodha to pacify since babies respond to their real mothers better! That made Ruq see red ... and she barked at the ladies "I am the child's mother!" but still she could not quieten the child.
She was then seen in a scene with Hamida, Jalal, Jodha, Gulbadan, Salima and a hakima and she ventured the idea that she was going to get a dai maa for the child. Jodha had by now virtually grabbed the poor crying Hussein out of Ruq's arms, and true enough the child became all pacified in an instant. But seeing this made Ruq even more defensive. She grabbed the child back and kept on pressing her point about the dai maa. Jalal was watching all this with a curl of lip, completely disgusted with the way Ruq was going on. But the worst was yet to come. Jodha offered herself as the dai maa for the child but that rattled Ruq terribly. She yelled back in one of the rudest sentences I have ever heard from her "You will come nowhere near this child, you do not have the haq. I will not have the child get attached to you." And then for good measure, Ruq told Gulbadan "Get me a different dai maa every six months so that my son gets attached to no one but me!"
The remarkable thing was that nobody in that room had the guts and gumption to give it back to Ruq that she was a lousy mother. Jalal, to my surprise, kept quiet and tolerated Ruq (perhaps thinking that he and Jodha were prohibited by farman from having any haq on this child). But Jalal did not even venture an attempt to shut Ruq up or pull her up for her extreme rudeness to Jodha! And what about Hamida and Gulbadan? Even Salima? Everyone wore an expression of loathing at Ruq's behaviour, but no one countermanded her or even pointed out to her that just saying she was Hussein's mother and refusing Jodha's help as a dai maa would not necessarily "attach" her child to her unless she could be a genuinely caring mother who earned her child's love!
This is how Ruq escapes every time because she outshouts the others, screeches when she goes on the defensive, and Jalal does not stir himself to give it back to her as he should at the appropriate time (for if he did, I am sure the others would follow his example and range up against Ruq). At present Ruq's utterly disgraceful behaviour is going by default as no one is expressly voicing dissent and disapproval! I sincerely thought Jalal should have led the denigration of Ruq's behaviour yesterday!
Anyway, Ruq then started feverishly looking for a dai maa, for how long could she manage to postpone the feeding of Hussein? As luck would have it the sudden arrival of Jalal's cousin Mirza Qasim and his wife Zeenat from Lahore seemed to provide Ruq with her let-off ... for Zeenat was a new mother herself and in a position to be asked if she would be Hussein's dai maa. Ruq asked Jalal for permission to go ahead with this - and again, despite his misgivings that Ruq was being too hasty and thoughtless, Jalal took the line of least resistance and acquiesced. So Zeenat was propositioned and she seems to have readily agreed - for her own sinister reasons as we later found out.
I don't know which was the worse for me - Ruq's shrewish behaviour under pressure to find a dai maa post-haste (to avoid going to Jodha), or Jalal's unreadiness to berate Ruq. In the end, the speed with which Zeenat was given the job smacked of evil being invited to have play with the life of the child, for Zeenat and her husband seemed to have come all the way to Agra from Lahore expressly to try and kill Jalal's children in revenge for the past!
I am happy about one thing in the final analysis ... the haste with which Ruq tried to get Hussein away from Jodha by hiring some other dai maa is also going to be the cause for her equally hasty downfall. I have put together a prediction in this post that shows how this could happen.
Are Mirza Qasim and Zeenat part of the Sharifuddin plot or are they separate?
This brings us to one question after yesterday's episode: are Mirza Qasim and his wife Zeenat a couple of crooks with their own agenda - or are they connected with Sharif and his dad BigBeard?
A lot of recent articles and spoilers seemed to say that Sharif and his dad would hire Zeenat to become the dai maa of the kids in order to "finish off the kids", but from the way it all looked yesterday, Sharif and his dad seemed to be on another agenda entirely, while Mirza Qasim and his wife seem to have arrived with their own plot.
Who knows, maybe the two teams may join forces, but I doubt it. I think it was a red herring to show Sharif and his dad and other maulvis having a pow-wow about hating Jalal and his predilection for hiring Hindus into his court, and deliberately showing that this whole group was disgusted with Sharif's baby crying and then Sharif was shown itching to throttle the baby and Bakshi. Maybe the CVs wanted us to get a feeling that Sharif and his cohorts hated babies, so that we would all think they would hate Hasan and Hussein too. But from the private talks that Mirza Qasim had with his wife, we did not get the impression that Sharif and his men had invited Mirza Qasim over.
As Gulbadan later told Jodha, Mirza Qasim had an old axe to grind with Jalal, for Humayun's treatment of his father. As the story went, Babur wanted his sons to co-exist peacefully and he charged his eldest Humayun to look after his brothers well. But Mirza Qasim's father was one of the sautela brothers of Humayun, hell-bent on murdering Humayun. After one such vile attempt, Humayun had blinded his eyes. Gulbadan said, "Luckily Mirza Qasim holds no grudges and is friendly with Jalal!" That is where Gulbadan went off the scent.
When Jodha heard this story (and we did too) it became apparent that no one should be trusted with the children, especially not close family who turned out each time to be the most treacherous. Jodha, I think was worried that she was losing Hussein not just to Ruq but to someone who may have reasons from the past to want to hurt her and her children, especially after Maham's curses still hung over the kids.
Overall, however, the introduction of Mirza Qasim and his wife adds an edge to the intrigue in the Agra Palace. It would have been too predictable and too pat if Sharif had engineered the death of Hasan and Hussein via a crooked dai maa. The addition of new characters at this stage adds some spice to the storyline!
My khichdi prediction of events for the coming week ...
Ruq on the other hand has a different plot. She does not need to kill the kids, she needs to get both kids for herself from Jodha so that she can be the mother of both and thus secure her position as MUZ and push Jodha out of the race. So her objective now is to try and show Jalal that while she is a great mother to Hussein, Jodha is a bad mother to Hasan. So Ruq starts slow-drugging Jodha by adding some poison to her food every day in low doses so that Jodha will be ill and unable to properly look after Hassan and Jalal will see this and handover both kids to Ruq. Actually Zeenat will see Ruq drugging Jodha's food, and have some ammunition to use against Ruq if necessary.
Meanwhile as shown in the precap yesterday Javeeda will see Zeenat trying to poison Hussein and will tell all this to Jodha and Jalal, and thus Jodha and Jalal will get their first scent of some plot afoot. Further Jalal will see that Jodha is getting ill and he will immediately suspect the food and prevent her from eating it. Seeing that there are too many clues to some conspiracy regarding Jodha and the kids, Jalal will approach Birbal ... and Jalal, Jodha and Birbal will now come up with some strategy to try and unmask the conspiracy. They will plan to act as if Jodha is very ill and Jalal will tell Ruq to look after not just Hussein but Hasan also as Jodha is unable to look after the baby with her illness.
Ruq will thus think that her strategy of making Jodha look bad as a mother in Jalal's eyes is working and she will gladly accept Hasan also. Jalal will ensure Jodha eats no more of the poisoned food, but she will pretend to be ill ... and Jalal meanwhile will decide to keep a watch on his kids. Zeenat will now try to poison both kids, and Jalal will catch her at it red-handed. There will be a big showdown of Zeenat ... but in the process Zeenat will not only admit she was trying to kill the kids but will also let the cat out of the bag that Ruq was slow-poisoning Jodha!
Ruq will be furious to know that Jodha was pretending to be ill while not really eating the poisoned food!
With Ruq exposed, Jalal will do one thing immediately ... he will say Ruq was a negligent mother to the baby in hiring a crook like Zeenat and thus by the reverse farman he will remove both babies from Ruq's care and hand them back to Jodha. He will also accost Ruq on the poisoning of Jodha.
Thus squarely exposed Ruq will blabber that it was not her intention to kill the kids or to kill Jodha, she just wanted to make Jodha look like a bad mother so that she would get both kids and the MUZ audha! After Ruq thus condemns herself by her own mouth, Jalal will clap Qasim and his wife in prison and decide also to punish Ruq. (For Maddy's sake and mine, I hope he exposes Ruq in the open DEK.)
Ruq may use her remaining wish (remember she has two wishes and has used one?) to beg that she should not be sent to prison. So Jalal will say "Okay I will give you a punishment worse than prison ... I will hereafter stop talking with you for life and never have anything to do with you. Just sit in a corner like a piece of furniture and while away your days in repentance."
Meanwhile out of genuine health failure the twins may die one after another. But Jalal will feel that this is the Maham curse working. He and Jodha will then try to console each other in their shared pain and after a while look to Salim Chisti to beget another waaris, and then will come the Salim birth stage.
But meanwhile we have some bridges to cross ... one of the important ones will be Sharif and BigBeard and their plots (and Maddy and I would like the truth that Sharif was leching Jodha to also come out). The death of Bakshi's baby may make Bakshi turn against Sharif and let out his ugly secret of leching after Jodha. Bakshi's baby may also die of natural causes but because yesterday she saw Sharif looking ready to throttle the baby, Bakshi might suspect Sharif as having killed her baby by strangulation and she may turn against him and give evidence of his leching.
One thing I want to add here is the role of Javeeda in helping Jodha and Jalal know about Zeenat poisoning the kids. Remember Maham told Javeeda "You be a real wafaadaar of Jalal and try to erase the daag Adham and I have got as betrayers!" I think this could be the inspiration that makes Javeeda tell Jodha and Jalal all about what she saw Zeenat do!
All that happened in yesterday's episode:
Ruq is having great trouble with crying Hussein. Hoshiyar tries to sing a lullaby but in vain. Some harem Begums tell Ruq "Take him to Jodha as only real mother can quieten child." Ruq shouts at them "I am his mother". The baby keeps on crying and Ruq is unable to handle it.
Hamida is talking to a hakima regarding the babies' health as Jalal is there with Ruq and Jodha each with their kids. Jodha takes Ruq's crying child and it quietens immediately. Ruq is miffed. Ruq says she wants a dai maa for her child. Jodha offers herself as the dai maa but Ruq is nasty and says "You will have no haq on my son and my decisions. ... " and she grabs back the child.
Ruq tells Gulbadan "Get me a different dai maa every six months so my son will not get attached to anyone but me". Hamida, Salima, Jalal and Jodha and all others in the room are aghast with Ruq's rudeness and behaviour to Jodha and her miserable handling of baby. Jalal looks very upset and sees how hurt Jodha is.
Sharif and his father are discussing with other maulvis that something has to be done to stop Jalal filling his court with Hindus and abolishing tax. Sharif's baby starts crying and all men get upset at interruption. Sharif goes and almost wants to hit the baby and even Bakshi for the child's untimely crying. Bakshi is stunned by his behaviour.
Jodha is with Hasan and Moti - and after she gets Hasan ready and dressed, she worries if Ruq is caring for Hussein properly and tells Moti to take some medicines for Ruq's baby. Jalal comes and tells Jodha not to worry as Ruq can manage but Jodha says her heart is heavy. Just then Jalal is told that his cousin Mirza Qasim and wife Zeenat from Lahore are here on a visit.
Mansingh welcomes Mirza Qasim - and his wife Zeenat is in a palki with a newborn baby of her own. As Jalal hugs Mirza Qasim he says "I too am a new dad like you." Qasim gives gifts for Hasan and Hussein and says his wife Zeenat really is a very good mother to his own child. Ruq gets an idea to make Zeenat the dai ma for Hussein.
Ruq is later seen with Jalal and Hamida and Jodha discussing Zeenat as a dai ma for Hussein. She says she can trust Zeenat as a bhabhi and a good dai ma. Jalal very reluctantly agrees after saying Ruq is making a decision too fast without care. Even though he agrees that Ruq can ask Zeenat, he looks very unhappy with the idea.
Ruq's kid is again crying and this time Zeenat is with her and pacifies the child. Ruq thanks Zeenat for agreeing to be Hussein's dai maa. But when Ruq is not looking Zeenat has a look of deep hatred for the child. She takes him too close to the window and there does evil self-talks about the child's bleak future.
Later in their own room Zeenat and Mirza Qasim talk to each other that they have succeeded in the first step of their plot against Jalal by Zeenat getting the dai ma responsibility for one of the kids. Mirza Qasim tells Zeenat "Yes, Jalal has no clue why we are here and we'll now put our plans into action."
Meanwhile Jodha asks Gulbadan who Qasim really is. Gulbadan says he is Humayun's sautela brother's son. Humayun' s sautela brother was forever trying to kill Humayun, but their father Babur made Humayun promise to care for his brothers. So Humayun tolerated him ... but once he was so bad to Humayun that Humayun blinded him.
But Gulbadan says "Luckily Mirza Qasim is not like his father and he is friendly with Jalal." But Jodha is very uneasy and says "After so many plots against Jalal and us, we have to trust no one - and be very wary of everybody, even close relatives". Gulbadan agrees. Jodha does not seem easy about Zeenat as dai ma for Hussein.
In the precap Zeenat is trying to pour some poison into Hussein's mouth when Javeeda spots something amiss and says "What are you trying to do?" Zeenat looks like she is hiding her actions.
Folks, if the khichdi prediction I have written out comes out to be more or less true, then by Friday I suppose Zeenat will be caught and she will make sure also that Ruq is caught.
If that happens, please keep Saturday free for a forum party! We have to especially crown Diksha for her timely and valuable inputs to the whole storyline!
Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi 2
Anupamaa
