My Farewell Tribute to Rajat's Jalal
Part 6
(Anyone feeling tired and a tad depressed and in need of a pick me up is advised to begin at the end😉)
Folks,
The opening episode today - and I apologise for having been a no show for 5 days - was one that I, at first sight, did not think worth commenting on. I ended up doing this post only on what could be called public demand.
But now that I look at it, I see that it contains one very important point, about the real significance of Jalal sending the Amer princes to do battle against the Sujanpur lot, which ties into the siyaasati chaal he worked out, and used to bring his Ministers round to the idea to his marrying a Rajput princess (Episode 31: The Emperor Strikes back). Which makes it worth looking into here.
This apart, the episode was a washout, with Jalal's 10 day tafteesh perennially receding, while he indulged in tiresomely repetitive and childishly vicious exchanges with Jodha , who seemed nowhere near likely to attempt anything bright and snappy in return. By this time, I was tired of thinking of responses for this useless girl!😉
But what I wrote then is, in retrospect, both ironic and amusing. I quote: How are the CVs planning to get Jalal out of this deep hole - he digs it deeper with each- without losing his dignity as an emperor? Like a parent apologising for having wrongly punished a child, he has to be able to climb down without crawling. It would never do for him to become a common, garden variety of lover, pleading for forgiveness from a haughty wife.
So, however much the vengeful brigade in the forum, waiting for him with belans, jhadoos, saucepans and assorted lethal implements, wants to pound him into pulp, the fact is that we have to make do with Jalal for the rest of the show, and I for one do not look forward to him becoming a doormat for Jodha to walk over. It would be painfully commonplace.
How wrong could I be? For see, what I ruled out was exactly what happened. Jalal soon began to spend a good bit of his waking hours apologizing to his new wife for things he had done and those he had not, while Jodha Begum never uttered even a hint of an apology, even after the narnaal disaster.
1.Jodha Akbar 60: Question marks
Posted: 09 September 2013 at 11:51pm | IP Logged
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The CVs' IQ seems to match that of the Amer princes. They have completely failed to put across the real importance of what Jalal is doing in the Sujanpur war', Instead, they are reducing his taking the Amer princes to that battle to a pathetically vicious supplementary move by him to humiliate the Ameris/ Rajputs, and to add another swipe to the death by a thousand cuts that he is apparently planning and implementing vis a vis Jodha. Of course he baits Jodha by presenting it as such, and she promptly obliges him by looking even more woebegone and protesting to her Bapusa about the paap that her Bhaisas will be forced to commit, but that is merely a minor side issue.
What Jalal is attempting here is a political move with far-reaching ramifications for the Mughal empire, and not an attempt to make Hindus kill Hindus on behalf of the Mughals, as the shallow minded Ruqaiya imagines. He is here testing the waters for the experiment he had outlined to his ministers when he was explaining why he was marrying Jodha.
If it fails, and the Ameris were not to be relied upon, not just to fight against other Rajputs, which they did all the time, but to fight against them for the Mughal invaders, Jalal's whole, broad strategy of melding Rajputana and the Rajputs, as equals in respect and prestige but also as loyal upholders of the his regime, with the Mughal empire, will also fail. With that failure, the Mughals will never be able to belong to Hindustan . They will forever remain outsiders, and Akbar's dream for a blended Hindustan will also be stillborn.
Shyamala B.Cowsik
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2. Let us simply pass over Episode 61, and that ludicrous Battle of Sujanpur, where Shahenshah Jalaluddin Muhammad, one of the greatest warriors and battle tacticians of his time, who never lost a battle in his whole life, was shown being caught like a sitting duck by a raggedy bunch of bandits, and nearly killed but for Bhagwan Das's timely intervention. It was too disgraceful to rate even a passing glance.
But with Episode 62, things began looking up, whence the title. Even if it seemed to go further into the maze of the dature ka ark, most of the characters were true to type, even in their extreme reactions.
I shall confine myself here to the two super-stormy scenes between Jalal and Jodha, and boy, were they violent! Rajat is at times unpredictable when called upon to do high drama, but here he was perfect in his blind rage, and then in his shamefaced confusion facing Jodha. But it was the nature of her angry response - delivered to perfection by Paridhi - that furnished rich material for an analyst. Read on!
Jodha Akbar 62: Dawn in the offing?
Posted: 12 September 2013 at 3:33am | IP Logged
...Now for the big, grandstanding scenes.
Jalal-Jodha 1: Contrary to most others in the forum, I was neither shocked nor surprised by his swinging his shamsheer at Jodha when she confessed, and that too with such vehemence and not the slightest indication of repentance. It was almost a given that he would do that; Bairam Khan has fixed Jalal's default setting at sar kalam karna when faced with such overt and unquestioned guilt in a gunaah-e-azeem,and Jalal would have automatically reverted to that in such a crunch situation.
It would have been the same with most other medieval rulers, not just Jalal, with his very short fuse.
Jodha knows that. Which is why, facing the Gordian knot of being unable to live up to the prescriptions of Rajput maryada towards her wedded husband, whom she now hates with more passion than ever before - Paridhi was very convincing when Jodha went into that angry spiel about Jalal to her brothers - and the compulsion of having to continue to live indefinitely as his wife, she tries to imitate Alexander the Great.
Except, of course, that she wants to trick Jalal into cutting this Gordian knot for her by cutting off her head. Her assessment is accurate, for Jalal, having apparently taken for granted, post Sujanpur, that Jodha too was innocent, must have been, first, shellshocked by her grand confession, and then possessed by blind rage. I for one am not at all sensitive to such manufactured shocks.
The last second saving of Jodha's life is typical OTT drama, like the nuclear bomb in The Peacemaker being defused at 11:59:59 (I did not mind that, as the scientist managing to save the world there was a woman). There would have been infinitely richer dramatic possibilities is he had cut off her head and then found out that she was innocent, but it is no use hoping for such riches, given that despite her 31 second daily disclaimer, not even Ekta can go so far in remixing history.
NB: The curious thing here was that the one Ruqaiya stopped was his second swipe at Jodha (he swings it once first and seems to miss completely!) And the other curious thing was that Jalal was not at all bothered about Ruqaiya's hand, which must have been badly cut, but Jodha was.
Jalal-Jodha 2: This was one peach of a scene. In the context of their relationship, this is going to be the turning point.
I loved it that Jodha made no move to get up when he came up, and instead glowered resentfully up at him. I also loved it that instead of attempting any kind of apology, Jalal launched into a farcical broadside against her for lying to the Shahenshah-e-Hind. Absolutely typical of the alpha male type!
Also to be noted is that Jodha's response is not a crisp Hamein aapke saath apna poora jeevan vyateet karna asahya ho gaya tha, aur ham apne parivaar ko bhi aapse bachana chahte the. Hamne kuch bhi anuchit nahin kiya. Hamaara jeevan hai, aur hamein poora adhikaar hai ki hum jiyein ya marein. Which is what one would have expected of her after all the build up in the scene with her brothers.
Instead, she launches into a long, typical complaining patni-style monologue, recounting every instance of khunnas against her patidev right since their marriage. What is one to make of this, especially given that she supposedly hates him with a white hot passion?
It is even more interesting that Jodha mentions only the nazarband as disgraceful behavior in a pati towards his patni. Not only does she cling to the relationship she wanted to desperately to escape, but she seems to have forgotten about the infinitely worse zinda jalana!
It is not just, as so many here would have it - at times by bending and stretching the facts to fit this charming theory - that Jalal is, in his heart of hearts, and unknown to himself, obsessed with Jodha. It is evident from the above that it is ditto for Jodha as well. Real hatred, unmixed with anything else, leads to dry-eyed rage, not to angry tears and a litany of accusations.
Unlike Kamal, I would not blame Jodha demanding the patni ka darja on a non-reciprocal basis, and carefully avoiding any mention of all the times when she insulted Jalal, like the shaadi ka joda burning. Why not, if you can get it? A little hypocrisy is a useful trait.
By scene end, Jalal was stumped for an answer, and no wonder.
I had written earlier that "His savage desire to hurt her as much as he could was not just for killing his child but for having, as he saw 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." Now the root cause of his rage has disappeared, and he simply does not know what to do.
Jalal will now have to reboot himself inside out, and as his sense of justice is very strong, also make public amends for the public accusations he had made against the Amer quintet. Let us see what he comes up with next. It will be fascinating to see both what he does in the open court, and if he can climb down and apologise to Jodha at least in private, without making a doormat of himself. (Famous last words, alas!)
Shyamala B.Cowsik
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3. With this Episode 63, the CVs redeemed themselves substantially, as Rajat returned to top form in the Diwan-e-Khas, and Paridhi's Jodha outdid herself throughout.
And then, in the closing scene with Salima, which left us all as much on tenterhooks as it should have done her (but did not!), Rajat's Jalal surpassed himself, with a performance of such smooth manipulativeness at the beginning, and such surpassing delicacy and gentleness at the end, that it called for several rounds of applause.
No wonder I breathed a sigh of relief, and straightaway incorporated that in the title!
I was in two minds about whether I should leave out the two FAQs, which deal with the motivations for Jalal's behaviour, or include them. In the end, I have left them in, for they are of some significance, and those not interested can simply skip them!
Jodha Akbar 63: Blessed relief!
Posted: 13 September 2013 at 1:27am | IP Logged
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Jalal-Jodha 2- Conclusion: I was grateful that this was there right at the beginning, so that the dramatic tempo was carried over from the previous day.
It was one crackerkjack of a winding up, with Jodha's bottled up anger and grief cascading over Jalal in a relentless flood, as her eyes welled over with hot tears and her voice cracked under the emotional strain. Paridhi did herself proud, for it was a very demanding scene, and her Jodha could easily have tipped over into shrill hysteria. She managed to stay in control throughout, and if she took what could be called creative liberties, as when she said that he had imprisoned her and her family sakhshya ke bina, disregarding the whopper of a clue, the dature ka ark in the kesar, that is the standard tactic of any lawyer for the defence!
Incidentally, Paridhi has one tremendous advantage that ought to stand her in good stead in her future career. She can cry buckets of assorted tears - angry tears, grieving tears, whatever - and still look gorgeous, and not, as most of the rest go, like something the cat just brought in. Her nose never looks like that of Rudolf the Rednosed Reindeer, her eyes do not puff up and become unsightly slits, and she must the delight of the make up artist as the least demanding of the lot!
To revert, I was delighted that Jodha did not let Jalal get a word in even edgeways. There was no let up, from the moment when she rose to confront him, like a furious nagin with her hood spread out and ready to strike, and let him have it with both barrels (apologies for the mixed metaphor!), till the time she folded her hands in savage irony and demanded that he leave at once.
Not that he was at all ready to say anything, and that pleased me a lot too. I was afraid that he might fold up and start apologizing abjectly, for while that might have forced her to relent, it would have detracted heavily from his aura as a Shahenshah (well, a nutty Energiser bunny at times, true, but a Shahenshah all the same, and not Manav or Arjun from Pavitra Rishta!) , and it is crucial for the Jalal-Jodha love story that he retains that aura. (Not for too long, alas, but one has to count one's blessings, even if they do not last long!)
No one would have dared to dress him down like that ever before, or dismissed him in his own palace, or told him so many home truths about himself, his methods of meting out justice and much else. It would all be salutary from him in the near future, as he ponders over the words and absorbs the lessons they hold for him, but for now, he is both speechless and uncertain of his ground. Which is why, after listening to her tirade with a rigidly resentful expression, he beats a strategic retreat to recoup and rethink his tactics and his Jodha strategy, even as the other problem of tackling the latest suspect simmers at the back of his mind.
The green-eyed monster: Oh yes, before I forget. There was, as Ela has cleverly noted, amidst the torrent of anger and resentment, a fleeting but tantalizing flash of a different emotion is Jodha's eyes in the beginning of the scene. This is when she says Humne bar bar saugandh khayi ki humne kuchch nahin kiya, par aapne meri ek nahin suni. Ruqaiya Begum ne keh diya ki koyi aur doshi hai aur aap maan gaye! Clearly a touch of the little green-eyed monster, good old jealousy, and this without Jodha even realizing it! 😉
Plus, one would have expected that after getting all her bile off her chest, Jodha would feel limp but light hearted at what she had achieved. Not so, for she sits down and dissolves in a fresh bout of tears. Why?
Is it that just as Jalal raged against the loss of what he had believed Jodha to be, she too is mourning the loss of the budding empathy that she had felt after Jalal's praise of her poem and the special respect and regard he had showed her at the jashn? Of the prickly but real camaraderie that had put out a few tentative shoots after the duel and the aarti ki thali encounters? Of what might have been, but is now, as she believes, scorched to dust and ashes? I believe so.
FAQ 1: Now here is my take on a question some have posed to me, which might be of general interest. This was about why Jalal went to Jodha to question her about the minor matter of her lying, and not to Salima to take her to task about the much more serious matter of her supposed guilt. The pat answer to that, which is the most popular here, is that Jalal is obsessed with Jodha and thus hurt by her lying to him.
I feel that he went to her first not because he was obsessed with her, which he is, or hurt, but because he was on the defensive. He is above all a warrior, and in a battle, when you are on the defensive, you attack at once. It is a running battle between them and he has lost this round, so he wants to pretend he has not by getting on a high horse and accusing her before she accuses him. He is defensive and so extra aggressive.
Whereas Salima is different. He is not sure about her guilt from the beginning, as the whole back story as far as she is concerned, from her being a close relative to the present, has been positive, and that gives him pause. Perhaps also he has become more cautious in this second case because of the Jodha fiasco. This is even before Jodha's calling his justice a joke, which of course reinforces this hesitation, whence the appeal to Shahabuddin.
FAQ 2: The other question: why does Jalal go to Ruqaiya for consultations about Jodha's reaction this time, whereas he did not do so on earlier occasions? I think it is because
(a) he does not realise where he is headed with Jodha. If he did, he would never include Ruqaiya in the matter. And
(b) he is now on very uncertain ground, having been blindsided, not only by the unexpected vehemence of Jodha's searing denunciation, but also by the depth of the pain that lies beneath it, which he grasps, though not completely. He wants to consult the only woman he is close to, to get a handle on this poori tarah se alagh female's mind, but he has dialed a wrong number, for a Ruqaiya can never understand a Jodha.
There is only one woman who can be in sync with what Jodha feels at the moment, and she is his Ammijaan. He will, I think, turn to her eventually, but he is not there yet. This is in fact the whole purpose of that incredibly warm scene between Jodha and Hamida Banu; it has set Hamida up to play the bridge between the two she cares for the most. You would all have noticed that while Hamida never fudges Jalal's faults, she invariably also puts them clearly and lucidly in context, gently but convincingly. No one else could have done that for Jodha, and certainly not Jalal himself.
Thus, as Hamida leaves her, it is patent that Jodha is busy assessing what percentage of the blame for her patidev's atrocious behaviour should be assigned to the lack of laalan paalan from her beloved Ammijaan. The look on her face at the end of that passage is inimitable!
Jalal in the Diwan-e-Khas: The BIG question after Episode 62 was of course how Jalal would get out of the pit he had dug for himself without losing his dignity and, as a supplementary, how he would, given that his sense of justice is very strong, make public amends for the public accusations he had made against the Amer quintet. In the Diwan-e-Khas scene, he manages the second gracefully, but the first is of course for the long haul.
The preceding consultation with the wise and sincere Shahabuddin brings us a troubled and tentative Jalal, who realises what he has to do regarding both Jodha & Co and Salima, but not how he should do it. That Jalal both seeks candid advice and, when told that he has done wrong and has to set it right, takes it in the right spirit, says much for his innate good sense.
I am sure that Jodha's strictures of a short while earlier must still be ringing in his ears, but we have also to note that if the ground had not already been fertile, not the best of seeds can take root there and flourish. Jalal already carries the proto-Akbar within him. Jodha waters this seed and provides the warmth of her own moral certitudes. Both count, but neither counts for more than the other.
Rajat's Jalal excels in the Diwan-e-Khas segment. An emperor cannot and does not apologise in public for his mistakes, any more than the government apologises these days when a murder suspect is found to be innocent and is released from jail. Mansingh and the Amer princes understand this, even if Jodha does not.
But Jalal does everything short of apologising, and does it with sincerity, candour and what, in a lesser man, would pass for humility.
This is unknown territory for him, but he tackles it head on, and tries his best to look them all in the eye as he speaks. He falters only twice. The first is when Mansingh, visibly relieved at the turn of events, conveys the readiness of his father and uncles to stay on as imperial guests till the culprit is caught, and expresses their sorrow at death of the heir. Jalal looks down and away, and when he raises his head again, he is unobtrusively blinking away his tears. There is still a film in his eyes as he expresses his khwahish, not his decision, that Mansingh should come back to him.
The other is when he tells Jodha Begum' that she can return to her khwabgah (a lovely term, the house of dreams). He raises his eyes to hers, and runs full tilt into the cold and unrelenting hostility in hers, which could scorch a rhinoceros at 100 yards. He holds her gaze as long as he can, but his eyes fall and he looks sideways to hide that fact. As she turns on her heel and leaves, his troubled gaze follows her. And Ruqaiya's eyes never leave his face.
Jalal-Salima: It might seem premature to comment on this scene, which is only in the opening stage. Jalal's is smoothly assertive as he declares his intention of staying the night and moves into the first stages of unfamiliar intimacy, ignoring her petrified stillness.
His expression in the closing shot is fascinating. His eyes question without being too obvious, try to gauge her with limpid persistence, again without betraying the least hint of animosity or suspicion. For the success of his experiment depends on her remaining unaware of his real intentions, and thus unwary. I could not help thinking that in another age and another station in life, Jalal would have made a superb poker player or counter-intelligence agent.
As for Salima, she might be Jalal's cousin now, but she must have been Bhagwan Das's sibling in a prior birth. Both have a talent for utter and total blankness of expression, no matter what the circumstances!😉
Shyamala B.Cowsik
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4. Now, this is of course a thread dedicated to Jalal, but still, I am including the segment of the post about Mahaam Anga, for she was, in the moment of revelation, like one possessed, and split in two by her conflicting love for her son and her foster son. Ashwini brought such virtuosity to this scene that it made my hair stand on end. So I would want to share this part with you even if it is off topic!
As for Jalal, his scene with Salima was a tour de force (on his side, of course!): of subtle manipulation in the beginning and, at the end, a display of such delicacy and sensitivity that I felt like standing up and applauding. Jalal was a revelation here, and Rajat made this surprising new side to Jalal credible, admirable,and intensely moving.
In sharp contrast, Jodha was now shown as a spoilt brat, with all the royal breeding - with its emphasis on total self-control under all circumstances, dignity and self-possession - that she presumably received in Amer , gone out of the nearest window of the palace at Agra the minute her patidev enters the scene. Instead, in the precap, she resembles no one so much as Scarlett O'Hara, deliberately smashing a vase, presumably a peace offering from Jalal. Scarlett throws a vase at Ashley Wilkes, so I suppose Jalal should be grateful for small mercies, that it was not hurled at his head! 😉
Now I backed Jodha, even in the face of criticism across the forum, for her relentless outpouring of resentment and anger against Jalal at their last encounter. I felt that she was justified, for he had not just accused her of a heinous crime, but he had literally gone berserk, losing all his judgment and his sense of justice, and descending to emotional cruelty amounting to sadism.
But I do not approve of such fishwife like behaviour in a princess. Jalal deserved to be told off, not just once but many times. But this is not about him. It is about a princess, now a queen, who behaves like an ill-mannered virago, when she should have been cool, dignified, collected, and aloof, while still being as off putting as she wanted to be.
And with Hamida Banu declaring that Jodha can do no wrong (which is de rigueur for an Ekta Kapoor heroine, who invariably swans around with a 24 carat halo firmly in place😉), no wonder Jodha has no incentive for introspection and course-correction.
Methinks that Jodha, is, in many ways, a mirror image of Jalal, not his complementary other half. Both are arrogant , hot-headed, quarrelsome with each other, opinionated and prone to snap judgments while disregarding inconvenient facts, biased, tenacious in their prejudices that often cloud their good sense, and almost always convinced that they, and they alone, are in the right.
Of the two, however, Jalal is, despite being an autocratic monarch, more ready to admit his failings and mistakes, to himself and at times to others, and to accept sound advice and act on it. Not so Jodha. Never.
Ok, enough of all that. Let us move on to the revelations!
Jodha Akbar 64: Revelations
Posted: 14 September 2013 at 5:34am | IP Logged
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Jalal: What revelation here, you might well ask. Patience, my gentle readers!
First, to those who feel that he was foolish to trust his Badiammi blindly and show her his trump card, the dibbi, I would only say No, that is not so.
For Jalal that very rare kind of king, a grateful one. At times grateful beyond what is called for, but that is a generous fault. He has had only 3 people in his life he could trust with that life, and Mahaam is one of them. I would think badly of him if he did not trust her till it becomes impossible.
Then it will be a crushing blow that will cripple him for a while. Remember how much it affected him when he thought that his new found trust in Jodha had been a bad mistake? How much harder would it be for him to learn that the loyalty and care of a lifetime had been corroded by baser emotions ?
Magisterially manipulative:But this is familiar ground. The real revelation about him last night concerned Salima. In the scene with her, Jalal (and Rajat) was throughout superbly subtle, magisterially manipulative, till he got at what he sought, certitude that Salima was innocent as well. And then, he makes it up to her with such trusting candour, such delicacy, such admirable sensitivity for her feelings, that I was blown away. When he picks up her dupatta and drapes it round her, and assures her that for him she will always be his Khan Baba's amaanat, I was mentally standing up and applauding.
Only a man with a heart gentle enough, and perceptive enough, to feel what Salima feels then - and that would be a very rare sort of man - would have been able to do what he did to reassure and comfort her. This was a revelation.
As for what he promises himself - that he will never repeat the mistake he committed with Jodha, and will get at the real culprit - that was probably meant to be repeated to Jodha by Salima, and pretty soon at that.
Mahaam Anga: That she was finally self-revealed to be the Dibbi Lady came not as a thunderclap, but as an anticlimax. Even I, who started out with her as the most likely suspect, was taken in by that conversation of hers with her Girl Friday Resham, and I switched to believing that it could not be her as she sounded so sincere there. But in hindsight, the matter is so very serious that she would never have trusted anyone else, no matter how close to her, with this incendiary truth, not Resham, and definitely not her uncontrollable, drunken braggart of a son.
Now, it is like those traditional English country house murder mysteries, where one starts out with the butler - the butler did it! - goes the round of suspects, and finally ends up with the selfsame butler!😉
But for me, this was not the real McCoy. That was the revelation of what could be called the Real Mahaam Anga. In a terrifying scene, she herself strips away every layer of her persona, one by one, to finally reveal a weak and helpless woman, crippled by her overweening love for her worthless son, and driven by the desire to prove, not to him, but to herself, and beyond all doubt, that he is the dearest to her in the whole world .
To prove this to herself, she betrays everything she not just professes to hold dear, but what she does hold dear. Her affection for her foster son, her loyalty to the sultanat-e-mughaliya, her fealty to the royal family and to the Shahenshah.
Listening to her proclaim that not even her shadow knows the truth (in this, she resembles no one so much as the master thief Aryan in Dhoom 2), I was struck by the folly of my conclusion, based on her apparently candid conversation with Resham, that she had not done it. For this is a dissembler par excellence, who can dissolve into real tears on cue, and berate Adham, her voice nearly suspended in deep distress, for even daring to think that she could have done it (Adham's expression as he leaves seems dubious and unconvinced, however, maybe he knows his mother too well to be convinced by all her nautanki) . No one else, listening to her then, could have failed to be convinced that she was innocent. I was so convinced, all over again.
Then comes the unveiling of the truth. With it, there was something else that sets her crime apart from the common, garden variety of poisoners down the ages. It is as if she has a split personality, and that now, looking at herself in the mirror of her soul, she would like to forget that she had done it. As Alakh put it so well, a part of her doesn't want to accept what she did, for she is always torn between Adham and Jalal.
It is true that Mahaam loves Adham more than Jalal, but it is probably also true that Jalal is the son she would have wanted to have had. Adham must, the blood tie apart, have always been a sad disappointment for her, but she loves him beyond reason still, and she cannot change that or let him go to his fate. This is her tragedy.
The wailing, the fresh tears in her solitude after Adham has left, the breast-beating, none of it was necessary. These are not for show, for there is no one there who needs to be hoodwinked. This is all for herself, for what she has lost for the sake of Adham.
In this context, I have a major reservation. I do not think a woman as intelligent as Mahaam Anga would believe that a dayima's son could ever become the Shahenshah, without a drop of royal blood in him. She might have, in some early phase when Adham was being more difficult than usual, have held that out as a carrot for his reasonably good behaviour and then ended up with it like a millstone round her neck, but what she really thinks is what she tells him immediately after the Malwa encounter with Jalal, when she saves him by a whisker. That a sipahi like Jalal comes once in centuries, and if Adham dared to stand up to him, he would blow Adham away in no time.
To revert, like Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray, who remains eternally pure and ageless and beautiful to behold, but whose portrait, kept hidden, shows every ugly wart and scar on his steadily rotting soul, Mahaam Anga sees her soul as black and ugly as that portrait, and she cannot stand it. That is her real punishment.
To be fair, I must also mention a different take on Mahaam Anga's despair that Mansi offered, that she was distraught because she felt she was "losing it". Because she was slipping in her wiles, in the care and detail with which she unleashed her chaal, and along with that her vulnerabilities are beginning to spill out. She lost the dibbi in a way for which she could not have forgiven herself, and she knows its the small clues that are the biggest giveaways. She also seemed overcome by the emotional strain of her love for her son vs. her lesser love for Jalal. I do not buy it, but it is very plausible nevertheless!
Whatever the truth might be, the fact remains that Ashwini's Mahaam was a treat, being both mesmerizing and terrifying at the same time.
Shyamala B.Cowsik
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5. OK folks, this part threatens to become too long - it stands already at 8 pages with narrow margins in Georgia 11 font- and then our tale has become too heavy going, what with all these bitter confrontations between our lead pair (most of which seems delivered when the speaker is sleep-walking😉), Mahaam's betrayal and so on. Some light relief is clearly indicated, especially with a Royal Bengal tiger in the offing. So here goes!
I am sure that you will be able to spot the single part that is straightforward analysis, the rest being purely tongue-firmly-in-cheek satire.
Needless to say, my extremely sound advice to Jalal (which will have you in stitches, guaranteed!), and the whole delightful scenario I had envisaged to help him win over his Kate (with apologies to Shakespeare), were both blown to bits by the hamhanded CVs, who ended up, predictably, with the narnaal track!😡
Jodha Akbar 65: Of a Tiger, and of Smoke and Mirrors
Posted: 17 September 2013 at 2:19am | IP Logged
Folks,
I was in two minds whether to write anything today, as I have been busy with a more important task. But since 90% of the forum seems to have caught that rare fever, dengue tigerensis, which produces delusions of a tiger attack on a beloved person, I thought some prophylactic measures might be in order, whence this post.
Now I have a son, Sasha aka Siddhartha, who is only slightly less stubborn and know-it-all than Jalal, and only a bit older, so I am familiar with this variety of the young male psyche. I thus decided to give Jalal (towards whom I feel very protective these days, seeing how many determined females of assorted ages in this forum are out to make mincemeat of him!) some good advice as to how to turn the tiger encounter, which is clearly in the offing, to his advantage. Moreover, he is, on the basis of recent evidence, much more likely than Sasha to take sound advice and profit by it.
So I wrote to him thus:
My dear Jalal (not Shahenshah, as I am old enough to be your mother and, at a pinch, with early marriages in your era, even your dadijaan),
I have watched in steadily mounting exasperation as you make a mess of every chance you get to bring that akdu baddimaag Begum Jodha of yours to order.
Instead, she is running rings round you, and you barely escaped having that expensive glass vase hurled at your head yesterday. Yes, I know you have guaranteed turban protection, and a very thick head underneath, but it might have shaken up your already scrambled grey matter and made a bad omelette of it. Which would never do for the future welfare of your millions of subjects.
So, while your artisans are melting the glass pieces and making an identical vase with which you can get the better of Jodha, you clearly need some lessons in how to handle obstinate and spoilt young women who do not know what is good for them. And that is You, bewakoof bachche!
So pay close attention, and I will tell you how to tackle the tiger in the offing with maximum effect and minimum damage (to yourself, of course). This will be the first in a series of lessons, so save this in the 16th century equivalent of a hard drive for future reference, just in case the tiger seeks a postponement.
1) Make sure the tiger goes after her first. Wait till the very last moment, to make sure that the wretched girl is really scared to death, and cannot say, after you have rescued her at great risk to life and limb,
Yeh kaunsi badi baat thi, Shahenshah? Hamare Amer mein to bachche bhi bagh ko dande se bhaga dete hain, toh aapko use parajit karne me itna vilamb aur itni kathinayi kyon huyi?
2) Push her behind you and advance a good way from her and towards the tiger, which will be stunned at the vision of a man actually coming towards him. More important, Jodha cannot then hear what is going on between the two of you.
3) Look the tiger in the eye, and tell him: Mere bhai, aap bhi bahadur aur hum bhi, isliye aapko ek achchi salah deta hoon. Is aurat ko mat khayiye. Ye abhi bahar se hi mujhe roz jhagda kar karke pagal bana rahi hai, to sochiye aapka andar se kya haal karegi?
4) The tiger will turn tail and run for his life. But before he does that, ask him, as a quid pro quo, to wrestle with you for a couple of minutes, and inflict 3 bad gashes on your arms and chest, calibrated to bleed heavily and picturesquely without causing any lasting damage.
5) You can then pick up your fainting begum and return to your camp in triumph. Make sure that as soon as you have deposited her on whatever is available, you collapse artistically on the ground, with blood all over you, and await further developments with your eyes strategically closed.
I can guarantee that this will work, provided you do exactly as I have told you. Apne dimaag par zor dene ki koyi zaroorat nahin. Is ladki se joojhte joojthe aapka tez dimaag sunn pad gaya hai, nahin to Sujanpur me jo hashar hua, wo kabhi nahin hota!
No need to thank me either, but I shall wait and see if you have followed my instructions to the letter before deciding whether to help you in the future, so watch out!
Yours affectionately,
Shyamala Aunty
Kanch ke karigaron ki beizzati: The Shahi Kaanch ke Karigaron ka Sanghatan of of Agra is staging a formal protest to the Shahenshah against the beizzati to which they had been subjected, by having a priceless specimen of their art wantonly reduced to smithereens by an angry begum. This would, they insist, give their potential customers the false impression that their products were substandard and not fit for the Shahi household. Their livelihoods would be badly affected for no fault of theirs. The Mughal empire's export trade figures for glass objets d'art would also take a downturn. They demand justice and corrective action.
The Shahenshah, while receiving them in the Diwan-e-Aam, and acknowledging the validity of their plaints, promises to give them the opportunity to recover their prestige and in fact enhance it, by melting the selfsame glass pieces and using them to recreate a bowl that would be the exact copy of the smashed one. They accept the challenge right willingly and disperse, praising the Shahenshah.
Smoke and Mirrors: Now for the less important matters that form the latter half of the title of this post.I am not touching now on the Jodha-Jalal-Mahaam Grand Confrontation, which Mahaam, of course, wins hands down. Jodha, apparently, has no inkling of how a man will react if told, by a wife who displayed acute hostility towards him even half an hour ago, that the mother-figure who has always been the sheet anchor of his life, and to whom he has owed his very existence time and again, is guilty of extinguishing the life of his unborn child...
So Jodha, as in the fable of the Three Little Pigs, can huff and puff all she wants to, but she cannot blow down Mahaam's house, anchored as it is in the bedrock of Jalal's unconditional love and trust for his Badiammi. She will thus end up, not where she started from, but a good ten steps behind, barely escaping another sazaa, not a jawaab, for this latest harkat of hers.
Kanha, who is antaryami, must have quickly readjusted his ear plugs to cope with the torrent of angry protests in which Jodha is bound to deluge him.
Jodha: Returning to her khwabgah in a state of suppressed fury, Jodha Begum looks around in vain for something more to throw that would be reduced to a satisfactory heap of rubble. Baulked of this outlet for her bruised feelings, she is reduced to muttering dire imprecations under her breath:
Apne aap ko kya samajhte hain yeh Shahehshah? Ek to is Rahim ne sahi samay par mera saath chhod diya, aur main unke samaksha jhooti ban gayi. Aur to aur, unki Badiammi ne atyant chaturayi se mujhe apne shabdon ke chakravyuh mein uljha diya, jis se mein apne aap ko mukht hi nahin kar payi. Anth mein, mujhe Shahehshah ke krodh se bachane ka natak karke, unki drishti mein aur bhi vishwaspaatra ban gayi. Ab kya karoon mein?
Aaj to Kanha, aapne mere saath kitna dukhdaayi vyavahaar kiya hai! Kya apni itni mahaan bhakt ko aisi peedha dena aapko shobha deta hai, Kanha? (Kanha readjusts his earplugs and starts snoozing).
Ek to maine itni bahumoolya vastu todi, is ummeed mein ki tab to unhe samjh aayegi ki hum par kya beeth rahi hai, aur hamein manane ka thoda to aur prayas karenge. Par unhon ne kya kiya? Mujhe ek aur dhamki deke chale gaye.
Ek shabd bhi nahin kaha ki : Jodha, hamse galti ho gayi, hamein kshama kar do. Agar thoda sa jhuk kar humse kshama mang hi lete, to kya bigad jata unki shahenshahwale guroor ka? Par inko to akadke rehne aur dhamki dene ke siva kucch bhi nahin aata!
Haan, par jootiyaan to dhyan se utaari thi is baar. Aur aarti bhi bina sankoch ke aur sahi dhang se le liya tha. Lete samay, humein dekh bhi rahe the; hum ne aankhon ke kone se dekh liya tha. Par jab humne unke aane ka kaaran poocha, yeh soch ke ki kuchch sahi kehne aaye hain, to wo dibbi aage kar di.
Bas jootiyaan utaarne ke liye unke itne sare avagunon ko hum kaise kshama kar dein? Kabhi nahin!!
And so on and on and on. Exactly like a Mills and Boon heroine 4 centuries down the years. Oh Jodha, my Jodha, when will you learn to read a man, even such an akdu Shahenshah, inside out, which is the first step to making him dance to your tune?
So, folks, en avant! The tiger, who is very strict about not working overtime, awaits!😉
Shyamala B.Cowsik
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Bye for now, folks! See you again soon (do I hear groans of What, again, and soon?😉)
For now, please do NOT forget to hit the Like button, in case you liked this post. Thanks in advance.
Shyamala/Aunty/Akka/Di
Edited by sashashyam - 10 years ago
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