Folks,
The title refers to the step by step process by which Raja Bharmal of Amer, driven to the wall by Sharifuddin's ever escalating demands on the Amer treasury, and with his fellow Rajput rulers turning down his request for help, with no escape route in sight, is finally forced to accept Chugtai Khan's advice and meet Shahenshah Jalaluddin Muhammad to seek redress.
Bharmal thinks he is seeking a modus vivendi which will curb the rapacious Sharifuddin, and permit him, his family and Amer, to live in peace with their honour intact. But we know that Jalal has something quite different in mind, and he is clearing the decks to get to that.
So, once again, the most interesting part in the last episode comes at the very end, just before the precap. As Chugtai Khan (who seems to be on excellent terms with the Shahenshah) mentions Raja Bharmal's wanting to meet the Emperor, Jalal's remembers Bharmal's desire to send the battered Abdul's head back to the Mughals. But there is no overt sign of anger; his lips curve in a half smile as he asks, Kis masle mein (milna chahte hain)? When Chughtai Khan begins his recital of Bharmal's sad plight at the hands of Sharifuddin, the smile broadens into one of sheer delight, and Jalal's deep set eyes gleam as images of Jodha cross his mind. It is as if he were saying to himself Gotcha!š
Hot air and vainglory: To revert, Bharmal is clearly addicted to pompous, meaningless statements like Kya hua agar hum unse jeet nahin paye? Par humne ab tak har nahin maani hai..Hum unki koyi baat na sunenge na sahenge.. Badla liya jaayega.. Suryabhan ki maut ka pratishodh Amer lega... One cannot fathom the depth of a ruler's folly and self-delusion when he goes about spouting such stuff.
It takes the down to earth honesty of Jodha to curb such disastrous tendencies: Kaun lega pratishodh, Bapusa? Aur kis keemat par? Hum yudh haar chukhe hain, Bapusa..Jo bacha hai, use bachana hoga.. Ab hamare pas aur koyi raaste bhi nahin bacha hai sivay unki sharton to maanne ke..
So Bharmal caves in and goes to meet Sharifuddin. On Chugtai Khan's intervention, which averts a potentially disastrous breakdown of the talks, he agrees to Sharifuddin's conditions. But over the next 3 months, as the screw is turned tighter and tighter, with the option of a renewal of the war ruled out because of the hostage angle, he is pushed, inexorably, down the road he does not want, at any cost, to take. That of the only remaining option suggested by Chugtai Khan: to meet the Shahenshah and unse dosti ka haath badhana.
Some of Bharmal's objections to this proposal, such as Peeth par vaar karnewala mitr nahin hota.., are difficult to comprehend. After all, Jalal's secret visit to Amer was hardly intended to make any vaar at any part of Bharmal's substantial anatomy!
But for all of Bharmal's propensity for spouting hot air and vainglory, the Bharmal I and Bharmal II face to face is remarkably candid. Especially in what Bharmal II says at the very end: Aaj Jalal se baat karoge to Raja bankar, sar ooncha uthakar..Kalko Sharifuddin ne Amer par kabza kar liya, to ghutnon ke bal Jalal ke darbar mein upasthit hona hoga.
It is revealing that of all of Bhagwan Das's tall claims, neither of the two Bharmals questions the certainty that any renewed attack by Sharifuddin would result in the capture of Amer.
And so on to Sanganer.
Question: Was the whole affair - beginning with the defeat of the Amer forces on the battlefield , the hostage taking and the extortionate demands on Bharmal, and ending in his being forced to meet the Shahenshah with a request for succour against Sharifuddin - a carefully orchestrated plot between Jalal, Sharifuddin and Chughtai Khan? It did occur to me as a distinct possibility, even if there is no hint of any such thing in the voice overs, because of the following..
Firstly, Jalal is not shown as giving Sharifuddin any instructions as to how to deal with the defeated Amer. This is odd, for he obviously wants something more than just domination over Amer, which is why he refers to it as a naayab tohfa, To get that special something, Jodha, careful handling was clearly necessary.
Left to himself, if Sharifuddin had gone the usual sar kalamifoying route (I am becoming addicted to that nifty term! ) and executed Jodha's 3 brothers in a fit of anger, then anything between Jalal and Jodha would have been ruled out for good. For this would have been cold-blooded murder under Jalal's aegis, even if he had not ordered it, not deaths in battle, as she would have taken Suryabhan's to have been.
So it would have been odd if Jalal had not, whatever his other preoccupations, sent a secret emissary to Sharifuddin asking him to tighten the screws on Bharmal financially, so as to push him relentlessly into a corner, but not to do anything drastic that could not be rectified later. Or told him this face to face during his nikaah with Bakshi Bano. He would have had plenty of time for that, even with all those nikaahs and the hectic ride to Malwa.
I thus find it difficult to believe that Jalal left Sharifuddin to his own devices in dealing with this nayaab tohfa. It would also gell better with my conspiratorial mindset; I have after all been a disciple, however unworthy, of Chanakya all my life!
As for Chugtai Khan, he is clearly ideally positioned, because of his earlier friendship with Bharmal, to play the role of honest broker. It thus seems at least likely that Jalal would have co-opted him into his scheme. And Chugtai Khan is honest, even if my above theory is correct, for he firmly believes that this is the only and the ideal solution for the deadly quandary in which his friend Bharmal now finds himself.
I would further buttress my theory by citing Jalal' s sudden decision to make a pilgrimage to Ajmer Sharif. The journey brings him near Amer, and the place where he camps midway, Sanganer, is much nearer to Amer than Agra, thus advancing the meeting that Jalal wants.
The clincher is the fact that the Shahenshah sends a message to Chugtai Khan that he is on his way to Ajmer and is camping at Sanganer. If Jalal was not confidentially in touch with Chugtai Khan, how would he know that he was coming to meet the emperor? And why would he inform Chugtai Khan that he, the Shahenshah, was much nearer that the former might have anticipated?
Finally, the slow, secret half smile that twists Jalal's mouth when Chugtai Khan's request for an audience is brought to him. The Shahenshah is clearly expecting Chugtai Khan.
So you see, folks, for all that the script and the voice overs are silent on this point, I believe, on the basis of logic, and the evidence cited above, that the whole of the process of bringing Bharmal to Sanganer to meet the Shahenshah was orchestrated by Jalal. And his Chanakya neeti worked like a dream.
As for the rest, one can take it character by character.
Jalal: He shows once again what it means to be an absolute monarch. A head shorter than the gigantic Adham Khan, Jalal has to look up at him, like Jack facing a giant. Anyone will tell you how difficult it is to dominate the opponent under such circumstances. But Jalal's total self-possession and his natural kingliness ( if there is such a word!) make it seem not just easy but completely credible.
When he plants his foot on the lolling Adham Khan's chest in one swift move, it reminded me of the samhaar of a rakshasa whose sins had passed all bounds, and I could not help hoping, against both hope and history, that Adham Khan's sar would be kalamofied. Alas, it was not to be!!
And when Jalal tells Adham: Par ham sab kuch samajh chuke hain.. Tumne jya kiya hai wo bhi, aur tumhare saath kya salookh kiya jai, wo bhi.. Bhoolna bahut buri baat hoti hai, Adham.. Shayad tum yeh bhool gaye ho ki humne tumhein kis kaam ke liye bheja tha.. Bhool gaye ho ki Agra ki izzat kya hai..Bhool gaye ho ki hamara mazhab tumhein kya shariat deta hai..Aur tum shayad yeh bhool gaye ki tumhare saamne tumhara bhai nahin, Hindustan ka Shahenshah khada hai!, his voice is level but his eyes, narrowed and bright, spit fire.
Chetan Hansraj, who has played positive roles in other Balaji serials, manages to bring out the casual brutality, the coarseness and the unbelievable stupidity of Adham Khan. His extremely ill -advised remarks about Jalal's harem are enough to earn him a ringing slap from his mother, who falls at Jalal's feet to save her son once again. (I loved the way in which Jalal affirms that every woman in his harem, even if won in war, is treated with all due respect and consideration). I am sure Mahaam Anga must be half convinced that Adham is a changeling, for no son of hers could be such a walking disaster!š
Out-manoueuvred in the end : In the end, for all his fiery pronouncements - Adham ko uske kiye ki sazaa denge hum! - Jalal is out-manoeuvred once again by his wily Badiammi, with her Jise humne ungli pakadkar chalna sikhaya, us Jalal ke faisle par awaam ungli na uthaye.
His agreeing to wait for witnesses and evidence is disastrous, for the witnesses are killed by Resham and their evidence neatly twisted 180 degrees by the murderous Maham. She thus levels the score with Jalal after being checkmated in both the Bakshi Banu marriage to Sharifuddin and the Jalal-Salima nikaah*. But it is a very near run thing, and not only in terms of the shamsheer halting, in one heart-stopping moment, a hair's breadth away from her neck. How I wished that it had not! But I must say that Ashwini does the gasping for breath bit perfectly!
NB: Maham's dramatic, last second saving of her son is a physical impossibility. Adham is still stretched out on the couch, and Jalal is standing in front of him. How on earth can Maham come to a kneeling position between Jalal and Adham, right in the path of Jalal's shamsheer, without Jalal having spotted her well in advance?
* At the nikaah, when Salima murmurs Qubool hai, Maham, standing behind her and Jiji Anga, looks frustrated. Jalal seems to look across at her, and there is a half smile on his face before he rises and walks off, holding little Rahim's hand in his. My reading might be wrong, but he looks as if he is thumbing his nose at her!š
Questions: How is it that no question about Adham's misdeeds is raised by Jalal apart from the one of having killed children, the old and women? Even about this last, though Maham lies thru her pearly whites and produces two dead bodies as evidence in favour of Adham - she warns Jalal in the end that he should keep in mind that kate hue sar bola nahin karte, whatever that might mean - the key point for Jalal is that these two dead girls cannot talk either, and he has to take Maham's unsupported assertion as true.
Even if this "evidence" is accepted, how is it that there is not a single other witness to Adham's crimes, and how is it that his accusers, notably Peer Mohammed, are unable to unearth such a witness?
Moreover. what about the other accusations against Adham, that he let Baz Bahadur escape while he was busy grabbing his treasury and his harem, and most important, that he sent only a small part of this loot to Agra and misappropriated the rest? Not a word is said, by Jalal or by Peer Mohammed or the others, about these very important points.
This is bizarre, and reflects badly on Jalal as a ruler, for it shows him as lax and unfocussed on the task at hand, which is to probe Adham's crimes in Malwa. If these other accusations had been raised, Maham would have been very hard put to save her son. In the event, he gets off scot free.
Lastly, Jalal, while leaving, is not shown issuing any orders about the future dispensation in Malwa. This too is very odd, for he could hardly have left Adham in charge!
The fallout: Anyhow, Adham Khan seems to have now used up one more of his nine lives - it might even be his last, as happened with Sisupala and Lord Krishna - and he is, from now on, exposed, suspect, and on his own. The Wazir-e-Aala's post is now a mrigtrishna (mirage). The fury in Jalai's eyes, as he looks back at Adham while leaving, is like molten lava, and for Adham Khan, the bell has started tolling.
It is only a matter of time before his double defenestration (the punishment of throwing the condemned man from a window, hopefully to his death. The name comes from the French word for a window, fenetre) on Jalal's orders. It will probably need about 6 able-bodied men to heave a struggling Adham Khan thru a window, not speak of lugging him up again preparatory to throwing him down again!
As for Jalal, this incident demonstrates once more how much he is still a prisoner of his close relationships. He knows perfectly well that Adham Khan is guilty as charged, but the proof melts away, and there is his Badiammi/ Ammijaan at his feet, shedding enough tears to put a 3 inch hosepipe to shameš. So he is reduced to talking of doodh ka karz, and threatening that this will the last time Adham Khan goes scot-free (famous last words!), while the fact remains that he has been effectively stymied.
What Jalal clearly needs is a Lord Krishna to make him disregard any and all extraneous holds on him as he moves to enforce justice and right wrongs. He might be as great a warrior as Arjun, but there is as yet no Parthasarathy to guide him and prevent him from faltering under emotional blackmail.
Commitment to rajadharma: But Jalal's concept of what the Mughal sultanate owes its subjects is lambent with wisdom.
Begunah riyaya par zulm ki ijaazat na Mughal sultanat deta hai na humara mazhab..Jung mein saamne khade sipahi humara dushman hai, magar jung jeetne ke baad, uske biwi bachche hamari riyaya hote hain..aur hamari riyaya par hum kisi ka zulm bardasht nahin kar sakte...
Sipahi ko hathyaar dushmanon par vaar karne ke liye diye jaate hain, mazloomon par zulm karne ke liye nahin..Aur hamari sultanat mein hum kisi bhi bachche, boodhe ya aurat par zulm bardasht nahin karenge..
There could not be a more ringing, more emphatic affirmation of Jalal's commitment to the strictest code of rajadharma, the duties of a king towards his subjects. And it needs to be noted that this commitment was his own, , not something Jodha or anyone else had brought him round to accepting.
Mahaam Anga: The lady is truly terrifying, Not the sort you would care to meet down a dark street at night. The ease with which her minion slashes throats is as appalling as the ease with which she herself manages to make her Goebbelsian lie (so called after Hitler's propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, best known for his maxim that any lie, repeated often enough, becomes a truth) hold up under Jalal's scrutiny.
Equally chilling is the unconcerned ease with which she later offers her namaz, with all the appearance of piety, apparently confident that the Almighty would understand! I momentarily expected Him/Her to hurl a thunderbolt from on high at Mahaam Anga, but it seems that the Almighty was busy elsewhere.
Well, the wheels of God grind slowly, says the Bible, but they grind exceedingly small. Bairam Khan might have been checkmated by his bete noire, but he is surely going to have the last laugh. His prediction to Mahaam Anga about Adham Khan, woh to doobega hi, par aapko bhi le doobega, is going to prove prophetic one day.
Perhaps because she is, at least sub-consciously, aware of this, Maham brutally snuffs out any aspiration on the part of Adham to kill Jalal in open combat. Jalal se jung? Jalal se?? Jalal ek aandhi hai aur aap ek tinka! (At 6'4", some tinka! š)Tinkon se ??? bante hain, riyasat nahin! Jalal wo sipahi hai jo sadiyon mein ek bar paida hota hai.Agar aap chahte hain ki taariq aapko yaad rakhe to Adham, Jalal ke saath rehna. Uske saamne khade hone ki koshish karoge to wo aapka namonishan mitha dega, is duniya se bhi aur taariq se bhi!
The revealing point about this tirade of Maham's is that at this stage, neither she nor Adham seem to be harbouring any imperial ambitions. Clearly the idea of seizing the throne came to them a little later.
Iron self-control: Earlier, Maham Anga's angry bewilderment at the sudden downturn of her fortunes (which also remphasised the fact that they all, in the ultimate analysis, depend on Jalal, not the other way around) when the prize of the Adham-Bakshi Banu marriage eludes her was very well done. I admired the impeccable self-control with which she took it on the chin, unblinkingly, when Jalal announced that he would give his sister's hand to Sharifuddin, not Adham. It is this kind of iron discipline that keeps her afloat, and at the top of her game, amidst all the treacherous eddies and whirlpools in the Mughal court.
Jalal, Maham, and the killing of Bairam Khan: There has been criticism of Jalal for not pinning the onus for his Khan Baba's murder on Maham. But how could he have done that? Even the voice over only says that he knew that Maham was against Bairam Khan; the word used is khilaaf. Not that she had him murdered.
I think it would have been a suspicion in his mind, perhaps stirred up by guarded remarks let fall by Salima or someone close to Hamida Banu, rather than a certitude. He could not have acted against Mahaam Anga based only on such vague inputs.
Unless someone had got hold of the Pathan Mubarak Lohani, who actually killed Bairam Khan, there would be no real proof, and Mahaam Anga would deny any accusation flatly. And Lohani would by now have put as many miles as possible between himself and Agra, it would be very difficult to track him down.
Maham Anga would be technically correct in denying any culpability as well, for it was not she who either got the bright idea or put it into action, it was all her loutish son. She seemed quite content at having turned the tables on Bairam Khan and watched his departure with carefully concealed satisfaction.
She got to know of Adham Khan's plot only post facto, and of course she must have rejoiced at it as being the first sign that her offspring had something approaching a brainš , but technically, she would not have been an accessory before the fact. as the legal expression goes.
Even Adham Khan's effort thru Lohani would have been at best a hit or miss affair. If Bairam Khan had anticipated it and taken evasive action, it would have failed.
So, it is natural that Jalal does not move against Mahaam Anga on such a weak prosecution case. The one about Adham Khan in Malwa is very different; here there is a flood of witnesses. So he moves, and moves fast. That he fails in the end is another matter altogether!
Joke of the day: Jalal warns his two interlocutors, who have come to inform him of Adham Khan's misdeeds in Malwa, to keep to themselves the raaz ki baat that he is himself descending on Malwa to punish Adham. Then the three of them come out of the hoojra and walk down the corridor. When doing so, they are just a few feet from Maham, standing there, stock still, like a large white pillar.And yet not one of them notices her!
Question: Jalal leaves only a day later, after the Sharifuddin-Bakshi Banu nikaah. But Maham has got to know of the disaster threatening Adham that day itself. Why then does she not despatch the messenger at once, instead of doing so after Jalal has left? Then there would have been no doubt of his reaching Adham before Jalal did.
Jodha: In the nightmare scene at the beginning, she rolled her eyes enough to give Mamma Dearest stiff competition, but she did manage to convey the blind panic that had gripped her, with nerves frayed to breaking point under the strain. Mrs. Popeye, aka Rani Mynavati, was as ineffective as ever as she flapped around her daughter, and it was, as usual, left to her sturdy and courageous daadisa to calm Jodha down.
Jodha's plea to her father not to think of her or his sons alone, but in the first place of all the Amer soldiers now in Mughal custody, is what one would expect from a true royal. It was of a piece with her reaction to Suryabhan's gruesome end and the catastrophic defeat of the Amer forces.
I had written in the comments on one or my 2013 posts, in response to some criticism of Jodha for not displaying desperate grief at her fiance's death, trying to explain her attitude and to defend her. I will reproduce those comments here, and perhaps many of you might share my take on this matter, which has considerable relevance for the future Jalal-Jodha relationship.
"I do not think that Jodha has as yet developed any deep and abiding love for anyone, and this includes Suryabhan. From her side, theirs was a pleasant, conflict-free, passionless and gentle relationship, facing no difficulties, no opposition, no discord of any kind. She liked him a very great deal as he was a familiar entity from her own milieu. He was also reassuring as a potential husband; he fitted in with her requirements under this head, such as bravery, and a readiness to stand up to the Mughals; Plus he was not bad looking, which always helpsš , and he was head over heels in love with her, which is always a great recommendation to a woman!š
All this, even put together, does not add up to love, and definitely not to the deewangee that haunts one's soul night and day. Both Jodha and Jalal are capable of such deewaangee, but neither knows that as yet. There were hints of it earlier, when Jodha is puzzled and disturbed by her inability to forget the face seen in the water, despite her knowing that she is to marry someone else. Of late, she had suppressed it, because of her hatred of the man whose image had obsessed her, and under the overlay of new experiences, in Bhanpur and earlier.
But the instinctive attraction is still there, and it will reemerge when the times comes. When it comes, it will be an all consuming passion that can see nothing and no one else but the beloved.
So, when she now learns of Suryabhan's gruesome end (which, one has to keep in mind, would not be as shocking to a 16th century Rajput princess familiar with deaths in war as it would be to us today; after all she always wanted Jalal's sar at her feet, did she not, the bloodthirsty wench?š), it is with great shock and sorrow, not an all consuming grief.
She is also a princess, trained from birth to look to her responsibilities first and foremost, and that is what she does now.
I have not been an admirer of hers, and I have always held that her veerangana title was yet to be proven. But in this crisis, she was brave, with a kind of cold, calm courage that is more impressive than the adrenaline-fuelled do or die courage in the battlefield.She does not think of herself or what is to happen to her now, she does not weep and lament like her mother. She does what a wise and responsible ruler should do, compromise with the yuddha/raj dharma of a king to fulfil the other royal duty of being a protector of his subjects, whatever the cost to his ego. It is good for her strutting, vainglorious fool of a father that Jodha was there to steady him
So I was not disappointed with Jodha's reaction to Suryabhan's death; it was not too deep a loss anyway, plus she had other and more important matters to take care of.".
This is it, folks. Now on to one of the most exciting, and satisfying episodes in Jodha Akbar, the face off between Jalal and Bharmal, which I will be covering as a standalone post on Tuesday, for it needs that. Till then, au revoir, and do not over indulge in modaks!
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