I was very pleased to see such detailed and perceptive comments from you - hardly a little bit! - , so as soon as I managed to start on this thread at a friend's place - my laptop should be back tomorrow - the first post I came to was yours. My own supplementary remarks are in green.
Shyamala
Originally posted by: adiana12
Dear Shyamala
Waiting for your laptop to be repaired and your responses to all the comments here. In the meantime here's my little bit 😃
Episode 61: Inexcusable distortion
I should, by rights, not do anything about the Monday episode at all, for there was nothing in it to analyse. But I do not want any gaps in the sequence, so here is a brief take, focussing on the single central point that upset me a great deal, both in 2013 and now.
It is this. What was it with Ruqaiya chortling repeatedly, during the tilak ceremony, about Hindus killing Hindus (a line that, in 2013, seems to have caused considerable dismay in this forum as likely to further rile the Rajya Sabha MPs , who were up in arms then about the way in which Akbar's character was being degraded in this show)?
And what was it with Jalal voicing the same sentiment to Jodha earlier when he is baiting her afresh by announcing a jung on Sujanpur ? Mughalon ne bahut Hinduon ka khoon bahaya hai. Ab jab ek Hindu doosre Hindu ko kaatega, tab mazaa aayega!
Firstly, it was an ugly line to use, and it was far, far worse for it to be put in Jalal's mouth. It runs squarely counter to all the broad-minded inclusiveness that Jalal stood for all his life, and not just after he had become Akbar. I cannot imagine what the CVs were thinking about when they put this in.😡
Next, it is not as if this Hindus killing Hindus was something invented by Jalal to humiliate the Ameris, and as if this was unheard of in Hindustan, including in the annals of Rajputana.
It is ludicrous of the CVs to pretend that there were never any wars among the Rajputs, and that they thus never killed each other before this "jung". In fact it was quite the opposite; the Rajputs , specializing and rejoicing in suicidal courage, were often at war with each other over real and imaginary slights, as also for conquests. Jodha's wise and knowledgeable Dadisa refers to the neighbourhood Rajas coveting Amer; would their attacks on Amer not have involved bloodshed and Hinduoon se Hinduoon ka khoon bahana?
Unforgivable distortion: But the actual implications of this very unfortunate formulation by the CVs is even worse.
For the CVs' IQ here seems to match that of the Amer princes! They have completely failed to convey the real significance of what Jalal is doing in the Sujanpur "war". Instead, they are reducing his taking the Amer princes to that battle to a pathetically vicious supplementary move by him to humiliate the Ameris/ Rajputs, and to add another swipe to the death by a thousand cuts that he is apparently planning and implementing vis a vis Jodha.
Of course he baits Jodha by presenting it as such, and she promptly obliges him by looking even more woebegone and protesting about the paap that her Bhaisas will be forced to commit, as if this was a first time occurrence ! But that is merely a minor side issue. What is deplorable is the crass distortion of what Jalal is really aiming at with this Sujanpur expedition.
What Jalal is attempting here is a political move with far-reaching ramifications for the Mughal empire, and not an attempt to make Hindus kill Hindus on behalf of the Mughals. He is testing the waters for the experiment he had outlined to his ministers when he was explaining why he was marrying Jodha.
If it fails, and the Ameris were not to be relied upon, not just to fight against other Rajputs, which they did all the time, but to fight against them for the Mughals, Jalal's whole, path-breaking strategy of melding Rajputana and the Rajputs, as equals in respect and prestige but also as loyal upholders of the his regime, with the Mughal empire, will also fail. With that failure, the Mughals will never be able to belong to Hindustan . They will forever remain outsiders, and Akbar's dream for a blended Hindustan will also be stillborn.
This is something the CVs could have put across very easily with a voice-over, but they chose to up Jalal's darana dhamkana of Jodha instead, and thus distort his character very badly😡. So much for that piece of idiocy. Now for the rest.
I agree with this in toto. This was not just ugly but also a deliberate distortion of the upcoming Parokh battle and the reason for its occurrence - it was an attempt to demonise Jalal to put more weight to the Show's leit motif 'Haivan ko insaan bana dena'
Precisely. And into the bargain, they destroyed the real raison d'etre of Jalal's strategic move in involving the Amer princes in the battle of Paronkh.
Superb take: Amidst all this unpleasantness, I was lost in admiration at Rajat's ability, in the scene with Hamida Bano when he comes to take leave of her, to convey nuances with incredible facility.
There is Jalal listening to his mother say that he should leave for Sujanpur only after having Jodha Begum do the tilak for him. Just watch the series of fleeting expressions that chase each other across his face as he replies "Jaise aap kahein, Ammijaan!" ! It was fabulous. The whole idea of how he can taunt and plague Jodha even more dawns on him then, but he does not want to show that to Hamida, of course. So there is first the farmabardaar farzand, then quickly camouflaged but distinct satisfaction, and finally a sense of keen anticipation that we alone can decipher. And all this in three seconds flat!👏
This definitely was a superb show by Rajat and a superb take by you 👏 I am very pleased that you liked both; I was greatly impressed by Rajat in this little snippet. But I wonder how many others noticed it.
Now on to the "jung" against Sujanpur, which turned out to be a joke, and a lousy one.
Episode 62: A rip-roaring farce!
The so-called "jung" was one for the record books for the totally farcical way in which it was conceptualized and shot. It would have won a Razzie for the worst "war" sequence hands down!😉Not just the Razzie, the war itself was incorrect as per the records, so it also gets the award of being a Big Lie. It was pathetic and dangerously misleading.
Episode 63: Dawn in the offing?
Now for the big, grandstanding scenes.
Jalal-Jodha 1: The Gordian knot:
What struck me was that the Jodha who was hell bent on showing a happy facade to her family just a few episodes before is so opening showing the fact that she always hated her husband since before and after her marriage to her family and thus showing her own lies to them.
You know, Adiana, this is a very interesting point that even I had overlooked. I suppose that after the disaster that has befallen the Ameris, she no longer sees any reason to keep up that charade.
Jalal-Jodha 2: A splendid tirade:This was one peach of a scene. In the context of their relationship, this is going to be a major turning point.
I loved it that Jodha made no move to get up when he came up, and instead glowered resentfully up at him.
I also loved it that instead of attempting any kind of apology, Jalal launched into a farcical broadside against her for lying to the Shahenshah-e-Hind. Kya khud ko bahut aala samajhti hain aap? Ya phir hamare aude ki koyi ehmiyat nahin hai apki nazaron mein?Absolutely typical of the alpha male type!😉
Also to be noted is that Jodha's response is not a crisp Humein aapke saath apna poora jeevan vyateet karna asahya ho gaya tha, aur hum apne parivaar ko bhi aapse bachana chahte the. Humne kuch bhi anuchit nahin kiya. Hamaara jeevan hai, aur humein poora adhikaar hai ki hum jiyein ya marein. Which is what one would have expected of her after all the build up in the scene with her brothers.
Instead, she launches into a long, typical complaining patni-style monologue, recounting every instance of khunnas against her patidev right since their marriage.
Mahatva to hamara nahin hai aapki drishti mein! Khel samajha hai aapne humein, hamare jeevan ko, hamari bhavnaon ko! Hamara aur aapka sambandh ek khel hi to hai aapke liye! (But how does she see this sambandh? Who is to ask her that? Not the startled Jalal!)
Har baat par humein neeeche dikhane aur hamara upahaas udaane ke atirikt kiya kya hai aapne (very likely the chicken leg con trick) ? Then comes the daasiyon jaisa vyavahaar with her (presumably on the night halt on the road to Agra), and the mirchi fiasco, citing it as if it was almost on par with the dature ka ark accusation. Then theakaaran arrest of her brothers, and the bali of Ratan Singh at Sujanpur. Aur yeh sab bhi aapke liye khel hi to hai!
What is one to make of this, especially given that she supposedly hates him with a white hot passion?
It is even more interesting that Jodha mentions only the nazarband as disgraceful behavior in a pati towards his patni: Ek patni ko usika pati nazarband kar de is se bada apmaan kya ho sakta hai? Not only does she cling to the relationship she wanted to desperately to escape, but she seems to have forgotten about the infinitely worse zinda jalana!
It is not just, as so many would have it in 2013 - at times by bending and stretching the facts to fit this charming theory - that Jalal is, in his heart of hearts, and unknown to himself, obsessed with Jodha. It is evident from the above that it is ditto for Jodha as well. Real hatred, unmixed with anything else, leads to dry-eyed rage, not to angry tears and a litany of accusations.
Unlike some, however, I would not blame Jodha demanding the patni ka darja on a non-reciprocal basis, and carefully avoiding any mention of all the times when she insulted Jalal, like the shaadi ka joda burning. Why not, if you can get it? A little hypocrisy is a useful trait.
Yes a little hypocrisy is useful, but as long as one has the ability to see the same hypocrisy in one's actions only - which sadly Begumsa lacks as is proved even in this very tirade - Begumsa cannot see beyond her own nose and for her there is only one POV and that is her own - she can see the Shahenshah's actions against her and hers and call them unjust - but she does not want to see that there was evidence that pointed towards Amer nor can she see the grieving father within the Shahenhah - had it been any other person this very same Begumsa will find infinite number of excuses for similar behaviour as her husband's - but not when it comes to Jalal - and this unidimensionality in perspective is unforgivable in visionaries - which proves that Jodha definitely is not a visionary so what margdarshaaning can she do to a visionary like Akbar😛
A visionary? No way! I never even imagined her in such a role. And as for her terminal self-righteousness, with her, it is always My way or the highway!
Episode 64: Blessed relief!
So it was not hope belied after all! For I was concerned, in 2013, about how Jalal would climb out of the hole into which he had fallen without losing his dignity as an emperor. Like a parent apologising for having wrongly punished a child, he had to be able to climb down without crawling; it would never do for him to become a common, garden variety of repentant husband, pleading for forgiveness from a haughty wife. That is why, every harsh scene between the two of them made it tougher to get over the transition gracefully and convincingly.
But he did manage it after all, not the least for the public part.
Yes he did and that is the difference between the royalty as displayed by him and the fishwifery as displayed by Jodha from here on 😆
Jalal-Jodha 2- Conclusion: I was grateful that this was there right at the beginning, so that the dramatic tempo was carried over from the previous day.
It was one crackerkjack of a winding up, with Jodha's bottled up anger and grief cascading over Jalal in a relentless flood, as her eyes welled over with hot tears and her voice cracked under the emotional strain.
Beginning with the Ek patni ko usika pati nazarband kar de is se bada apmaan kya ho sakta hai?, she goes on, her tirade gathering strength as she proceeds. Ek stree ka maan, sammaan, uski maryada, uski pratishta, sab kuch aapke liye khel hai na? ..
She then wades into his notions of justice: Aaj Ruqaiya Begum ne kaha ki hatyara koyi aur hai, aur aap maan gaye. Kal ko yadi uska apradh siddh nahin ho saka to koyi doosra, phir teesra, aur phir chautha! Nyay bhi aapke liye keval ek khel ban chuka hai Shahenshah!
Then comes the coup de grace, an impassioned declaration of why she made a false confession of her guilt. Haan, humne jhoot bola.. kyonki jaise bhi ho, jis vidhi se bhi ho, yeh khel rukh to jaye!.. Baki nirdosh to bach sakein! Humne aapka jhoota aarop isliye sweekar kiya kyonki aapki patni hone ke dand se kayi guna shresht hai mrityu ka dand! Itni ghrina ho chuki hai aapse ki is se achcha hai mar jaana. Isliye jhoot bola... Humne marg chuna mukti ka, aapse, aapke aatank se, is khel se!
Paridhi did herself proud, for it was a very demanding scene, and her Jodha could easily have tipped over into shrill hysteria. She managed to stay in control throughout, and if she took what could be called creative liberties, as when she said that he had imprisoned her and her family akaaran, disregarding the whopper of a clue, the dature ka ark in the kesar, that is the standard tactic of any lawyer for the defence!
Incidentally, Paridhi has one tremendous advantage that ought to stand her in good stead in her future career. She can cry buckets of assorted tears - angry tears, grieving tears, whatever - and still look gorgeous, and not, as most of the rest look, like something the cat just brought in. Her nose never looks like that of Rudolf the Rednosed Reindeer, her eyes do not puff up and become unsightly slits, and she must the delight of the make up artist as the least demanding of the lot!
To revert, I was delighted that Jodha did not let Jalal get a word in even edgeways. There was no let up, from the moment when she rose to confront him, like a furious nagin with her hood spread out and ready to strike, and let him have it with both barrels (apologies for the mixed metaphor!), till the time she folded her hands in savage irony and made avinti that he leave at once.
Jalal: shocked silence: Not that he was at all ready to say anything, and that pleased me a lot too. I was afraid that he might fold up and start apologizing abjectly, for while that might have forced her to relent, it would have detracted heavily from his aura as a Shahenshah (well, a nutty Energiser bunny at times, true, but a Shahenshah all the same, and not Manav or Arjun from Pavitra Rishta!) , and it is crucial for the Jalal-Jodha love story that he retains that aura for as long as possible.
No one would have dared to dress him down like that ever before, or dismissed him in his own palace, or told him so many home truths about himself, his methods of meting out justice and much else. As he tells Ruqaiya later Is baat ka ghumaan nahin tha ki is tarah se pesh aayegi wo humse.
It would all be salutary from him in the near future, as he ponders over the words and absorbs the lessons they hold for him, but for now, he is both speechless and uncertain of his ground. Which is why, after listening to her tirade with a rigidly resentful expression, he beats a strategic retreat to recoup and rethink his tactics and his Jodha strategy, even as the other problem of tackling the latest suspect simmers at the back of his mind.
Jodha: mourning a loss?: Oh yes, before I forget. There was, as Ela had cleverly noted in my 2013 thread on this episode, amidst the torrent of anger and resentment, a fleeting but tantalizing flash of a different emotion in Jodha's eyes. This is at the beginning of the scene, when she says Humne bar bar saugandh khayi ki hum nirdosh hain, humne kuchch nahin kiya, par aapne hamari ek baat bhi nahin suni. ...Aaj Ruqaiya Begum ne kaha ki hatyara koyi aur hai aur aap maan gaye! Clearly a touch of the little green monster, good old jealousy, and this without Jodha even realizing it!
Plus, one would have expected that after getting all her bile off her chest, Jodha would feel limp but light hearted at what she had achieved. Not so, for she sits down and dissolves into a fresh bout of tears. Why?
Is it that just as Jalal raged against the loss of what he had believed Jodha to be, she too is mourning the loss of the budding empathy that she had felt after Jalal's praise of her poem and the special respect and regard he had showed her at the jashn? Of the prickly but real camaraderie that had put out a few tentative shoots after the duel and the aarti ki thaliencounters? Of what might have been, but is now, as she believes, scorched to dust and ashes? I believe so.
I would definitely say the loss of something more 😉 and I would also add that the revelation that she is definitely not the centre of belief for her husband - as she has been in Amer, as she is with HB, and as she expects to be with everyone else who comes into her orbit 😲 Begumsa expects all to believe her as soon as they come in contact with her - as you say issue a blank cheque - and she expects the same to be extended to hers as well - Does she forget that the Prithviraj Chauhan who she idolizes was betrayed by his own FIL who was a rajput as well ??????
She never remembers inconvenient facts like the one you have cited! The problem is that Hamida reinforces every self-righteous trait in Jodha, and the end result is most unfortunate for all who are not confimed Jodhaphiles.
Hamida: Wise counsel: There is only one woman who can be in sync with what Jodha feels at the moment, and she is his Ammijaan. He will turn to her eventually, but he is not there yet.
Incidentally, this is in fact the whole purpose of that incredibly warm scene between Jodha and Hamida Banu; it has set Hamida up to play the bridge between the two she cares for the most. You would all have noticed that while Hamida never fudges Jalal's faults, she invariably also puts them clearly and lucidly in context, gently but convincingly. No one else could have done that for Jodha, and certainly not Jalal himself.
Jalal ne apna bachcha khoya hai.. Uska gam hum jaante hain..
Does Begumsa even hear what HB said here????? There was no indication, on her face, that she had done so.
Insaan ka rubab aur taab uske khoon se milta hai, Jodha, par taaseer parvarish se milti hai.. Yeh Jalal ki galti nahin hai, hamari hai. Uski parvarish ke waqt hum uske saath nahin reh paaye..
Thus, as Hamida leaves her, it is patent that Jodha is busy assessing what percentage of the blame for her patidev's atrocious behaviour should be assigned to the lack of laalan paalan from her beloved Ammijaan😉. The look on her face at the end of that passage is inimitable!
What Jodha feels for is of Jalal having lost HB's taleem - she still has no understanding of people and she definitely has no understanding of Jalal - unfortunately Jodha does not see beyond herself and what concerns her - this is not a woman who can be anyone's soulmate much less a man like Jalal - this is a character who is just a cardboard cutout - EK and her team of CVs have done an injustice to women, men and Love by carving out this cardboard character for a story that they have touted as an 'Epic Love Story'.
Infact had I seen these episodes when they were aired I might have given up on the Love Story right there - unfortunately for me I started from the epi where Jalal saves Jodha as she attempts suicide and watched a few epis after and was shocked to see a hero like Jalal in an EK show and started watching and Rajat hooked me in further - had I seen these epis I would never have thought that EK had changed - a leopard never changes its spots - and this I realised much later but by then I was only watching for Rajat
Well, I deserve a medal of sorts for not only having lasted thru most of the show, but analysed more than half of it in loving detail, would you not agree?😉
The Diwan-e-Khas: A high wire act:The BIG question after Episode 64 was of course how Jalal would get out of the pit he had dug for himself without losing his dignity and, as a supplementary, how he would, given that his sense of justice is very strong, make public amends for the public accusations he had made against the Amer quintet. In the Diwan-e-Khas scene, he manages the second gracefully, but the first is of course for the long haul.
The preceding consultation with the wise and sincere Shahabuddin brings us a troubled and tentative Jalal, who realises what he has to do regarding both Jodha & Co and Salima, but not how he should do it. That Jalal both seeks candid advice and, when told that he has done wrong and has to set it right, takes it in the right spirit, says much for his innate good sense.
I am sure that Jodha's strictures of a short while earlier must still be ringing in his ears, but we have also to note that if the ground had not already been fertile, not the best of seeds can take root there and flourish. Jalal already carries the proto-Akbar within him. Jodha waters this seed and provides the warmth of her own moral certitudes. Both count, but neither counts for more than the other.
Rajat's Jalal excels in the Diwan-e-Khas segment. An emperor cannot and does not apologise in public for his mistakes, any more than the government apologises these days when a murder suspect is found to be innocent and is released from jail. Mansingh and the Amer princes understand this, even if Jodha does not.
But Jalal does everything short of apologising, and does it with sincerity, candour and what, in a lesser man, would pass for humility. As when he indirectly acknowledges that his knee jerk rush to judgement on Jodha and her brothers was a mistake: Hum shukraguzar hain hamari Ammijaan ke aur tamam hazraat ke jinhon ne Mughal insaaf ki bulundi kayam rakhne ki koshish ki.
He does not fail to praise the Amer princes lavishly: Hum unki bahaduri aur unki wafaadari ke kaaayal bhi hain, and he acknowledges that Bhagwan Das saved his life by risking his own. Hum tehedil se unki taareef karte hain, aur unhein Mansabdari nazar karte hain.
This is unknown territory for Jalal, but he tackles it head on, and tries his best to look the Amer princes and Mansingh, and Jodha too, in the eye as he speaks, though he lowers his gaze time and again. He falters only twice.
The first is when Mansingh, visibly relieved at the turn of events, conveys the readiness of his father and uncles to stay on as imperial guests till the culprit is caught: Aapka aadesh poorna hoga, and adds kyonki humein bhi sultanat ke honewale uttaradhikari ke kho jaane ka dukh hai (something that Jodha never does). Jalal looks down and away, and when he raises his head again, he is unobtrusively blinking away his tears. There is still a film in his eyes as he expresses his khwahish, not his decision, that Mansingh should come back to him.
I suppose Maansingh realised that with Jalal he had a better example to follow than anyone in his own home. Here he can learn not just warfare and art of battle but also how to be gracious not only in victory but in defeat as well - definitely not something that Begumsa has learnt so definitely not something that is taught in Amer it seems 😛
Now this is a delightful and very telling observation. This apart, what struck me was that Mansingh, the youngest of the lot, spoke up for all of them without even looking at his father for confirmation. I think he wanted to seal the matter at once!
The other is when he tells Jodha Begum' that she can return to her khwabgah (a lovely term, the house of dreams). He raises his eyes to hers, and runs full tilt into the cold and unrelenting hostility in hers, which could scorch a rhinoceros at 100 yards. He holds her gaze as long as he can, but his eyes fall and he looks sideways to hide that fact. As she turns on her heel and leaves, his troubled gaze follows her. And Ruqaiya's eyes never leave his face.
Salima: In the opening stages of the faux seduction scene, Jalal is smoothly assertive as he declares his intention of staying the night and moves into the first stages of unfamiliar intimacy, ignoring poor Salima's petrified stillness.
His expression in the closing shot is fascinating. His eyes question without being too obvious, try to gauge her with limpid persistence, again without betraying the least hint of animosity or suspicion. For the success of his experiment depends on her remaining unaware of his real intentions, and thus unwary. I could not help thinking that in another age and another station in life, Jalal would have made a superb poker player or counter-intelligence agent.
As for Salima, she might be Jalal's cousin now, but she must have been Bhagwan Das's sibling in a prior birth. Both have a talent for utter and total blankness of expression, no matter what the circumstances!😉
A narrow escape!: This apart, I am sure that as he embarked on this dibbi mission, poor Jalal must have been dreading the dire prospect of having to do a Salima with all the 300+ (I have no idea how much of + there was) harem begums, none of whom would have shuddered delicately in aversion like the blank faced Khan Baba ki amaanat. Every one of them would have grabbed him pronto, especially the ones he has been avoiding with assiduity. 😉
Result: he would have been so busy trying to get away with his imperial dignity intact that he would have lost the precious dibbi at No. 3 hoojra, and then would have been clueless, literally and otherwise.😉😉😉
4:20: But what really made my day - and I hate the Comedy Central types of show - was the 4:20 minutes (what a perfect fit for that master charsaubees , Mahaam!) of a laugh riot between Maham and Javeda. Entirely predictable, at times corny, but good, clean, old-fashioned fun of the old Johnny Walker type (yes, yes, I know that shows me up for the Jurassic relic I am😉, but at least some of you must have heard of perhaps the best ever comedian in Hindi filmdom!) and I was still gurgling with laughter in the second viewing.
It was all such a pleasant change from the raving and ranting and poisoning and plotting of the last fortnight! To top it all, the left handed compliment that Javeda unknowingly pays her saas - aap to auron ko phansati hain, wo bechari to khudh phans gayi - at the very end was deadly! I also liked the way in which Mahaam is, overall, indulgent towards the inanities of her scatterbrained bahu.
Things are looking up, folks! Did I not tell you we would climb out of this slough of despond?
So on to Episode 65 in the next post!
Shyamala/Aunty/Akka/Di
Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi 2
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