Folks,
Those of you who still visit the Jodha Akbar forum, and used to read my almost daily episode analyses for Jodha Akbar between June 2013 and April 2014, would be surprised, if not startled, to see me popping up again, like Rip van Winkleš, well after the serial has been (clumsily) wound up. It is not a long story, so here goes.
My very good friend Mandy (ghalibmirza) had persuaded me, somewhat against my better judgement, to write episode analyses once again for those watching the rerun of Jodha Akbar. This began on her Jodha Akbar Discussion thread at
https://www.indiaforums.com/forum/zee-anmol/4447559/jodha-akbar-discussion-corner
and I have so far done Episodes 1-10. These were fresh ones for me, since I had posted first in this forum only 2 weeks after Jodha Akbar started, on June 30, 2015. I had thus done these new ones on a daily basis.
But from now on, I shall be doing biweekly posts for 3 episodes at a time, on Thursdays and Sundays.
As for reviving these posts in the main Jodha Akbar forum, this is in response to requests from some of my regular readers, who felt that there might be interest in reading them even among casual visitors to this forum. I am not very sure of this, but I am willing to make experiment, so here goes with the post for Episode No.1: Sound and Fury.
I send PMs about these posts to a certain number of regular readers who want that, and if you want to be included in that list, all you need to do is to send me a PM to that effect.
If you read this post or the follow up ones and happen to like them, do hit the Like button without fail. I want to keep track of my regular readers even if they are silent readers, and this is the only way I can do that. So please do not forget the Like button!
Shyamala B.Cowsik
_________________________________________________________________Folks,
Here I am again, right at the beginning of a series that I had promised myself I would not touch again. Famous last words!š But Episodes 1-9 did not feature in the earlier list of (almost) daily analyses that I had done between June 30, 2013 and April 2014, so these will be, in that sense, new for me and for you too.
I have seen the charming posts on Episode 1 made, later on this thread (I had reserved this place as soon as Mandy opened this thread!), by Mandy and Khushi, but my take on it will be somewhat different. I must confess that when I watched it on June 18, 2013, Om Puri and his Jalal = Jallad ranting got on my nerves so much that I detested the whole episode. Why No.1, I detested No.2 as well, and almost dropped out then itself. However, I thought I should wait at least till the end of the week, which was only of 4 days as the show opened on a Tuesday. By then, I was fascinated by this young man and his Jalal, especially after the searing bitterness he brought to his scene with his estranged mother Hamida Bano, and I stayed. '
Which was a great piece of luck for me, for I would not have missed Rajat's Jalal for anything. Or the very large number of delightful friends I have made in this forum!
Anyway, enough of all this, and here goes!
Roohon ki baatein: The voices were softer than at any other time in such scenes shown later, and Jalal's was almost unrecognizably gentle. His Jodha, without the Begum, pleased me inordinately, as also that, in a charming contrast with his irritating habit later, he does not add Jodha Begum in every sentence he utters, as if he was in danger of forgetting her name!š
Now where do you suppose this scene in Hamara maqbara ,as Jodha puts it, is situated? The opening line, by Jalal, is Tum yahan kya kar rahi ho, Jodha?, and she responds Aapko dekhne aayi hoon! Which would put it at Sikandra, Akbar's mausoleum, which seems to be in remarkably good shape, and not in Jodha's 1 km or so away.
There is a lovely, throwaway line from Jalal next, Tum to khudh ko aaine mein dekh rahi ho! It has deep, romantic implications, for she has come to see him, but now she looks in her mirror. Where she sees, not herself, but him, for he is part of her, indeed more. He is woven into the warp and woof of her being, and as Harry Potter when he looks into the Mirror of Erised, Jodha looks into her aaina, and she sees her heart's deepest desire, Jalal. It is an intensely moving line, but I wonder how many who watched it really grasped its true significance.
By the end of the scene, however, the magic faded away, and my teeth were set on edge as Jalal intoned: Wo Jalal jo ek hi rang jaanta tha, ek hi rang samajhta tha, ek hi rang bahata tha, khoon ka rang. As if every young conqueror, from Alexander to Napoleon and all those in between, with Asoka the Great in the first place, did not do exactly the same thing!
Bharat ka itihaas a la Balaji: I did not expect the natakiya rupantar to begin with historical dates, no matter what they did to Chittor (the last quasi-historical track taken up by Ekta's CVs) later.
What does the Balaji equivalent of a PPT say?
-66 years ago*: 1947: Independence (*in 2013, of course)
- 156 years ago: 1857: The first war of independence
- 256 years ago: 1757: East India Company
-333 years ago: 1680: Veer Shivaji
-456 years ago: 1557: What seems to be the Second Battle of Panipat, though there is no Hemu, and the man Jalal executes (with entire justification, seeing that after the recumbent foe has chosen zindagi, he rises and makes a cowardly attack on Jalal from the back) is only a subordinate, seeing that Jalal sends a fierce warning to his king.
As far as the history I have studied goes, the Second Battle of Panipat was fought in 1556, on November 5, 1556 to be precise, between Jalal/Bairam Khan and Hemu, more than 30 years after the First Battle of Panipat, on April 21, 1526, between Babur and Ibrahim Lodi.
So what would you say this battle of 1557 was supposed to be?
I would say that it is due to an obsession with the number 6, possibly for numerological reasons. Thus 66/156/256/456 (they would not have dared to tamper with Shivaji Maharaj, otherwise he would have been shifted to 1683, 336 years ago!)! No one seems to have told this 6-obsessed Ekta that in Christian belief, 666 is the sign of Satan!š
There are other very curious things about this battle. In the opening shots, the soldiers on the left seem to be ambling along rather than rushing into battle. Worse, Jalal is shown riding all alone in full battle gear, a risky and unheard of manoeuvre. His intense participation in the fighting is in blatant contradiction of the historical fact that Jalal, born on October 15, 1542, was only 14 years old at the time of the Second Battle of Panipat, and that Bairam Khan did not let him participate in the fighting. Why, in Ekta's version, it seems to be a Jalal solo show, with Bairam Khan nowhere in evidence! The film did this part far more credibly and with greater historical accuracy.
The Jalal as Jallad ranting: But then Jalal has to be shown cutting down foes right and left instead of embracing them with daya aur prem. For Om Puri is here bent on asserting that Jalal is a beraham yoddha, a bloodthirsty zaalim aur vaishi ( the CVs apparently forgot to add darinda!š) and that his shamsheer ne khoon ka swaad chaka, as though the shamsheers of all the warriors seen in Hindustan till then were raised on a milk diet. š”
Even after that magnificent scene between Bairam Khan and Jalal, when the shamsheer is ceremonially handed over to the boy, Om Puri is at it again, with his lament about the zeher that he accuses Bairam Khan of having bharofied into the young Jalal's ragein, ki uski soch mein insaniyat ki koyi keemat nahin thi. And then he begins to talk of Jalal nahin Jallad, jiski waqt ke saath kroorta badne lagi thi... By this time, I was close to gnashing my teeth, and I could see why I could not stand this episode on June 18, 2013. š”
However, since at this point the brooding young Murad-to-be, perched on a huge pedestal in the middle of nowhere like a statue, had been replaced by apna Rajat, with his handsome face and arrogant sneer, no one, at least none of the ladies, would have lent an ear to what Puri was babblingš. Which would have been all for the best!š
Bairam Khan: Naved Aslam is an excellent actor, whether as DK in Pavitra Rishta,as Peter, Sultan Mirza's right hand man in Once upon a time in Mumbai, or now. His Bairam Khan is as much, or more, a triumph of casting as of acting. He looks the role, and in comparison, the one in the film (blessedly very soon disposed of) was ludicrous. As he intones:
Tum soorma ho Jalal.. Fateh karna tumhara mazhab... Yeh shamsheer tumhari baandi.. Sultanat tumhari chahat...Beraham khauff tumhari shoharat..Fateh kar lo is mulq ko! ,
he almost gave me goose pimples. Even the yoddha ke seene mein dil nahin hota mantra,which makes its debut here, could not irritate me! Bairam Khan's narrow face, with its deep-set, lambent eyes, is imbued with one fierce and unwavering obsession, Mughal rule over all of Hindustan, thru fear and force. He is wrong, of course, for no land this vast can be ruled for long by fear and force, but if it was a failing, it was in its way a magnificent one!
And the young Jalal matches him well, which is no easy feat, especially in the scene where his Khan Baba blotches the map of Rajasthan with his blood. Obviously they had no fear of septicaemia in those days!š
Kabootar aa, aa, aa: This part was as ludicrous the second time around as it was at the first showing. But how on earth does Jodha, who is clearly a female, 16th century version of Usain Bolt, follow the fall trajectory of the wounded pigeon? And then, when she releases it, it takes off as if it was not in the least hurt!š
Sujamal scores: Of the Jodha-Sukanya spatting, the less said the better. But I liked the tulabhar scene, and the subtle, double significance of Sujamal's gift. Firstly, Saraswati trumped Lakshmi, and secondly, Sujamal trumped all the rest!
Mandir ki loot: I was again exasperated by the Ameri soldier asserting Jab se yeh Mughal aaye hain, tabse humare mandiron ki dharohar loot rahe hain, as if this had not been done time and again by any number of conquerors from Muhammad Ghazni downwards.š”
But with that, and on top of that, the second assertion that Mughal sainikon ka ek hi sardar hai, Badshah Jalaluddin Muhammad (as if the Shahenshah would be at all aware of 80% of what is being done in his name), Jodha's fuse is well and properly lit. And not without reason, for the buck stops with the Shahenshah, and he is responsible for all the acts of his subordinates, whether he knows about them or not, whether he had ordered them or not.
Not that Jalaluddin Muhammad, with his trademark half sneer, seems at all bothered by such matters right now!
Oh Lord, see how, long this has become! Bye for now, folks!
Shyamala/Aunty/Akka/Di
Kumkum Bhagya
Tu Dhadkan Main Dil
Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi 2
365