The title is from a Swedish term for a buffet, or a spread of various hors d'oeuvres, but nothing substantial. It was a perfect fit for what was dished out to us from Monday to Wednesday last. There were various bits and pieces, but no standout scenes, no telling lines, nothing that was very impressive in any way.
And in fact a good bit that was tiresome and irritating, beginning with the time-honoured device beloved of soaps, of hiding something from one's near and dear ones. But let us get started with Episode 43.
Episode 43: Spice-crossed!
I was in two minds about how to cover this episode, mostly because it left me feeling rather tired and also a bit sad about the vagaries of human nature. Plus the terminally soapy device of pretending for the sake of the khushi or bhalayi of someone or the other, and lying thru one's teeth to that end, is enough to set my teeth on edge; every single saas bahu serial, without exception, has it.
The truth is always the safer bet, and then it can be sugar-coated as desired, but the denizens of TV soapland are in love with untruth, and the more blatant the better. So is Jodha now, apparently believing that the charade she has embarked upon can be kept up indefinitely.
Let us get the score on this operation, beginning Monday.
Jodha-Jalal: the score 3 days ago: Okay, so she wants that, and of course she needs Jalal's sustained cooperation to carry it thru. So she goes - after some strong persuasion for the extremely practical Motibai, who has 10 times as much commonsense as her mistress - to see Jalal. He agrees to oblige her and, after some coaching, to lie thru his perfect pearly whites for her sake.
She in turn, helps him bathe, most reltouctantly, it is true, but still she does it. If she had had any sense of humour, she would have dissolved in infectious laughter at her own plight, and Ekta's serial would have been shortened by about 200 episodes! But our Jodha is not burdened with this attribute, so she does not appreciate her spouse's mischievous grins.😉
So far, they are quits.
Jodha-Jalal: the score 2 days ago : Jalal is extra welcoming and warm to Bharmal and Mynavati. He lays it on thick about Jodha to her mother. A hint of a grateful smile is visible on Jodha's face. It is, however, immediately chased away by Jalal mentioning, with a straight face, but an impish gleam in his eye, meant for Jodha, that she had learnt a new rivaaz from him, at one try, the day before. Like Queen Victoria, Jodha is not amused! Round 1 to Jalal.
To pay him back for that mischievous sally, Jodha scolds him for coming into the room with Lord Krishna's idol with his jootis on. Jalal must have wondered, at this point, why all his khaas Begums seem to be eternally after his beloved jootis! 😉
His eyes, as he slowly raises them to Jodha's, look almost grim - for it is a very cheeky remark - but he makes a quick recover, and apologises, blaming his forgetfulness. Mynavati is amazed at the good humour of her javaisa, and Jodha smiles in secret triumph. Round 2 to Jodha.
Not one to go down without a fight, Jalal now hints very broadly at perfect conjugal felicity between Jodha and himself, mentioning her having pulled him up about the jootis the night before too, and wondering about the wounds on her arm (from the broken bangles of the night before last) which, he says, were there the previous night as well. Jodha turns pink with embarrassment at the implications of his remarks; and as Jalal leaves, the two of them eye each other like Kilkenny cats, eager for the next sparring match.
Maybe the bangle bit was rather insensitive, but the rest of it is a perfectly legit, no holds barred boxing bout, from which Jalal retires having won on points. This is not yet the self-destructive spousal hostility of Who is afraid of Virginia Woolf .
Alas, this is soon going to change, and change drastically, for the worse, after the Mahaam-induced fiasco of Begum Jodha's lazeez khana.
Pre-Chilli: Coming to that, I wondered why the Shahenshah eats in solitary state. Even if Bharmal cannot join because of the beti ke ghar paani bhi nahin peete rule (I was in fact looking to see whether Bharmal had a water bottle, or the 16th century equivalent thereof, tucked away in his choga. But perhaps, since he is a son of the desert, he shares the ability of the ship of the desert to go on for days without the aforesaid paani!😉 ), what of Bhagwan Das and Mansingh? Both of them are obviously exempt from the paani nahin peete fiat, since both have been both eating and drinking in the palace for weeks now. If one or both of them had sat down to the meal with Jalal, Mahaam would never have pulled that stunt, as it would have been spotted with the first mouthful either of them took.
Next, Jodha has at least 5 maids in attendance all the time. Not one of them, not even Motibai, has the notion of being watchful and making sure their special khana was safe; instead they all sashay off in Jodha's wake. Staff is the same everywhere and in every age, never where they should be!
Plus, this chilli stunt is as old as the hills and as boring; it is unworthy of the quality we have got used to in these early episodes of Jodha Akbar.
And the explanations for Jalal eating it till he practically has smoke coming out of his ears -imperial pride, wanting to keep his word to Jodha etc. - are all nonsense. He could have put an end to it after the first bite by jokingly asking Bharmal if they preferred such red hot food to match the fiery Rajput temperament, and the cat would have been out of the bag at once. It is pathetic, this screenplay.
Post-Chilli: I feel that in this phase, both our leads are OTT, Jalal furiously so and Jodha mulishly so.
But he is the one more sinned against than sinning. He has treated Bharmal and Mynavati with great courtesy and consideration, he has been very kind to Mansingh (even if Jodha sees this as aimed at corrupting the young man), and he has lied manfully to please Jodha and keep her parents not just happy but in the seventh heaven of parental joy and satisfaction . Against all this, what are few mischievous sallies at Jodha's expense ? So, in the pre-chilli phase, she owes him a good bit.
Why then does Jodha assume that he is making up the chilli complaint? If she had taken even a single look at him while he was eating, she would have known that something was badly wrong. But of course she does not. Even without that, a look at him pouring all that water down his throat as she is coming into the room should have alerted her to the fiasco. But that does not even seem to register with her.
Remarkably inept handling: Jodha's response to Jalal's fierce question as to why she did it, that she has no bhay of him, and this not once but twice, before she gets around to a denial, is bizarre.
When Hanuman returned from Lanka with Sita's token for Lord Rama, he announces, as soon as he is in Rama's presence, Dekha Sitaji ko. He wants to spare Rama even that one extra split second of anxiety, the time taken to pronounce the 2 more words, if he had said Sitaji ko dekha.
So also here, Jodha should have said at once Nahin kiya maine! The categoric negative, accompanied by the info that Maham Anga had tasted the food and found it lazeez, plus a word of concern for his pain and a move to get him some honey to soothe his burnt tongue - and Jalal would not only have believed her and launched a successful investigation to nail the culprits, but he would have instantly forgotten all his ills.
There is no point in listing out all his misdeeds of 2 days back. He was drunk then, but the day before , and more so now, sober as a judge, he has turned up trumps for the wife whom he had promised to make miserable.
Does Jodha even try to think thru that if he really meant what he said to her that night, why then is he now putting up the show which she desperately wants, and why is he being extra considerate and obliging to her parents? No, she does not, for she does not want her hatred of Jalal, which is by now an axiom for her, to be diluted by any such analysis or any contrary facts.
I simply could not understand the folly of her simply repeating that she is not afraid of him. Which of course drives him to furious, over the top imprecations and threats, plus a great deal of outraged rhetoric about what is owed to the dignity of a Shahenshah.
It is only then that, after repeating that she has no bhay of him, she finally gets around to denying that she had added too much mirchi to the food. This denial is further wrapped up in long explanations of why she would never have done such a thing, and that so long as her parents are here, she would never do anything to hurt them..
Why such a lack of concern? : I was also taken aback by Jodha's totally ignoring the hurt Jalal has suffered, not offering at least a sliver of sympathy, and not insisting on the incident be investigated at once by him. Or even rushing back to taste the uneaten food on his plate or in the kitchen (Maham could hardly have made both of these vanish so soon!)
The way she behaves, harping on what she would not do while her parents were in Agra, would, even in an unconcerned bystander, only reinforce the conviction that she-dun-it.
It all goes to prove that if there is one thing Begum Jodha does not have, it is sound practical sense, plus some understanding even of 'the other', her interlocutor, and why he behaves this way.
If Jodha had, immediately after issuing a firm and unequivocal denial instead of such a roundabout one, rushed to Jalal's side and done something to ease the burning, not out of fear but out of sheer compassion, only would her character have gone up several notches and become truly admirable, but the show would have been cut short, at a rough estimate,by 200 episodes.
Both would have manna from Heaven for us, especially the latter😉, for we would then not have had to endure 200 episodes or more of yo yoing till the amar premis finally come round to hanging on each other's neck instead of seeking to get hold of it and squeezing hard, real hard!
Jodha is a perfect Scarlett O'Hara to Jalal's Rhett Butler, and their interactions have the same sharp edge, and the same, unfailing ability to get the other's back up, and to maul whatever it is that is budding between them. The only difference is that here, unlike the muted tragedy of Gone with the Wind, not even Ekta Kapoor can change the happy ending!
Thought for the day: It seems to be generally felt that by conferring the 5000 level Mansabdari on Bharmal, Jalal has gained a substantial politico-military advantage, by co-opting the Ameris to fight for the Mughals instead of against them. This might well be true for the long term vis a vis the Rajputs, for after all Akbar reigned for all of 49 years. But right now, seeing the way the Amer forces, reinforced by Suryabhan's troops, fared against Sharifuddin (and this one the open battlefield, without any access for the Mughal forces, courtesy Sujamal, to the secret passages into the Amer fort), it seems likely Jalal will be paying out 30000 asharfis a month for less than dependable military support!
NB: What follows is not relevant to this post, but is my take on the above question: whether Jalal had gained a lot when he gave the paanch hazari Mansabdari to Raja Bharmal, and whether Bharmal had lost a lot by accepting it. This is from my response to a question posed to me in 2013, when I was analyzing this episode for the first time. It is reproduced below for those who might be interested in these politico-military aspects. The others can heave a sigh of relief at this point, and move on to the next episode!
"I do not see how and why Jalal can be said to be devilish in this context. He is astute and wily, that is all. So were all the emperors of India, beginning from Chandragupta Maurya, and elsewhere as well; it was dangerous to get in their way. Nobility has never had much to do with the needs of an empire, not even under Marcus Aurelius.
As for what Jalal gained from giving Bharmal the Mansabdari, it should not be overestimated, for one has to take into account that getting Amer on his side does not solve the problem of Rajputana for Jalal, far from it.
Amer is a minor kingdom, as Maham Anga points out, and as Dadisa notes, it is surrounded by bigger, more powerful kingdoms who covet it and might have conquered it at any time. These kingdoms have not as yet been coopted by Agra, not to speak of the ferociously independent Mewar of Maharana Udai Singh and his successor, Maharana Pratap.
So Jalal does not gain very much from the alliance with Amer, except for starting off a trend, both of the roti-beti ka rishta with the Mughals, which was soon extended to Jodhpur, Jaipur and many others, both for Akbar and for Salim, and of the politico-military alliance with the Mughals which made the Rajputs fight Akbar's battles for him in the farflung corners of the empire.
In fact, Amer's biggest contribution to the Mughal Empire was Mansingh, who was a pillar of strength and loyalty for Akbar right till the end.
Nor does Amer lose anything except some nominal independence, and as the Dadisa points out, that might have been lost at any time to one of its predatory Rajput neighbours.Now Amer is safe from all of them, and Bharmal can sleep in peace.
In fact it is Jalal who should be concerned, for when he sends Bharmal or his sons into battle against other Rajputs, the odds are that they will all be taken hostage again, only this time it is Jalal who will have to pay their ransom or go to war to liberate them!
Again, when it is said that that Jalal had extracted a much higher price from Bharmal than he would have paid had Jalal just conquered his land by force, one has to take into account that if Sharifuddin or Adham Khan had been left to wage a mukammal jung against Amer, there would not have been much left of Amer to salvage. So the kind of security Bharmal gained, from the Mughals as well as from his covetous Rajput neighbours, was not to be sneezed at!
Jalal pays an high price for the Amer alliance as it is an icebreaker with the Rajputs, like the first strawberries of the season, which are always expensive. Plus of course he wants Jodha.
There was nothing underhand about it, and he kept his end of all his bargains all his life, and so did Jahangir. So in a way it was win-win, or else it would never have lasted so long".
Now on to Episode 44
Episode 44: Round and round the mulberry bush!
No, I have not lost it in choosing this nursery rhyme for the title! It is in fact a perfect fit for most of the episode. Let us see what we have.
1 ) Jalal telling Jodha, for the umpteenth time, that he will make her life hell: Hamara khauff nahin hai na aapko? Usi khauff mein jiyengi aap! Is khauff mein aap har pal rahengi ki ab kya hoga, ab hum kaunsi chaal chalenge.
It is another matter that neither is he, nor are we, at all clear as to what precisely he can do to fulfil these ferocious threats,when all he can think up, at the end of the day, is having her defeated in a chess game with Ruqaiya. It does not even occur to him that Jodha might not play chess at all, and might thus refuse, with justification, to enter this competition. Jab baat Jodha ki aati hai, toh Shahenshah-e-Hind ki doorandeshi kahin gaayab ho jaati hai!
2) Jodha complaining repeatedly to all and sundry- Lord Krishna, Motibai and herself - that Jalal is bahut bure, that only his ahankar and his hat matter to him; that he has held back her parents so that he can make her smile in public aur ekaant mein humein aur rulayenge. This litany of her miseries, which sounds remarkably like a pupil's resentful complaints against an unfair tutor, rather than accusations against a person for whom she has only ghrina (the sar option being now ruled out as he is her suhaag) , is repeated thru the episode.
3) Jalal repeatedly assuring Ruqaiya, for want of any other confidante (the mysteriously missing Abdul would, even if he had been there, hardly have been a suitable substitute) that Jodha ko sazaa zaroor milegi, hum pal pal tadapayenge use. Par phir bhi apne walidein ke saamne use muskurana padega (a curious mirror image of Jodha's own lament!) That foolish woman is stoking his resentment against Jodha without realizing that in doing so, she is also stoking his obsession with the new begum.
So, by the end of the episode, one is sure that these three would repeat the same lines even if they were awakened at 3 am from a deep sleep😉. So would we, alas!
But the real heart (no, not dil!) of the episode lies not in these OTT passages, but elsewhere.
Jodha ke zeher ki aadat dal rahe hain: It was there when Jalal picked up a green mirchi from a bowl full of them (what on earth for? This is Mughal Agra, not Bangkok, where such a bowlful is de rigueur for Thai guests) and bit into it, to the consternation of Ruqaiya. And he relates the story of the emperor who was made immune to poison by being fed a little of it every day from his childhood, so that, ek waqt aisa aaya jab uske jism par kisi bhi tarah ke zeher ka koyi asar nahin hua.
He then ends with Aadat daal raha hoon...Jodha ke zeher ki aadat daal raha hoon, and the sudden bitterness in his voice sears the screen.
My thoughts went back to that other scene in one of the very early episodes, where Jalal, meeting his mother Hamida Banu, reveals how deep is his sense of being abandoned by her as a baby, and the corrosive bitterness that has never left him for the whole of his life.
And I realized anew how right Sangeeta (smiletherapy) was when she wrote on my old thread for the last episode:
"I think also the spice thing further enrages Jalal as it opens up that wound of abandonment/not being cared for, because after all food is nourishment and a source of comfort. That he wanted her to feed him, I think on a deeper level, he wants her to care about him; and feeding someone is one way to do that. So, that he thinks she mirched it up is not just an insult for him, but another rejection. "
This is a wound that runs deep and festers, unknown even to him. But the chilli incident rubs it raw again. What he hears Jodha say to Motibai (as she assumes, though it is Jalal standing there) rubs it even rawer.
After listening to her disparaging, and singularly unfortunate and misleading comments about the incident- Zara sa mirchiwala khana to kha nahin paaye, to humein bhojan banana ke liye kaha hi kyon? Ameri mirchi to sah nahin paaye, hum to Amer ki beti hain! (the implication, that he could not handle her either, was unmistakable) - not even the most sympathetic onlooker would have believed her earlier denial about the mirchi. Certainly not Jalal.
When he tells her Aapne humein mirch khilakar hamari zubaan par hi nahin, hamare zehen mein aag lagayi hai. Ab us aag ki dahak mein aap khud jalengi, the anger is but a mask for the unacknowledged hurt.
As he rages at her in ever increasing fury, what he is really saying is I did everything you wanted of me and more. How then did you do this to me? Why did you do it?
If he really hated her as he claims all the time, there would have been only vengeful anger, none of the bitterness of Jodha ke zeher ki aadat daal raha hoon. The hurt comes from what he wants from her, though he does not even know as yet that he does so. What I wrote some time back, my Shahi Shaadi :Storms brewing post, seems to be coming true already.
What I am waiting for is to see when it dawns on him that what he wants is not her. Not the possession of her, legally or physically even...What he will want is for her to want him, in the sense of caring for him, even if the idea of love is very long in coming.
Now he can, soon enough, command her dutiful obedience in all acceptable things (I was a bit off here, but never mind!) , but not her respect and her caring. This will gnaw at him, and we shall see how he handles that entirely unfamiliar situation. ...No one can protect him from that sense of deprivation that will eat away at him from within. It is going to be very interesting.
That sense of deprivation is there already, and it is clearly eating away at Jalal. And Ruqaiya's taunts about Jodha having made him suffer a shikast are like twisting a knife in that wound. Everything he does thereafter - the tiresomely repetitive threats to Jodha, telling Ruqaiya about his seeking revenge on Jodha. setting Ruqaiya up to defeat Jodha at chess and thus humiliate her in front of the whole court - is all part of a desperate attempt to somehow drown that inner desolation in triumphant hate.
Jodha: A haunting fear: There is something new afoot with her as well.
On the surface, it is difficult to understand what precisely frightens her so much - and for all her untimely assertions to Jalal earlier that day, she is really afraid of him, and not just because of what he might reveal to her parents.
Looked at logically, the worst he can do is the latter. Now since he has promised not to do so, has attached no other conditions to that promise but the hamaam caper, and is a man of his word, she can be pretty sure that he will not spill the beans.
There is another reason for her to believe this: once he drops the charade of a happy marriage, he would have lost the one hold he has over her, and she would escape his control. He would never want that, so it would be in his interest to maintain the secret.
As for his ferocious but unspecified threats, she can easily see that he cannot really do anything to her in practical terms, short of sending her back to Amer, and he shows no signs of wanting to do that, for the same reason as above, that she would then escape him.
So then, all Jodha has to do is to pretend to be a happy newlywed in front of her parents, listen to Jalal's daily dose of dire threats with one ear, let it all out thru the other, and carry on as before.
But this is not what she does. She is in a flood of tears at the beginning of this episode, wailing to Moti: Humse bahut badi bhool ho gayi Moti! Humein Shahenshah ke saamne krodh nahin karna chahiye tha. Ab wo humse pratishodh lene ke liye har seema paar kar jayenge! - and she is not the crying sort! Later, her complaints to (supposedly) Motibai about Jalal are more plaintive and despairing than angry.
NB: This bit, as also the Jalal-Bharmal scene that Mynavati refers to later, have been edited out in the Zee Anmol telecast. In fact, all the retelecast episodes are a minute to a minute and a half shorter than the original ones, for no valid reason that I can think of, and such nuances are lost in the process.
To revert, when she realises that it is Jalal who was behind her and not Moti (what can one say of this young lady's olfactory sense, when she cannot smell the difference, at 3 feet, between Jalal's undoubtedly top of the range itr and Motibai's mamuli scent, if at all she has one?😉 ), she does not slip into her veerangana mode.
Instead, she proceeds to show him all her weaknesses, and for the first time ever, openly complains to him about the way in which he is treating her, and about the peedha he is causing her : Hamare jeevan ko aapne khel bana diya hai (Jalal, furious at first, now looks smug)! Aur ab isme hamare mata pita to bhi sammilit kar liya? ( Jalal smiles). Aur aap chahte hain ki hum hamare man ki peedha, uski vyatha, kisise baante bhi nahin?
I was zapped by this last; where is her habitual spine-stiffening pride, which would never let her show him that he can make her miserable? This is not the old Jodha. In fact it is almost like a hurt wife accusing a harsh husband of ill-treatment.
And when he, now convinced (with considerable justification, as noted above) that she was lying when she had denied all responsibility for the chilli disaster, goes off into his standard threatening spiel and leaves in a huff, Jodha's woebegone face, and the haunted expression in her eyes, hint at something new, for there is in them none of the rage one would expect.
His professed hatred for her is beginning to affect her badly, and make her miserable and weepy. This is curious and revealing, for this hatred was precisely what she claimed to want, and she should have been relieved and happy about it.
A sense of isolation: There is another odd, revealing little moment that points in the same direction. At the end of that charming interlude with young Rahim, after he announces that he is the Shahenshah ka beta, his mother tells Jodha that she is the Shahenshah's Begum Salima Sultan.
As she listens to this, for a long moment , Jodha's eyes hold an indefinable, troubled expression. Is it a sudden sense of isolation, of exclusion from what she assumes that this pleasant lady, another spouse of their husband, who moreover has a son from him (Jodha would assume that Rahim is Jalal's son), enjoys? She gets hold of herself soon enough, and salutes Salima very graciously as her senior, but as the two leave, that troubled expression is back in her eyes.
The carefree, headstrong princess is beginning to grow up, to feel things that she has never felt before. The journey that will end in a lovers' meeting has begun, all unknowingly, for her as well.
Phew! I think I could easily set up as the resident IF psychologist!!😉😉
Question of the day: Why the devil did the faithful Motibai not find a way to alert her mistress, even thru a nudge in passing as she slinks out under Jalal's angry gaze, that her bete noire has descended on her?
Joke of the day: Adham Khan cosying up to his own wife under the drink-fuelled illusion that she is Motibai. I wonder when he woke up, with a king size hangover, and realised that it was only his lawful other after all! I wish they had showed us his face then!
Now on to Episode 45.
Episode 45: Suspended animation
Here is a treat for all of you, a really short one.Yes, yes, I can hear you saying to yourselves Short? This I have got to see! But it is so, for once, and all the credit for that goes to the screenplay.
There were only 4 main points that emerged last night.
1) Jalal, even as he rightly cuts short Jodha's vigorous argument with Adham Khan and shooes her back to the palace (he must have been greatly relieved that she actually obeyed him and left!😉), admires her unhesitating readiness to stand up for what she believes is right, and to fight for it with anyone, any place, any time. That can be seen, firstly, from the relatively gentle way in which he dismisses her, as compared to the harshness with which he snubbed Ruqaiya over the Zaheer affair, almost yelling at her.Incidentally, this is the first time he calls her Jodha Begum.
And secondly, from his imagining Jodha, almost involuntarily, amidst the Amer dancers at the jashan, bearing the Amer flag with pride, and this in an utterly natural way, devoid of any arrogance or self-righteousness. It is revealing that he is not just dreaming of her, but that this is how he perceives her. He regards his vision of Jodha with no trace of either anger or sarcasm.
For once, he genuinely approves of her and her ways!
It is the same when Jodha announces her readiness to compete against Ruqaiya, citing her Rajvanshi heritage of never backing down before a challenge. For a brief instant, Jalal looks benign and even admiring.
2) Jalal handles the parcham matter to perfection. He investigates it swiftly and effectively, and then does justice to the poor banjaras - truly a Daniel come to judgement (with apologies to Shylock and to Shakespeare!).
He next puts Adham Khan in his place (or as near to that as possible given Adham's temperament) - Adham, jis din tum sach mein kisi gunehgaar ko pakad laoge, hum use nahin chhodenge! and a little later, Tum sirf unhein pakadna, sazaa hum muqarrar karenge!.
Finally, he also seizes the opportunity to organize a delightful surprise for Bharmal & Co. (who, incidentally, seem to hav given the go by to their beti ke ghar paani bhi nahin peete rule, as they are now enjoying their javaisa's hospitality without any qualms😉) .
Jalal has now come into his own, and is fast maturing into a just and decisive monarch, who can put his absolute power to use for the good of the awaam .
3) Jodha is still in the same Shahenshah bahut bure hain... zaroor mujhe peedha pahunchane ke liye kuch karenge groove, like an LP stuck in one place. So much so that even when she sees that the banjaras, whose cause she was advocating so vigorously that morning, have not not only been freed but have been invited to perform at the jashn, she does not think even for an instant that it was well done of Jalal. Instead she is off at once looking around for clues to what he might be planning next against her.
As things stand, he is looking forward to showing her up as being no match for Ruqaiya at chess, but I am sure that even if there had been no chess match, Jodha would still have been on edge, fearing a booby trap set by her (un)beloved patidev. In that sense. Jalal has won, for Jodha does his job for him, as she herself makes sure that she never has a moment's peace of mind!😉
4) Jodha's sotto voce remark to herself, when she decides to take the plunge and face Ruqaiya at chess, is very curious. It is not, as would be natural in a proud Rajput princess, that she wants to uphold Rajput honour.
Instead, what she wants is to block Ruqaiya from getting that one time blank cheque, so to speak, from Jalal. Agar Ruqaiya jeet gayi, toh ne jaane woh Shahenshah se kya mangegi! The unstated part is: Mujhe use rokna hoga, aur uske liye mujhe jeetna hoga!.
But what is it that Jodha does not want Ruqaiya to ask of Jalal if she wins, and then get it? I cannot think of any thing that the generally detached Jodha would resent Ruqaiya getting. So is it that she has begun to resent Ruqaiya per se, and is making this excuse to herself to explain away this resentment? Because of Ruqaiya's much tomtommed hold on Jalal? A teeny weeny stab of the green-eyed monster- good old jealousy?
Not consciously as yet, but perhaps sub-consciously, just like the subconscious longing in her eyes as she looked at Salima and Rahim in the morning. How else can one explain what she says to herself ? If this is indeed so, what a contrast with her reaction in the scene with Ruqaiya, in her bedroom!
Hamida Banu: Ammijaan ka haq: The scene between Jodha and her mother-in-law was utterly charming and touching. I loved Jodha bending to touch Hamida Banu's feet and calling her Ammijaan, gracefully adopting part of the Mughal tehzeeb. It would be interesting to see Jalal's reaction if she were to call Hamida Banu Ammijaan in his presence!
Hamida Banu obviously does not care for Ruqaiya, very likely seeing her as one of the elements making sure that Jalal's khoya hua dil stays khoya hua. So she roots unabashedly for Jodha at the chess match, just as much as the Amer lot.
The chess match: Ruqaiya, true to her brash, over-confident and arrogant temperament, plays a very aggressive game, capturing as many of Jodha's pieces as she can in quick order. Jodha, on the other hand, keeps her head, and continues to play a waiting game, looking out for a mistake from her opponent. The CVs seem to believe in ending on a cliffhanging note, if possible over the weekend - the episode was telecast on a Friday evening the first time around - but a Jodha victory was a no brainer even then, so I am sure no one lost any sleep over that!
That is it, folks. I am fagged out. Alvida till next Monday, my hands willing!
Shyamala/Aunty/Akka/Di
Financial markets and global economy
Mannat Har Khushi Paane Ki
Mahadev And Sons
Cricket
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