Folks,
I hope you are recovering satisfactorily from the rigours of Deepavali, and that your ears are no longer ringing with the sound of exploding explosions of fireworks. Let us how get on with the business at hand beginning with the latter part of Episode 75.
Episode 75b: Crossed wires, and how!
We have already covered the Shahi maafinama part 2 in the last post. As we move on, what strikes one is the clear disconnect here on Jodha's part, especially in the way she responded, or rather failed to respond after Jalal's public apology in the Diwan-e-Khas, even if only to think about it to herself. It was a very big thing for an emperor to do, and as a king's daughter, she should have understood that.
Also that she was being given a choice, not railroaded back to Amer, as she seems to have convinced herself by now. And following from that, Jalal's reasons for the second option, that he wanted a more normal marriage. Why should he put up with a lifetime of a spouse spitting venom at him every other time he ran into her? But Jodha does not seem to understand any of that. So, at the beginning of this segment, she is in a fit of deep depression, clearly caused by Jalal's do raaste proposal of the night before.
Amer, Amer,Amer!!!: Jalal, on the contrary, when he comes to see her, is clearly buoyed and morally uplifted by his public apology is feeling good about himself. He proclaims, with a small but genuine and friendly smile, Hum aapke liye ek khushkhabari laye hain.
We never learn what the khushkhabari is, but there are no overtones or undertones in Jalal's opening line. He is hoping, not without reason, that she would have been pleased with his public apology, and will at least respond with a decent show of interest in his piece of news, so that they can, for the first time bar the aborted discussion about Ammijaan's padayatra to Ajmer, have a sensible exchange and take a few small steps towards normalizing their relationship. He does not quite know as yet why this is so important for him, but he realises that it is somehow very important.
His timing, alas, could not have been worse, and this is due to no fault of his. Jodha is down in the dumps as never before, angry with him, with herself, and with the rest of the world, and dismissive of her maid's well meant suggestionse for improving both her looks and her mood. She cannot understand herself, and much less understand him and what he is trying to do. But even allowing for all this, what she proceeds to do is guaranteed to make everything worse.
Escalating melodrama: To Jalal's growing bewilderment, then disappointment, and finally dawning anger - and Rajat brings this incremental process to vivid life thru microshifts in his facial muscles - Jodha, her face rigid and sullen and streaked with tears, goes into melodramatic overdrive. A deluge of tearful accusations, all apparently rooted in her conviction that he is sending her back to Amer in disgrace as parityakta, a woman abandoned by her husband, cascade over the head of the uncomprehending Jalal.
She first assumes that he has come to inform her of the arrangements for her return to Amer, and begins with: Bahut hi shubh soochana hai, bahut prasanna hain hum , while her rigid, miserable face shows the exact opposite. Jalal, understandably, looks puzzled.
Prominent in the rest of Jodha's tirade is the insistence that she has not had a moment's happiness since she came to Agra. Humein itna anand diya hai aapne ki prasannata ka anubhav hi hona bandh ho gaya hai. Aap koyi shubh soochana denge, iski koyi apeksha nahin hai..Jalal's face begins to show a dawning anger..
She continues with her parityakta spiel: Jab ek pati apni patni ko tyaag deta hai (Of course she has nothing to say about a patni jisne apne pati ko kabhi apnaaya hi nahin) .. to uske mata pita par pahad tooth padta hai.. Jalal looks puzzled and resentful; it is clear that this aspect of the matter was not known to him.
To us, detached outside observers, it is clear that Jodha is no longer angry about her patidev's past failings. But then nor is she in the mood to give him any credit for the distance he has moved, from rockhard imperial hauteur, of the kind he described to her the night before, to making a public apology to her and hers.
She is crabby and tearful because she wants to stay but does not want to lose face with Jalal by confessing that to him, or even letting it be known indirectly by, say, wearing a green joda . Come to think of it, the one in which she sang that paean to Rajput valour, perhaps. It would be perfect provided he recognised it!
Less to blame: He too is entangled in crossed wires, but is far less to blame for that. He had given her two choices, hoping she would stay, and of her own free will, but ready to accept it if she chose to leave. Seeing her constant proclamations of her hatred for him- and this since long before l'affaire dature ka ark - he cannot be blamed for thinking that she is still at that stage.
But he is trying, as hard as he can, to nudge her in the opposite direction, and he is justified in harbouring modest hopes that his recent moves would have had some beneficial effect on his Amer ki mirchi.
After being subjected to her lachrymose tirade, he is, unsurprisingly, on the point of giving up, He naturally thinks she wants to leave, so he is not able to help her out as she would have wanted him to do, by simply asserting Aap yahan se kahin nahin ja rahi hain, Jodha Begum.
So Jodha proceeds, like the heroine of a railway station bookstall paperback, on the same track, only at an even higher pitch. She complains bitterly about having never been happy in Agra (thus discarding the kindness and affection shown her by Hamida Banu, Salima and Rahim as inconvenient facts).
She also makes it a point to tell Jalal, complete with the full quota of melodramatic doli-arthi lines, how disgraceful it would be for her to go back to Amer as a parityakta, but that she would prefer that to Agra, Yahan hum prati din marte hain.. Prati din arthi uthti hai, kabhi hamari bhavnaon ki, kabhi hamare sammaan ki, kabhi hamari garima ki (I thought that was the same thing as sammaan?), kabhi hamare sambandhon ki.. Bahut khush hain hum !
It is all in the worst traditions of the Hindi cinema of the 1970s,and the complete antithesis of the intelligent, rational, courageous Jodha I for one would have hoped for.
No wonder Jalal, who cannot understand what more he is expected to do to placate her, and why this dratted woman can never say two civil words to him, is left climbing the wall, and clenching his fists to contain his rising rage.
Hard won self-control: This last moves Jodha to what could be called the apogee of her peroration. Beginning with asking him what aadesh he had come to announce to her, and promising that she would not do any niraadar of any such aadesh of his so long as she was here in Agra, she effectively invites him to beat her as an outlet for his rage, adding for good measure that it would provide her with santosh of having been able to satisfy him at least in that way.
If Jalal had been Shakespeare's Tamer of the Shrew, he would have taken Jodha at her word at this point, advanced purposefully on her, picked her up, and spanked her soundly. It would have done her, and him, a lot of good . Us too!
But of course he is not Petruchio. He is then not even a Shahenshah. He is merely an unhappy and acutely disappointed young man, taken aback by her totally unexpected behaviour, and driven to a pitch of anger that he has to struggle to control.
And control it he does, except for his exasperated outburst: BAS!! Which stops Jodha in mid-sentence. Then, Bas! Jab se yahan aayi hain, sirf Amer, Amer, Amer ki rat laga rakhi hai. Yaad rahe, Jodha Begum, aap abhi Agra me hain!
His parting line, as he turns on his heel and leaves her, is a classic in its subdued but sharp bitterness: Sahi kaha aapne. Humein bahut gussa aa raha hai. Bahut kuch kehna chahte hain, par kahenge nahin. Do din ke mehmaan se kya gila aur kya shikwaa!
If Jodha had had even a modicum of sense or sensibility, that line would have stopped her in her tracks. But she is too far gone, and impervious to not just the voice of reason, but even to a bullhorn if it was blown in her ear. So she takes it as confirmation of her worst fears regarding his intentions - ie to ship her off to Amer at the earliest - and looks, if it was at all possible, even more woebegone, miserable and desperate.
I was looking around for a stout slipper myself, to do what Jalal had, regrettably, failed to do. As for Jalal, he must have gritted his teeth in the corridor and muttered Women!!
The Maham Mystery: Let us, for now, leave aside the whole Maham puzzle, along with all her tiresome high pitched horse laughter, accompanied by a show of her batteesi, for all the world like a Colgate with namak ad.😉 And the annoying chorus of the pop-eyed Resham, and the even more meaningless irruptions of her sevaiyaan-obsessed daughter-in-law. Those of you who have tried to read deeper meanings into Javeda's past pronouncements, to no avail, have by now been reduced to docketing her under the almost empty khana of Comic Relief.
So now on to Episode 73.
Episode 73: Hidden hints and loose ends
This episode was clarificatory as regards Mahaam I & Mahaam II, and as regards Jalal and Jodha, it was rich in hidden hints if one looked for them.
Let us take our golden couple first. I am tired of calling them the Odd Couple, and then here, in all the sunny glory of her latest yellow joda, Jodha looked as if she had been electroplated all over in 24 carats, and was spreading a golden glow wherever she went. Jalal too, happily, had a new dress for his jungi riyaaz, I was just as tired of the old brown one, which had doubled up for a night dress at Sujanpur.
Jalal-Jodha 1: Prologue: This scene was preceded by the departure of Jodha's brothers, who left without meeting her. Their excuse of being in a hurry would hardly wash, as it must be at least 3 days to Amer on horseback, and an hour spent bidding farewell to Jodha would not have mattered. So either Bharmal must have told them not to alarm Jodha unnecessarily, or they must have decided to do that on their own, following the age-old maxim of keeping all the bad news from the (supposedly) fragile women of the household until it is too late for them to do anything about it!😉
As for the likely question you might have, viz. Why does Jalal not mention Jodha's projected departure to the brothers?, why, that is a non-starter. This is a sensitive matter concerning a daughter of their family, and propriety demands that it be discussed only with the head of the family, her father, whose decision it would then be to share it with one or more or the others as he chose. It would have been unbecoming on the part of Jalal to have told anyone other than his father-in-law about it.
What he tells Ruqaiya as to why he did not send Jodha with her brothers, that they were going elsewhere, is true, but it is not the real reason. Nor the other thing he tells her, that the escort would have to come from Amer. The logical thing would have been for her husband to have sent her with a Mughal escort ( not escort her himself, which would be acutely embarrassing in this case).
Jalal is waiting, not just for the Ameri escort, but for Bharmal's reaction and response to his paigham. He might well be hoping that it is in the negative, for then Jodha would have to stay on despite, as he assumes now, wanting to leave.
But again, the real reason is that he is not sending Jodha back, she has elected to return, and for this , in any royal family of that era, her father's consent is necessary. As an honourable and responsible son-in-law, Jalal cannot simply dump his wife back in Amer as if she was a piece of unwanted baggage, even if she is demanding it.
Jalal-Jodha 1: Anyhow, Jodha, who, after her crying jag of the day before, had obviously spent half the night or more mulling over Jalal's Do din ke mehmaan se kya gila kya shikwa, which enrages and hurts her for no logical reason, pounces on what she sees as a golden (oh, not again, sorry!😉) opening to engage him in another skirmish after catching him, as she imagines, on the wrong foot. She is not one to bother about the proprieties of appearing before the soldiers unveiled, so she barges into his jungi riyaaz area unannounced.
Incidentally, this area is clearly, as we saw in the earlier tulsi aarti scene, very close to Jodha's rooms and the tulsi grih, which comes into play again today.
What followed was remarkable not so much for what happened, or what was said, but for what was not.
But first, it was good to see Jalal's energetic shamsheerbaazi after a long while, he is like quicksilver and steel combined, with the suppleness and elusiveness of the one, and the hardness and the tensile strength of the other. It was also good to see him appreciating and commending the soldier who was his sparring partner for having broken thru his guard, even if his hand sustained a cut in the process..
Now, for some more likely questions that might arise from Jalal telling Jodha that he has made pukta intazaamaat for her departure, and the testy, irritable exchange of barbs that follows his tripping her up by explaining why her brothers did not visit her before leaving Agra. Here, Jodha exposes her tendency to invariably rush to a negative judgement when the matter concerns Jalal.
After referring to his promise that she would be mukht, she goes on: Dum ghuthta hai hamara yahan par, hum yahan se jaana chahte hain (translation: Why on earth, your stupid man, can you not see that mera dum yahan se jaane ki soch se ghuthta hai? Why can't you for once help me out and tell me Aap kahin nahin ja rahi hain, Jodha Begum, kyunki hum aap ko nahin jaane denge?)
Hum bhi aapko jaane se rokna nahin chahte hain (translation: Why on earth can you not see, your tiresome, pigheaded female, that all that I have been doing of late was to please you? Why can you not see that you are best off with me, not languishing in Amer?)
Questions: At which point did Jalal write the paigam to Bharmal? Why did Jalal not tell Jodha what arrangements he has made for her leaving? And, jumping ahead a bit to Jalal-Jodha Scene 2, Why did Jalal tell Jodha not to tell anyone about her leaving till her departure?
First of all, we need to stop taking Jalal's do din ke mehmaan as if was a deadline for a bomb timer to go off, set and immutable . It is only a throwaway phrase, meaning that the duration of her stay in Agra would now be limited. Jalal had asked Jodha to decide, and he now thinks he has an indirect answer, that she wants to leave. He will arrange for this soon, but hardly in 2 days!
He must, after her tirade of the night before, have decided to send a paigham to Bharmal, setting out the facts of the case, and informing him about Jodha's decision to return, leaving it to him to respond as he thought fit. This message might have gone off that morning, after the departure of the brothers but before his jungi riyaaz session. So what he tells Jodha, and later Ruqaiya, would be technically correct.
I think he does not tell Jodha what arrangements he has made because he is not at all sure of how Bharmal will respond. If he tells her now that he has written to her father, she might panic, anticipating that he would refuse to let her come back. That he might see her demand/desire as childish and irresponsible, both because of Rajput maryada, and because he now has a high opinion of Jalal and might thus blame her rather than him. She would thus have preferred to land in Amer straightway with a Mughal escort, and face her father and family with a fait accompli. Jalal anticipates all this, and he does not, for good reasons, want any more scenes from her!
As for why he tells her to keep the news of her leaving for good to herself, methinks it is for the same reason. Bharmal might very well refuse to take her back, and by telling her to keep it secret till it actually happens, Jalal probably wants to spare Jodha any humiliation in the harem, where she would be then mocked for being unwanted by both the Shahenshah and her family. He has by now come a long way from rejoicing in her guroor being thus trodden underfoot, whether he realises it or not.
Mohabbat ka marham, nafrat ka zakhm: An inspired piece of scripting, and even more so of performance. The shifting expressions in Jalal's eyes are a treat to behold. First questioning as Jodha looks consideringly at the wound and then turns away. Then puzzled as she returns, holds his hand and applies the lep, blowing gently on it all the while. Probing the reason for her action - Is meherbaani ki wajah?, and then, Humne aapko marham lagane ko nahin kaha!. When she responds ambiguously: Har baat kahi nahin jaati, kuch samajhi bhi jaati hai! (translation: Can you not understand anything without its being put down in black and white, you silly man?) - trying to assess how far there is another reason behind the surface one, by cutting his other hand and adding mischievously Hum phir se zakhmi ho gaye, apna farz nahin nibhayengi?. Finally, as she leaves in a huff, he looks after her with a very curious expression, part sadness, part longing, part regret.
It was a tour de force from Rajat, and as he brings out that gorgeous line Bahut khoob! Mohabbat ke marham mein lipta nafrat ka zakhm.. Humein achcha laga ! (the boy gets all the best lines, and how he delivers them, in that deliberate husky baritone!). Jodha's eyes say so many things as she looks at him, then down and away.
Jalal-Jodha 2: This one, replete with their squabbling about the Meena Bazaar, would be standard issue, but for Jodha's constant carping on Jalal's do din ke mehmaan. After she has finished repeating it, in a sulky, accusatory tone, about 4 times, even the most clueless of men would have realized that she was angry with him for wanting to, apparently, bundle her out in such short order. And, flowing naturally from this, that she was angry because
(a) he was making too much haste and
(b) she did not want to be hurried out, and in fact did not want to go at all.
But Jalal does not cotton on to this truth, probably because he is unaccustomed to reading women's minds. And as for why the secrecy he mandates, I have given my take on it above.
As for why Jalal forces Jodha to participate in the Meena Bazaar, it is, methinks, largely out of pique. Also partly because he does not want to lose face before Ruqaiya because of this non-compliant wife. Ruqaiya has already taunted him about why, after relaxing so many of the Mughal kanoon and rivaaz for Jodha, he was now upset that she was taking her own decisions and not participating in the Meena Bazaar. Partly also because he now wants to protect himself, in his interactions with Jodha, behind the barricade of the haughty, demanding Shahenshah. No more signs of weakness, as in his apology, or his Hum aapke liye ek khushkhabari laye hain (I now wonder what that was, as it is clear that it was not the Meena Bazaar).
A nafrat that stings: What remained with me after the telecast was not the precap, with Jodha delivering her usual acerbic lecture to Jalal, both condescendingly and sarcastically, in her full blown Rajput culture mode. By now, I am beginning to find this smart-alecky stuff very tiresome.
It was rather the totally lost look on Jalal's face as Ruqaiya declares Jo Shahenshah se nafrat kare, uske liye Agra mein jagah bhi nahin honi chahiye! When he is reminded of Jodha's nafrat for him, there is always a sharp twinge in his zehen, a sense of loss, a hurt that he cannot subdue. Rajat brings out this nuance impeccably, and this is one more instance of his going beyond the script. But I wonder how many viewers noticed and appreciated this superb little visual byte.
Maham & Lakhi: This was a surprisingly neat wrapping up of the whole humshakal track, with no loopholes that I could spot, apart from the BIG question mark as to how Jalal swallows the explanation that a rustic Rajasthani woman would be able to not just assume the appearance of Maham, but also somehow learn enough about Maham's relationships with the palace residents to be able to pass off as the original. And as to how the real Maham did not stumble upon her look-alike in all this time. But as for the objection that different people age differently, and how then could Lakhi still look exactly the same as Maham after 18 years, that is hardly impossible, and is in any case hardly a major piece of cinematic licence.
The reference to Mullah Beqazi is the catalyst that reminds Maham of Lakhi, and shows her a way out of the net that she sees tightening around her as Jalal's tafteesh about the dibbi proceeds apace. Jalal would naturally go with the Abu Hamza angle, re: humshakals, as he knows nothing about Lakhi, but for the viewers, it is a nice, fat red herring, that is all.
As for Maham's chancing on Lakhi 18 years ago, it was good luck for Jalal then, and as for her being reminded of her now, it is the devil helping his own!
To try and ascertain which Maham was where when is a recipe for brain fever! In fact the best, if not a complete solution to the above puzzles is the one by Ashwinee: that it was Maham who was doing all the Lakhi acts for Jalal's benefit - smoking the chillum, writing from left to right , wrongly naming Hamida Banu as Jalal's rescuer from cannon fire, and finally offering to make a spicy meat dish for Jalal - and that she produced Lakhi only at the very last stage, in the Diwan-e-Khas. But even here, we have to enter some qualifications. It is clearly Lakhi who is there giving orders to the soldiers when she is pointed out to Maham by Jalal. Again, it is clearly Lakhi smoking the chillum without going into a spasm of coughing, and Lakhi who is writing in Devanagari, from left to right, assuming that Jalal is correct in his statement that Maham knows only Urdu and Arabic (but if so, how does she read Jodha's letter to Jalal, the one that leads to the dhakka, for that was surely written in Devanagari! Chalo, let that pass!)
The only conclusion to be drawn is that the outgoing Jodha Akbar CVs, who left in a huff as part of the Great Walkout from the JA team at Balaji, must have deleted all the humshakal files and introduced a particularly nasty virus to corrupt whatever was left. So the new entrants did the best they could and wrapped it all up in a hurry, and logic be damned .
An ode to the Rajput code of honour: All this apart, the whole Lakhi track is really, as often in Jodha Akbar, an ode to Rajput loyalty and cold blooded courage, a reaffirmation of their parivaar aur vachan ke liye sar kata sakte hain motto.Even if Lakhi's unquestioning loyalty to Maham was in aid of a beastly crime, her courage cannot be called into question. It is also characteristic of Maham that she values this as it should be valued, and as she breaks into Lakhi's Rajputani folk yodel, one felt the force of that admiration, even if was from one evil woman for the evil done by another out of misplaced loyalty.
So now let us move on to Episode 74, and that extremely unpleasant segment showing Jodha at the Meena Bazaar
Episode 74: A contrary view.
You might well ask, contrary to what? Well, contrary to some other takes on this episode here in 2013, inspired by the endemic romanticism that then prevailed in large chunks of the forum. The romanticism that kept reading the tea leaves at the bottom of the pot, trying to interpret the significance of every acid-tipped exchange between our leads as a hidden (to themselves and to flatfooted realists like yours truly! ) indication of the red hot passion for each other bubbling and boiling beneath their hostile and/or bemused exteriors. Trying to predict whether the nirvana of amar prem between them would be reached before we were all flat with emotional exhaustion!
Warning: If you are an endemic romantic, you are not going to like what comes next. You are hereby given a warning advisory, and if you stay with me, it is at your own risk!!
To resume, there was then no shortage of those who were aux anges (in the seventh heaven) after the Meena Bazaar encounter, with allusions and similes and parables centred on colours, and the hidden romantic implications perceived in every remark and every act of our principals. It was like Omar Khayyam in overdrive, and of course they had every right to be so.
In fact I too, as you might have noticed, have been trying my very best, over the past few episodes, to get into sync with this approach, writing alternative, snappy lines for Jodha and translating the resentful Jalal-Jodha exchanges into something they ought to have said instead,and hopefully meant in their heart of hearts. I did it for the talaq-e-khula scene, the one of Jodha ripping into Jalal when she invites him to beat her, the tulsi lep scene (what lep she found at the foot of the tulsi plant I do not know, there is only earth there, and perhaps dried leaves !), and the argument about her participating in the Meena Bazaar.
The last straw: But in this episode, the peevish display of bad manners by Jodha when Jalal comes to her khema at the Meena Bazaar has exhausted all my stock of patience with her. I would have liked to spank her as if she were a badly behaved 6 year old.
Not, as you might assume, for misbehaving with Jalal, right from not greeting him with a pranam when he arrives (what had happened to the famed Ameri sanskaars, especially towards an athiti?), till the end, when she wantonly stains what she thinks is his dupatta. Rather because she was shortchanging herself, and demeaning her royal status, as also her status as a woman of quality and substance.
This is not about standing up for Jalal because she treated him shabbily. Jalal can look after himself, and I do not think he gave two hoots about anything she said or did yesterday, for he made a complete fool of her. It is rather that I hate it when women behave like petulant idiots, so that men can treat them like retarded children.
Jodha was brattish, and overtly and publicly rude to the man who is both her husband and the Shahenshah, and thus has, according to the code she was raised in, to be accorded at least public respect.
Not to forget her holding forth about the superiority of her native culture in the most condescending and even sarcastic manner possible, like a Hyde Park soap box orator. I found her lecture on colours pompous throughout, delivered as if she was talking to an uncultured, inferior being: Rangon ka mehatva hum aapko kya samjhaayein, Shahenshah? .. Parantu aap is baat ko nahin samajhenge, kyonki na to aap mein bhavana hai, aur nahi usko samajhne ka hriday!- . and in parts completely meaningless.
Public misbehavior: She was also trying so hard to needle Jalal that she lost sight of all good sense and even her royal upbringing. It has been often said in Jodha's defence that she never fails to maintain proper decorum towards her husband in public, no matter how she rails at him in private. Here, she threw even that to the winds.
The way is which she declared, in answer to his polite question as to what was the significance of having a stall of colours: Humne rangon ki dukaan kyon sajaayi hai, is baat ko aapko bataana aavashyak nahin samajhte hain!, was not only extremely rude, but betrayed a total lack of breeding dismaying in a princess born. One wonders what the Shahenshah' s attendants, not to speak of her own,would have thought about such behaviour in public. Nothing flattering to Jodha, I am sure.
Poetic justice: I was thus delighted that her deliberate impertinence in soiling what she thought to be his white dupatta boomeranged on her,and she fell flat on her face. I almost cheered Jalal for having tripped her up so smoothly and effectively.
He was in any case smiling into his moustache right from the moment when she reached past him and picked up the dupatta, for he knew what was coming. He waited, with a perfect sense of timing, till after she had run the gamut of her ill humour and her tantrums, to inform her that it was his gift to her, as an aman ka paigham, aur aapne is mein rang daalkar iske jazbaat hi badal diye... Aapko rangon ka ilm bakhoobi hai, par aap khud unke maayne nahin samajhti hain. Very neat, but as a woman, I do not like it when another woman exposes herself to ridicule in this fashion.
The symbolism of her colouring what would have been, in the Hindu cultural matrix, a widow's white, with pink, thus making it a sign of happiness for a suhagan (though, strictly speaking, then it would have to be red, not pink), as was then expressed eloquently elsewhere in this forum, would have been perfect, except that Jodha did not do it for that purpose. She did it to spoil something that she thought belonged to him. That she was left with something gifted to her that is now unusable seemed to be poetic justice!
Mature restraint: It seemed to me that Jalal treated her here the way an adult treats an ill-behaved and obnoxious child, with exaggerated patience and unshakeable calm . Not as if he was trying to patch up an as yet non-existent relationship, but rather as if he wanted a civil parting free of any hostility or vindictiveness. This is clear from the way in which he counters her remark about his not having any feelings: Ek Shahenshah ka kaam jazbaat aur dil se nahin hota hai, Jodha Begum, kaaydon se hota hai. .
He now believes she has chosen to leave, which does not surprise him given the assurances of hatred and contempt that she bestows on him so liberally. I do not think that at this point he is thinking of her staying back, and when he refers to the aakhri khwahish of a departing guest,to my mind, it is precisely that and no more.
The curious thing here is, as noted above, that Jodha does not now seem to remember any longer that Jalal had given her a choice, and she insists on behaving as though he was railroading her back to Amer against her will. That is probably because she does not want to shoulder any of the blame that will be forthcoming when it becomes clear that it was she who wanted to leave.
When Jalal buys all the colour powders in her stall, after she had, with gratuitous offensiveness, told her maids to give him as much of them as he wanted, it is not so much because he wants to convey to her that uski zindagi ka har rang hamari marzi se hai, though this is what he tells Ruqaiya in order to keep his end up and not be accused of being soft on Jodha.
It is far more likely because he knows that no one else was going to buy any of the stuff, which would be of no use to any of the other women there, and he does not want her to stand there at the end of the Meena Bazaar, looking foolish with all her stocks untouched.
This too fits in with his treating her like a spoilt, ill-behaved brat. When he gives her permission to play Holi, as a parting gift, but adds that it should not inconvenience anyone else, it sounded exactly like a hostel warden giving permission for a late night to a disobedient and unreliable student, whom he fully expects to violate the curfew deadline!
Lack of nuance: During this whole exchange, Jodha's face displays only 2 expressions: arrogant disdain at the beginning, and sullen resentment at the end, when she is left looking remarkably foolish. There was not single shifting shade or nuance in her face as she listened to Jalal's unexpected and thoughtful permission, that too given without her asking for it, to her to play Holi in the palace the following day. She continues to look resentful, merely lowering her eyes as he smiles broadly and leaves. I was left thinking about what a master of nuance like Rajat would have made of this scene had he been playing Jodha.
Tit for tat?: Lastly, to those who would protest that Jodha is doing no more to Jalal now than what he did to her during the dature ka ark phase, much of which was in fact far worse, there are two answers to that.
One, that he has set aside his imperial ego and apologised for his unfairness then, and in public. He is not being given any credit for that by her. He should be. Not many modern husbands would do as much, if they were in a similar position of absolute power like, say, a Saudi monarch.
She herself has been extremely harsh and rude to him repeatedly in the past, and still is. In fact she is going from bad to worse. This is hardly in line with the Rajput marital code for queens, of which she was only recently reminded by her mother.
Two, that there is a distinction to be drawn between public behaviour and private behaviour. Good behaviour. especially in public, is something one owes to oneself and to one's upbringing, it need have nothing to do with the way others have behaved or behave with you. I thus have nothing against Jodha ranting at Jalal in private. But in public it is an entirely different matter, and that is what distinguishes a lady, and more so a princess or a queen, from the common run of ill-bred humanity.
So when Jodha burnt her shaadi ka joda, after having been cautioned by her mother about the likely consequences for Amer, I had felt that she was behaving like a reckless fishwife. Here, at the Meena Bazaar, I felt that she was behaving like a shrew. Royalty are taught, above all, never to let their self-control slip, no matter what the circumstances. Judged by those standards, Jodha is sadly wanting. She has always been so.
If I had paid for a ticket for this show, I would ask for my money back at this point and instead go and buy a DVD of Jodhaa Akbar. Aishwarya's Jodhaa, though no pushover herself, would be balm for nerves frayed by the shenanigans of this avatar.
I do realise that I sound acidic myself, but the Meena Bazaar encounter set my teeth on edge. I set great store by proper behaviour and good breeding, and I do not like it when these are found to be so patently wanting in the accredited heroine.
Question of the day: How did Maham Anga get to know of Jodha's going back to Amer? Jalal reveals it to Ruqaiya by mistake, but they are alone then, and there is no reason why she should tell Mahaam.
Star of the day: Salima Begum, for her gentle grace and her quiet dignity. The way in which she offers her shauhar, though he is one only in name, his favourite ittar, and explains that shauhar ki pasand, napasand ka khyal begumon ko hona chahiye, was as charming as it was genuine. No wonder Jalal looked touched and happy. Jodha has a lot to learn from Salima, not to speak of Hamida Begum, about how to develop and maintain relationships, no matter how difficult they might be at the beginning. No meal can be created only out of Amer ki mirchi!
Now for Episode 75.
Episode 75: Jodha Begum ko bhay kyon lagta hai?
Now, let me begin by apologizing to the talented director Saeed Mirza for my riff on his cult film Albert Pinto ko gussa kyon aata hai? But believe me, I have been asking myself this question about Jodha since September 29, 2013, and am still at a loss for a credible answer.
The Holi fiasco: Here is our Jodha Begum, who has been given specific permission, by the Shahenshah, to celebrate Holi. To the possible objection that she needs no permission at all, as Jalal had given her the freedom to practice her religion, it needs to be noted that this did not mean automatic permission to celebrate all her festivals in public in the Agra palace. It meant doing puja in the privacy of her rooms. We have to remember that this was a major concession by the emperor, and the mullahs must have criticised it vocally.So yes, she needed his permission for that, and Hamida Banu too does not say, contrary to what she said about Jodha's temple visits, that his permission is not required. In fact she asks Jodha whether he has agreed to it.
Once Jodha, in a fit of understandable joie de vivre after the emotional storms she had been subjected to in recent weeks, brought her Holi celebrations out into the palace gardens, clashes and complaints were bound to surface, and of course it all blew up with her colliding, inadvertently, with Maham Anga. Given Maham's vinctiveness, the fat was well and truly in the fire.
Unexpected collapse: Despite all this, I was surprised to see Jodha immediately fold up like a pack of cards. I would have expected , and wanted her, our dauntless Amer ki Mirchi, who, moreover, had no further stake in the Mughal system as she was sure she was returning to Amer for good, to stand up for herself somewhat more.
I did not at all like the way Jodha behaved at the Meena bazaar, trying to talk down to the Shahenshah as if he was a stupid village yokel and humiliate him, and I did not at all like the way she behaved the next day , like a bheegi billi, apologising to all and sundry and scared stiff. I expected her to be calm and collected, and to re-state her defence: that she was very, very sorry, but it was not intentional on her part, it was just an unforeseen and unfortunate accident. But even before anyone said anything to her, she looked terrified, in the garden when she was speaking to her daasis after Mahaam Anga swept off, her face literally red.
It is not what one expects from our Rajputani sherni, who had unflinchingly faced the announcement of a death sentence by being burnt alive. And it was not as though her sole weak point, her parivaar, was involved in any way - none of them was even in Agra . So now was the time for her to show her mettle. What is the worst that could have happened to her? Being sent back home pronto. But that was on the cards already. Anyone can strut about when times are easy, but it is the brave who stand up to tough circumstances.
When Maham came to her to twist the knife in a bit more, I saw no reason for all the abject apologies from Jodha, the folding of hands and begging pardon from "Maham Angaji" , that old witch, who she knows hates her, and whom she dislikes acutely . What does she imagine, that Maham would be amenable to reason? If so, and this after so much of hands on experience of the Wazir-e-Aaliya, Jodha needs to have her head examined. She had done nothing intentionally, and she should have said so, calmy but firmly, and left it at that.
What paap?:What is more, I did not at all understand her statement, again to Maham, that her parents would not have forgiven her and that she had, anjaane mein hi sahi, committed a big paap.
She was saying the same to her daasis, and looking very scared, in her hoojra just before Jalal turns up to go thru his Pamplona bull routine (remember the bull run at Pamplona in Spain, shown at the end of Zindagi na milegi dobara?), and I could not comprehend that either.What paap? It was only an unfortunate accident. How does that become a gunaah, not to speak of a gunaah-e-azeem, and why should she be dissolving into a puddle of regret for it?
There is, so far as I am aware, no custom among Muslims of widows wearing only white, which was the prescribed colour for Hindu widows. Hamida Banu does not wear white at all, nor even pale colours, nor does Bakshi Banu before she remarries. So the accusation of a widow's weeds being soiled by Jodha, and this being a gunaah-e-azeem, as that chamcha of a mullah helpfully proclaims, is hardly applicable here.
I was listening to Maham shedding crocodile tears in front of Jalal, and asserting that Jodha Begum had, deliberately or otherwise, ruined her paakeeziyat. Why, by rights, the black inside Maham's soul should have long since seeped into her outfits and coloured them to a shade fit for a burqa!
As for the suggestion that Jodha was so upset because it concerned her husband's Badiammi, that is hardly credible, as Jodha has never bothered about her husband's feelings. If she had, she would not have failed to greet him with a pranam at the Meena Bazaar, at the very least, nor would she have been so ostentatiously off putting to him in public.
In short, I cannot think of an reasonable explanation at all for the Jodha we saw last night. When, Jalal, wound up by his Badiammi, and reverting to his Energiser Bunny-cum-Pamplona bull routine, charged into Jodha's rooms and began all that tod phod, I knew , having seen her in the garden immediately after the fiasco, that she would not be putting out her favourite line whenever he is yelling at her: Hamein aapse koyi bhay nahin hai.
But I did expect her to be not only appropriately regretful, but also to state, calmly and very politely but clearly, that she had not done anything intentionally. Instead, she seems to be bent on self-flagellation, and on proving the prosecution's case for them. Even when she attempts to say that she had not done it jaan bhoojkar, she subsides as soon as he nixes that excuse.
I felt like shaking her, but this time for a very different reason. And I felt like kicking Jalal with a stout pair of hobnailed boots all the way from Agra to Amer for his mindless ranting without trying to even listen to Jodha's side of the matter.But as discussed below, there is a reason for that.
The underdog: For all that Jodha gets on my nerves all too often, I felt desperately sorry for the poor, unhappy girl, especially when she was sitting all by herself before Mahaam arrives. It is the concern one feels for the underdog.
And when she lifted scared eyes to Jalal's and quavered that she had not meant to do it and it was just an accident, she looked so woebegone that my heart went out to her. Paridhi did wonderfully well in that scene.
Jodha plays her cards all wrong. The only person who counts in Agra is Jalal, but even after he has become more civilised with her, and even apologetic, she does not take advantage of it by behaving at least politely with him, if not cordially, and building some sort of tentative bridge to him.
Take what he says at the height of his rage last night, something he has said before to Jodha. Aap kisi tohfe ki laayak nahin hain, kyonki aapne har baar humein hamari hi nazaroon mein neecha dikhane ki koshish ki hai. That belief, beginning from the day when he heard her demand his head from Suryabhan, and abuse him in the worst possible terms at a time when he had not done anything against Amer, also lingers in his zehen, and colours all his reactions towards things she is accused of doing.
He is convinced that she hates him and will miss no opportunity to hit at him and humiliate him. That too humiliate him in front of his own people, by apparently demonstrating, time and again, that the concessions he made to her were misplaced and he had been unduly weak with her.
That was another reason why her misbehaviour with him at the Meena Bazaar was a mistake. For all that he displayed unwavering patience and unshakeable calm there in the face of her unrelenting rudeness, her attitude then would have definitely coloured his attitude towards her during the Holi fiasco. As Napoleon said of a mistake made by one of his generals: It was worse than a crime, it was a blunder.
Beliefs on either side: Jodha, of course, has by now decided to hold firm to the thesis that she is being railroaded to Amer against her will. It does not suit her to remember that Jalal offered her choice. Lavanya felt that this choice was no hard one, but then she is not Jodha!
As for Jalal, he is by now convinced that she wants to go back to Amer, and so he goes out of his way to make sure, as he tells Ruqaiya with more than a tinge of sadness in his face and eyes, that Jodha's last few days in Agra are happy: Yeh yahan unki pehli aur aakhri Holi hogi. Hum chahenge ki wo use khush hokar manaaye.As Alakh has noted perceptively, it has always bothered Jalal that Jodha doesn't want him. But now it bothers him even more that he cannot make her happy.So he is trying his best.
Of course until the latest storm burst over his head, and he reverted, as discussed above, to his old template.
NB: Did you folks notice one more thing? When the chips are down for Jodha, Hamida is not a jot of use, whether it was in the Motibai case or now. Of course she stood up for her in the dature ka ark case, perhaps because that was a life or death matter. But the fuss they all, including Gulbadan and even Hamida herself, make about this Maham and rang issue seems excessive to me, with Hamida conceding that begunah hote hue bhi, is baar gunah kar diya hai Jodha Begum ne, and then proclaiming gloomily: Ek to yeh siyaasi nahin, mazhabi maamla gay hai, jisme koyi riyaayat nahin ho sakti! But I suppose I cannot understand the religious sensibilties of that age.
Joke of the day: The surreal conversation between Jodha and her Ammijaan, where Jodha actually takes credit for Jalal having bought all her rang! She also smiles contentedly, with assumed modesty, when Hamida asks: Suna hai ki tumhare rang saare Meena Bazaar par cha gaye? Then, she actually explains that her lakshya in selling the rang to the Shahenshah was kuch aur. Hum chahte the ki Shahenshah rangon ka arth aur unka mehatva ko samajh sakein. When one remembers her opening response when Jalal asks her why she had set up a rangon ki dukaan, one is left speechless by this airy, unblushing hypocrisy on the part of apni Jodha!😉
Shot of the day: The changing shades in Jalal's face during his bit of scene with Ruqaiya as he is leaving the Meena Bazaar. Ruqaiya is making fun of Jodha for being happy at the prospect of a berang zindagi, and proposing to write a book about her. Jalal is displeased, and unhappy underneath, and this shows in his eyes, which he blinks tiredly once. It shows too in his reluctant half smile after Ruqaiya drapes the scarf round his neck. But he says not a word.
That, folks, is it for the present. Get over the after-effects of Deepavali, and I will see you again on Sunday next.
Shyamala/Aunty/Akka/Di
Bigg Boss 19
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