FOR ALL THOSE WATCHING THE RE-RUN OF JODHA AKBAR AND MY OLD READERS
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 Winkle😉, 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
__________________________________________________________________Jodha Akbar 7: Parwaan chad chukha tha
Folks,
This whole episode had the strange, will o' the wisp quality of a dream. It could just as well have been one of those fantasy sequences in films, only set in Amer instead of in Switzerland, with the hero gazing spellbound at the peerless beauty of the heroine and losing his heart to her in a nano-second. Only it was not.
Then again, our hero is not a lovelorn wannabe Romeo. He is, as he informs the cutlery seller with wicked relish, Shahehshah-e-Sultanat Jalaluddin Muhammad, on a swashbuckling adventure like a boy escaping from his dull school routine. And as the episode begins, he is yet to see his lady love-to-be. And she , luckily for him, has no notion that he is floating around!😉
Right now, he is wandering about, hands crossed behind his back in true royal style (when I wrote my first post here on June 30, 2013, I had to explain that this stance, far from being "stiff" , was the way royalty, especially Mughal royalty, moved), twirling his moustache with pride. His eyes, as keen as uske khanjar ki dhaar, scan the Gangaur scene of unbridled colour and gaiety. He is captivated by the light-hearted enjoyment of the crowds, and no wonder, poor boy, after having had to look at his eternally sour-faced Khan Baba day in and day out!😉
The palkis of the royal ladies of Amer appear, but he is not interested. Not, that is , till there are cries of Rajkumari Jodha ki jai! In that instant, his head snaps around, and his eyes are immediately raised to the palki now arriving, trying to penetrate the sheer pardha and catch a glimpse of the Registan ka gulab.
Waqt rukh gaya: Then begin I minute and 53 seconds of sheer magic. Or rather, 1 minute and 53 seconds when time stands still. I was reminded of a sher that captures to perfection what Jalal was feeling:
Waqt do hi guzarein hein mujh par yeh saari umr mein, Ek tere aane se pehle, ek tere jaane ke baad.
The words of his bedazzled sainik echo thru his mind: the bedaag chehra ( curiously enough, the makhmali twacha is omitted!)), the lacheela badan ( which could hardly be made out thru the parda, and that too when Jodha was seated in the palki, but who cares?). To me, Jodha's bepanah husn (the narrator, whose verbal clumsiness is beyond belief, pronounces this as hansna!) seems to be more an article of faith than of fact at this point of time, but then I was not looking at her thru Jalal's eyes!
Tham gayi thi aanken, rukh gayi thi saansein, bezubaan ho gaya tha Jalal, intones the narrator, and then falls back once again on bezubaan, while I felt like hitting the inarticulate chap on the head for getting in the way, and that too so clumsily. In the way, that is, of my gazing at Jalal's eyes and his face.
First he walks along the side of the path towards the palki, on its right. Then he stops, and as she comes parallel to him, and he moves backwards for a moment, there is a shot of his face that can only be described as priceless.
His eyes, once so sharp and cutting, now look different. They are bold and rakish as they gaze up at Jodha with an unhesitating curiosity that comes from Jalal's imperial lineage and his inbuilt sense of entitlement. But they are also at once seeking and questioning: Is this possible? Can there be beauty as flawless as this? The eyes soften, and for an instant the look in them comes close to adoration. The mouth twists in a half smile of pure satisfaction: Us Rajkumari ke deedar ki chahat poori ho gayi thi!
The narrator babbles on of history having decided to link Jodha and Akbar, but I was not listening. I was lost in the rapture on Jalal's face, a rapture that was reflected in his eyes. He was lost too, in a dream of his own, and as he comes to a halt and the palki starts moving away from him, there is a very curious expression on his face. I could not make it out: was it satisfaction or was it a craving for more?
One minute and fifty three seconds of enchantment were over, and time started moving once again.
The face in the water: Yes, yes, we will get there, But after a moment to remember.
This is when Jodha arrives at the site for the Gangaur pooja and prepares to alight from the palki. Suryabhan has come trotting up, and has placed himself where he thinks Jodha can spot him. But Jalal has other ideas, and he smoothly cuts him off and takes up a position between Suryabhan and the palki. I did not pause to wonder why the former did not shove this impertinent commoner aside, for I was too busy trying to read Jalal's eyes.
The whole face is tight and drawn, and the eyes look almost angry. Is it a nascent possessiveness already at work, that no one but he should gaze on Jodha's beauty? Is it the same raw emotion that later makes him threaten the folk singers against ever singing praises of Jodha's physical perfections? It might well be so.
After Jalal cons the Ameri guards into letting him into the inner enclosure, he walks parallel to Suryabhan but behind him, on the next higher step. Hands behind his back, the body bent slightly but completely at ease, the eyes once again sharp and focussed on Jodha's face, fascinated, devouring.
Whereas Suryabhan, who is in the know of things, looks concerned at Sukanya's storming away after a squabble, Jalal looks amused.
Jodha, told by her mother, Kehte hain jo diya tum paani mein bahati ho, uski roshni mein, ek pal ke liye, tumhein tumhara aanewaala pal dikhta hai, looks half disbelieving, half sweetly compliant, and altogether charming. She bends down, launches her diya on the water and questions the Goddess, He Gangaur Maata, batayiye kya hai hamari kismet mein? ( and I thought kismet was pure Urdu, and this should have been bhavishya!).
The Maata responds with unexpected celerity. A sudden wind comes up, blowing leaves and earth all over the place. With perfect timing, it blows away even Suryabhan's heavy, zari doshala just as Jodha is bending to catch the promised glimpse of her future. For a man so keen that she should see him, and him alone, in the water, Suryabhan behaves idiotically, for he bends low and fumbles for the doshala for what looks like ages. And the bird of opportunity flies past him and disappears.
Jalal, on the other hand, stands still, unmoving and unmoved. So it is his face, dazzlingly handsome even upside down, that Jodha gazes at in the water for a long, long moment. A face that is now tilted back as its owner smiles with pure pleasure.
But as she looks up, wanting to make sure of this man who is her future, the wind and the rain make him just a blurred, shadowy presence, a will o' the wisp that is there but almost not there. Jodha aur Jalal ka pehla milan has the curious, intangible quality of a dream. A dream that is to haunt her in the days ahead, as she sees that bold, handsome face in the water even when its owner is not there.
Parwaan chad chukha tha: Ah, yes, the paayal! We have got there at long last.
There is nothing so charming as a paayal of the girl you adore. A lovely piece of work, made lovelier by the fact that it graces her shapely foot. And there can be nothing so delicately romantic as the act of the lover replacing the paayal of the beloved, fastening it with hands that tremble at her touch ( of course one hopes that she does not have cracked heels, for to have to apply Krack cream would have hardly been romantic!😉)
In the event, Jalal has no such notions, and as he looks at Jodha's lost paayal lying in the puddle of water, he seems for a moment unsure and puzzled as to what he should do. Then he bends, one arm behind his back, hesitates once more for a long moment, and then picks it up with his right hand.
There is a certain stiffness in this movement, a rigidity that seemed, in June 2013, to give some cause for complaint. But one has to take into account the character to be played. This is a young man who has his world at his feet. So arrogance comes naturally to him, as also the attitude of one who habitually dominates lesser mortals. The stance, the hands behind his back (exactly like the great Dilip Kumar playing Prince Salim in Mughal-e-Azam, incidentally), the slow walk to pick up Jodha's paayal, the hesitation before he does so, it is all part of the consciousness of being a Mughal ruler.
Jalal is not used to bending at all, for anything or anyone. It would normally never occur to him to stoop and pick up a girl's paayal as a token. Women have always been his to take as he chose, he would never dream of chasing any of them. Still he picks it up, which means a lot more than with an ordinary man.
He does not kiss the paayal as any ordinary lover would. It would be not be like the Shahenshah at all. He tosses it up in the air, but he always catches it, and when it falls into the fire, he burns his hand to retrieve it.
It is revealing that it never occurs to him to poke about in the fire with a stick to retrieve it safely; he plunges his hand straight in. And once he has the paayal safely back, he rolls both his hand and the searing metal of the paayal in the sand to ease the pain of the scorching. But there is not the slightest hint of hurt to be seen in his face or his brooding eyes, for he is too lost to be even conscious of his scorched hand.
All this is not so much, as some have thought, a sign of passion for Jodha. He is not yet aware that he is falling in love with her, he does not know what love means. It is rather the possessiveness towards her that, as the line has it, uske parvaan chad chukha tha. For him, the payal symbolizes Jodha, and he will not let go of it or her, even if he has to burn his fingers to secure it.
It all comes thru beautifully, and far from being unnaturally rigid, it is all spot on for who Jalal is.
At this point, the narrator kindly informs us about what we knew perfectly well already. To wit, that Amer mein kayi khoobsoorat ladkiyaan thin, par Jalal ke liye Amer ka arth thi Jodha. Jalal ko nahin pata tha ki insaan kabhi kabhi kisi to paane ke liye apne aap ko kho deta hai.. Ab Jalal ki ek hi khwahish thi, Jodha ko paane ki..
It is revealing that in Jalal's split second fantasy, where he gallops up on his steed and sweeps Jodha off her feet in one supple movement, into his arms and on the horse , Jodha looks first bewildered and then helpless, while his gaze feasts greedily on her loveliness. This is wish fulfilment at its charam seema!
As the narrator continues to intone solemnly about Jalal having been chosen by fate and having his place in history secured, but bas sahi waqt ka intezaar tha, Jalal is doing his own thing. Holding Jodha's paayal in this hand, he stands there still and unmoving. But his eyes are anything but still, and in them is the same expression that they had when he was in his tent, calling out to Abdul before setting out on this madcap adventure to the heart of the enemy. The spell of his kismet was strong on him, and it is even stronger now. Kismet ke aage kis ki chali hai?
Ok, that is it for today, folks. I am not going into the Jodha-Suryabhan segment at all, so as not to dispel the spell that holds us all in its thrall, except to note that it somehow reminded me, in its headlong, heedless obstinacy, of her Khyber rescue mission. Tomorrow, we enter the Jalal ka sar zone with a vengeance. Adios till then!
Shyamala (B.Cowsik)/Aunty/Akka/Di
Cricket
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