Jodha Akbar 8-10: Revelation!

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 8-10: Revelation!

This is going to be a three in one, given that Episodes 8 & 9 were mostly as flat as a pappad, and almost entirely void of content.I shall pick up the very few points they had to offer at the end of this post. In fact, I begin to think that by the time they had finished with the magical No. 7, the CVs decided that we should not be spoilt with a succession of good and very good fare, in case we got visual indigestion. So they added these two deadly dull ones, somewhat like the way you give a baby Woodwards Gripe Water!😉

So let us concentrate on No,.10, which was a crackerjack of an episode, with Jalal at his swashbuckling best.

The revelation in the title is a double bill: first that of Jalal's identity to Jodha, and then, to her and to us, of how far his icy courage, even with death staring him in the face, could go. Coupled with this are his astuteness, and his quick-wittedness, both of which are phenomenal. A bunch of unanswered questions rounds it off.

At the top of his game: Jalal was in rip-roaring form, and despite the Damocles sword of having to rescue Abdul hanging over his head, he seemed to be enjoying himself like a lively, resourceful schoolboy playing truant.

Having inveigled the tubby mithaiwala into revealing the location of the prison (in the previous episode) - it was sheer delight to see the mischievous twinkle with which he tells the chap:Choki baat kahi hai aapne! Main to kahoon ki aapko is rajya ka gupt mantra hona chahiye! - he swiftly disposes of an unwary, mariyal- looking guard at the main entrance to the prison, and takes his place, complete with the uniform and the sword . And if the choga was splitting at the seams under his arms due the difference in their builds, why, no one would have been able to spot it! 😉

One should not miss the astuteness with which Jalal locates the identifying mark on the dead guard's arm and duplicates it on his own with the point of his knife. His attention to detail shown by the fact that before going into the prison as a soldier, he turns all the three rings on his right hand inside , so that the valuable stones do not show and thus betray him as not being a simple sipahi.

The impulsive youngster: Jalal looks exceptionally handsome in the simple sipahi's outfit, proving that he does not need any chamak-dhamak to enhance his looks. He oozes royalty, strength and power; arrogant, sharp and dripping with self-confidence even in such parlous straits. He is also an excellent actor, with the body language to fit his role as a sainik.

He is now ripe for mischief, and he is not going to stand still on guard duty, that is for sure! Fortune favours him - the goddess probably has a soft corner for a handsome young man - for Jodha's palki makes its appearance, and our boy wonder swings into action without losing a second, and without a second thought!

I was in stitches seeing him swiftly position himself as one of the front bearers of the palki. As soon as he has slotted himself in there, he proceeds to behave in a most un-bearerlike manner, casting sidelong glances upwards at the princess. It was sheer luck that he did not stumble and bring the palki down! 😉

Once the palki has been set down, and Jodha descends from it, Jalal stares at her unblinkingly, and his eyes, till then narrowed in thought, brighten as if a lamp had been lit inside them.

A strange, unrecognized longing: Very soon, however, the brightness gives way to wide-eyed, startled shock and anger as Jodha retails all of Jalal's misdeeds to Suryabhan, rounding her peroration off with an emphatic: Isi liye hum uska sar, uska ahankaar, aur uska samrajya pairon tale kuchala hua dekhna chahte hain! Jalal has never before been treated to such a catalogue of his crimes, committed knowingly and unknowingly, and he is stirred to an anger that is rooted in this realization of how he looks to Jodha.

A question arises here: why is he angry at all? Since it was his aim to spread the khauf-e-Jalal as far and as fast as he can, he should in fact have been pleased at this proof positive that his campaign has worked, for he is hated here in Amer, and thus feared, to a satisfactory extent.

There is only one answer to this conundrum. What makes Jalal angry is that it is Jodha who thinks so badly of him. Already, along with the nascent possessiveness and the obsession that she should be his and his alone, the desire to have her accept him and care for him is beginning to take root in his zehen. Soon, this yearning, which he himself does not recognize as yet, will spread and take over both his heart (yes, it is there! ) and his mind. These are the two factors that, even when Jalal is in a druken rage against Jodha, govern the way he behaves towards her.

The Mughal prisoner: As he walks alongside Jodha's train of daasis, Jalal's eyes narrow in anger as they voice their certitude that Jalal ka sar is now near at hand. Both then, and earlier when he is listening to Jodha rip into Jalaluddin Muhammad, he displays iron self-control, and not a muscle in face betrays the rising rage within him. This self-control foreshadows, and shows glimpses of the great tactician and strategist he is to become. And it pays off, for he learns precisely Abdu l is being held prisoner

Next he rushes to Abdul's cell and abuses him loudly in order to attract his attention. Even before Abdul recognises Jalal, his rock-hard conviction that Kisi bhi waqt mere Shahenshah aayenge, aur tumhari nazaron tale mujhe le jayenge illustrates the nature of the relationship between him and and his master.

Of caring and responsibility: One can only marvel at the extreme risks that Jalal runs to save a servitor,even if he is also a friend. It is proof positive that Jalal has a very acute sense of responsibility, and yes, a heart as well that knows how to be compassionate and caring

If that was not so, he would never have risked this life, and the destruction of all his hopes of victory over Rajasthan, to come right into the heart of the enemy's citadel to rescue Abdul. In the same situation, Bairam Khan would have left Amer, leaving Abdul die under torture. That is the difference between him and Jalal.

Another example of Jalal's kindness and consideration to those who serve him, which I have cited earlier, is the understanding way in which he waves away Zaheer's objections to his leaving the camp. That is not the way most absolute kings would have treated a servitor in such a case, they would have shouted at him or hit him for daring to raise any objections.

So the seeds of kindness, caring, and affection are already there in Jalal, they only need nurturing.

His mother cannot do that as she has lost all her hold over him , since he feels , and has must have had it drilled into him by Mahaam Anga, that her leaving him with a nurse was a total and cynical abandonment of her son to save her own life.So it will have to be someone else, Jodha being the most likely candidate for the job. But for that to have effect, she will also have to show that she cares for him, and that is not going to be easy.

The Shahenshah and the Rajkumari: So now we have the Shahenshah standing to attention in front of Abdul's cell, eyes discreetly lowered as Jodha approaches, but still casting sidelong glances at her.

When Abdul retorts to Suryabhan: Bahut kareeb hai wo.. Itne ki kisi bhi waqt uski shamsheer tum tak pahunch sakti hai.. , Jalal smiles into his moustache.. As Jodha launches into her usual tirade against Jalal and asserts that there is no way he can penetrate the walls of the Amer fort and get here, Jalal hardly reacts, being by now familiar with her routine!😉 But Abdul's mocking smile disappears when she mentions the foot-chopping and the desecration of temples.

The curious thing, illustrative of the lack of sharpness and perceptiveness in both Jodha and Suryabhan, is that it occurs to neither to deduce, from Abdul's cryptic but confident pronouncements, that Jalal might have penetrated into Amer. Both are busy making vainglorious statements of the kind that go before a fall.

Be that as it may, it appears that like Hercule Poirot, who could read writing even when it was upside down, Jodha too can read faces even when they are upside down, as that too irrespective of the get up. Thus she recognizes the face in the water in the sipahi standing guard before her, and she swiftly seizes Suryabhan's sword and holds it at Jalal's throat.

I spoke earlier of Jalal's icy courage. He gives a demonstration of it now. With a sword at his throat, and exposure and death only inches away from him, he still does not bat an eyelid, and not a muscle moves in his face as he brazens it out. He is obviously one of those who habitually play at dice with death. 👏

I was entranced by the suppressed mischief in his eyes as he looks at Jodha full in the face and, asked how he was present at the baudi ,answers, in the the fluent rural Rajasthani dialect, undoubtedly a carryover from his childhood in Umarkot: Manne koyi nahin bataya tha ki wahan jaane ki anumati ne hai.. Kyonki hamare yahan to koyi bhi aa jaa sakta hai bina rok tok ke..

And to the follow up question: Kahan ke ho tum? , the eyes are bright and compelling as he answers, a half smile twisting his mouth:Umarkot!

Finally, the cheekiness with which he comments, after having 'proved' himself to be a Rajput soldier, Mahaul hi shaque se bhara hua hai.. Hawa hi itni zahreeli ki sans ke to mare, na le to mare.. Phir bhi choki baat kahi aapne.. and he looks her full in the face... Yahan koyi bhi Mughal ho sakta hai.

Reckless excellence: There are other things to admire in this arrogant cavalier.

There is the superb swordsmanship that could overcome and disable at least 11 soldiers - this was my count, but there might have been a couple or so more at the sides - and then the sheer physical strength needed to bend those thick prison bars so that he could enter the cell, cut the chains and rescue Abdul. This last reminded me (and Holmes aficionadas will bear me out) of Dr, Grimesby Roylott in The Speckled Band, who could bend a steel poker. And of course Sherlock Holmes himself, who could straighten out the bent poker!

Finally, the arrogant declaration of both his identity and his intent in the message : Agli mulaqat jung mein hogi.. Jalaluddin Muhammad - left on the prison floor, and written in the only medium available, blood, presumably that of the 11 incapacitated guards. Curiously enough, the message is bilingual.Now it is obviously for the benefit of the Rajputs and us, but why then the Persian version?

This is vintage Jalal all over. The flamboyant gesture, the problems with its logistics notwithstanding, is exactly the kind of thing Jalal would do, though, by doing so, he further jeopardises his already tough escape, and in the pre-cap, is getting ready to fight a round dozen opponents with a limp Abdul on his hands to boot. But of course we know that, like d'Artagnan in The Three Musketeers, our boy wonder will emerge a winner, which is the only saving grace!

Jodha does not have that much to do here. But in the striking face to face encounter with Jalal in the prison, when she sees the identification mark on his arm, her genuine regret and her desire to make amends, even to a simple soldier, for having suspected him wrongly, are brought out very convincingly. Her face softens and the eyes offer an unstated apology.

And in her tete a tete with Suryabhan, she is sweetly grateful for his assurances, but at the same time self-assertive.

At the end, Jodha is furious because Jalal has made a fool of her, and she has unknowingly saved his life. In fact, she does that twice, not only during the prison encounter, but earlier, though she does not know it, when she stops the execution of Abdul. If she had not done so, Jalal would have come charging out, dagger in hand, and however hard or well he fought, he would have been overpowered and killed, or worse for him, imprisoned and humiliated.

In the whole episode, however, what stands out, above all else, is Jalal's ice-cold nerve in the face of near certain exposure, and all that this would entail.

The questions:

1) Jalal could neither read nor write. So the message must have been written by Abdul, even in his battered and exhausted state. The blood would have had to be taken from the wounded soldiers scattered all over the hall in front of the cells.

It must have been Abdul who did it, for there is no other option, unless the CVs got Saraswati Devi to suddenly decide to bless Jalal and make him proficient in writing! As Sherlock Holmes used to say When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, is the truth.

Abdul is a cripple, and his crutches are nowhere in evidence. How on earth was this calligraphic exercise accomplished, and how long did it take? Ten minutes would seem an underestimate. This very precious time would have been better used in trying to get away safely, don't you think? It might in fact have made all the difference between life and death for both him and Jalal.

2) Where was the time for Jalal to fight the soldiers, pull Abdul out of the cell, and get the message done before the royal group returned to that hall? Maybe he had a Time Turner, like Hermione in The Prisoner of Azkaban!😉

3) The departing contingent led by Jodha and Suryabhan is very close to the prison hall. Even as they are looking at the dead guard being carried in, they are alerted by a loud groaning sound, presumably from Jalal's wounded victims, and rush back to the hall, to find the birds flown. Now the prison is not a rabbit warren of many corridors, but seems to be consist only of the main hall and some adjacent halls. How then did no one see Jalal rescuing Abdul after disposing of 11+ soldiers, and carrying him out of the prison? And where were Suryabhan and Jodha when all this mayhem was under way?

Shaguni Bai: I am not going into Mainavati's meeting with her, except to note that her pronouncement: Jo Jodha ka haath thaam lega, wo is yug ka sabse bada raja kehlayega! gladdened my heart. Atta girl, I said to myself, this prophecy of yours is Ekta-proof!😉

Episodes 8 & 9: I am not going into the horrible blinding of Zaheer, except to note Bairam Khan's response to Zaheer's anguished cry: Hum Shahenshah ke wafaadaar hain!- Par Mughal Sultanat ke nahin. It is this very distinction that Bairam Khan voices later, when he is complaining to Salima Begum about Jalal and the Takhatmal case, and which, eventually, leads to his downfall.

Nor am I going into the verbal joust between him and Mahaam Anga, which was reminiscent of two scorpions, stings raised, circling each other warily.

The face in the water: There is a dreamy, prophetic quality to the way in which the unknown face in the water haunts Jodha, so much so that she sees it even with her eyes closed. She looks puzzled and troubled as she asks the image: Aakhir kaun ho tum? Kyon aankhen tumhara chehra bhula nahin paatin? The closing shot of Jalal's face in this sequence is arresting, with the features looking are if they had been fashioned with a knife, so sharp are the planes.

Sujamal & Jodha: The desolation on Jodha's face, as she remembers her fencing bouts with a blindfolded Sujamal, who still manages to disarm her every time, stays with you. As does Sujamal's explanation of how he pulls that off: Man aur shareer jab ekaagra hokar kaam karte hain, to aatma saath deti hai.. Aise mein aapki talwar hi aapki dhaal ban jaati hai, jo waar karti bhi hai aur waar se bachati bhi hai.. This philosophy reminded me of Jonathan Livingston Seagull!

Suryabhan: His lovelorn effusions about Jodha are really poetic: Kyon aisa hai, Jodha, sochoon to thara naam sujhe, aankhen band karoon to tu hi nazar aaye, talwar dekhoon to aankhen dikhe thaari, har waqt man hai teri yaadon se bhari..kyon kuch samajh nahin sakta tere siva.. Jodha, aakhir kaun ho tum? Unfortunately, his mono-expression, plasticine face has no room for the high romantic. No wonder the director keeps him behind a screen when he is spouting all this!😉

Editing by Zee Anmol: I think there is some amount of editing going on here. For one thing, every episode is under 20 minutes. Secondly, a discussion between the Rajputs in the maikhana, about their getting hold of Jalal's harem after defeating him was missing. When I heard that the first time, I felt sad that the Rajputs here seemed to have the same attitude toward the womenfolk of the enemy as the Mughals (bar Jalal, I presume). The kind of respect and honour to be accorded to all non-combatants, especially women, as part of the traditional yuddha dharma seem to have long since vanished by the 16th century.

The dunderhead Abdul: He is remarkably ill-prepared for his disguise as a jyotishi. He would have done far better to have come as an ordinary man, which would have kept him safe. He looks panicky, and he does not even take care, when he pushes Suryabhan's largesse into his kamarbandh, that he should not dislodge the Mughal gold coins there. And he lands Jalal in an extremely sticky situation.

Then again, in the prison, as soon as he recognizes Jalal, he starts smiling, which, if there had been any keen Rajput observers, would have been deadly. Again, when Jalal is answering Jodha's question about his native place, and later when he is asked to prove that he is a Rajput soldier, Abdul's face is taut with tension before Jalal responds, and he is smiling immediately afterwards. Both could have been very dangerous for Jalal.

Jalal-Jodha :Lastly, a speculative exercise about the current relationship between Jalal and Jodha.

What Jalal feels for Jodha is a rapidly changing thing, so anything one says now might be overtaken by the next episode. In the short term, however, as I wrote earlier on another thread, Jalal is going to find out that his new begum is more like a hedgehog than a velvet pillow 😉(that makhmali badan nonsense; when she is sitting in the palki and he can see nothing of her but her face, how does he spot the makhmali badan?)

Still, I think he feels:

1) Great appreciation of her bepanah husn (I have my own views on this,but it is what he thinks that counts, after all!). Akbar was said to be a lover of the beautiful in general, and in a woman, it would go without saying! But this would not be an obsession, for he is used to beautiful women, after all.

There would be a strong element of desire, but it would not be decisive or dominant.

Love is still far away, and in any case, right now he does not know what love is.

2) Anger at her having held him at the point of a sword. What, a mere woman to dare to do that to ME! Still, this is mingled with reluctant admiration for her courage, which gains ground once he is back in his camp.

3) A burning determination and desire, linked to No.2, to give her a proper comeuppance. He thinks this would be best done by making her come to him voluntarily, as a way of saving her Amer from destruction at his hands.

4) Lastly, a growing discomfort, camouflaged as rage against her, due to the harsh home truths she voices about him. That gets under his skin and rankles, especially, as discussed above, because it is Jodha who is voicing them.

Ok, folks, this is it. I'll be back on Monday.

Shyamala (B.Cowsik) /Aunty/Akka/Di

This is going to be a three in one, given that Episodes 8 & 9 were mostly as flat as a pappad, and almost entirely void of content.I shall pick up the very few points they had to offer at the end of this post. In fact, I begin to think that by the time they had finished with the magical No. 7, the CVs decided that we should not be spoilt with a succession of good and very good fare, in case we got visual indigestion. So they added these two deadly dull ones, somewhat like the way you give a baby Woodwards Gripe Water!😉

So let us concentrate on No,.10, which was a crackerjack of an episode, with Jalal at his swashbuckling best.

The revelation in the title is a double bill: first that of Jalal's identity to Jodha, and then, to her and to us, of how far his icy courage, even with death staring him in the face, could go. Coupled with this are his astuteness, and his quick-wittedness, both of which are phenomenal. A bunch of unanswered questions rounds it off.

Episode 10 was a classic. I can watch it over and over and over again!

At the top of his game: Jalal was in rip-roaring form, and despite the Damocles sword of having to rescue Abdul hanging over his head, he seemed to be enjoying himself like a lively, resourceful schoolboy playing truant.

Having inveigled the tubby mithaiwala into revealing the location of the prison (in the previous episode) - it was sheer delight to see the mischievous twinkle with which he tells the chap:Choki baat kahi hai aapne! Main to kahoon ki aapko is rajya ka gupt mantra hona chahiye! - he swiftly disposes of an unwary, mariyal- looking guard at the main entrance to the prison, and takes his place, complete with the uniform and the sword . And if the choga was splitting at the seams under his arms due the difference in their builds, why, no one would have been able to spot it! 😉

One should not miss the astuteness with which Jalal locates the identifying mark on the dead guard's arm and duplicates it on his own with the point of his knife. His attention to detail shown by the fact that before going into the prison as a soldier, he turns all the three rings on his right hand inside , so that the valuable stones do not show and thus betray him as not being a simple sipahi.

I found the Jalal-Mithaiwala interaction very cute! How smoothly he got the info he needed out of the little(??)sumo.

The impulsive youngster: Jalal looks exceptionally handsome in the simple sipahi's outfit, proving that he does not need any chamak-dhamak to enhance his looks. He oozes royalty, strength and power; arrogant, sharp and dripping with self-confidence even in such parlous straits. He is also an excellent actor, with the body language to fit his role as a sainik.

He looked very handsome indeed. I don't know how the rest of the sipahis didn't sense anything amiss in this particular one. Even with his simple attire he stood out.

He is now ripe for mischief, and he is not going to stand still on guard duty, that is for sure! Fortune favours him - the goddess probably has a soft corner for a handsome young man - for Jodha's palki makes its appearance, and our boy wonder swings into action without losing a second, and without a second thought!

I was in stitches seeing him swiftly position himself as one of the front bearers of the palki. As soon as he has slotted himself in there, he proceeds to behave in a most un-bearerlike manner, casting sidelong glances upwards at the princess. It was sheer luck that he did not stumble and bring the palki down! 😉

Once the palki has been set down, and Jodha descends from it, Jalal stares at her unblinkingly, and his eyes, till then narrowed in thought, brighten as if a lamp had been lit inside them.

Poor Jalal, he is so unused to standing still nazare jhooka kar.

A strange, unrecognized longing: Very soon, however, the brightness gives way to wide-eyed, startled shock and anger as Jodha retails all of Jalal's misdeeds to Suryabhan, rounding her peroration off with an emphatic: Isi liye hum uska sar, uska ahankaar, aur uska samrajya pairon tale kuchala hua dekhna chahte hain! Jalal has never before been treated to such a catalogue of his crimes, committed knowingly and unknowingly, and he is stirred to an anger that is rooted in this realization of how he looks to Jodha.

His face was a kaleidoscope of emotions from curiosity to admiration to anger on hearing what dear Jo had to say about him. He is not a happy camper.😆

Lesson learnt Jalal: eavesdroppers never here good about themselves.

A question arises here: why is he angry at all? Since it was his aim to spread the khauf-e-Jalal as far and as fast as he can, he should in fact have been pleased at this proof positive that his campaign has worked, for he is hated here in Amer, and thus feared, to a satisfactory extent.

There is only one answer to this conundrum. What makes Jalal angry is that it is Jodha who thinks so badly of him. Already, along with the nascent possessiveness and the obsession that she should be his and his alone, the desire to have her accept him and care for him is beginning to take root in his zehen. Soon, this yearning, which he himself does not recognize as yet, will spread and take over both his heart (yes, it is there! ) and his mind. These are the two factors that, even when Jalal is in a druken rage against Jodha, govern the way he behaves towards her.

It is his first crush that is denouncing him, to her fiance no less. That has to hurt even the most heartless amongst us. OUCH!

The Mughal prisoner: As he walks alongside Jodha's train of daasis, Jalal's eyes narrow in anger as they voice their certitude that Jalal ka sar is now near at hand. Both then, and earlier when he is listening to Jodha rip into Jalaluddin Muhammad, he displays iron self-control, and not a muscle in face betrays the rising rage within him. This self-control foreshadows, and shows glimpses of the great tactician and strategist he is to become. And it pays off, for he learns precisely Abdu l is being held prisoner

I think he seemed a little upset too when he heard them praising Jo-Surya ki jodi.

He has entered enemy territory putting his life and the Sultanate in jeopardy, thank god for his self control. One misstep and he and his dream kingdom are both kaput!

Next he rushes to Abdul's cell and abuses him loudly in order to attract his attention. Even before Abdul recognises Jalal, his rock-hard conviction that Kisi bhi waqt mere Shahenshah aayenge, aur tumhari nazaron tale mujhe le jayenge illustrates the nature of the relationship between him and and his master.

Of caring and responsibility: One can only marvel at the extreme risks that Jalal runs to save a servitor,even if he is also a friend. It is proof positive that Jalal has a very acute sense of responsibility, and yes, a heart as well that knows how to be compassionate and caring

If that was not so, he would never have risked this life, and the destruction of all his hopes of victory over Rajasthan, to come right into the heart of the enemy's citadel to rescue Abdul. In the same situation, Bairam Khan would have left Amer, leaving Abdul die under torture. That is the difference between him and Jalal.

Another example of Jalal's kindness and consideration to those who serve him, which I have cited earlier, is the understanding way in which he waves away Zaheer's objections to his leaving the camp. That is not the way most absolute kings would have treated a servitor in such a case, they would have shouted at him or hit him for daring to raise any objections.

This is what is so endearing, he is a real softie (for people he cares about) underneath that heartless armor he likes to flaunt.

Very admirable, what he did for Abdul.

So the seeds of kindness, caring, and affection are already there in Jalal, they only need nurturing.

His mother cannot do that as she has lost all her hold over him , since he feels , and has must have had it drilled into him by Mahaam Anga, that her leaving him with a nurse was a total and cynical abandonment of her son to save her own life.So it will have to be someone else, Jodha being the most likely candidate for the job. But for that to have effect, she will also have to show that she cares for him, and that is not going to be easy.

Jo is a likely candidate because she does not have a history with Jalal so far. Everyone else has just accepted him for the way he shows himself to be. When we are surrounded by the same people day after day, people who do not want/need or expect you to change, where is the need to better/evolve ourselves? When we are pushed by someone we care about or by circumstances then we evolve. Jalal has these inherent good qualities but there is no incentive for him to unveil these.

The Shahenshah and the Rajkumari: So now we have the Shahenshah standing to attention in front of Abdul's cell, eyes discreetly lowered as Jodha approaches, but still casting sidelong glances at her.

When Abdul retorts to Suryabhan: Bahut kareeb hai wo.. Itne ki kisi bhi waqt uski shamsheer tum tak pahunch sakti hai.. , Jalal smiles into his moustache.. As Jodha launches into her usual tirade against Jalal and asserts that there is no way he can penetrate the walls of the Amer fort and get here, Jalal hardly reacts, being by now familiar with her routine!😉 But Abdul's mocking smile disappears when she mentions the foot-chopping and the desecration of temples.

The curious thing, illustrative of the lack of sharpness and perceptiveness in both Jodha and Suryabhan, is that it occurs to neither to deduce, from Abdul's cryptic but confident pronouncements, that Jalal might have penetrated into Amer. Both are busy making vainglorious statements of the kind that go before a fall.

Yes, Bharmal more than anyone else should have thought about the possibility that Jalal could've entered Amer after catching Abdul.

Be that as it may, it appears that like Hercule Poirot, who could read writing even when it was upside down, Jodha too can read faces even when they are upside down, as that too irrespective of the get up. Thus she recognizes the face in the water in the sipahi standing guard before her, and she swiftly seizes Suryabhan's sword and holds it at Jalal's throat.

JO's a sharp one!

I spoke earlier of Jalal's icy courage. He gives a demonstration of it now. With a sword at his throat, and exposure and death only inches away from him, he still does not bat an eyelid, and not a muscle moves in his face as he brazens it out. He is obviously one of those who habitually play at dice with death. 👏

I was entranced by the suppressed mischief in his eyes as he looks at Jodha full in the face and, asked how he was present at the baudi ,answers, in the the fluent rural Rajasthani dialect, undoubtedly a carryover from his childhood in Umarkot: Manne koyi nahin bataya tha ki wahan jaane ki anumati ne hai.. Kyonki hamare yahan to koyi bhi aa jaa sakta hai bina rok tok ke..

And to the follow up question: Kahan ke ho tum? , the eyes are bright and compelling as he answers, a half smile twisting his mouth:Umarkot!

Finally, the cheekiness with which he comments, after having 'proved' himself to be a Rajput soldier, Mahaul hi shaque se bhara hua hai.. Hawa hi itni zahreeli ki sans ke to mare, na le to mare.. Phir bhi choki baat kahi aapne.. and he looks her full in the face... Yahan koyi bhi Mughal ho sakta hai.

The way he looks at Jo with an intense, penetrating gaze...as if engraving her face in his memory forever.

Reckless excellence: There are other things to admire in this arrogant cavalier.

There is the superb swordsmanship that could overcome and disable at least 11 soldiers - this was my count, but there might have been a couple or so more at the sides - and then the sheer physical strength needed to bend those thick prison bars so that he could enter the cell, cut the chains and rescue Abdul. This last reminded me (and Holmes aficionadas will bear me out) of Dr, Grimesby Roylott in The Speckled Band, who could bend a steel poker. And of course Sherlock Holmes himself, who could straighten out the bent poker!

Finally, the arrogant declaration of both his identity and his intent in the message : Agli mulaqat jung mein hogi.. Jalaluddin Muhammad - left on the prison floor, and written in the only medium available, blood, presumably that of the 11 incapacitated guards. Curiously enough, the message is bilingual.Now it is obviously for the benefit of the Rajputs and us, but why then the Persian version?

This is vintage Jalal all over. The flamboyant gesture, the problems with its logistics notwithstanding, is exactly the kind of thing Jalal would do, though, by doing so, he further jeopardises his already tough escape, and in the pre-cap, is getting ready to fight a round dozen opponents with a limp Abdul on his hands to boot. But of course we know that, like d'Artagnan in The Three Musketeers, our boy wonder will emerge a winner, which is the only saving grace!

Jodha does not have that much to do here. But in the striking face to face encounter with Jalal in the prison, when she sees the identification mark on his arm, her genuine regret and her desire to make amends, even to a simple soldier, for having suspected him wrongly, are brought out very convincingly. Her face softens and the eyes offer an unstated apology.

She looks gorgeous here. I liked the transition from surprise at seeing the face from the water to anger and then regret at humiliating someone unnecessarily. She is also agile and quick as seen in the way she diverts the sword that he throws at her. Why did he do that though?

And in her tete a tete with Suryabhan, she is sweetly grateful for his assurances, but at the same time self-assertive.

At the end, Jodha is furious because Jalal has made a fool of her, and she has unknowingly saved his life. In fact, she does that twice, not only during the prison encounter, but earlier, though she does not know it, when she stops the execution of Abdul. If she had not done so, Jalal would have come charging out, dagger in hand, and however hard or well he fought, he would have been overpowered and killed, or worse for him, imprisoned and humiliated.

Couldn't help feeling sorry for her. Jalal, her arch enemy, comes into her palace, makes a fool of her and manages to slip right from under her nose(literally!). How much more humiliating can it get?

In the whole episode, however, what stands out, above all else, is Jalal's ice-cold nerve in the face of near certain exposure, and all that this would entail.

The questions:

1) Jalal could neither read nor write. So the message must have been written by Abdul, even in his battered and exhausted state. The blood would have had to be taken from the wounded soldiers scattered all over the hall in front of the cells.

It must have been Abdul who did it, for there is no other option, unless the CVs got Saraswati Devi to suddenly decide to bless Jalal and make him proficient in writing! As Sherlock Holmes used to say When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, is the truth.

Abdul is a cripple, and his crutches are nowhere in evidence. How on earth was this calligraphic exercise accomplished, and how long did it take? Ten minutes would seem an underestimate. This very precious time would have been better used in trying to get away safely, don't you think? It might in fact have made all the difference between life and death for both him and Jalal.

2) Where was the time for Jalal to fight the soldiers, pull Abdul out of the cell, and get the message done before the royal group returned to that hall? Maybe he had a Time Turner, like Hermione in The Prisoner of Azkaban!😉

3) The departing contingent led by Jodha and Suryabhan is very close to the prison hall. Even as they are looking at the dead guard being carried in, they are alerted by a loud groaning sound, presumably from Jalal's wounded victims, and rush back to the hall, to find the birds flown. Now the prison is not a rabbit warren of many corridors, but seems to be consist only of the main hall and some adjacent halls. How then did no one see Jalal rescuing Abdul after disposing of 11+ soldiers, and carrying him out of the prison? And where were Suryabhan and Jodha when all this mayhem was under way?

All the above I am going to put in the category of "Artistic Licence".😆

Shaguni Bai: I am not going into Mainavati's meeting with her, except to note that her pronouncement: Jo Jodha ka haath thaam lega, wo is yug ka sabse bada raja kehlayega! gladdened my heart. Atta girl, I said to myself, this prophecy of yours is Ekta-proof!😉

Episodes 8 & 9: I am not going into the horrible blinding of Zaheer, except to note Bairam Khan's response to Zaheer's anguished cry: Hum Shahenshah ke wafaadaar hain!- Par Mughal Sultanat ke nahin. It is this very distinction that Bairam Khan voices later, when he is complaining to Salima Begum about Jalal and the Takhatmal case, and which, eventually, leads to his downfall.

Nor am I going into the verbal joust between him and Mahaam Anga, which was reminiscent of two scorpions, stings raised, circling each other warily.

The face in the water: There is a dreamy, prophetic quality to the way in which the unknown face in the water haunts Jodha, so much so that she sees it even with her eyes closed. She looks puzzled and troubled as she asks the image: Aakhir kaun ho tum? Kyon aankhen tumhara chehra bhula nahin paatin? The closing shot of Jalal's face in this sequence is arresting, with the features looking are if they had been fashioned with a knife, so sharp are the planes.

Surreal connection in the works...

Sujamal & Jodha: The desolation on Jodha's face, as she remembers her fencing bouts with a blindfolded Sujamal, who still manages to disarm her every time, stays with you. As does Sujamal's explanation of how he pulls that off: Man aur shareer jab ekaagra hokar kaam karte hain, to aatma saath deti hai.. Aise mein aapki talwar hi aapki dhaal ban jaati hai, jo waar karti bhi hai aur waar se bachati bhi hai.. This philosophy reminded me of Jonathan Livingston Seagull!

Suryabhan: His lovelorn effusions about Jodha are really poetic: Kyon aisa hai, Jodha, sochoon to thara naam sujhe, aankhen band karoon to tu hi nazar aaye, talwar dekhoon to aankhen dikhe thaari, har waqt man hai teri yaadon se bhari..kyon kuch samajh nahin sakta tere siva.. Jodha, aakhir kaun ho tum? Unfortunately, his mono-expression, plasticine face has no room for the high romantic. No wonder the director keeps him behind a screen when he is spouting all this!😉

Maybe he is just feels awkward in front of his new fiancee and that makes him stiff?😆 He is afraid that if he shows too much emotion he will lose it?

Editing by Zee Anmol: I think there is some amount of editing going on here. For one thing, every episode is under 20 minutes. Secondly, a discussion between the Rajputs in the maikhana, about their getting hold of Jalal's harem after defeating him was missing. When I heard that the first time, I felt sad that the Rajputs here seemed to have the same attitude toward the womenfolk of the enemy as the Mughals (bar Jalal, I presume). The kind of respect and honour to be accorded to all non-combatants, especially women, as part of the traditional yuddha dharma seem to have long since vanished by the 16th century.

The dunderhead Abdul: He is remarkably ill-prepared for his disguise as a jyotishi. He would have done far better to have come as an ordinary man, which would have kept him safe. He looks panicky, and he does not even take care, when he pushes Suryabhan's largesse into his kamarbandh, that he should not dislodge the Mughal gold coins there. And he lands Jalal in an extremely sticky situation.

Then again, in the prison, as soon as he recognizes Jalal, he starts smiling, which, if there had been any keen Rajput observers, would have been deadly. Again, when Jalal is answering Jodha's question about his native place, and later when he is asked to prove that he is a Rajput soldier, Abdul's face is taut with tension before Jalal responds, and he is smiling immediately afterwards. Both could have been very dangerous for Jalal.

Jalal-Jodha :Lastly, a speculative exercise about the current relationship between Jalal and Jodha.

What Jalal feels for Jodha is a rapidly changing thing, so anything one says now might be overtaken by the next episode. In the short term, however, as I wrote earlier on another thread, Jalal is going to find out that his new begum is more like a hedgehog than a velvet pillow 😉(that makhmali badan nonsense; when she is sitting in the palki and he can see nothing of her but her face, how does he spot the makhmali badan?)

Still, I think he feels:

1) Great appreciation of her bepanah husn (I have my own views on this,but it is what he thinks that counts, after all!). Akbar was said to be a lover of the beautiful in general, and in a woman, it would go without saying! But this would not be an obsession, for he is used to beautiful women, after all.

There would be a strong element of desire, but it would not be decisive or dominant.

Love is still far away, and in any case, right now he does not know what love is.

2) Anger at her having held him at the point of a sword. What, a mere woman to dare to do that to ME! Still, this is mingled with reluctant admiration for her courage, which gains ground once he is back in his camp.

3) A burning determination and desire, linked to No.2, to give her a proper comeuppance. He thinks this would be best done by making her come to him voluntarily, as a way of saving her Amer from destruction at his hands.

4) Lastly, a growing discomfort, camouflaged as rage against her, due to the harsh home truths she voices about him. That gets under his skin and rankles, especially, as discussed above, because it is Jodha who is voicing them.

Ok, folks, this is it. I'll be back on Monday.

Shyamala (B.Cowsik) /Aunty/Akka/Di

Originally posted by: Coolpree

Hi Shyamala. thanks once again for your superb analysis.

Episode 10 was one of those absolutely delightful episodes and was a bit of a turning point for me where my addiction towards this serial and Rajat's Jalal in particular started taking place.

This episode was full of Khauf e Jalal moments and he actually instilled fear in me for the Mayhem he was about to unleash in Amer.

The scene with the portly halwai was corny but very endearing and brought some lighthearted humor to an otherwise intense episode.

I apologize for back tracking a bit to a previous episode analysis that I have not has a chance to comment on yet. I absolutely loved your description of the first Jalal and Hamida moment . You are correct in pointing out that Hamida's ( her real name fails me) poor acting skills did not detract from this brilliant scene that Rajat carried on his shoulders. It was a very emotional moment for me where I felt the angst and pain of both mother and son very acutely.

As we have the advantage of hindsight and know what is to come in the future for Jalal, I could not help but flash forward to Salim's childhood and watch history repeat itself. Despite knowing how acute a sense of abandonment Jalal felt about being separated from his mother at the tender age of 9, he did the same thing to his son when he snatched Salim away from the arms of his maasa and the security of his abba huzoor's protection and promptly banished him. Just like in Jalal's case where Maham filled the void with her manipulations, in Salim's case it allowed Rukaiyya to step in and do the same😭. The circumstances were different the end result the same.

Thanks once again Shyamala. cant wait for the episodes to unfold though your brilliant writings

Originally posted by: sashashyam

My dear Preeti,

My addiction to Rajat's Jalal started with Episode 3, and was set in concrete by the time he had finished those marvellous scenes with his mother - a truly amazing piece of acting by the boy, with very little support from the lady, , though her pain and desolateness did come thru in one shot, which I have mentioned there - and with Abdul, in this case with the kind of support that meshed effortlessly with Jalal's own performance. So, long before I got to this Episode 10, which is in the true spirit of Dumas' musketeers, I was sold over!

As for what Jalal did to Salim, and what was done to Jalal (he was not separated from his parents at 9, but when he was an infant in arms, whence the dayimaa and the doodh ka karz; it was Salim who was 9), there is one major difference that is crucial. Jalal sends Salim away because he is discovered drunk and misbehaves, setting fire to the insaaf ka tarazu. At that time, Salim is already totally antagonistic towards Jodha because of the arrow killing incident. Or is it this one you are referring to? Well, there it is like the famous South Indian kings like Manuneethi Chozhan and their absolute standards of justice, plus the fact that Salim runs away from the scene instead of running to get help. That is cowardice, which Akbar will not tolerate. He is patient earlier, as with the shamsheer-paayal jugalbandi, but this he cannot tolerate.

The other difference that Jalal got over his anger towards his mother., Salim never lost his antagonism towards his father.

Shyamala

Originally posted by: munnirony