Friends, yesterday we had another very lovely episode where it struck us anew how beautiful is the bonding between Jodha and Jalal ... Jodha was suffering the loss of her baby just as much as she was in the previous episode, but at least the path to her easier recovery was becoming visible to Jalal. Hamida, Salima and Jalal couldn't help but see that bringing Husein back to Jodha could give Jodha a reason to live again, for otherwise she was on a path of self-destruction as a result of her deep distress on the loss of Hasan.
And once Jalal knew what he could do to bring Jodha back to life from the dark recesses of depression she was in, he left no stone unturned to try and help Jodha find her reason for living again. But while his intentions were decidedly firm, he was not successful in his mission, for he had to contend with the inflexible and defensive hold that Ruq was keeping on Husein - and her total recalcitrance in giving the baby even for a short while to Jodha to revive Jodha's spirits.
"What would Jalal have to do to get Husein back from Ruq to Jodha?" became the question to answer by the end of the episode.
For my analysis today I thought I would pick on three topics that struck me about yesterday's episode ...
Would Jodha have recovered easier if she hadn't gone and fed Husein? Is it wise for Jalal to ask Ruq for Husein for "just a short while" hoping it will help heal Jodha?
The episode yesterday began with Jodha drawing the curtains to keep the Kanha murthy out of her sight hereafter. She wanted nothing more to do with a God whom she could not trust. Seeing her depth of sorrow and grief, Hamida, Salima and Moti tried in turns to tell Jodha to get a grip on herself. But nothing worked till Jodha fell against them, racked in sobs - and she let out a lot of the inner burden of sadness that was weighing upon her. Hamida and Salima felt her agony but could only be mute spectators to the suffering she was going through.
Just then Jodha heard the cry of a baby and her heart began to show signs of life. "My Hasan, my Hasan," she started saying as she ran out of the room in the direction of the baby's cry. Hamida and Salima and Moti had a hard time running after her at the speed at which she was going. Salima barely caught up with her as she entered Ruq's hojra.
There in her hojra, Ruq was trying hard to calm Husein who was crying because Zeenat was late in coming to feed him. Jodha, who had no grasp of her surroundings, save only for hearing the baby cry, just grabbed Husein from Ruq's hands saying "mera baccha, mera bachha", and then seeing that he was wailing from hunger, Jodha just took matters into her own hands and started to feed Husein. For a moment Ruq was completely taken aback by the speed at which events happened that she could not raise a protest at Jodha feeding the child, for the tardy Zeenat was still showing no signs of appearing!
The moment Jodha finished feeding Huseein however, Ruq collected her wits and immediately grabbed the child back from Jodha. "I am his mother," she said and added for good measure that "her son" was not used to sleeping on anyone's "godh" and preferred the palna. The child was so hastily snatched back from Jodha that it seemed to leave Jodha's heart and mind in smithereens ... she was looking so bereft and helpless like she'd lost another child all over again.
This incident seemed to have made a deep mark on Hamida, for later she found Jalal sitting in a dark corner crying his heart out. In my previous post itself, I had the feeling that Jalal would need to break down himself at some point soon, for he was being very stoic for Jodha's sake and putting a lid on his own very deep sadness. Yesterday, as his mother reached him, he thankfully let go his feelings through copious and unbridled crying. He then said "I can't cry in front of Jodha because I can't bear the distress she's already going through. As a King I feel so helpless that there are things in this world all the power I have cannot help me solve!"
Hamida, fresh from the feeding incident at Ruq's room was on a different mission here. She told Jalal, "You have to try and be strong for Jodha because I have seen her and she is sinking. She is just breaking. This morning she heard Husein's cry and ran to Ruq's room and started feeding Husein. There was such utter peace in her for that space of ten minutes ... but then Ruq snatched back the baby and Jodha lost it all again! My son, Husein is Jodha's child, after all. You know what you have to do to get Jodha to live again, don't you?"
Hamida's words rang in Jalal, and he later went to Jodha's room to check on her condition himself. What he saw seemed worse than the previous day. Jodha was neither crying, nor feeling anything. She was numb and vacant. She had gone into a space where nothing mattered. He tried to get her to eat some food, and in fact he tried feeding her with his own hands, but she just refused food with that empty stare again! Jalal knew he had to heed his mother's words and somehow get Husein back to Jodha, for she needed some rallying point around which to build her will to live. Jalal therefore decided to go to Ruq and bring Husein back for Jodha.
At this point folks, a question of a more general nature taxes my mind. I am wondering if that incident when Jodha got to hold and feed Husein did her good or bad? Granted that the ten minutes she spent with Husein did revive her spirits for a space and give her that peace that she had lost with the going of Hasan. But when Ruq subsequently snatched Husein back from Jodha after the feeding, to me it looked like Jodha had set herself up for a fresh and even more hurting wound on her heart. If she had not spent that small amount of time with Husein, she probably would have been trying to get over Hasan. But now that she had seen Husein, but was not being allowed to hold and keep him, had she lost another baby again from her grasp, so to speak, thus reviving the scars in herself and re-living the feeling of loss all over again with respect to Husein? Would it have been kinder on Jodha to have never been with Husein so that she could continue to just mourn not having Hasan - instead of now mourning that she didn't have both Hasan and Husein?
I ask this because the expression on Jodha's face when she totally broke down and cried to Hamida and Salima at the beginning of the episode, was like a cathartic moment after which some feeble life seemed to come into her eyes. But after she went to Ruq's room and held and fed Husein and then had the baby snatched back from her, that bleak and empty expression on her face seemed to take her back by at least twenty steps in her road to recovery. After Husein was snatched from her, Jodha became like an automaton, without thought, with a vacant stare and a total disinterest in life. When Jalal found her not eating, and drained of all feeling and looking numb, he must have seen a new level of sorrow in Jodha, as I saw. It was like hope had been shown to her and then cruelly snatched away again making her lose all interest in life itself! That disengaged stare that Jodha gave him must have been enough to galvanise Jalal to try and get Husein back to her as quickly as he could.
I also question this route that Jalal subsequently took with Ruq that if not forever, she should at least give Husein back to Jodha for a small while! I know that Jalal must have been at his wits end to help Jodha against the inflexibility of Ruq and he had to try and wheedle for the best deal he could get. But it's my feeling that when even that small gain of feeding Husein and losing him again could send Jodha reeling back into deeper darkness than she had felt before, if she had had Husein with her for a few days via Ruq's mercy, then again Jodha's heart was ready for fresh and harsh scratching when Ruq took the baby away one more time after the few days of respite were over.
I think Jalal needs to get Husein back to Jodha forever - or not try at all. Bringing him over to Jodha for just a few days is a sure way to set Jodha back by many many steps in the healing process. She will not be able to withstand yet another snatch-back from Ruq, is my feeling!
The defensive readiness of Ruq to face any request for the baby from Jalal!
We've all heard of the ugly politics inside places of power like the Agra Palace - but see how patently it showed itself to us when a couple of lowly "nobody" bandhis started advising the Queen and BEK of the Sultanate Ruq on what she would need to do now that Jodha's baby had died!
The bandhis told Ruq "Be careful, this child you now have is the waaris and you are well on your way to becoming the MUZ. They are sure to come and try to take the child away from you now that Jodha has fed the child. Don't give in. Be ready for them when they come!"
Ruq the Queen, at that moment, became a defensive, scared woman hustled by a couple of non-entities! Her hackles rose, and she was mentally preparing herself to face the onslaught when everybody would now pressurize her to give Husein back to Jodha. "He is mine, I will never give him up" she said a couple of times to herself, the way wrestlers prime themselves up before a match!
So it happened that by the time Jalal entered Ruq's hojra, Ruq knew already exactly why he had come. His face was mutinous and he was so forthright in his asking that Ruq had no hesitation in matching his forthrightness with her own. "If your friendship from childhood to me means anything, you have to do as I ask," he said and then added "I have come to take Husein back to Jodha!"
Ruq was ready for this. She decided to attack him squarely and asked him the one question for which he had no direct answer. "Don't tell me your love for her has blinded you so much that you can rob one wife of a child just to help the wife you love?" she attacked. Then she played the heart card and said she could not live without Husein. She then played the farman card and said she had got Husein by a farman. And then finally she decided that to hum and haw would only needlessly lengthen this discourse and make her more vulnerable to his pleadings. She said "Even if you were King of this whole world, and not just this Sultanate, my answer is a flat NO!"
I couldn't believe my ears when Jalal then went on the defensive and said "At least consider giving Husein to Jodha for a while if not forever, she is just breaking!" In normal times, I doubt Jalal would have ever been reduced to such deal-making, but he was a desperate man with a mission to bring Jodha back to some semblance of life, and I guess he decided to play his self-respect in the service of his love for Jodha. But Ruq stopped looking at him, and made him feel dismissed from her mind. She just held onto the baby and kept repeating "He is mine, he is mine!" Jalal turned his face away from Ruq, and then just got up and left the room with a sneer of disgust that she did not bother to watch!
A question again enters my mind here: "Would Ruq have been this ready to thwart Jalal if those two bandhis had not primed her to expect this visit from Jalal? Would Ruq have found it more difficult to refuse Hamida, if Hamida had come here to ask instead of Jalal? Would Ruq have succumbed to Jalal's pressure if Jalal had not shown the chink in his armour by climbing down too fast and asking for the lesser deal of a few days of time for Husein to be with Jodha? Did Jalal play it wrong?"
We can never tell, but we have to wait and see the fallout of this whole issue between Jalal and Ruq. Yesterday Ruq won the battle - but will Jalal win the war by using the reverse farman? Or as per the spoilers, will Ruq show a weakness in her position by suddenly doing a volte face and accepting to give Husein to Jodha for one night instead of a few days - and thus will she drive the advantage back into Jalal's hands?
And at the end of all this, folks, are we seeing the bartering of a human baby between a King and his highest-positioned Queen? What a disgrace, for a baby born of two people's deep love to become such an object of wheeling and dealing in the circus of power politics!
This is a asituation which is a loss-loss-loss all round. I feel really sorry for Jodha. I feel sorry that Jalal has had to reduce himself in front of Ruq for Jodha's sake. And I feel sorry that I had to witness the naked possessive greed of Ruq in hanging onto a baby not for itself but for the power and title that came with it! I feel disgusted that Ruq's advisors were a bunch of layabout bandhis! Most of all I feel utterly upset that Husein who was suddenly landed with the waaris position (thanks to his twin brother's death) has become a football!
All of us who love to hate Ruq can say many things about her nastiness yesterday, but to me it was not just she who was making me feel nauseous, but the whole damned situation. I didn't like to watch Jalal beg this woman to grant a favour to Jodha. And I didn't like the way this woman then made Jalal feel like dirt by turning her face away from him leaving him no other option but to walk out with his head held as high as he could manage. Some situations bring out the best in people. Yesterday I thought that scene between Jalal and Ruq showed me something about sub-optimal situations that I don't care to watch ever again.
A revised prediction needed to factor in the arrival of Dadisa and Bharmal?
With the arrival of Dadisa and Bharmal yesterday a new dimension has entered the picture. Dadisa, if you all recall, had heard a sentence from Shaguni at the time of the dire prophecy. Shaguni had said "The children will be safe from Maham's curses outside the Palace but not inside it!" I think that was on Dadisa's mind as she said in the precap "Perhaps for the safety of Husein I should take him with me to Amer!" Dadisa stretched out her hand to hold Husein, who was after all the child of her own granddaughter. But Ruq was so on the defensive that she fell back a few paces so that Dadisa would not be able to even touch Husein!
Now in the light of Dadisa's coming into the picture with the Shaguni prophecy, Diksha and I had had another midnight powwow on what will happen to our predictions.
Diksha has brought out her own version of a revised prediction thus:
"After knowing that Hussain is alive, Dadisa will remember Shagunibai's prediction that if the kids r in palace, the curse will affect them... and she will tell it to all that one kid is already lost due to curse, and if Hussain is to be saved then he should be kept away from Agra... and so she will express her wish to take him to amer...
but Ruku will think it as Jalal and Jo's plot to take Hussain away from her and thus snatching her chance to become MUZ... and so she will refuse to even let Dadisa and anybody else to touch Hussain...
Jalal will feel helpless that he can't use reverse farmaan, coz till now Ruku hasn't done anything wrong with Hussain...
and then he will be keeping watch on Ruku to find her mistake... and then Zeenat will try to poison Hussain and will be caught... Jalal ll be shocked to know that his kids r poisoned for revenge... by then Hussain will start falling ill, and finally will die...
Ruku will be shocked only coz her dream is shattered... and Jo will be totally numb... and then again dadisa will say that if they had taken Hussain away from agra, he could have been saved...Jalal will be upset that coz of Ruku he lost his another child also and blame her, that she never listened to anybody, and trusted outsiders than him and Jo, and thus she is responsible for the death of Hussain... ruku who is already shattered, will then blurt that she wanted to keep Hussain away from Jo, coz he was heir to throne and thus she could become MUZ, so how can she kill him??? this will further anger Jalal , and thus we will get to see Ruku punishment...
My own revised prediction goes thus:
Dadisa will say that Shaguni predicted that Maham's curses will work only in the Palace and Husein can be saved if he is taken out of the Palace. Ruq will at first try to avoid giving the baby to Dadisa or even Jodha. But she will realise that everyone is now turning against her. So she will herself decide to save her position by offering a smaller deal to them all. She will say I will give Husein to Jodha for one night, not more. He should not be taken to Amer, and his stay with Jodha should not be extended. Jalal may accept this proposition, and although he will not be able to let Dadisa take the baby to Amer he will feel he can help Jodha have at least one night in peace.
But by morning Ruq will be back to snatch the baby again away from Jodha. Jalal seeing how much difference having Husein has made to Jodha's emotional recovery from loss, will then tell Ruq that she should give Jodha's baby back to her for Jodha was after all the natural mother ... but Ruq will point-blank refuse (as per promo) since the baby she has is now her ticket to the MUZ, and she can see her way clear to the title now that Jodha has lost Hasan.
I believe that at this stage Jalal will take Birbal into confidence and the two of them will decide to apply the reverse farman on Ruq the minute she trips up on some small matter of care of her baby. Ruq will make some mistake and will then have to cede the baby to Jodha as per the reverse farman.
What will Ruq do wrong that the baby will revert to Jodha? It is my feeling that Zeenat will make a try in giving poison to Husein while he is with Ruq and since Jalal is keeping an eagle eye on Ruq and the baby he will catch Zeenat in the act. Zeenat will thus be unable to poison Husein. Jalal will immediately extract the truth from Zeenat that it was she who killed even Hasan with poison. Thus using the reverse farman that Ruq had hired a murderess as dai maa, and endangered Husein's life, Jalal would take the baby back from Ruq and give Husein to Jodha.
A miffed and thwarted Ruq will then decide to start dosing Jodha with small doses of daily poison in her food to prove that she is also a bad mother to Husein ... so that Jalal is forced to give Husein back to her, Ruq! But instead of the posion doing major damage to Jodha, it may kill Husein who is being fed by Jodha! Jalal and Birbal may trace the poison in Jodha's food back to Ruq and see that in her haste to become MUZ she has made Jodha ill but killed Husein. Ruq may herself blabber that she was not intending murder she was just after the audha. This could lead to Ruq's capture and punishment.
Episode starts with Jodha drawing a curtain to cover the Kanha murthy from view, which she doesn't want to see again. Hamida, Salima and Moti weep at this distress of Jodha. Jodha falls on them and cries bitterly. Suddenly she hears a baby crying and says "Hasan, my Hasan " and runs out in the direction of the crying baby.
Ruq is in her room with a crying Husein because Zeenat has not yet come to feed him. Jodha runs in followed by Salima. Jodha just grabs Husein from Ruq and cannot bear her baby hungry and she starts feeding him. Ruq looks very displeased but Salima tells her to pity Jodha's condition. But after the feed Ruq snatches back Husein and says he is used to sleeping only in his palna. Jodha is shattered.
Jalal is sitting on the floor, in a corner, in the dark of the night, crying bitterly - when Hamida comes and sits beside him. He says he was unable to cry in front of Jodha and can't bear her distress. Hamida says "You must be strong for her." And then Hamida tells Jalal all about Jodha feeding Husein and Ruq snatching him back.
Hamida says "Husein is Jodha's child and she was in peace with him for that few minutes. You have to get Husein back to her. You know what you have to do!" Jalal goes to see Jodha but she is sitting in the dark and refusing all food even when he tries to feed her. Jalal is extremely distressed with Jodha's condition.
Jalal tells himself he has to find the way to make Jodha want to live again. He proceeds to Ruq's room and on the way remembers his mother's words, and also the rough way Ruq took Husein by the farman in the DEK, and also how willingly Jodha gave Husein to Ruq. Meanwhile Ruq is in her room with a couple of her own bandhis.
The bandhis tell Ruq "Be careful ... Husein is now the waaris and you can be MUZ. But this afternoon after Jodha fed him she may ask back for him." Ruq says "They cannot take Husein, he is mine by farman. I had to let Jodha feed him, but I will not allow them to take him." The bandhis say "Be careful - they will ask for him".
Just then Jalal enters Ruq's room and all others leave. Jalal caresses Husein and looks at Ruq and says "If you are my friend from childhood you have to do as I ask. I have come to take Husein back to Jodha". Ruq is ready with the answer. She says "He is my son and you can't please the wife you love by depriving another wife." Jalal says "Give him at least for a short duration" but Ruq refuses.
Ruq says "Even if you are the king of the whole world I will not heed your request for Husein is mine." Jalal says "Jodha gave him to you so willingly ... can't you do this much for her?" Seeing Ruq's tight face he then just looks away from her and leaves her room in disgust. Ruq keeps saying "He is mine, he is mine" ...
Next morning Dadisa and Bharmal arrive from Amer on a surprise visit as they are dying to see the babies. They go to Jodha's room. In her room, Jodha is wearing no jewellery but Jalal applies sindoor on her saying "For my sake at least wear this." Bharmal and Dadisa walk in with gifts but see Jodha and Jalal hugging and weeping.
Jalal tells them that one baby has died and Bharmal is also aghast that Jodha has curtained the Kanha murthy in depression. The visitors get so shocked they drop everything to the floor and stand in shock at the bad news. Jalal caresses Jodha as she faces her father and Dadisa in grief.
Precap: Dadisa remembers the prophecy bby Shaguni that the children may die inside the Agra palace but they will be safe outside it. She suggests she could take Husein to Amer for his safety and stretches out her hands to get and hold the baby of her granddaughter. But Ruq grabs the baby away from her as Bharmal and Dadisa stand aghast. Jalal looks at Ruq with utter disgust.
How much more do we have to bear this week before the track ends on a "good wins over evil" storyline. Phew! I am already exhausted just waiting for the end to be in sight!
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