Rajat's jalal's memories via shyamala's pearls.. links updated pg 1! - Page 18

will catch up later..cannot wait to give mt two cents away😉

Not me, my pet, it was a little before my time. It was my mother, and we had a whole collection, including Ponniyin Selvan, and Thevan's CID Chandru. In fact we still have it, for I have preserved it lovingly, except for some of the lesser works that I gifted away. In Mylapore, even nowadays, there a lot of relatively young ladies still keen to have such books, because they have the original illustrations for each chapter. If you buy it now as a printed book, as I did for Sivakamiyin Sabadam, there are only a very few, poor quality illustrations. The difference in appeal is tremendous.

Shyamala Aunty

Originally posted by: Sandhya.A

Good Lord ! You too aunty. I thought that only my grandmom mom and aunts were such devout magazine story binders.😲 We have stacks of the original editions torn from the magazines esp Kalki and neatly bound. The Ponniyin Selvan, Kadal Pura and numerous other works by Kalki and Saandilyan. Historicals and non-historicals. My grandmother used to be proud of her collection.

You much watch TM movie aunty. Surely it must be on youtube. The make up was too loud and Padmini quite old looking. Else the movie is really good. The wicked shameless 'Vaithi' played by Nagesh is a treat to watch.

Its great to read u again nd again aunty. many times I agreed to u many times strongly disagreed but overall enjoyed rajat more nd more through ur writing. 😃

Originally posted by: sashashyam

That, my dear Ela, is an excellent idea, and do not forget to let me know if you change your takes on the story!

When are they starting the telecasts in Zee Anmol?

Shyamala

i would also like to know that😉😆

Originally posted by: sashashyam

My dear Preeti,

It is always pleasing when others discover talents that one did not know one possessed! 😉 I enjoyed writing those parts, and I am glad you enjoyed reading them. Thank you!

For me, however, the real highlight of the whole was the scene between Jalal and the little Hindu boy. One can have naughty, flirtatious goings on any time, and they are very entertaining, but that scene was superb and intensely meaningful, as you have noted as well.

As for Rajat outdoing Hrithik in the intensity of his Jalal during the fencing bout, you have to remember that Hrithik's Jalal was teasing and lighthearted throughout, whereas here it is a game of one-upmanship with an undercurrent of aggressiveness. Plus there was, in the film, no backlog of near hatred between him and that Jodha. So the two Jalals should not really be compared. \

Hrithik's Jalal had another very attractive quality, elegance, which came from his height, his presence, and his lean, sleek body. Remember him walking down the palace corridors, the curtains billowing all round, listening to Jodha singing? That was very special, and it cannot possibly be reproduced in this serial, just like the delicacy and grace of the first, face to face meeting between them, in Jodha's puja room, cannot be replicated here. That was stunning.

So it is best to avoid comparisons and take each on its own merits.

Shyamala

shyamala, hrithik was very graceful as akbar and my favorite one is how he tamed the elephant..! rajat on the other hand looked acted and relived akbar, he has killer looks but height part pulls everything down, regardless he overcomes his short comings with his acting and screen presence! and comparing a movie to a serial is again comparing apple to oranges!

Movie scored better in

Originally posted by: sashashyam

My dear Shreya,

Thank you for reading and appreciating these very long posts, clubbing together extracts from my episode analyses of 6-7 of the early episodes of Jodha Akbar. I don't know about Rajat, but I enjoy reading my old posts and preparing these collages, especially the very lively exchanges on matters of substance that we used to have then, arguing back and forth. There is next to nothing of that these days.

I have also been rather disappointed in the no show by many of my old, regular readers, who seem to have become so disgusted with the serial of late that they do not want to have anything more to do with it, even with the fine, early episodes. It is a pity that their commitment to Rajat and his talent could not overcome this distaste for the work of the CVs in the second half of the show. So, you and others like you are extra welcome here!

I do not know how many more parts I will be posting, but one thing I shall do without fail. That will be to post the full list of all the 99 episode analyses I put up in the IF Jodha Akbar forum, marking my personal favourites in deep blue. Then all of you can read any of those 99 posts in full, with all the funny and satirical bits, whereas the extracts I have included are necessarily selective, since they have to be Jalal-centric.

Thank you so much for your concern about my knee. I am soldiering on with the physiotherapy, even if it is painful, but it looks like another 3 months of it at least.

Shyamala Aunty

shyamala, keep posting as your health permits and the rest if you do not feel like please give me a final list of all your threads towards the end and i can update on page one and that way all your threads will come to this thread and we can have easy access to it..your writings and rajat's acting is something that fans like us can cherish for lifetime!

shyamla for u..hope you like it😉

credit RTw

Farewell Tribute to Rajat's Jalal

Part 5

Folks,

Ok, here we go again! This part is going to be somewhat of a yo yo, with landmark scenes, as in In the vale of tears, alternating with less impressive ones. But even the latter are like pot pourri, which smells lovely, does it not? So even the minor scenes that I am going to select for you are charming , and revealing too, in terms of the character development of Jalal and, who else, his Tar Baby, Jodha Begum! As in this one, with two distinctly delightful scenes.

Both these scenes are wonderful, each in its own way, and even if the script makes Jalal seem at times to be playing catch up to Jodha, that does not diminish the quality of his performance, which is exceptionally nuanced and a very good watch.

Those wanting to read all the funny and ironic bits that have been excised can see the whole post at
(Bolding unintentional!)

1.Jodha Akbar 51: Clearing the Air

https://www.indiaforums.com/forum/post/90949112

Posted: 28 August 2013 at 12:01am | IP Logged

...

The quality of caring: With apologies to Shakespeare. Like Portia's quality of mercy in The Merchant of Venice, the quality of caring in Jodha is also twice blessed: it blesses her that gives and also the one who takes.

Jalal wonders earlier what more there might be for him to discover about Jodha. He gets a large dollop of it here, served up front and centre, with the natural self-assertion of a wife who insists on setting her laggard spouse right where she believes that he has fallen short. A most novel experience for both Jalal and the Shahenshah! But of that a little later.

The earlier part of the scene with Jodha, Hamida Banu and Sheikh Salim Chisti is charming, both in the affectionate respect that marks Jodha's behavior towards her Ammijaan, and in her calm demeanour when she receives the holy man's blessings on her marriage with Jalal. When he prophesies that this will herald a new bright era for the Mughal empire, maybe her thoughts go back to what her mother told her, before the wedding, about bhagya choosing its own yoddha.

Even when the Sheikh goes on to proclaim that this union would soon produce an heir for the empire, she does not flinch. It is worth noting that at this point, Jalal, who is of course constantly stealing sidelong glances at Jodha, does not look either smug or triumphant. On the contrary, he looks very serious and even a tad troubled, as if he were wondering how on earth any such near miracle was to be pulled off when his wife cannot even stand his touch!

The touch part takes a baby step forward when Jodha, after some initial hesitation, lets Jalal help her off the podium. The look he gives her afterwards is neither amused nor one of arrogant self-satisfaction. It is one of pure pleasure and happy possessiveness, and when she looks up and catches it, there is no distaste or pulling back in her eyes. There is something quite different in them, and that relates to Hamida Banu's sudden mannat to walk to Ajmer and back to ensure that the Jalal-Jodha baby does make its appearance as the heir to the Mughal empire.

To go back a bit, when Jodha immediately endorses his protest against this alarming proclamation, Jalal does an imperceptible double take. It was not clear whether it was because he heard Jodha calling his mother Ammijaan- with all that implies, not just for her relationship with Hamida Banu but also in terms of Jodha's desire to adopt Mughal tehzeeb - or because her ready support for him astonishes him.

Thereafter, once he gives up, one sees Jodha darting some fairly irritated glances at him when they are still seated on the podium. It seems clear that if they had been on even slightly better terms, she would have nudged him sharply and hissed instructions into his ear that he should react more strongly and decisively to halt this dangerous mannat😉.

It is also to be noted that when Jalal, who spends a much longer moment looking down at his wife than taking leave of the rest, finally departs, he nods farewell to Jodha, and her eyes follow his retreating figure - both firsts of their kind!

An aggressive biwi: This is one delightful scene - the Shahenshah being hauled over the coals relentlessly by his hitherto distant wife for having, of all things, failed to prevent his mother from undertaking a hazardous pilgrimage.

When Jodha lands up at Jalal's suite, he must have wondered what was in the offing, though he maintains a poker face. This is accentuated when she begins by apologizing for disturbing him: he was surely wondering Ab isko kya ho gaya hai, ki hamare saath itni tameez se pesh aa rahi hai? 😉

But she is dead set on her worries, and does not bother about his expression or even pause as she launches into her arguments. The beautiful face is creased with genuine fear and concern for her Ammijaan as she ticks Jalal off in no uncertain terms for not having been forceful enough in stopping his mother. He is bemused, and even as he lodges a proforma protest about his being lectured to about how he should handle his mother, one can see that he is both touched and impressed by the quality of caring that is so evident in her.

What follows is, at one level, a triumph of quick thinking by Jalal, who is undoubtedly used to exploiting every opening he can get in battle, and this is, after all, also a battle of a kind. The stroke of pure genius lay, however, in his remembering the way in which Jodha had given a kasam to Motibai in the Diwan-e-Khas, and immediately adapting it to his own benefit! Poor Jodha is boxed in by the kasam on her patidev's head on the one hand, and her fears for the mother-in-law she has come to love on the other. No wonder that, after some anguished attempts to read his eyes, she gives in.

Two caveats here. One, whatever the degree of sudden closeness Jalal and Jodha now set out to exhibit to the rest of their world - and this is undoubtedly going to be manna from Heaven for the legions of Akdha enthusiasts! " they can hardly announce that Jodha is in the family way for at least 6-8 weeks. How do they make sure that Hamida Banu does not set out for Ajmer Sharif by then?

Two, I am a great admirer of Rajat and his mastery of facial nuance. He scores very high grades in that department 99 times out of 100. Yesterday, as he was making an overly eager sales pitch to Jodha about the natak that he was proposing, it was the 100^th. His eyes gleamed too much. and the whole expression was too forced. The director should have spotted it and got him to tone it down in a (rare) retake; it would have made that part of the scene a lot better. Paridhi, on the other hand,her anguished eyes, filmed over with unexplained tears, desperately looking into his and searching for reassurance (probably that this would remain a natak), was pitch perfect.

Shyamala B.Cowsik

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

2.Well, well, good old Isaac Newton, and his law of gravity, which ordains that whatever goes up has to come down, prevailed over our hopes and expectations, and Episode 52 turned out to be mostly a dud. I say mostly because one of the bits that could be salvaged from the hotch potch, the lovely, ambiguous aarti scene, (though it could, the CVs willing, have been much better) would have been enough to make up for the whole episode!

As usual, those wanting to read my savagely satirical takes on Jodha pakaofying the ears of her long-suffering Kanha with endless complaints about that ghruna ka patra Jalal, or about Ruqaiya doing her hyena act, can see the full post at

Jodha Akbar 52: Anticlimax

https://www.indiaforums.com/forum/jodha-akbar/3718387/jodha-akbar-52-anticlimax

Posted: 29 August 2013 at 1:39am | IP Logged

...

In this context (of Ruqaiya doing her hyena act), I was standing up and clapping for Jalal when he declares that even if they have a girl, they would raise the little princess with the same love and pride as if they had had a son. It was wonderful to see an emperor, on pins for a male heir, nonetheless ready to love a daughter every bit as much as a son. The Enlightened Sixteenth Century Man Award is hereby conferred on Shahenshah Ja-laluddin Mohammed!👏👏👏

Rajat was extremely convincing as the expectant father, wonder and delight pouring out of him as his voice catches in his throat in his breathless eagerness. His bubbling joy as he issues instructions for the glad event to be celebrated all over the empire might seem excessive, and more important, premature, but the very excess shows how much this child of his means to him.

It is thus a given that he would promise Ruqaiya a gift of her choice, which she salts away, like a chipmunk ( her two centre front teeth do make look a bit like one, come to think of it!), for after the arrival of the anticipated heir. ...

The cultural gap: the Aarti: Yes, yes, I know that 90% of the forum did not look beyond those 3 minutes 10 seconds, and could not care less what was there, or not there, in the other 17 minutes 31 seconds😉. I loved it too: it was so sensuous and delicate, so mischievous, so graceful and tantalizing.

At least Jalal made it so, with minimal help from Jodha. She is so busy patronizing him mentally for not knowing how to accept the aarti (though how she expects him to know that is a mystery) that she does not cotton on to the fact that he singes his right hand quite deliberately over the flame. He knows that she will then do it for him and raise her hand, which he can then promptly grasp in his.

What follows is a superb display of delicate flirting a la Jalal. His eyes, lambent with a hidden emotion, tender and teasing at once, never leave her face, while she keeps hers lowered till almost the very end. His hand slides down, never letting go of hers, till he shifts it to cup the flame. He then cheekily makes it clear, by taking the aarti in due and proper form, that he was fooling her all along. It was exactly like the fake hand injury trick on the road to Agra, only it is gentler and free of any intent to ridicule. What is remarkable, and admirable, is that he obviously bears no grudge against Jodha for having turned him down the day before.

It is only at the end, when he has finished with the aarti, that she raises her eyes, grave and questioning, and more than a little shy, to his. What they might have said to each other remains unknown, for the messenger from Ruqaiya comes up just then, and the unsure and embarrassed Jodha seizes the opening and makes good her escape. (I bet the CVs did not know what to write in here for them, and took the easy way out!)

This apart, the whole conception of the scene, especially Jodha's script, was illogical and faulty. Here she is, offering the aarti to her Muslim husband, who naturally has no idea what he is supposed to do with it. Jalal, who obviously has an excellent memory for detail, goes by what Mynavati did while welcoming her javaisa, and does his best to cope with the cultural gap, lowering his forehead for the tilak. Why the two of them have to do a Barfi act and cannot speak up is incomprehensible. Even more incomprehensible is Jodha repeating aarti, aarti like a stubborn parrot, instead of explaining the procedure right at the beginning, as Aishwarya had done in the film.

The scene was apparently played for laughs, but in the process, the opportunity for a charming and gentle reaching out to each other was lost. Nonetheless, the execution, mostly from Jalal's side, was so impeccable that by the end, as he rubs his sooty and slightly singed right hand thru his hair, eyes crinkled in his private thoughts, even I did not mind that this scene, which promised so much in the precap, was actually left dangling like a kite bereft of a wind, rudderless and directionless.

Almost the only positive note I could extract from it is this. Why does Jodha ( now totally at home in her harem rooms, with a lush tusli plant in a proper tulsi mandap to boot), want to give Jalal the aarti at all? She has just asserted to her Kanha (who must by now have procured a pair of good earplugs for himself!😉) that she has itni ghruna for him. He is a good distance away and he is engaged in working out with weights. He is not, bar an initial glance, looking at her. Why does she, after having offered the aarti to all her maids, not quietly take the aarti thali and go back to her suite?

But that is what she does not do. Instead, muttering under her breath that she does not want to go in front of him at all, she proceeds to do precisely that, rationalizing her action to herself by arguing that it is bhagwan ki aarti. She goes right up to him and proffers the thali, gesturing mutely to him with her eyes.

I do not know what you folks feel about it., but if I had as much ghruna towards anyone as Jodha professes to feel for Jalal, I would stay a good 500 yards away from him whenever possible. Not trot up to him, quite unnecessarily, with an aarti ki thali! Not just that, Jodha makes no move to pull her hand away when Jalal grasps it, as she did even with Suryabhan, and she must have caught a glimpse of his Rudolf Valentino look as well as he was taking the aarti, for he never moved his gaze from her face. She is one devious wench, folks, make no mistake!😉

Shyamala B.Cowsik

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

3. Now this one made me sit up and rejoice again. It was what I would call a "progressive" episode, in the sense that the central relationship in our tale, that between Jalal and Jodha, progresses to a new level of mutual understanding.

If Jodha stood out here because of her transparent goodness (in those days, untinged with mahaanta!), Jalal was no slouch either. His genuine joy at her poem for the baby to come is heartwarming, and after he has had Jodha explain the meaning of the poem to him, his smile is very different from the usual. It contains no mockery, nor it is flirtatious. It brims over with empathy, understanding, a liking that is direct, candid and genuine. Something that he has surely never before felt for a woman. And also the beginning of friendship.

Little wonder that I had high hopes for them for the next few episodes. But trust the CVs to being any castle of dreams crashing down in an instant. Well, let us not fret about that now, and instead look at the new hope! (Bolding unintentional!)

Jodha Akbar 53: A new hope

https://www.indiaforums.com/forum/jodha-akbar/3719591/jodha-akbar-53-a-new-hope

Posted: 29 August 2013 at 10:10pm | IP Logged

Folks,

Consistency, the wise say, is the virtue of fools. Not being a fool, I am, after watching yesternight's wonderful episode, prepared to take back my lament on Episode 52, that it would have been better for the development of the Jalal-Jodha story if the naatak had gone ahead after all.

The New Hope of my title of today is of course that of the first Star Wars film, but it also perfectly sums up what I felt at 8:30 pm last night. The beautiful, imaginative script, and the pitch perfect performances by the duo, have opened the door on a new vista. A vista of a new beginning, a beginning of a sincere, candid understanding of each other. An understanding based not on attraction on one side or the end of repulsion on the other, but on mutual, warm appreciation of each other's qualities of head and heart.

Jodha: Yesterday belonged to Jodha, and Paridhi sailed thru the whole effortlessly, projecting the simple, transparent, unclouded goodness of Jodha's whole persona with total conviction. ..

The unruffled dignity and nobility with which she answered Ruqaiya's wild accusations (which only revealed the depth of the latter's by now endemic insecurity vis a a vis this polar opposite of a woman, whom she cannot understand and thus hates). The warm gratitude with which she responds to the outpouring of love and admiration from her Ammijaan, touching her feet repeatedly in respect and affection. The genuine detachment and goodness of heart with which she silences the complaints of Motibai.

And finally, the eager warmth and sincerity in her eyes, and her whole face, as she explains to the Shahenshah the import of her gift and her poem of welcome for the new arrival. Not one line, not one expression, however fleeting, was out of place, not one was either over the top in cloying mahaanta or found wanting in sincerity.

It was a visually and tonally perfect performance which gladdened by my heart, for though I am no sentimentalist, and have by now, with age and experience, become more of a cynic than anything else, genuine goodness always moves me.

But the most arresting bit in the whole was not in any of the above-mentioned scenes. It came when Jodha is leaving Hamida Banu's rooms, after the latter voices the hope that Jodha too would soon give her the same happiness that Ruqaiya was now about to do. Jodha's smiling face becomes serious, and she tries to smile, the right side of her mouth lifting in a forced attempt at cheerfulness.

As she comes out of the room, the flames from a nearby mashaal shade her face, which appears and disappears as they waver in the breeze. Her eyes seem desolate, clouded with a sense of despair. What is it that she feels? She believes what she says earlier to Ruqaiya, that a woman, no matter how highly placed, is truly fulfilled only in motherhood. Is the sudden sorrow reflected in her eyes because she sees this longed for motherhood, as she sees it, forever outside her grasp? I felt so.

Jalal: He too was a revelation last night. I have often written that what Jalal feels for Jodha is neither a pedestrian attraction rooted in admiration of her beauty, nor physical desire, nor even the pull of the unusual in the first woman who, far from running after him like all the others, does not even want him. It was always something more, a desire of the heart that he could not understand when it dragged him on that dangerous adventure to Amer just to catch a glimpse of her.

It was the same with Jodha. The face in the water that haunts her conscious and her subconscious, the face she sees even with her eyes closed. Now that she knows whose face it was, she has buried it deep inside her, under layers of stubborn and irrational ghruna. A ghruna that she repeats to herself every now and then as if she might otherwise forget it! But it is there, nonetheless, and as she watches Jalal leave her rooms, it is reflected once more in the curiously gentle expression in her eyes. A look of tentative hope, which seeks more of it knows not what.

The scene in Ruqaiya's rooms as Jalal opens Jodha's gift brings out with blinding clarity the basic difference between the two of them.

Jalal instantly sums up what lies behind Jodha's lovely poem to the child he awaits: Lagta hai ki dil se likha hai. But it needs a dil, and a sensitive and perceptive one, to recognize what another such dil feels.

Ruqaiya, on the other hand, is unseeing in her total self-centredness and foolish vanity: her comments about Jodha's supposed chaaploosi, and her apparently trying to cultivate Ruqaiya's favour are incredible in their blind folly. I do not suppose that Jalal, still lost in the aural beauty of the poem, even hears what she says, which is probably just as well for her!...

To revert, when the lines of the poem haunt Jalal's sleep and echo and re-echo in his zehen, the underlying note, for all that he remembers her beauty seen up close, is one of gratitude, of a sudden emotional connect. He understands instinctively that her joy at the prospect of the child is both deep and genuine, and it is this generous and caring spirit that touches him as perhaps nothing else so far in his life. ...

It is this same gratitude that lights up his whole face when, after having listened, with unwinking concentration, to Jodha's enthusiastic explanation of the significance of the spoon and the meaning of her poem, he praises her words for having embellished and enriched her gift.

For the first time, he smiles at her with a warmth that is untinged with even a hint of the usual mockery or one-upmanship, or even his trademark mischievous flirtatiousness. It is a smile of empathy, of understanding, of a liking that is direct, candid and genuine. Something that he has perhaps never before felt for a woman. The same empathy, of recognition of what he feels, and of a reluctant liking, are reflected in Jodha's eyes as she watches him leave.

It is in this quantum shift on both sides that the new hope of my title is rooted.

Titbits: The little exchange between Jalal and Jodha, about her oblique manner of getting him to leave, was delightful in itself, but even more so for the sense of camaraderie in her retort and his comeback. At long last, they are on the way to becoming friends, and there is no stronger foundation for eventual love than friendship.

Jalal's phenomenal memory for the spoken word. He is able to recite the whole poem, most of the words in which he cannot understand, faultlessly after just one hearing, which shows how keen is his faculty for Shruti . No wonder Akbar always had something significant read out to him daily before he retired for the night. It must all have imprinted itself in his memory, word perfect and docketed away for future reference.

The sudden sense of deprivation on Jalal's face when Ruqaiya, with unthinking casualness, asks him to read Jodha's poem. That he cannot read and write is a lifelong and bitter regret for Jalal; remember his rooh describing himself, even centuries later while speaking to Jodha's rooh, as an anpadh jaahil? That Ruqaiya rubs this wound raw, and does not even realise it, is typical of her.

Jalal's curious expression when Mahaam Anga asks him whether he agrees with his Ammijaan's paean to Jodha. It is not resentment or even mild jealousy, but rather a bemused, and amused, acceptance.

One feels for Mahaam Anga in the precap, yelling at an obviously sozzled Adham in furious frustration. If they had had hospitals for deliveries in those days, she would surely have sued them for saddling her with a changeling😉!

Jodha watching Jalal dancing, with Rahim on his shoulder. We cannot see thru the veil, but I am sure she is a tad more reassured about the capacity for affection in the erstwhile Jalal the Jallad, the ogre whose image is fast fading in her mind.

Shyamala B.Cowsik

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

4. This one was a tour de force of raw emotions, and Jalal, who dominated it from beginning to end, made both his joy and his gut-wrenching grief infectious. We, the audience, could not stand aside and watch him with detachment, even if it was seeped in admiration. He pulled us into the whirlpool with him, and we laughed when he rejoiced, and we wept when he collapsed in unbearable grief. The awful fate that hung over Jodha was there at the back of our minds, but it could overshadow the spectacular display of acting prowess that Rajat brought to his Jalal.

Jodha Akbar 55: In the vale of tears

https://www.indiaforums.com/forum/jodha-akbar/3723602/jodha-akbar-55-in-the-vale-of-tears

Posted: 03 September 2013 at 1:33am | IP Logged

...

The image from last night that haunted me was not that of Jalal blossoming into an expectant father, wrapped up, to an unbelievable extent, in the child whose arrival he awaits with such eagerness. So eagerly that he is prepared to put off his campaigns of conquest, and sheath his shamsheer till that happy day. So eagerly that he rates even the prospect of having an heir, for the empire he rules and the even more vast empire he is sure he will rule, lower than the happiness of being a father.

It is rarely, even today , that a father is so emotionally dependent on the child he hopes to have, so think how much rarer this must have been in those days! The Shahenshah has turned philosopher in this unexpected flood of joy: Zameen khudh chunti hai ki us par kaun hukumat karega. Takht apna shahenshah khudh chunta hai.

Nor that of Jalal, restless from a variety of unfamiliar emotions that do not let him sleep, that make him unsettled whether alone or in company, assembles the 4 senior women who are the closest to him and seeks answers to why he feels the way he does.

It is a lovely scene, with Jalal's uncontainable joy brimming over, and being reflected in the four affectionate, indulgent faces of these women - his Badiammi, his Ammijaan, his Gulbadan phupha and Jijianga, his other wet nurse - for whom he has been the apple of their eye since his birth. As he walks away, they form an arc of empathy as they gaze after him, and I could almost believe that all their smiles are genuine, but still the doubt ate away at me from inside - is it really all, or all bar one?

Nor even of Jalal breaking down completely in his Badiammi's sheltering, warm embrace, weeping like a lost child as the truth of the tragedy seeps into his consciousness. As he looks up and accuses the Almighty of having let him, and even more so Ruqaiya, down so cruelly, anguish and anger fight for dominance in the upturned face.

It was rather the slightly earlier, fleeting shot of Jalal's face as he stands outside Ruqaiya's rooms, having been expelled from them by Mahaam Anga in anticipation of the arrival of the Khwaja. It shows, for the first time ever, fear. A fear that he does not try to hide as a sign of weakness, for he is beyond any such petty considerations. A naked fear that desperately seeks reassurance, and negation, from his Badiammi's eyes. When it dawns on him that this is not forthcoming, that something has gone very badly wrong, the fear dissolves into the despair of sudden, gut-wrenching grief and tears.

It was an incredibly nuanced performance from so young an actor, who could hardly draw on his own experiences for such scenes, but would have to fall back on his imagination.

In the whole episode, Rajat's Jalal walked thru this vale of tears with amazing conviction and credibility, so much so that by the end, when Ruqaiya demands justice from the Shahenshah, one has almost forgotten that there is an individual called Rajat Tokas. There is only Jalal. That is perhaps the ultimate compliment that one can pay to any actor.

Mahaam Anga: After Jalal, if there is one character who deserves applause for the sheer ability to carry conviction whatever her inner thoughts and her actions, it is Mahaam Anga. For more on this, plus a bit on Ruqaiya, I would refer you to the full post.

Jalal I & Jalal II: Even in depths of such overwhelming grief, Jalal balances the distraught father on the one hand, and the Shahenshah as the impartial dispenser of justice on the other, to perfection. Despite the apparently watertight case against Jodha, he does not accept it at once, but threatens the Khwaja with death if she proves to be wrong.

But she is unshaken, and the case against Jodha is not merely a circumstantial one, be it noted, but one backed by solid evidence (that is to say, evidence that has been carefully tweaked to seem so to even the most skeptical judge). There is the dature ka ark in the kesar from Amer, plus the Khwaja's assertion that it is not found in the Mughal dominions but only in the dry areas adjoining its borders, and that only expert hakims from the old royal families know how to extract and prepare it from the datura. Then the smell of datura on Ruqaiya's breath and traces of it in the blood that has seeped out of her body. And finally Mahaam Anga's genuine swooning act; they show her surroundings going out of focus in her eyes as she sways; naturally, for the dature ka ark in the kesar is real.

One can almost see two Jalals struggling within him for domination within him. There is Jalal I, whose insensate rage against the woman who seems to have killed his child threatens to sweep all before it in a mad, murderous rush.

Then there is Jalal II, who cannot accept the awful possibility that this selfsame woman, in whose goodness he had placed his trust, the woman whom he had begun to admire and respect almost despite himself, could have so betrayed that trust and perpetrated this vile deed.

It is this idea of the pristine image he now has of Jodha being lost and degraded that hurts him almost as much as the loss of his child.

Matters are made tougher for him by the fact that no one accuses Jodha directly - not the Khwaja, not Mahaam Anga , who in fact goes one better and exclaims Par Jodha Begum aise kyon karegi? In fact, as the net of the physical evidence is drawn tighter and tighter, it closes inexorably on Amer, and thus on Jodha, and it is Jalal who is forced to arrive at the same suspicion, that soon becomes proof positive.

Hamida's no show: Strangely enough, Hamida Banu, who might have spoken up for Jodha with conviction and strengthened Jalal II's hands, is nowhere to be seen just when she is needed the most. Not just here, she was nowhere to be seen when Jalal was distraught with grief after learning from Mahaam Anga, that his child was no more. Or anywhere else before or after that, for that matter. No wonder she is invariably so ineffective and lacking in influence on her son.

Still, Jalal does not rush to judgment and charge off to Jodha's rooms to punish her. He goes to Ruqaiya's and tries to soothe her and get her to act rationally and soberly, for Jalal II is struggling still within him to find a way out for Jodha. His inner sense tells him one thing, and the evidence another, but the inner voice is not strong enough to overcome the pitiless logic of Ruqaiya's demand for justice against Jodha, who she genuinely believes is a devious murderess.

It is this implacable voice of a bereaved mother that defeats Jalal II, who has been fighting hard till then solely on the strength of the conviction that comes from his heart, the conviction that despite all the appearances to the contrary, the Amer ki shehzaadi is innocent.

So, when Jalal I takes over in the precap, there is no way he can be berated for what he does. I was glad to see that among all the helpless lamenting in the forum about Jodha, almost no one has blamed Jalal for believing that it was she who had done it. Confronted with that pile of evidence, not even a saint would have exculpated Jodha.

Shyamala B.Cowsik

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5. I was quite depressed with this episode, for not only has the Jalal-Jodha relationship, which was advancing, albeit slowly, suffered a drastic setback, but there seemed to bee no immediate prospect of its recovering lost ground.

Though my judgement was clouded by this, I could nonetheless not fail to admire Rajat as his Jalal lets his raging grief and unbearable sense of loss overcome his deep-rooted sense of justice. He brings our beautifully how the growing softness Jalal had begun to feel for Jodha now actually acts as a stimulant for his rage, for Jalal hates himself for having developed feelings for a woman who, he is now convinced, has destroyed what he had wanted and loved more than anything else, his unborn child.

Jodha Akbar 56: Confusion worse confounded

https://www.indiaforums.com/forum/jodha-akbar/3724397/jodha-akbar-56-confusion-worse-confounded

Posted: 03 September 2013 at 2:19pm | IP Logged

Folks,

If you are puzzled by my strange get up tonight, let me clarify the matter. I am all togged up in sackcloth and ashes, like the medieval Holy Roman Emperor Gregory when he went barefoot in the winter snow to Canossa to seek the Pope's pardon. The idea is to do penance, after having endured the consistently OTT Episode 56 of today, for having been so dismally wrong with my predictions after Episode 55😭. Not that this is anything new, for one of the few points on which I was correct was that I am almost always wrong when I try to second guess the CVs😉!

Jalal I: Jalal II having apparently become roadkill, his fierce alter ego, Jalal I. was the dominant presence from beginning to end today. He was raging like a rampant bull, accusing, manhandling and threatening Jodha, shutting out all debate in the Diwan-e-Khas and violating Mughal legal norms in his mad rush to railroad Jodha and her brothers to the worst possible punishment for their crime' (but not death, be it noted, for Jodha).

He is impervious to anything and everything : pleas and gentle arguments from Salima Sultan (though it is odd to see her citing Bairam Khan, whose patent solution to most problems was kisika sar kalam karna, as a model of fairness and farsightedness for Jalal!😉), appeals for keeping a cool head from his mother, the citing of the norms of Mughal justice by his Ministers, and stubborn counter assertions from Mansingh. Any attempt to speak up for Jodha acts as a red rag to a bull .No one, it seems, can reach him and pull him back even an inch.

Jodha: Given no opportunity to speak, Jodha can only stare at Jalal's furious visage thru her veil. Even if she had been allowed to speak, what could she have said except that she is not guilty? This apart, she seems blank and shell shocked, and there are no nuances of any kind in her expression.

It was also strange that whereas she is full of sympathy for Ruqaiya on the loss of her child, Jodha does not seem to even realise that it is Jalal who has suffered the far greater loss, and that he is consumed by bitter grief. She can, it seems, share the sorrow of Ruqaiya, who hates her openly and strongly. But she does not share the agony of her husband who, just the day before, had shown so much warm appreciation for her caring for his child, and had done her unprecedented honour at the jashn.

Her comment about his blaming her family without reason is bizarre, seeing that he has told her that the poison was in the kesar they had brought from Amer. It is very odd that she expresses no shock about this, nor does she wonder how this could have happened. ...

Jalal ka sar: I could not help thinking that all of Jodha's chickens - the endless assertions that she hated Jalal and wanted Jalal ka sar - were now coming home to roost, and to deadly effect. For Jalal believes that she killed his child out of her hatred for him , to hurt him in the worst possible way. Tum mujhse nafrat karti ho na? To mujh par vaar karti. Mere bachche ko kyon mara? To this belief there is no counter. Jodha has herself made sure of that.

It is this belief that fuels the blind rage that shuts out Jalal's sense of justice, his sense of his responsibilities as the final court of appeal, leaving only a burning thirst for revenge. A thirst that is all the more implacable because he knows that lurking in some corner of his being, there is Jalal II. He wants to disown Jalal II completely, along with the growing softness he had begun to feel for this woman who, he is now convinced, has destroyed what he had wanted and loved more than anything else, his unborn child. ...

To sum up, we seem to have gone several steps backwards in the Jalal-Jodha story. Earlier, she had the luxury of hating him without any qualms, while he allowed her to do so without imposing himself on her. He was fitfully irritated, at times teasing, and of late even admiring. All that is now gone, and there is, in his eyes, only a relentless hatred that outweighs anything that she might ever have felt towards him. For it is not an abstract concept, but a real feeling rooted in a real, terrible, personal loss, and a horrible crime of which he holds her guilty.

It will be interesting, and revealing, to see how this hatred against her will affect Jodha, and not just because of the Damocles sword now hanging over her head. It is time for her to wake up and smell the coffee.

Shyamala B.Cowsik

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6. This post was an afterthought, due to pressing requests for one, but it has turned out to be a fairly interesting exercise in psychoanalysis, mainly, of course, of Jalal.

It is clear that nothing of what Jalal is doing now is acceptable behaviour, even according to his own code and standards, but that is the way he is at this point. I have thus avoided indulging in excoriation or expressions of horrified shock at Jalal's untrammeled ferocity.

Instead, I have tried to get at the reason why he is so,and I have tried to do this as objectively and rationally as possible. And then the same for Jodha. You might just find it interesting, especially the theory of their reversion to their default settings! (Bolding unintentional!)

Finally, please do see -a very interesting historical footnote about methods of punishment across the world in the 16^th century. This is for those horrified at Jalal's declaration that if found guilty, the Amer lot would burnt alive in public, and for the rest too, of course!

Jodha Akbar 58: Wuthering depths

https://www.indiaforums.com/forum/jodha-akbar/3727183/jodha-akbar-58-wuthering-depths

Posted: 06 September 2013 at 4:10am | IP Logged

Folks,

I thought you were all in for a Friday afternoon treat: an escape, for at least this one day, from my 3 pagers😉! I am run off my feet with other commitments, but some very kind requests for my take on what was obviously an unsettling and unpleasant episode have brought me back here this afternoon. Isme mera koyi kasoor nahin hai!

I will start with two givens, and as everyone would have watched the episode, there is no need to go into the details of who said what to whom, and more important, who did not say what to whom.

The first given is that Jalal is well over the top, with a rage that is obviously not ebbing, but feeding on itself and whipping itself up to frenzy levels.

The other given is that the Amer quintet, bar the very level headed and straight-thinking Mansingh, is as silent as the grave. They have not, for whatever reason, opened their mouths even to proclaim their innocence (bar Jodha's assertion to Jalal the first night).

What I propose to do today is not to excoriate one or the other, and to eschew any kind of shocked condemnation on the one hand, and melting empathy on the other, for Jalal and Jodha respectively. It is both pointless and repetitive, for the posts I have seen are all entirely predictable and declamatory. Instead, I propose to take each as he/she is, and to try and see why each is behaving the way he/she is doing.

Jalal: For any major change in the behavior of a character, especially a very strong one like Jalal, there has to be a definite and immediate reason. From the time of the chess match, thru the fencing duel, Jodha rescuing Rahim, and finally with the lovely poem she writes for the Jalal-Ruqaiya baby, Jalal had come quite a distance, and on an unfamiliar road, as far as Jodha was concerned.

His attitude to her earlier , up to the immediate post marriage phase, was entirely coloured by what he had heard her say about him at the Amer jail, and by her very obvious distaste for her marriage to him, which she never made any attempt to camouflage. So his approach was shaped partly by a desire to dominate her and break her guroor, and partly by reluctant admiration for her beauty. There was no personal element in it, for he did not know her as a person at all. And when he thought he did, as in the mirchi incident, his antagonism was only reinforced.

Changing perceptions: But soon enough, as he got to see a different facet of Jodha every other day, all of them positive and fascinating, Jalal began to slip into a phase he had never known before. It was not yet what is commonly perceived as love. It was rather admiration for her various skill sets, which overlapped with his own - at chess or at fencing - and to which he could thus relate at once.

However, it was only after the rescue of Rahim, and even more so after the poem, which effected a quantum change in the way he perceived Jodha, that Jalal began, for perhaps the first time in his life, to trust in the unselfish goodness of another human being. He was now sure that the Amer ki shehzaadi was special, that even if she did not care for him and even if she still hated him, she was capable for deep and genuine affection for the child which was already the closest to his heart. Everyone else who was close to him had always wanted something or the other from him, but Jodha was unselfish and undemanding, he believed, and so she was in a class apart. And this shift in perception and feeling of his side was reflected not just in his private praise of the poem to her, but in his public praise of her gift at the jashn, and in the unprecedentedly high level of respect and regard he showed for her then.

Oh, what a fall!: It was from these heights in Jalal's innermost being that Jodha fell, and fell precipitously, the same night when, after fighting the idea initially and threatening the Khwaja with dire punishment if she turned out to be wrong, Jalal succumbed to what seemed to be a cast iron case against Jodha. It was not circumstantial evidence but (concocted) physical evidence, the validity of which, in those days of no forensic or technical skills, was readily accepted even by Mansingh.

One can cite the Holy Bible about Satan: Lucifer, Son of the Morning, how art thou fallen? , which is mirrored in Jalal's anguished cry to Jodha: Tumne yeh kyon kiya? Tum itne neeche kaise gir sakti ho?

For Jalal, already reeling under the loss of his child , ripped apart inside and rent with a grief that chokes him, this second shock must have been crippling. He was, in his own zehen, exposed as a soft fool, who had succumbed to a hitherto unknown weakness and had placed his trust in, as he now believes, a devious murderess who had channeled the hatred she felt for him into this vile crime, in order to hit him where it would hurt the most, and inflict on him an injury worse even that death.

Whence his savage desire now to hurt her as much as he can, to punish her not just for extinguishing his dearest hope and joy, but for having, as he sees it, made a complete fool of him by trampling on the innermost recesses of his being, where no one else had ever been allowed entry. There is to be no escape route for this Jezebel, she has to pay and pay to the limit.

Right and wrong no longer count for him at this stage (they will, fairly soon, but we are not there yet). So it is pointless to talk of respect for women or for the rule of law. The law is in any case what the Shahenshah says it is.

Note that in every meeting with the Amer sextet, Jalal looks only at Jodha; the rest are irrelevant, and they are to be punished because that will hurt Jodha far more than her own punishment.

By now, Jalal's corrosive rage has turned into something perilously close to sadism . It was fascinating to watch him yesterday - it was all so smooth and silken, and yet so much of an exercise in refined cruelty. The message he has sent to Amer is in the same vein, to add that extra dose of second hand pain for Jodha. It all made for unpleasant watching, but I was greatly impressed by Rajat, who delivered effortlessly.

Jalal's default setting: I would here like to cite two very relevant points made, in the thread It is Jalal, not Akbar, at

https://www.indiaforums.com/forum/jodha-akbar/3725394/this-is-jalaal-not-akbar

by Couch_Potato . The second builds on the softness aspect I have mentioned above, but the first, about Jalal slipping into his default setting, the one set by his two mentors, Mahaam Anga and Bairam Khan, is new and spot on. The extract goes as follows:

Moreover, him lashing out like that made complete sense. Of course when traumatised to his core, Jalaal would leave all rationality and reason and revert to his default setting. One Bairam Khan and Maham Anga have groomed and nurtured since childhood - that of a raging, bloodthirsty warrior that attacks first and asks questions later. To fall back on those principles now would give him a sense of direction and as he hopes some respite from the torment he feels inside.

Somehow, I also felt that somewhere and in some ways, Jalaal holds himself responsible too. He blames himself for not seeing it coming, for not being better prepared, for not protected his unborn baby and perhaps the worst sin of all - for softening up. Something Bairam Khan had always cautioned him against.

To revert, nothing of what Jalal does now is acceptable behaviour, but that is the way he is, and I have tried to get at the reason why he is so.

Illiteracy no reason: For those who attribute Jalal's current behavior to his being illiterate, that argument is really a non-starter.

One cannot equate illiteracy with the absence wisdom and a sense of balance and moderation, and by inference, education with the presence of these very qualities. And it is a fallacy to assume that education automatically broadens the mind and makes one wise, tolerant and compassionate. Aurangzeb was very well educated, and so were Stalin, Hitler and Franco. Mao tse Tung wrote fairly decent poetry as well, and many of the worst Nazi mass murderers were great devotees of the German classics and of Wagner's wonderful operas. Did that make them any less of bloodthirsty, conscienceless killers en masse?

On the contrary, many poor, illiterate people in the rural areas are wise and compassionate and generous. I have personally known any number of them, both men and women. That Akbar , while remaining illiterate, went on to become one of the greatest rulers the world has ever seen proves my point.

Jodha: There seems to be less to analyse here: good people are usually transparent and lack shades and grey areas. In fact, she seems to me, and I repeat myself, almost like a transparent sheet of glass, which, in the correct lighting, is practically invisible. She seems to understand but little of what might well happen to her and hers in the present catastrophic situation.

Jodha too had been moving away of late from her earlier fixation with the Jalal the Jallad image of her husband, but not to any significant extent. She is not shown being pleased after his praise of her poem, or happy at the special regard and respect Jalal shows for her at the jashn. She is passive and non-reactive, and even when Jalal's midnight eruption into her room brings home the terrible loss he has suffered, as also the danger in which she finds herself, she hardly reacts to either. Not then, and not later, except to stare at him in unflinching defiance at the Diwan-e-Khas and later at the private audience.

She can think only of the reputation of Amer, and fret about any interruption in her daily diyabati for her Kanha (why could Motibai not have done it in Jodha's place? Kanha would hardly refuse to accept puja from a non-royal devotee!)

One can only conclude that like Jalal, Jodha too has automatically reverted to her default setting, of hatred and contempt for Jalal the Jallad. This shuts out any possibility of her trying to understand why the man who smiled at her the previous evening with such unclouded warmth was now like a snarling wild beast, intent on destroying her and hers root and branch. And then adjusting her response accordingly.

Incomprehensible passivity: Jodha now presents a strange image of unyielding courage on the one hand, and on the other, a total lack of all that an intelligent, enquiring mind would proceed to do in such a situation. She is not even shown speculating, to herself, about who the real culprit might be; the contrast with Mansingh is very sharp.

I can only reiterate what I had noted earlier about why I am dismayed by and disappointed in this totally passive young woman. This is not some silly, giggling royal wench like Sukanya. This is Jodha, with the brains of a chess grandmaster and the acuity of mind of a fine duellist. What has happened to all that? She has always been a fighter - she fought relentlessly for Motibai and barged in anywhere at all without the least hesitation. Why is she now drifting with the tide? Why has all the fight gone out of her now?

At the last meeting with Jalal, not just Jodha, but the other 4 as well stand around like dummies.What can an already vengeful Jalal conclude from that, except that they do not even have the conviction to protest their innocence? That he bars them from speaking out should hardly have weighed with Jodha, any more than it weighed with young Mansingh.

In Jodha's place, I would have looked Jalal calmly in the eye, and said: Well, Shahenshah, I am a daughter of Amer and of Rajputana and I do not fear death, even by burning. It would be no different from our ritual of jauhar.

But I worry about you, Shahenshah. Some day soon you will find out, after you have executed your sentence, that we are all innocent. From that day onwards, you will never be able to sleep in peace.

That would be it, and he would have been halted in his tracks and forced to think. But she does no such thing. I think she is expecting Kanha to turn up to save her a la Draupadi. But she forgets that this is the kaliyuga!

The immediate future: ...

I do not think Jodha will go back to Amer after she is proved innocent. That would bring further shame on her family, which would then be doubly ostracised by their community. She will, I think, remain in Agra, associate only with Hamida Banu, Salima Begum and Rahim,and try to avoid Jalal completely. Let us see.

Of course she will forgive Jalal for all his present excesses. If he was smart enough, which I much doubt😉, he would have simply said to her: I was so furious with you because I felt betrayed by you. And I felt betrayed by you because I had begun to admire you, respect you, and most important of all, trust you. Achche khaase Shahenshah ka tumne kya haal bana diya, Jodha! Jo bhi maine kiya, wo sab tumhara hi kasoor hai.

She would have caved in and forgiven him, because we women, all of us, are suckers for the idea that we have tamed a headstrong, rough and tough man and made him our own. I think I will drop Jalal this useful hint for future use😉. Of course he might muff his lines, but there is only so much one can do for him!

Meanwhile, folks, don't fret so much. Try and appreciate Rajat's very convincing takes on a vengeful Jalal, and tell yourself ,when it is particularly off putting, This too shall pass!

I do apologise for such a late post, but it was the best I could do.

Shyamala B.Cowsik

NB: Historical footnote, which might interest those outraged by Jalal's announcement about the likely death sentence by public burning.

Medieval methods of capital (and other) punishment

Yes, Jalal's saying they would be burnt alive in public if they were not proved innocent sounded horrible, but then those were brutal times. Blindings, severe torture, hanging, drawing and quartering, breaking convicts on the wheel, throwing them down an oubliette and leaving them, with broken bones, to die in pitch darkness, and lifelong imprisonment in horrible prisons without not just any hearing but even without any knowledge of the charges, under the infamous lettres de cachet - some or all these charming practices were common all over Europe during this period and for nearly 150 years late, till the early 19th century, and the end of the Napoleonic wars.

Then there were burnings at the stake for religious reasons, for the so-called apostates. The Catholic Church routinely burnt Protestants at the stake and vice versa. After Henry VIII of England, Queen Mary was Catholic, then Elizabeth I was Protestant & Church of England. So Mary burnt Protestants and Elizabeth burnt Catholics at the stake, though to be fair to her, it was very largely for political reasons, as many Catholics were plotting to assassinate her, with the active help of King Philip of Spain.

The Spanish Inquisition, of the Catholic Church, routinely 'applied the question'an euphemism for brutal torture on the rack, to suspected apostates, 'to save their souls'

So burning alive must have been, for the Mughals, just a variant on their other practice of walling convicted prisoners alive. More economical in terms to wall space, I suppose (that is black humour, don't take it seriously!). Down south, they used to have the convicted criminal buried up to his neck, and then get an elephant to knock his head off.

So all this would have been par for the course then.

Why, as recently as the early 1900s, public lynching of black Americans was common in the southern States of the US. These lynchings, which were outside the pale of the judicial machinery that did nothing to stop them, were accompanied by brutal torture of the wretched human being strung up from trees and left to the mercy of the savage mob of men and women who were, in their daily lives, perfectly ordinary citizens.

The worst, to my mind, is that they went to these brutish, revolting spectacles in their Sunday best, with their children on their shoulders, and they later mailed their friends picture postcards of the lynching, circling their own face in the photo. The sending of these postcards by the US Postal Service was banned only in the 1920s.

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7. The change of perspective, gentle readers, is not that of Jalal or Jodha. It is mine, and it made me (re)view this otherwise dismal episode as a running jokefest. It did me a lot of good. I think that by now you too need a good laugh, so go ahead and enjoy this post in toto, especially the lines (in shudh Hindi) that I have cooked up for apni Jodha. You will be in stitches!

Jodha Akbar 59: A change of perspective'

https://www.india-forums.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=3728576#p

Posted: 07 September 2013 at 9:19am | IP Logged

Folks,

Yesterday, after doing my last Wuthering Depths dissertation' on Jalal's psyche, his corrosive grief, and his even more corrosive fury, washing like lava over the Amer sextet (Mansingh does not count for me, but if you want him in, why then, a septet), I sat thru episode 59.

I watched the Grand Confrontation between Jalal and Jodha, though it would be stretching the meaning of the word to breaking point to call it that. It was grand all right, as Jalal raged in a bass timbre and Jodha wept and pleaded. Emotions ran riot , mostly vengeful and sadistic glee on his side and helpless despair on hers, for she seemed too broken to even feel any anger.

It was quite an exercise in emoting, especially the one time when Jalal's anguish surfaces, raw as ever, from under the deliberate fury. Tumne yeh kyon kiya, Jodha? That Why? Why? Why? is still haunting him, and that, as I wrote yesterday, is a hurt as deep as the death of his child. To hide that hurt, the pitch of his anger has to be raised each time, and stoked afresh to white hot rage.

Yet, even as he taunts and threatens her by turns, there is no Jodha Begum, but only a long drawn out Jodhaaa... with a curious underlying note that caresses the name even as he utters it. Just like his finger, delicately picking a tear drop off her cheek, in a gesture that could, under different circumstances, have been that of a lover consoling his beloved.

But as for the rest, I could not recognize this Jodha at all, and as for Jalal, I felt I had got on to a time machine and been suddenly transported back to Episode 1 & 2 (which had nearly driven me away altogether. What a loss that would have been for me, and what a piece of luck for you, my dear, long-suffering readers!😉).

By episode end, as Jodha was back in her Jalal the Jallad default setting (I do hope, dear Couch_Potato, that you are not going to sock me with a copyright suit for thus appropriating this choice term!😉), I felt weary and worn out. I suppose that is what the CVs must have aimed at, and it irritated me that I had duly obliged them.

Then, I chanced upon a kaleidoscope, and after shaking it and looking at the changed patterns a couple of times, I rewatched episode 59. Lo and behold! I was gurgling with laughter almost right thru. It is all a question of perspective. If you looked for the ridiculous, you could find it in abundance yesternight, masquerading as high emotion.

First, Jalal. Poor Rajat must , after so many close ups of him snarling at his begum from about six inches away, with all the ferocity of a Siberian tiger and all the assiduity of a model showing off his batteesi in a toothpaste ad, have felt like a prime candidate for lockjaw😉.

His lines about giving her maut ke baddthar zindagi and itni takleef doonga ki maut bhi sasti lagegi were exactly the same as those of the accusation scene in her bedroom the other day, the boudoir scene when he breaks her bangles... you can stretch the list at will. Rajat looks as if he could recite the lines in his sleep, and he was, in effect, sleepwalking thru the whole scene: he must by now have got every sneering, terrifying smile, lips drawn back in false merriment, every hate-filled look in the over-bright, narrowed eyes , down pat thru constant repetition.

The problem is that we have got them down pat as well, and they seem dismally familiar or familiarly dismal, or both.

The silken menace behind Jalal's faux reasonable argument to Bharmal for the attack on Sujanpur was, well, silken, but one can have too much of a good thing. Besides, having to repeatedly watch that array of wooden Amer princes, faces set in eternal blankness whether they are being informed that they are going to be barbecued in public or to be despatched to a battle😉, strains one's patience.

Next Jodha. Our fiery Amazon-cum -chess grandmaster has been transmuted overnight into a weak, whimpering watering pot (Aha! Neat alliteration, that!) . The Jhansi ki Rani (with apologies for the anachronism ) has turned into a Niobe, drowning herself, and us, in a flood of tears. Paridhi must be wondering about when the studio supply of glycerine would run out, leaving her to fend for herself.

She must also be contemplating the possibility - a very faint one, of course! - of suing Balaji for inflicting on her the cruel and unusual punishment of constantly having to mouth lines that would win a Razzie for the Most Inane Dialogue any day😉.

As Jalal promises her that Tum gidgidaogi, maut ki bheek mangogi, and parrots other equally ridiculous lines, Jodha looks at him with large tear-filled eyes in an utterly woebegone face, and pleads that only she should be punished, even with death, and not her family, as he chortles with glee. When I was not laughing at this throwback to the worst of the villain's den scenes in the 1970s films, I felt like shaking Jodha till her teeth rattled, and hitting Jalal with something nice and hard, like a belan.

Rescuing Jodha: As an antidote to the stuff onscreen, I thought up lines for the old Jodha. She is in a terrible fix, true, but the last thing she should do now is to show Jalal any weakness or fear, and the old Jodha would have known that instinctively.

She would have retorted: Kitne baar ek hi vaakya ko dohrayenge aap, Shahenshah? Kuch toh naya sochiye! Main yahi vishay sunsunke thak gayi hoon.

Aur aap to mujhe sab ke saamne jalane waale the? Uska kya hua? Agra mein lakdi ka aabhav to nahin ho gaya hai? Hum aapke ke liye Amer se lakdi mangwa dein? 😊

Or, when he refers to her father not having been executed or imprisoned, but instead suffering even in the lap of luxury because of what his children were being subjected to, Jodha could well have attempted a snappy comeback:

Toh aapne hamare Babasa to kaal kotri mein nahin daala? . Kyon nahin kiya aapne, Shahenshah? Hum to yeh soch kar prasanna ho rahe the ki agar aap aise karte, aur unhe kuch din daal roti par rakhte, to unki sehat ke liye kitna achcha hota! Maasa kitne hi varshon se nakaam prayas kar rahi hain unka vazan ghatane ka, aur yahan aapke prayas se ho hi jaata! 😉

And right at the beginning, as he stomps in with a predictable Tum jaanti ho ki hamein sabse zyaada sukoon kis se aata hai? Dushman ki aankhon me aansoo dekh kar, she might well have tucked a paan casually into her mouth, with the comment: Waise to hamein Amer ke pakhwan ke bhaate hain, apitu Shahenshah, aapke Agra ke paan to atyant swadisht hain, adding, Aap kuch keh rahe the? , while raising her big dark, tear free eyes to his.

I can bet anything that looking down into their depths, Jalal would have lost all sense of where he was and what he had wanted to do!

Finally, when her patidev was still raging at her in the tightest of close ups, and promising her a fate worse than death, the old Jodha would have enquired, while regarding him with an expression of polite interest:

Achcha, hum bhi to sunein, kya naya socha hai aapne abhi? Ab tak to hum aapki soch ki durbalta se atyant niraash huye hein, Shahenshah! Ab to prateet hota hai, ki hamein hi aapke liye kuch sochke, aapko likhke de dena chahiye. Aap padh lijiye ga. Agli baar kaam aayega.

That would have sent him out hotfoot, unwilling to confess that he would not be able to read her draft for him!😉

Instead, this changeling of a Jodha says Yeh uchit nahin hai, in a quavering treble.

Uchit?!? No wonder I almost collapsed in giggles. It reminded me of her old, equally ROFL mantra Aapko yeh karne ka adhikar nahin hai, when he was breaking her bangles and threatening worse. Or alternatively, her other favourite line, Aap aise bal prayog nahi kar sakte! , like someone trying to halt a bulldozer by waving the Traffic Rule booklet at it. 😉

Worse. when Jalal accuses her, for the umpteenth time, of the murder, this Jodha seems suddenly possessed by the unquiet spirit of a 16^th century kaala coat( lawyer). For instead of shouting as loudly as she can, Maine yeh ghinouna aparadh NAHIN kiya hai! NAHIN! NAHIN! NAHIN!, what does she do? She offers a convoluted legal argument about innocent until proved guilty. And finally, in the precap, the sole change in her old mantra is that now the ghruna ka patra is not Jalal but herself, as Jalal, what else, sneers and looks away in satisfaction.

All in all, it was a most unintentionally comical display, and I am pretty sure the unfortunate actors felt the same. They of course get paid for giving us a headache. We simply get the headache.😡

Mahaam too: The comedy track does not end with Jalal stalking off, having run out of even stale threats. It continues with Mahaam Anga trying to do a Miss Marple in the harem. She is undoubtedly rattled by Ruqaiya Begum's pointed silence when Mahaam remarks that she too is in the shaque ka daayra.

Mahaam is in fact entirely unlike her usual commanding, controlled self, behaving like a headless chicken, slapping a baandi and roaring at all and sundry, including Resham . The way in which she goes about looking for a pukhta saboot, by rifling thru the contents of a chest in the same disorderly and violent manner in which Amitabh Bachchan used to search for documents in his 1970s-80s superhits, seems guaranteed to destroy any such saboot as might have been there. The underlying note of panic is crystal clear. The redoubtable Mahaam Anga is afraid.

The other curious point is that both Ruqaiya and Mahaam specifically mention the possibility of Jodha being innocent. What each makes of this remains to be seen.

Well, to cut a long story short, while the changeling Jodha got on my nerves big time, and Jalal only a wee bit less, I found that seeing the high pitched proceedings from a comic track angle did help. At the end of the rewatching, I felt almost lighthearted, and ready to face the profusion of OTT stuff sure to hit us all come Monday. One has to survive from day to day, it is pointless to think too far ahead.

Shyamala B.Cowsik

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This is it for today, folks. More as soon as I can make it. Hasta la vista!

Shyamala/Aunty/Akka/Di

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Originally posted by: sashashyam

Not me, my pet, it was a little before my time. It was my mother, and we had a whole collection, including Ponniyin Selvan, and Thevan's CID Chandru. In fact we still have it, for I have preserved it lovingly, except for some of the lesser works that I gifted away. In Mylapore, even nowadays, there a lot of relatively young ladies still keen to have such books, because they have the original illustrations for each chapter. If you buy it now as a printed book, as I did for Sivakamiyin Sabadam, there are only a very few, poor quality illustrations. The difference in appeal is tremendous.

Shyamala Aunty