Originally posted by: sashashyam
Folks,
Usually, I pick my title before I start on a post, and at times it is tough to find one that really fits when what one is analyzing is not a single episode but a triptych. However, this time, it was a piece of cake. For though the happy ending of Jodha Begum's narnaal disaster did not dispel all the darkness in her relationship with Jalal, the full brightness of the day was far off, and squalls still lay ahead, at least there was some lightening on the horizon.
But to get there, one has to first wade thru some unpleasant stuff, at least it was unpleasant for me. Let us get started, then, with Episode 79.
Episode 79: Unexpected depths
Back in 2013, after watching the Mohini segment, I was not, unlike many in the forum, moved to affectionate rejoicing over the nok jhok between our warring couple. Perhaps because I am so ancient, almost jurassic, I was depressed and, frankly, disgusted with the depths to which this Jodha has descended. So the title of my post for this episode was Bachao! Bachao! Jodha Begum ko bachao! And the opening lines read as follows:
Bachao! Bachao! Hamari Jodha Begum ko bachao! Unke priyatam Kanha ke naam par, unhein aise moorkhta aur ashleelta ke daldal mein doobne se bachayie koyi!
I felt pretty much the same this time around, only more sad than angry to see how Jodha was devaluing herself. On Saturday last, I was lamenting Jodha's lack of basic manners in not greeting her husband when he came up to her in the garden. On Monday, I was appalled anew as she left all that in the dust, as she plumbed new depths of indelicacy, indeed coarseness as well. And the lovely, feisty, intelligent, and withal cultured Amer ki Mirchi was reduced to a terminally stupid, vain, self-centred, delusional nitwit of a woman, whose mind seems to be fast resembling that of what Mahatma Gandhi once called Katharine Mayo, a drains inspector.
Jodha: Bizarre obsession: Consider this. Jodha is a Rajput princess by birth, very young, and presumably raised in the strict code of behaviour that applied to 16th century Rajput aristocracy, especially to the women. Such women were an epitome of discretion and delicacy and regal restraint, no matter what the provocation.
Yet, on Monday night, we saw Jodha Begum discussing her distaste for marital relations with her husband, and her determination not to vyatit a ratri in the same khema with him, with a daasi of hers. And a strange new daasi, not even her near friend and confidante Motibai! Is this how a Rajput queen behaves? Plus, even this daasi objects to her mistress's folly, pointing out that such fears are premature. If I had been Jodha, I would have felt deeply ashamed at being thus called to order by a maid.
Instead, she reprimands the daasi for siding with her husband, makes an utterly illogical remark about the Shahenshah not having a drop of daya or karuna (what that had to do with his sleeping in her tent is a mystery!) and that hum jaante hain wo kya kar sakte hain!
After painting this obliging picture of the man she had sworn to love, honour and obey, as a cross between Attila the Hum and and a putative marital rapist, she marches off to confront him. She states, bluntly, that she will under no circumstances share a tent with him, aur aap bal poorvak apni ichcha hum par laad nahin sakte!.
Note that after her first night in Agra, when he told her that as her lawfully wedded husband, he had full rights to her and could do anything he liked with her, but would not even touch her, Jalal had never displayed the slightest amorous inclination towards her, or ever approached her with any such intention in mind. This when he could have landed up in her rooms in the harem any night or day if he had so chosen, by right, and no one would or could have stopped him. Why then does such an idea even occur to Jodha Begum, that her husband could suddenly decide to behave like 1960s Bollywood villain?
Jodha has a short memory and a lot of imagination of her husband as if he was an incarnation of Satan. He's beyond miles away for any inclination towards her and and this state they aren't ready.
Jalal, listening to her with condescending patience, points out that she has her own khema, that he knows that she would not want to share his tent, and for her kind information, humein aapka chehra dekhne ka koyi shauk nahin hai! She flounces off.
She could simply ask it without spitting venom.
L'affaire Mohini: Next, when there is the assassination attempt against them by her fellow Rajput, and Jalal decides to share Jodha's tent to ensure her safety, she mutters under her breath about his supposedly dubious intentions towards her, and lowers a sheer curtain between them before clambering on her bed while he disposes himself on a nearby divan. This after he has responded to her cutting comment about his being a paraya in her khema with a neat invitation to her to do the nigarbaani while he slept!
She is surprised that he actually falls asleep, and is not about to pounce on her the minute she nods off. She must be having a very strange idea of the modus operandi of a (marital) rapist if she imagines that he would wait till midnight, and for his victim to fall asleep, before attacking her.😉
Finally, when he is awakened by the slithering of the snake, and captures it, in one swift and sudden movement by ripping off her dupatta, on which it was presumably crawling, one can understand her screaming in shock.
What one cannot understand is what follows. With the fluency of a soapbox orator and the vehemence of outraged virtue threatened by stree ke liye laalasa (or SKLL for short. Do try and remember it, for it features prominently in Jodha's future sniping at her lawfully wedded husband!) she reels off a long spiel about her fears about his intentions in insinuating himself into her tent under the pretext of suraksha being justified, and about the shame of the Shahenshah of such a huge empire , whose duty it was to protect all women, indulging in such ashobaniya vyavahaar. She winds up her peroration by proclaiming that though she was married to him, she had never given him those (marital) rights and never would, and he had better understand that and leave. Is tarah chal prayog kar kee humein hathiyaane ki koshish( not prayaas? You are slipping, JB!) karna band kijiye aap!.
At which point, as a smiling Jalal throws her ripped dupatta back at her, she catches sight of the snake (which looks as if its body is made out of used cycle tyres, but never mind😉). End of story.
A little matter of conjugal rights: Now, what is on to make of this rant?
Firstly, I do not think her mother, who was talking the other day about beti ki pallu mein seekh baandkar bhejna, had briefed Jodha about the little thing called conjugal rights.
Here, there is one thing that needs to be remembered. Any marriage - love, arranged, political, alliance, whatever - automatically implies the exercise of conjugal rights by both spouses. Neither spouse, in this case Jodha, has the right to deny this to the other indefinitely. This is so even today, and the persistent denial of conjugal rights is still one of the grounds for divorce, and the courts can also pass orders mandating the restoration of conjugal rights, with non-compliance leading to penalties and, if the other party desires it, divorce.
👍🏼
So Jodha's fine declaration is, on both legal and moral grounds, pure poppycock, something that she has, characteristically, arrogated to herself. Note that she does not refer to any zubaan of Jalal's and insist that he abide by it. She simply asserts that it is her right not to let him near her, and this in perpetuity!
It seems that now that she is no longer in the least afraid of Jalal - she would never have dared to make such speeches to the old bangle-breaking Jalal!- she is sure that she can talk to him like this and get away with it.
If Jalal had actually chosen to claim his marital rights then and there in one of his blind rages, when Jodha goes on about Aapko wo adhikar nahin diya hai, aur na hi kabhi denge, samjhe aap? , she would have been well served.
This also means that given the existing state of affairs between them, Jalal's offering her the talaq-e-khula is perfectly rational and legally appropriate as well. In fact he would have been justified in giving her a talaq from his side for the continuing denial of his conjugal rights.
A Freudian explanation:Secondly, when Jalal is not raising the conjugal rights issue at all, what does one make of Jodha's near obsession with the physical side of marriage? And for no reason that one can think of? Sigmund Freud would have had an unpleasant explanation for such a young girl's fixation with , as Kamal (KDR81) put it on my 2013 thread, her patidev's supposed carnal desires. So great is this fixation that she can apparently think of nothing else all the time after they left Agra. It was unbelievable, and the way she carried on, not only with Jalal but with the daasis, made me feel downright queasy.
Maybe, as young Khushi has suggested on my last thread, Jodha wants Jalal to make advances to her so that she can have the pleasure of humiliating him by turning them down (provided always that she could manage it, which is far from certain!) . So when he shows no signs of obliging her, she prods him with such rants so that he is enraged enough to react as she wants him to.
My thoughts are the same here. She is waiting for the oportunity to prove that Jalal is the 'Jallad' she wants him to become.
Whatever the truth of the matter, Jalal would have been fully justified had he roared at her, in a repeat of what he yelled after dragging her out of that forest pool : Tum apne aap ko kya samajhti ho? But it seems that by now, he hardly cares what she says or does, and takes such insane tirades from her as a matter of course.
What I wonder is why, when she reduces such relationship as they have to this lowest common denominator, he still cares for her and wants her to care for him. It is insufferable for the heroine of any soap to be so demented and shrewish, and for the hero to be so yielding. I felt really depressed after watching Jodha here . Angry as well, and I rarely feel anything so strong for or against any serial character.
Even with all this hell, I admire his hopes of build a healthy relationship with her.
I think it is because, as a woman, I felt personally let down by Jodha's behaviour in suspecting and accusing Jalal of trying to get intimate with her. It was cheap beyond words, and as noted above, seemed to hint at something in her mentality that was the mirror image of what she was accusing him of wanting. And I hate it when women behave like that.
Me too!!!🤢
Devaluing herself: What is worse, by carrying on like this, Jodha, who is bright and beautiful, lively and (supposedly) intelligent, devalues herself badly by reducing herself to, putting it baldly, just a body for Jalal , the possession of which is, she seems to assume, the only thing he wants from her. And this when he has endless resources of this basic commodity available to him in his large harem!
Jalal never considered her as an object for lust and desire. He's attracted to her, but he knows her value(which is precious) and he won't let to get it loose by anything or anyone.☺️
Maybe, as I had written once before, the affirmation, by Ruqaiya and Maham, that once this was over and done with, she would be junked by Jalal, has sunk so deep into Jodha's subconscious that it submerges all else.
Although she claims to hate him, she fears that she would be thrown out like dirt like the others.
But even allowing for this, why does it not occur to such an intelligent girl that if this was indeed so, there would be no way she could hold Jalal off indefinitely? Nor to wonder why he does not make the slightest move towards physical intimacy with her? Why he assured her, after rescuing her from the pool, Bhale hi hamare beech shauhar aur biwi ka rishta nahin ho, lekin aapko wo saari sahooliyatein muqammal ki jaayengi jo ek begum ke liye hoti hain.
Unfortunately, this Jodha seems incapable of deducing, from Jalal's sustained forbearance, that he might want something more from her, and that she might mean something more to him than his marital rights. This Jodha never thinks of telling Jalal, as Jodhaa does in the film, Aapne hum par fateh ki hai, aapne hamara dil nahin jeeta hai!
Supplementary folly: It is not just that Jodha Begum is thus obsessional. She also reveals herself as and incapable, strange in a princess, of formulating a single coherent political thought.
When the would be assassin is captured, and Jalal is about to decapitate him - which would have - been the instant punishment in those days the world over for such a crime of lese majeste - I do not blame Jodha for intervening and offering the pilgrimage argument for sparing his life.
But then, she starts arguing with him in public about the matter, unthinkable in a queen. Next, when he gives her a hearing after dismissing the courtiers, she actually exculpates the assassin for his behaviour, which she apparently sees as fully justified given that the other Rajputs were deeply upset about their marriage, and asserts Yeh jo bhi kuch horaha hai, uska kaaran aap hain, Shahenshah!
W*F???😡😡
This, though she knows full well that it was her father who, being incapable of saving his kingdom from Sharifuddin, proposed the marriage to the Shahenshah, and not the other way around! It never occurs to her to blame her precious Bapusa, who did not even have the guts to tell her in advance who her bridegroom was, but was planning to let her find that out at the actual wedding mandap! I was left speechless.
If she really wants to blame someone for her situation, it should be her useless father🤢
I wish the assassin had actually bumped Jodha off. We would all have been much better off, especially yours truly!
Jalal: An excess of "understanding": The Shahenshah is fast becoming a candidate for sainthood, and it is tough to tolerate too much of saintliness.
At this rate, after so much practice in "understanding" Jodha Begum for feeling lost and unwanted (of course in the lap of the imperial luxury that he provides her, but never mind!) and thus needing to let off steam in so many varied but uniformly unpleasant ways (one would have thought she was the only unhappy woman in the whole wide world!), we should soon have him embracing even Adham Khan and "understanding" his desire to send Jalal to rejoin his Maker in short order.
After all, Adham Khan has also been feeling lost and unwanted, and for much, much longer than apni Jodha. He believes that his Ammijaan has always loved Jalal more than she loves him, and he is bitter that he is treated like an underling (which is what he is) by Jalal.
Worst of all, he is suffering cruel and unusual punishment in being saddled with Javeda, who would drive the mildest of husbands batty. 😉
Would all this not suffice for the reformed, "understanding" Jalal to forgive Adham after his (next) attempt to assassinate him fails? If Jodha has a right to vent her frustrations, so too should Adham Khan. As she is so understanding of the frustrations of the Rajput assassin, why not of his Mughal counterpart as well? She might well have been, come to think of it. It is just that we never had the chance to find that out!
Infectious folly: Terminal folly seems to be an infectious disease. It reaches even Agra, from half way to Ajmer Sharif. Thus we have, ad seriatim, the following startling examples of the spread of this fell disease.
- Adham Khan, plotting to have the Shahenshah assassinated in the jungle on the way to Ajmer. He does this just outside the inner perimeter of the fort at Agra, and by conferring loudly with two Keystone Kops style associates. No wonder Mahaam Anga, chancing upon them, smells a rat.
- Ruqaiya Sultan Begum, descending to equally loudly proclaiming her sole and exclusive ownership of the Shahenshah's dimaag (and presumably the rest of him as well) to a bemused audience, with the ever placid and unruffled Salima Begum, whom she has just defeated at chess, in the front row.
Having only recently stopped lamenting the obviously irreversible hatchet job done on the original Ruqaiya - intelligent and astute, and yet vulnerable, loving but forced to hide her love for her childhood playmate, deeply saddened by her inability to have a child - and her being reduced to this plastic, light-eyed Harem Superintendent, I am now fearing worse.
Thought of the day: If I had been Jalal, I would have handed the snake back to Jodha along with the dupatta and told her, Agar aapko hamare zariya saanp se bachne se itna hi aitraaz hai, to lijiya, sambhaliye aap hi, dupatta bhi aur saanp bhi!
I had, in 2013, harboured a faint hope that Jodha would have at least a modicum of shame and some residual grace, and would apologise to Jalal for all the ugly accusations she had hurled at him, not to forget thanking him for saving her life once again. Of course nothing of the sort happened. I suppose one should have been grateful that like at the pool, she did not blame him for saving her, and asserted that she would have preferred to have been bitten by that cycle tyre construct😉. Not a bad idea, come to think of it, putting her out of her misery, and us out of the misery of watching her slide even further downwards!
Snippet of the day: This was the very entertaining bit where Jalal and Jodha leave for Ajmer. As his Ammijaan is giving him last minute instructions to care for Jodha Begum, Jalal, for whom the steady stream of advice clearly goes in thru one ear and out of the other, is occupied otherwise. To wit, in smiling into his moustache as he looks back for a second and spots Jodha peeping somewhat timorously from behind the curtains of her palki. The worried expression in her eyes clearly amuses him enormously! I for one am sure she is already preparing herself mentally to counter his anticipated ashobaniya aacharan ( this is a case of mixed anupraas alankar, or alliteration)!
Question of the day: Why on earth is there only the very slow palki for travelling women in Jodha Akbar, and not some kind of four wheeled vehicle like a coach drawn by 2 or 4 horses? Or even a 2 wheeled one? Such coaches were familiar all over Europe and England during this period, and for centuries before that. As for India, even our puranas describe horse-drawn rathas, or chariots. How come there is this regression to palkis in these period dramas? Imagine how long it would have taken for a palki to traverse the distance from Agra to Ajmer!
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Now on to Episode 80.
Episode 80: The turning of the tide
In 2013, the forum was full of assorted beautiful, highly emotional takes on this episode, awash in sentiment and imbued with the hope that the meeting of souls was just around the corner. I am generally not given to an excess of sentiment, and in any case, while the episode was mostly soothing and very beautiful, I was sure that would was too good to be true, and would not last!
So let us take as a given that the whole episode was indeed a treat for the eye and the heart alike. Instead, let us analyse it as a whole, as the sum of its parts, and see how what happened has affected each of our principals, and what could be the implications for their immediate future (and ours!).
The turning of the tide: But first, the title. On the seashore, when the tide runs out, in some places, it goes out very far into the sea. Large swathes of sand are laid bare, littered with the sad debris of dead marine life, and of human folly in terms of garbage. The tide recedes further and further. The wreckage strewn around seems all pervading. As if there will never be anything more than this arid expanse of dirty brown sand, devoid of life and even the prospect of life.
Then, suddenly, the tide begins to turn. First very slowly, millimeter by millimeter, the white foam spreads across the grubby brown sand and whitewashes it. Then come the waves, white sea horses dancing and prancing in the wind, ever advancing as they gallop farther and farther inland. Soon, one can see nothing of the ugly wreckage that littered the seashore, it is all a stretch of rich, gleaming blue laced with the white of the foam, like imperial robes edged with ermine.
So it is with our tale. In the previous episode, as Jodha plunged to hitherto unsuspected depths of folly, it was as if the tide had gone out for a long, long time, leaving us with the ugly debris of a relationship damaged almost beyond recall. But on Tuesday, it seemed that the tide was indeed turning. Very slowly at first, and hesitantly, but with the promise, and the prospect, of brightness and beauty ahead.
Jalal:Unshakable calm: To those who fear, after watching the last 3 episodes, that Jalal is being reduced from a dominating, alpha male Shahehshah to the leading man of a standard issue Ekta soap, dancing attendance on a demanding and capricious lady love, I would like to offer reassurance. It is might seem so, but our medieval Rhett Butler is not about to be reduced to Manav Deshmukh of Pavitra Rishta.
Methinks the real key to Jalal's behaviour with Jodha - during the tent squabble, after the snake episode, and at the dargah - lies in his perception that he and Jodha share a sense of being rootless, of not belonging anywhere, of having no one who really cares for them, that he describes the other day, ostensibly to Maham, but really to himself and perhaps to an invisible Jodha.
Because of this feeling of kinship, and because he thinks he can understand her hidden desperation that surfaces in illogical, immature and even ugly reactions, like an obstreperous child having a tantrum and drumming its heels on the floor, Jalal goes the extra mile, not to be provoked into retaliating in kind, and being accommodating to a fault with her.
Very good thoughts!! 😊
That is why he is so unruffled when Jodha harangues him about the khema, disarming her and making her look extremely foolish with a calm explanation, and a concluding jab that he is not interested in looking at her, thank you. And shakes his head slightly in bemusement as she stomps off.
Also why he does not react to her mindless and extremely stupid assertion that the Rajput assassin's motives were entirely understandable, and that he (and not her Bapusa and his desire to save Amer by offering her in marriage to Jalal) was responsible for the attack, and also for Rajput hostility towards her family. His eyes widen in disbelief as she rants on, but he says nothing. One does not argue with a frantic, hysterical woman.
He lets Jodha down even more gently after the snake episode. She is acutely embarrassed, as well she might be after her atrocious accusations against him, and he helps her recover by turning it into a joke. Agar is saanp ko kuch ho jaata, to hamari begum par ilzaam lag jaata!.. Humne mazak kiya hai, aap hans sakti hain!
The sarcasm is there, and in abundance, in his dialogue with the snake, for all that he does show how much her accusations hurt him - Hume kya bigada tha tumhara ki tumhari gustakhi ka ilzaam hamari begum ne hum par laga diya? Aur itna kuch keh diya! Unhein choone ka haq to humein bhi nahin hai, to tumne aisi gustakhi karne ki himakat kaise kar di? Shukr manao ki waqt rehte humne tumhein bacha liya, varna aaj tum unhein das lete, to kya anjaam hota tumhara? Unka tej sehne ki taap nahin hai tum mein. Then the sharp bitterness surfaces: Tumhare zeher se insaan sirf ek baar marta hai, jeekar roz roz nahin marta!
Finally, he reassures Jodha once more as he settles down to sleep on his couch. Ghabrayiye mat, Jodha Begum, aaraam se so jayiye. Apni di huyi zubaan hum nibhaate hain. Hum aapke paas nahin aayenge!
NB: Here folks, is the first reference, and by Jalal himself, to the never before sighted, and in fact non-existent Zubaan No. 1. From now on, this will gain in strength and solidity, ending up as a paththar ki lakeer that Jodha will throw in Jalal's face time and again. _____________________________________________________________________
Alas, Jodha is not of the same mettle. I would have been pleased and impressed if she had immediately apologised, without any holding back, for the ugly barbs she had thrown at him, which were beyond the pale and worse. But she lacks the grace and the sensitivity to do that. However, despite this, he has succeeded in making her feel guilty and ashamed of herself.
To revert, that is also why Jalal guides her so gently in the mazhar, and tells her: Aapko mazhab ki azaadi yahaan bhi hai. Agar aap chahein, to dua nahin bhi maang sakti hain. Why he explains, with a little pause while he searches his memory for the right word, that the tavarrukh he is asking her to eat is the prasad. Why he asks, after tying the mannat ka dhaga, only for her wish to come true, and, in a gesture of genuine friendship, tells her so.
NB: Rewatching that segment clarifies thatJalal says Us se humne bahut kuch liya hai -not aap se - ie that he has taken a great deal from the Almighty, and so wants nothing now, and has thus made his wish for her. Which makes sense. Why on earth would Jalal endorse, even if partially, Jodha's illogical mantra that he has despoiled her of everything she holds dear?
Accommodating kindness: It is his territory, he belongs there, but for her it is strange, and he wants to make sure that she is comfortable and does not feel that she is being left alone.
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He also wants her to feel comfortable with him. To many of you, it might seem that the reason for his making her accompany him on the hunt is to get back at her by scaring her and harassing her. But I feel it is more of what I noted above, trying to get her used to being with him, even if she cribs and nags at him non stop.That he why he teases her to talk with him - kya aap raaste bhar hum se baat nahin karengi? - , so that interaction between them becomes commonplace, and does not seem strange and awkward. The way she reacts to this, with a pert comeback, shows that he has succeeded to some extent. But when she gets to be too much, he shushes her abruptly.
Mischief abounding: In fact the whole build up to the shikar is vintage Jalal: the insistence on having his own way, her homilies going in thru one ear and out the other, and the delight with which he looks back at Jodha cupping her ears at the report of the matchlock gun going off. But there is none of the automatic hostility of old. Again, in the forest, there is a mischievous glint in his crinkled eyes and sideways glances as he circles her, narnaal in hand, awaiting the shikar.
I hasten to clarify that all this, even put together, does not add up to love. Not as yet. Nor is it desire, at once simpler and more commonplace. At no point in the last two episodes does he look at her with even a hint of longing in his eyes. If anything, as in the tent scene, there is only a weary patience, and at other times, a detached kindness.
The challenge: Apart from the sense of kinship mentioned above (which is, alas, totally one-sided) and the understanding of her inner turmoil that makes him cut Jodha Begum a lot of slack, there is something else.
She is a challenge of a kind he has not faced till now. The first woman he has encountered who wants nothing from him, and will give him nothing, not even friendship. Who detests him openly and fiercely, and often, especially of late, wrongheadedly.
And both will win their own challenges!!😃
This has to be changed, for he never lets a challenge pass, and he does not like losing. She has to be brought round to liking him, caring for him. So he tackles it the way his Khan Baba has taught him. When a straight on attack does not work, then you adopt salami tactics, fine slice by fine slice.
In the process, he will, in due course, find that she has, with all her follies, her pigheadedness, her self-righteous bhashanbaazi, insinuated herself into his being, so much so that she has become indispensable to his comfort. But for that, as in mathematical problems, there is one necessary and one sufficient condition, of which later.
Imperial prestige: Finally, his stopping Jodha from donating her jewellery, and then giving his instead, right down to the shahi pagdi, had nothing to do with his wanting to displease Jodha. He was being the Shahenshah, which is something that pervades every cell of his being at all times, and a Shahenshah has to make these grand gestures, and make them exclusively. He asserts his pet prejudice that his begum should not strip herself of her jewels, and shooes Jodha off abruptly without a word of explanation, but he gives that explanation to the fakir.
This fetches him the unexpected bonus of warm praise from the guardian of the dargah at Ajmer Sharif, for having come so humbly, like a common man, without his shahi pagdi! Talk of undeserved encomiums!😉
NB: I was struck by Jalal's supplementary explanation that his jewels were worth more than his begum's.Evidently large freshwater pearls, and large gemstones were far more expensive than gold jewellery.
TRUE.
Jodha: Limited understanding: I do not cut her anything like as much slack as Jalal does. She comes across, even after making allowances for the trauma of the dature ka ark episode, as someone with a closed mind that she resolutely refuses to open up and broaden, being addicted to snap judgments, and once she has taken them, allergic to any facts, especially those concerning Jalal, that run counter to these judgments.
The fact is that Jodha is a very warmhearted and good girl, but she is opinionated, unyielding in her prejudices, and with no understanding of anything beyond her Amer, like a frog in a well. She is like a small town girl pitchforked into the capital of an empire, with none of the understanding of the complexities of imperial governance that the gentle and equally goodhearted Salima has.
Worse, Jodha seems to have no desire to learn either, exulting instead in simple minded self-righteousness. She does not and will not understand that for her imperial husband, the choices are rarely between good and bad, black and white. That they are mostly between the bad and the worse, between two shades of grey. She has been spoilt by her whole family and told constantly that she can do no wrong, and here in Agra, Hamida Banu spoils her even worse. No wonder she is the way she is.
She will never(except in a few cases) do that through the whole serial.
I am not one of those incurable romantics willing to overlook all her failings in order to luxuriate in the prospect of le grand amour being round the corner. Or rather just behind Mohan's charge against Jalal as a horrified Jodha looks on the outcome of her handiwork, a burning mashaal in her hand.
On Tuesday, she was so shellshocked and ashamed after the snake episode that she was on her best behavior for most the rest of the Ajmer trip, of course till the hunting expedition, when her inbuilt do-gooding instincts took over and, predictably, led to disaster.
The missing apology: But first, to answer the obvious question: Why does Jodha not apologise to Jalal after the snake fiasco? Why merely thank him for saving her life, and that too in a muted fashion?
She does not apologise, as she should have, because that needs the courage to expose yourself without fear of ridicule, and she, for all her self-righteous bluster, does not have it. She is afraid that he will laugh at her and despise her for her folly. Once you do not apologise at once, it can never be done.
So, instead, once the initial sense of guilt has ebbed, she starts looking around for ways to getting back to thinking badly of Jalal, so that she can silence the inner voice that rebukes her for her failure to apologise.
She thinks she has found it in the jewellery episode, whence her rush to a harsh judgment against him. She ends up falling flat on her face once again.
Jalal, in contrast, is completely self-assured. He can stoop without being worried about whether that would be interpreted as a sign of weakness. That is why he does not hesitate to apologise publicly to the Ameris in the open court, not because he is a Shahenshah, but rather in spite of it.
The mannat: Jodha behaves impeccably in the mazhar, and even her penchant for making a speech at the drop of a hat - this time about the Khwaja's holiness - serves her well. Jalal (who has caught a glimpse, out of the corner of his eyes, of her praying with her hands raised in the approved manner) is pleased, and the maulvis are delighted and bless her : Aapki soch aapko ooncha auda dilwayegi. Humein yakeen hai ki aapki dua qubool hogi, aapki jholi bhar di jaayegi!
Jodha looks so beautiful in her eager sincerity that their blessing would have been the same even if she had spoken in Swahili! (Come to think of it, when she uses words like karmasthali, it must have sounded like Swahili!😉)
As for the mannat, a clarification is in order here. There are two places where they pray. The first, and the really important one, is at the mazhar of the Khwaja, inside. That is where she copies Jalal and prays with her hands raised, and I am sure with all her heart, for her husband's safety and well being. One does not know what he prayed for, probably for the well being of his subjects.
Next, after the chaadar chadana ceremony and the blessings, they come to the second, subsidiary place and tie the mannat ke dhaage. This is a more devout version of throwing a coin in a well and making a wish. It is not as holy a place as the mazhar. So she can ask for whatever she most wants.
Here. Jodha's mannat - not for her husband's downfall, as some had commented in 2013, but that Aap humein unhein paat padhane ka ek avsaar pradhan karein - is a childish thing to want, and inappropriate given the sanctity of the place. But it is not malicious.
He wishes that her wish might come true and, in a gesture of genuine friendliness, tells her so. Her odd response to this - that she wants the same thing and she is glad that he had made the same wish - seems to be less due to haughtiness than to awkwardness and an inability to open up and say something warm and appreciative to Jalal.
This is the first time after her marriage she behaves like a queen, even if her wish is very childish, but at least she controlled herself👍🏼
The necessary & the sufficient: But what was disappointing is Jodha's sticking to her old mantra that Jalal has taken everything away from her, which is as illogical as her even more curious assertion that the Rajput assassin's attack was all Jalal's fault. Disappointing because even the shock of having misjudged her husband so terribly in the snake episode has not taught her to re-examine the facts dispassionately, and reassess her opinion of him in the light of the facts.
It would have done her a lot of good to fall helplessly in love, and have to try and win over the object of her affections, and this would also have made for very entertaining viewing. But the CVs, who perhaps know their target audience, had other ideas, and dumbed Jalal down instead of raising Jodha. But that is for the future.
The lover and the beloved: To revert, the necessary condition I had mentioned above - for Jodha to become indispensable for Jalal's comfort - would be her learning to assess him objectively, free of her deep rooted prejudices. The sufficient condition would be for her to discover in herself the capacity to love him truly, deeply, unreservedly, to match his love for her. For the deewangee of a lover needs an equal passion from the beloved...
Beautiful concepts. She has to work on herself to know how much she and Jalal are similar to each other and how their differences can make her able to fall in love for him.
But I have a sneaking suspicion that this Jodha will never feel the same for Jalal as he will for her. In all love affairs, there is one who loves, and one who is loved. Jodha clearly falls in the second category. For her, Amer, and all the assorted Sas - her dadisa, bapusa, maasa, bhaisas - always come first. But how does it matter, as long as Jalal does not mind?
The non-nirdosh pashu: The arrival of Mohan, and what follows, of course marks the real turning of the tide. A tide that almost washes Jalal away for good, thanks to Jodha's self-righteous and unthinking folly.
But to cut her some slack - yes, I do that occasionally! 😉- she was imagining that it would be a nirdosh pashu like a deer, not a khoonkhaar pashu like our Mohan. The blood freezes in her veins as soon as she realises what is surging out of the undergrowth!
Quiz for the day: Guess the number of times Jodha uses the words nirdosh pashu in the hunt segment. No cheating by rewatching the episode and counting!
Entries will be received till I put up my next post on Sunday.
Prize for the closest count: The winner will be given a chance to attend the 16th century PETA General Assembly at Amer along with Jodha Begum.
Alternative prize: A shikar trip with the Shahenshah, with the winner acting as his caddy (in golf lingo), and carrying his shamsheer for all eventualities (this is subject to His Imperial Majesty's consent, which is still awaited)
Episode 82: The darkness descends
I was bemused, as I scanned thru the forum in 2013, to see nothing except lamentations and complaints that there was no jungle romance! No wonder the CVs, subjected to these barrages, periodically slip into a Mills and Boon track, regardless of what it is that sets Jodha Akbar, even though it is an Ekta production, apart from the mushy soaps that foam all around us on TV these days!
The heart of the matter: For me, the core of the beautifully conceptualised and superbly enacted episode lay elsewhere than in the shots of a distraught Jodha consumed by guilt and fear that she might have ended up getting Jalal killed.
Firstly, it was all handled much better than I had expected. It was far grimmer, and the desperation and the trauma got to me. I am far more cynical than most of you, and I am not easily moved by manufactured tragedy. But last night, as in 2013, I could actually feel it, and I did not look at the scenes of Jodha struggling to salvage something from the wreckage her sanctimonious folly had created, as if I was judging an acting competition, in a detached and critical manner. I was almost there myself, on the forest floor, with a frantic Jodha and a fading Jalal, and they wrung my heart.
Jodha: Raw courage: Even as I wanted to clout Jodha for her idiocy, I could feel her helpless agony as she cradled her bleeding and unconscious husband in her arms and tried to shake him back to consciousness. This is as much to the credit of the scripting as to that of Paridhi, whose wild eyed incoherence, morphing into renewed determination as she straps Jalal to herself using forest vines, and tries to get him to safety, was as real as anything I have seen on the big screen.
There is the cold courage with which she grits her teeth and focusses on the job of trying to get Jalal safely to Agra, of not letting him die on her in the forest.
The part where, after an initial, wild-eyed, long drawn out pralaap of grief: Aaah...! , she refuses to accept that he might be dead: Shahenshah, aankhen kholiye! AANKHEN KHOLIYE! Hum aapko kuch nahin hone denge!Aankhen kholiye! Hum yahan par aapke bhavishya ke liye prarthana karne aaye the, aapli mrityu par vilaap karne nahin aaye the!Kholiye aankhein! Shahenshah! Hum aapko nahin marne denge! Aapko jeevit hona hoga, Shahenshah!
As she mutters to herself Chahe jo ho jaaye, humein Shahenshah ko surakshit Agra pahunchana hoga!Kisi bhi prakar unke pranon ki raksha karni hogi humein! , as much in grim determination as to keep her hopes from crashing, I could literally feel her helpless despair.
I had goose pimples watching her, her frantic tear-filled eyes and her twitching face and hands, and the grief and guilt and shock that pervade her, body and soul, got to me.
And amidst my welling anger at what her unthinking do-gooding had led to, I could find it in me to pity her.
Absolutely agree with you in this one.
The reason why: There is another aspect to all this that needs to be noted. Jodha repeats ad infinitum that she hates Jalal, and before they were married , she had wanted him dead. Now he is dying in front of her, and the reason for that is Jodha herself. But this is now, for her, a calamity worse than anything that has ever befallen her.
This is the moment when her feelings of concern betray her hatred words towards him and now she has to do everything to save him.
When Mohan arrives and leaps down at them from the tree, Jodha, with frantic, fear-driven courage, gets in front of Jalal and tries to fend the tiger off with her mashaal. Her face is drawn and tense with guilt and worry as she struggles with the impossible. Till, of course, Jalal shoves her aside and takes Mohan on himself, without even his shamsheer.
Then, once he has been left badly injured and the tiger is dead, Jodha strains every nerve, draws on every resource, physical, mental and emotional, that she can summon up to save Jalal's life, somehow, anyhow, and get him back to Agra.
She fights the elements: the sudden downpour that drenches them and make her task even tougher, the night that blots out light and a sense of direction. She fights Jalal's own fading senses, shaking him with ferocious energy and literally trying to will him to regain consciousness.
She drags him, a limp body weight much more than hers, heaves him atop the horse and clambers in front of him, holding him to her with the improvised ropes made of vines, and with one hand that clutches his lolling head against her shoulder while the other holds the reins and guides the galloping horse.
When Jalal slips off and falls to the ground, Jodha does not dissolve into hysterical tears. After one moment of shock and terror, she gets down from the horse's back, cradles Jalal in her arms, and then somehow drags him back on to the horse,his body dangling on both sides as she tries to prop up his blood-streaked head.
But why is she doing all this, as if by instinct and driven by the single-minded determination that he must be saved, that she will not let him die?
And whom is it that she is saving? Is it her Ammijaan's son, who does not want her to see him so bloodied ? Is it the bachpan ka dost of Ruqaiya, whose desire for a child he regrets not having fulfilled? Is it the shauhar of Salima and so many other begums back in Agra whom Jalal does not want to see clad in the white of mourning?
Or is it her own husband, Jodha's pati, the one whom she promised, in her wedding vachans, to love, honour and obey, despite and along with the hatred for him that clouded her mind and heart ? Where is that hatred now as she touches his blood on her maang with eyes that are distraught with guilt and grief? Does Jodha realise, in that instant, that whatever she might have felt and might even now feel towards this man, he was and is her sarvasva, her all, her destiny?
I think although she has institutional reasons to save him like your previous questions, the last one points out that somewhere in her innerself she realises Jalal is her destiny, and the wedding flashbacks reflected that.
Jalal in extremis: But in the final analysis, the segment belongs to Rajat's Jalal, who dominates it even though he has to be mostly passive. Rajat's take on a Jalal at death's door is superlative. When he graduates to films, as he is bound to, he will be magisterial in the death scenes.
👏👏👏
Jalal believes he is dying: Hum jaante hain, Jodha Begum, ki hum Agra nahin pahunch paayenge. But there is nothing maudlin about him, no fake heroism. There is instead a calm, almost unearthly acceptance of the hand fate has dealt him, and then only concern of those he loves and those for whom he is responsible.
😭😭
Those who have recovered after a near death experience say that at the instant of death, all of one's past life, and all of one's unfulfilled wishes, the adhoore sapne, flash before one's eyes. So too it is with Jalal.
And it is revealing, especially in a man said to be heartless, that he does not regret the loss of his empire, or the failure of his dreams for a Mughal sultanate that would unite all if Hindustan under his aegis. All he can think of before he passes out is to spare his loved ones the grief of losing him. And all he regrets is the manner of his dying.
🥺🥺
The failing, hoarse voice stalls in his throat as he struggles for breath, for the energy to proceed. Jodha Begum, hum nahin chahte ki Ammijaan aur Ruqaiya Begum, ya aur koyi, humein is haalat mein dekhe. He has to pause to rally his rapidly failing strength. Unke maayoos chehre nahin dekh paayenge, Jodha Begum. Hum Ruqaiya Begum ki maa ban ne ki ummeed ko tootha hua nahin dekh sakte. Hum apni begumon ka libaas safed nahin dekhna chahte.
And as Jodha tries to rally him: Aap swasth ho jaayenge! Aapko kuch nahin hoga!, there is the ghost of a laugh as he asks her: Yeh aap kaise keh sakti hain, Jodha Begum? The calm acceptance in that laugh moves one as no deathbed speech could have done.
He is racked by a cough that makes his body arch upward, and Jodha panics, looking wildly to the left and to the right for some succour, no matter how slight. But Jalal goes on: Jodha Begum, humein maut ka afsos nahin hai. Afsos bas iske tareeke ka hai..Hum ek Shahenshah ki tarah, ek sipahi ki tarah, jung mein marna chahte the.. Left unsaid is his bitter regret at the manner of his dying, on a jungle floor mauled by a tiger.
Jodha's whole being, her face, her eyes, her hands, are racked by fear and grief and guilt as Jalal's voice seems to be fading. Then he seems to rally all his resources of strength for a final farewell to the woman kneeling at his side.
Jodha Begum! He raises his head slightly, and the effort is palpable. As he strives to tell her something - his Jo..odha, Jodha Begum!, ending in a fruitless struggle with his fading senses before he is able to convey anything - one hangs on his words, one gasps with every pain-wracked breath he draws. The head lolls, and then falls backwards as his eyes close. And Jodha screams: Aaa...hhh!!!
No reproach: Jalal believes that he will never get back to Agra, and his dream of a lifetime lies shattered on the forest floor because of a girl's unthinking do-gooding. Still he does not utter a word of reproach to Jodha, and when she begs his pardon for what she has done, he summons up all his energy to smile.
What a selfless man he is!! Hatts off to Jalal for not blaming Jodha and to Rajat's perfomance!!
What he says then, his voice slurring with pain and the weakness caused by the loss of blood, is a surreal take on the demands of imperial power. Jangal ka ek usool hota hai, Jodha Begum..Agar ek taaqatwar jaanwar ko zinda rehna hai to use doosre ko khatam karna hi hoga. Is se pehle ki wo tumhein maare, tumhein use khatam karna hi hoga. Ek machli doosri machli ko khaakar hi zinda rehti hai. Sher ki baadshaahat khauff je balboote hi kaayam rehti hai, Jodha Begum. Khauff khatam, to baadshaahat khatam.
The simple Jodha, cocooned in the warmth of a loving family, cannot but exclaim: Aisi baadshaahat par humein daya aati hai Shahenshah! .. Yadi sabhi aapse bhaybheet ho jaayenge, to aapke saath kaun chalega? A question from the heart, that begs an answer.
And Jalal, his eyes half closed and his senses fading, mutters, almost to himself: Shayad baadshaahat ki yahi keemat chukani padti hai, Jodha Begum! , as Jodha, frantic with regret and guilt, pleads: Shant ho jaayiye Shahenshah!
But my mind involuntarily flashed forward to that time in Amer, when they are there for Sukanya's wedding, and Jodha tells Jalal, in effect to go and die somewhere else so that it does not upset the wedding plans. And a welling bitterness rose up in me at how short-lived Jodha's regret and sense of guilt were.
Honesty?: Even in such few 2013 posts as did not mourn the absence of "jungle romance", the focus was on giving Jodha credit for her honesty in confessing that it was all due to her folly. But what else could or would Jodha have done?
Her initial explanation fudges the facts, as she only describes how the tiger attacked Jalal. But Hamida will not buy this explanation. She insists: Jalal maahil shikari tha! Khoonkhar jaanwaron ko Jalal ne qaboo mein kiya hai! Wo is tarah zakhmi nahin ho sakta!
And Jodha, now between a rock and a hard place, has to tell the truth, beginning with Hamari aatma par ek bhar hai. Racked as she is by guilt, remorse and shame, it is in fact a kind of catharsis for her to confess and invite punishment. She simply has no other way out. It is not honesty, it is an attempt to lessen the guilt that weighs her down like a rock.
Well said, and she wants to lessen the upcoming punishment.
If she had had a greater understanding of the repercussions of such self-indulgent candour, she would at least have tried to fudge matters further even if she could not lie. But she has no such understanding, and so she blurts out everything.
In 2013, I had felt, and written, that Jalal's first concern would be to keep Jodha from revealing the truth, ,despite her acute sense of guilt and shame. Not only to protect her and keep her from putting herself beyond the pale, but also to prevent her from bringing shame on the Mughal sultanate, the very thing he had worked so hard to prevent after her suicide attempt. But Jalal is too far gone to do anything of the kind.
Jodha: an innocent abroad: Jodha here proves the truth of what I had written about her earlier in this post, that she has no understanding of anything beyond her Amer, like a frog in a well. She is like a small town girl pitchforked into the capital of an empire, with none of the understanding of the complexities of imperial governance that the gentle and equally goodhearted Salima has.
The Mughal ladies are able to look beyond their personal grief; they know what is really at stake as this one young man hovers between life and death.
Hamida Banu, facing the greatest tragedy that can ever befall a mother, the prospect of the death of a child - and the lines from Sholay come to one's mind : Jaante ho duniya ka sabse bada bhoj kya hai? Baap ke kandhe par bete ka janaza - can still rise above her personal agony, and concentrate on her fear for the fate of the empire and its subjects if Jalal dies without an heir, and chaos ensues in a no holds barred struggle for succession .
Maham Anga, though shellshocked, can still think of the paramount need - now that there is no Bairam Khan to hold the fort till Jalal recovers - for her to step into the breach and keep the wheels of government turning, so that the enemies of the Mughal sultanate do not think of attempting a coup. She might, in some recess of her being, be also thinking of what Jalal's passing might mean for her son, but right now she is hardwired to handle any crisis, with her sole focus on preserving and protecting the interests of the Mughal sultanate.
In this context, it is of great political importance that the truth about Jodha's folly does not become common knowledge, whether inside the harem or, worse, out in the bazaar, the subject of common gossip and popular derision. Hamida knows this, whence her order to Salima to make sure no one in the palace gets to know of what Jodha has done.
If it were to get out into the streets, the scandal would shake the Sultanate. It is not a question of Jodha, but of the prestige of the Shahenshah, and of the repercussions for his reputation even if he were to survive, as the man in the street would believe his Rajput wife tried to kill him. But Jodha, in an agony of self-reproach, has no comprehension of the gravity of any of this.
Well, we know that Jalal will survive. We know that this incident will bring him and Jodha closer. But for now, Jodha, with no access to Jalal's sick chamber, is reduced, when she pauses from justified self-flagellation, to haranguing the long suffering Kanha. He must already be hunting for the ear plugs he had misplaced while Jodha was safely away on the way to Ajmer😉.
Star of the day: Hamida Banu. Even in the depth of shock and grief, and even after learning that it was all Jodha's doing, she can find it in herself to maintain her dignity and to react with restraint. Not to slap Jodha or scream abuse at her, but merely tell her: Dua karo, Jodha, ki Jalal salamat rahe! Varna is sultanat par kya zalzala aayega, uska andaaza tum nahin laga sakti!
This is what is meant by grace under pressure. Jodha badly needs a lesson in this, and she can do no better than learn from her Ammijaan.
A change of tone: Now, after all that heavy duty emotion, let us seek some much needed, 2013 vintage light relief.
Tiger, tiger, burning bright: In late September 2013, a week before all of the above happened, as we were waiting breathlessly for the belated arrival of Mohan the Magnificent, we were treated to the tiger promo. It was so unintentionally funny that I could barely see the laptop monitor for tears!
There was apni Jodha, who goes for shikar in that yellow joda with all her jewellery, Next, being an accredited member of the 16th century Save the Tiger Project, she informs her patidev, till then strutting about brandishing his trusty matchlock confidently, about her karnama with the barood , and this when the tiger is barely 10 yards away. Finally, she is wringing her hands and hovering over Jalal and the tiger exactly like a 1960s vintage heroine! 😉
I simply could not stop laughing. Is paagal ladki ko apne sar laadne ke liye Jalal ka yeh to hona hi tha! The look on his face when she kindly informs him about the barood was to die for. 😉
But Mohan looked, and looks magnificent. I am sure he is real, not CGI.
Other lunch options for Mohan: Finally, responding Mansi (skanda12)'s thoughtful suggestion to Mohan that on the way to his tryst with our Odd Couple, he could snack on Maham, the mullah of gunah-e-azeem infamy during the Holi shindy, or Adham Khan, I had pointed out that there would be several problems with this otherwise clever idea.
Maham and the mullah would be as tough as old shoe leather, and Mohan would have his work cut out to chew them to anything approaching a digestible pap . Adham Khan would be softer, juicier and more filling as there would be far more of him, but he would be absolutely pickled in alcohol, and Mohan, assuredly a teetotaller, would get tipsy and pass out after the first bite 😉.
So Mohan would have to fall back on our Odd Couple, and if he had the misfortune to try and eat Jodha, he would expire on the spot from metal poisoning, given that she was, even on shikar, doing her best to look like a Christmas tree on December 25.😉
Sound advice for Jalal: That left only Jalal, who I felt strongly had thus better rehearse the excellent lines I had suggested for him weeks ago. Remember that when I sketched out this scenario for my imperial pupil, we all thought the tiger was going to attack Jodha, and we had no clue of what she had actually done!
Now I have a son, Sasha aka Siddhartha, who is only slightly less stubborn and know-it-all than Jalal, and only a bit older, so I am familiar with this variety of the young male psyche. I thus decided to give Jalal (towards whom I felt very protective those days, seeing how many determined females of assorted ages in this forum were out to make mincemeat of him!) some good advice as to how to turn the tiger encounter, which was then clearly in the offing, to his advantage. Moreover, he was , on the basis of factual evidence, much more likely than Sasha to take sound advice and profit by it.
So I wrote to him thus:
My dear Jalal (not Shahenshah, as I am old enough to be your mother and, at a pinch, with early marriages in your era, even your dadijaan),
I have watched in steadily mounting exasperation as you make a mess of every chance you get to bring that akdu baddimaag Begum Jodha of yours to order.
Instead, she is running rings round you, and you barely escaped having that expensive glass vase hurled at your head yesterday. Yes, I know you have guaranteed turban protection, and a very thick head underneath, but it might have shaken up your already scrambled grey matter and made a bad omelette of it. Which would never do for the future welfare of your millions of subjects.
So, while your artisans are melting the glass pieces and making an identical vase with which you can get the better of Jodha, you clearly need some lessons in how to handle obstinate and spoilt young women who do not know what is good for them. And that is You, bewakoof bachche!
So pay close attention, and I will tell you how to tackle the tiger in the offing with maximum effect and minimum damage (to yourself, of course). This will be the first in a series of lessons, so save this in the 16th century equivalent of a hard drive for future reference, just in case the tiger seeks a postponement.
1) Make sure the tiger goes after her first. Wait till the very last moment, to make sure that the wretched girl is really scared to death, and cannot say, after you have rescued her at great risk to life and limb,
Yeh kaunsi badi baat thi, Shahenshah? Hamare Amer mein to bachche bhi bagh ko dande se bhaga dete hain, toh aapko use parajit karne me itna vilamb aur itni kathinayi kyon huyi?
2) Push her behind you and advance a good way from her and towards the tiger, which will be stunned at the vision of a man actually coming towards him. More important, Jodha cannot then hear what is going on between the two of you.
3) Look the tiger in the eye, and tell him: Mere bhai, aap bhi bahadur aur hum bhi, isliye aapko ek achchi salah deta hoon. Is aurat ko mat khayiye. Ye abhi bahar se hi mujhe roz jhagda kar karke pagal bana rahi hai, to sochiye aapka andar se kya haal karegi?
4) The tiger will turn tail and run for his life. But before he does that, ask him, as a quid pro quo, to wrestle with you for a couple of minutes, and inflict 3 bad gashes on your arms and chest, calibrated to bleed heavily and picturesquely without causing any lasting damage.
5) You can then pick up your fainting begum and return to your camp in triumph. Make sure that as soon as you have deposited her on whatever is available, you collapse artistically on the ground, with blood all over you, and await further developments with your eyes strategically closed.
I can guarantee that this will work, provided you do exactly as I have told you. Apne dimaag par zor dene ki koyi zaroorat nahin. Is ladki se joojhte joojthe aapka tez dimaag sunn pad gaya hai, nahin to Sujanpur me jo hashar hua, wo kabhi nahin hota!
No need to thank me either, but I shall wait and see if you have followed my instructions to the letter before deciding whether to help you in the future, so watch out!
Yours affectionately,
Shyamala Aunty
Jalal, alas, had no chance of putting this extremely sound advice into practice, and we lost out on a delightful alternative track, thanks to the conservatism of the CVs!
See you next Sunday, folks!
Shyamala/Aunty/Akka/Di
Kumkum Bhagya
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