Jodha Akbar 105-114:Of human bondage JA 165-69 pg 96

Folks,

Relax, I am not going to make a series of "last" appearances before finally signing off😉! Just as my post on my last thread, on Episode 104, Sri Jodha Tulaabharam, was to coax young Lavanya out of being rusht with me for stopping this series, this one, on the whole of the Jodha false pregnancy track, is to please a couple of other young friends, Munni and myviewprem.

I had initially thought of covering only the last 3 episodes of this track, Nos.111-114, for the beginning and the middle, which I re-watched last week, at one go, from my own recordings (as Zee Anmol has got to only No.110 as yet) made me distinctly queasy, and this not just because of the idea of everything hinging on the colour of Jodha Begum's ulti!

But when I got started, I realized that I needed to cover the build up as well if the finale was to make any sense at all, and this not in terms of the events, which you would all know, but in terms of what they indicated or implied. In 2013 I had, sensibly, taken a week off till the track moved to its conclusion, but that showed up as a distinct discontinuity in my analysis. So this time I will be covering the whole, and for the first 6 episodes, the analysis will focus on concepts and trends thru this period, rather than taking each episode separately. Here goes then.

Part I: Episode 105-110: Vishwas evam avishwas

The title for this section comes from the key element in the whole of the false pregnancy track: faith and the lack of faith.

Jodha-Jalal: The limits of faith: Firstly, faith is not faith if it needs proof.

Given this, there are two kinds of faith. One is total, blind, instinctive, based on a love beyond reason. Mera beta aise kabhi nahin kar sakta, asserts a mother who has this kind of faith in her son.

The other is what can be called rational faith. This is anchored in one's knowledge of the other person's character, based on personal experience of him/her, which assures one that this person could not have committed the crime of which he/she is accused. One might have hoped that by now, both Jodha and Jalal might have developed enough of this kind of rational faith in each other to be able to defuse this ugly crisis right away. But that was not to be.

Taking Jodha first, the vital factor that should have given her pause while declaring Jalal guilty of violating his vachan to her is this. She has had repeated proof of Jalal's capacity for self restraint, not just on the road to Ajmer, but day after day after day in Amer itself. She must have realized that none of this would have happened if Jalal had been a standard issue husband who claims his conjugal rights at once, and she, as his wife, would be expected to comply. That, to use her pet term, Jalal had demonstrated that his vaasna was firmly under control. In fact, Jodha affirms this proudly to Ruqaiya when she tries to needle her: Shahenshah ne hamara maan rakha! Apna vachan nibhaya!

Then there was Jalal's epiphany at Ajmer, and again at the Kali temple, where Jodha herself perceived his capacity for absorption in the Divine.

There are the persistent efforts Jalal has made recently to woo her, to take her likes and dislikes into account, and this with rare perceptiveness and sensitivity, such as the revelation about her lost payal, the exquisitely chosen gift for her birthday.

That after the tiger mauling him, a disaster due solely to Jodha's unthinking folly, even when Jalal believes he is dying, he does not utter a single word of reproach to her. It was incredible.

His going out of his way, even handing over a fort that has deep sentimental associations for him, to make sure that Sukanya not only gets married but has a place of honour in her sasural, but largely for Jodha's sake, and his telling her so.

Above all, his readiness to abandon his throne and his people to keep his promise to her , with what I see as criminal, self-indulgent irresponsibility. But Jodha should have seen it very differently.

NB: It is revealing of Jodha's limited comprehension of matters political, that despite her being a princess born and raised to always place a king's rajadharma first, she does not even think of this, the biggest sacrifice that he is ready to make for her sake. She instead harps only on his standing up to the maulvis.

To revert, any normal woman would have taken note of all this, drawn her own conclusions, and developed some rational faith in him. She would not accept so readily that such a man could suddenly lapse so badly, and her anguished question to him would then have been:

Aap aise kabhi nahin kar sakte, Shahenshah, to yeh kaise ho gaya?

That would have given him pause, and might have let reasoned faith reassert itself on both sides. But perhaps that was too much to expect from Jodha, who is nothing if not blinkered by her self-righteousness and obtuseness, and who is, right now, rocked to her foundations by this apparent revelation about Jalal.

For Jalal, the breakdown of his faith in her is easier to understand.

For this faith is limited to believing that though she hates him, she will not plot to kill him. She has never been even civil to him, quite the opposite. What has she ever done for him that he should trust her in depth?

Besides, he knows nothing of her personal morality. All he knows is her distaste for any kind of intimacy with him. This cannot, when faced with what looks like incontrovertible evidence from the Hakima, add up to blind faith in her personal virtue.

As for this Rajput honour business, I am sure there were the female equivalents of Jaichand among them, and unfaithful wives as well. No one can claim a blanket halo for a whole race! Then again, even if Jodha had been a Jezebel, she would have cried the same way and made the same assertions of innocence., in fact more vehemently and convincingly. Why then should Jalal believe her?

Moreover, just as Jodha accuses him of having taken revenge on her for hating him, Jalal could say the same of her, that she had taken revenge on him for forcing her hand and getting her to marry him.

It has also to be remembered that the loss and humiliation for Jalal is infinitely greater than for Jodha, for it is not just a sense of personal betrayal, it is a political and personal fraud of the worst kind, as he sees it.

Othello strangled Desdemona on similar suspicions, and on far, far less "evidence". Men, and emperors more than ordinary men, see red in these situations.

Jalal: Perceptive faith: But then, eventually, Jalal's essential faith in Jodha surfaces, asserts itself, and governs all his subsequent actions.

This faith is based on nothing more than his belief in the paakeezgi that he sees in her eyes, and on the absence of the fear that a zinaakari aurat would display, when she refutes all his accusations, and proudly proclaims that she is a Rajput queen, and koyi paraya manushya humein choona to door, hamari saaya ko bhi nahin choo sakta!

Plus her, for once, calm and dignified demeanour at the insaaf ka tarazu, when she asks him, as her husband, not as the Shahenshah, what she, an innocent wife accused by her husband, should do under these circumstances.

One can also interpret Jalal's belief in Jodha's innocence as due to his ability to judge an individual based on his interaction with that person, a flair essential for any leader, be it a CEO of a company or the absolute ruler of an empire. Except that this flair seems to desert Jalal when it comes to Adham and Sharifuddin, not to speak of a whole host of others. So this hunar of Jalal's is clearly Jodha-specific!😉

Jodha: Persistent lack of faith:In contrast, there is Jodha's persistent lack of faith in the man she sees, at the drop of a hat, as a kutil, kroor vyakti - she does not even accept that he is an insaan - who is perennially intent on nothing more than his vaasnapoorti, be it with a daasi or moorchit avastaa ka laabh uthana with herself. And this despite all the counter- facts I have listed above.

But then, deductive logic is not among the long list of Jodha Begum's hunars! Nor inductive logic, for that matter. For Jodha does not see any inconsistency in demanding that her husband trust her on her word alone, while she does not extend any of same faith to him or his word of honour.

However, even despite all these precedents, I do not blame Jodha for not believing Jalal's assertion that he did nothing at all that night, for she has received a huge shock. She knows that she is innocent of any wrongdoing, so that naturally leaves only one explanation, that he has broken the (virtual) zubaan he had given her. So it is perhaps natural that her trust in him, such as it was, is shattered.

Then, to compound the initial shock comes the horrible wave of the most demeaning insults against her that Maham stirs up in the harem, which sucks in even her tower of support, Hamida Bano. My heart went out to her as she gazes, in uncomprehending horror, at the transformation of her incredibly affectionate Ammijaan into a vengeful Malika-e-Azam who tells Jodha that she should fall to her death on a temple steps or drown herself in a water body, but she, Hamida Bano, would not allow her to stay on in the Agra palace any longer.

On top of this, there are Jalal's extremely demeaning and crass references to the possibility of her having had an extra-marital relationship while in Amer for the Sukanya wedding (he makes them deliberately,

On top of this, there are Jalal's extremely demeaning and crass references to the possibility of her having had an extra-marital relationship while in Amer for the Sukanya wedding (he makes them deliberately, as part of his attempt to save Jodha from the shameful accusations that Hamida Bano levies at her, but Jodha does not know that). This is the last straw, and Jodha is shattered.

to save Jodha from the shameful accusations that Hamida Bano levies at her, but Jodha does not know that). This is the last straw, and Jodha is shattered.

The Holmes principle: This last scene, interestingly enough, shows how even the strongest faith of one human being in another can, when faced with the Sherlock Holmes principle in action - When you have eliminated the impossible, what remains, however improbable, is the truth - can collapse in an instant.

When Hamida Bano, for whom it is impossible that her son should lie about his not having touched Jodha, confronts the fact of Jodha being pregnant, she shifts to believing the improbable, that Jodha, hitherto the apple of her eyes, is guilty of infidelity.

There is another aspect to this. Hamida Bano's savage reaction is a measure of the seriousness the imperial family attaches to the matter of infidelity to an emperor. Remember that they - Hamida, Jalal, Ruqaiya - are used to treachery from those close to them. So it would not be too difficult for Hamida to believe that she might have been completely mistaken in Jodha.

To revert, the same principle is at work with Jodha. For her, the impossibility is her having been unfaithful of her pati. So it follows that the (in any case, for Jodha, never strong) improbability, that Jalal had betrayed his vachan has, for her, to be the truth.

Seen against this, how much more admirable is Jalal's faith in Jodha's purity, once he sees it in her eyes and her fierce, unafraid denials of any wrongdoing! He does not fall into the Holmesian trap. For him, now, it is the idea of Jodha's infidelity that is the new impossible. So it follows that the diagnosis of her pregnancy has to be shifted to the "improbable" category, dissected and disproved. It is this that elevates Jalal as a character way beyond all the others.

Reactions: Jalal: Rajat brought Jalal's distilled fury vividly alive on the screen , especially during the savage, almost demented sword practice. That scene was splendidly visualised and shot.

I was also impressed with the Diwan-e-Am scene with the adulterous wife, though I gravely doubt if any 16th century woman, adulteress on not, would be stupid enough to advance those kinds of arguments in open court. It was not quite clear whether those were actually the lines spoken by her, or whether Jalal was projecting his own inner storms, and his understanding of where Jodha was coming from - based on what she had told him at different times about her hating him, her distaste for the slightest physical intimacy with him etc. - on to that shameless creature. It was a very well conceived scripting device.

Either way, what came thru, with pitiless clarity, was the searing bitterness in Jalal about his being rejected by Jodha, a woman he had come to care for, if not to love. Or perhaps even to love, seeing how often the unfortunate plaintiff - who is of course Jalal's projection of himself - uses the word mohabbat. And worse, based on the Khwaja's pronouncement about her being pregnant, about Jodha's apparent readiness to cheat him with a paramour in the name of love.

As for the punishment Jalal decrees for the defendant, a self-confessed adulteress, I do not understand why Hamida and even Mahaam, not to speak of Adham and Sharifuddin, all seem taken aback. That was the standard punishment for an adulteress in those days - death by stoning. (The unfortunate who copped it because of unrelated circumstances was the thief, who got the full penalty in those days - and even today in Saudi Arabia - of having his hands chopped off. It also make the jooti chor in Episode 2 look lucky, for it is easier to manage with no feet than with no hands.)

As for the Shahenshah's fury, any judge in those days , faced with the crass arguments that the cheating wife uses, would have reacted identically. Jalal cites the violation of the tenets of Islam - that, and the question Kya tumhein Khuda ka khauff nahin hai? - is exactly what any maulvi would have said. And of course her partner in adultery would suffer the same punishment.

The reason for restraint: It was argued here in 2013 that Jalal does not yell zinda jala denge, order Jodha stoned to death, or pull out his shamsheer to do the job himself, and instead soliloquizes about his having been given the worst ghaav in his life, because Jodha has now got under his skin and can hurt him, as opposed to merely making him furious. This is true to some extent, for after all, their relationship, such as it is, has come some way since the dature ka ark days.

Methinks, however, that in these particular circumstances, that is not the main reason for his seething, glowering silence, interspersed with fleeting, pathetic attempts at projecting gladness, rather than exploding, as is his wont, in destructive rage.

Jalal's restraint is mostly because he cannot stand the idea of a public scandal, which would inevitably lead to his being branded a cuckold by the whole of the court and the awaam, and mocked at and derided for that. That is the one intolerable insult for any man - even today, this is the prime reason for crimes of passion ending in the murder of the unfaithful spouse (for which French courts used to routinely acquit husbands, under the crime passionel defence, till late into the 20^th century!). How much more hellish must the very prospect have been for a 16^th century emperor?

And this one is not about a baandi like that Farida. This is a Shahi Begum, jiske saath baakayda nikaah karke use Agra le aaya tha. The corrosive ridicule would have eaten away at the roots of even imperial power. His image would never have recovered from that.

Not every king can be a Henry VIII, who did not care a hoot for any ridicule on this count. As you might remember, he tried 2 wives publicly, without any hesitation, for the same offence, and executed them both. One, Anne Boleyn, was innocent of the charge, and the other, Katharine Howard, was not.

But in private, Jalal's restraint can and does break down when he confronts Jodha after the chadar ceremony. He says nothing on the earlier occasion, when Jodha accuses him of having broken his word to her, because Ruqaiya is also present. If she had not been there, his fury would have broken its bounds then itself.

Infectious folly: Jodha's complete lack of good sense seems to be catching. For we now have Jalal who, instead of simply informing the Teen Devian (Hamida, Gulbadan and Jijianga) and the assorted assemblage that Jodha was not expecting at all and was the victim of a plot, indulges in the kind of "Hate me, do!" convolutions that one expects from the typical virtuous bahu in every single soap.

You know, it is a sort of TV soap convention for the noble, self-sacrificing heroine to make herself out to be a villainess at some point in the story, so as to save the reputation or marriage of someone else, ideally her husband's sister. It would not be such a great tyaag if it was her sister, you see! Plus it never occurs to her to tell the truth and take the straight way out of the mess, for she has to make tyaags periodically! So for a bunch of episodes, the heroine is vilified by all the rest, till one day the truth comes out and she instantly acquires a halo.

This is what is happening here as well. Except that the gender has been changed. It is now the hero who is making himself out to be a villain, strictly temporarily, of course. Soon he will have a halo of his own (of course much smaller that that of Jodha Begum, be it understood!). As for me, I did not know what to make of an emperor for whom the fate of Afghanistan is apparently less important than the colour of Jodha's vomit.. Ugh!...instead of coming clean like a man. This is hardly the path to greatness!😡

But I am sure the TRPs would, in 2013, have celebrated this truly revolutionary role reversal, of which Balaji must have been very proud!😉

Reactions: Ruqaiya: This was a tour de force, and it was a relief to see the old Ruqaiya back, and then some more. She redeemed herself magnificently. For what came thru was her essential decency, and her respect and feeling, as a woman, for another woman's motherhood, no matter that she detests that other woman and no matter that she personally has lost out to her in the motherhood stakes. Also, the affection and loyalty she has for Jalal ki aulad, which is but a reflection of the loyalty and love she has for him. That says a lot about Ruqaiya, much more that had been shown even by Smiley's version.

Later, when Jalal calls her to meet him, and she comes reluctantly, he needs her desperately. I think he is on the verge of telling her the truth from his side, and perhaps asking her whether a woman like Jodha could actually commit such a crime. Her reply would, I think, have been in the negative. But then Jodha barges in and the opportunity is gone.

Reactions: Jodha: As noted above, I can understand where Jodha was coming from. So I did not mind it that for almost the whole of this track, Jodha is desperate, angry and weepy: in private, bewailing her fate to Moti and raging against the ghrinit Shahenshah, and looking so consistently sullen and angry even in public that no one but the purblind Hamida Banu, and her even more purblind coterie of Gulbadan and Jijianga, would have been taken in.

Nor even her falling back, characteristically, on what she now sees as the basic difference between the Mughals and the Rajputs, the breaking or keeping of the vachans they give. Of course she forgets the like of Jaichand, and even her Sujamal Bhaisa, who betrayed Amer to the Mughal Sharifuddin for his own selfish ends, but then, as noted above, Jodha Begum has little use for logic.

Nor even that she seems to suffer from short term retrograde amnesia, a la Aamir Khan in Ghajini. First, she treats the Teen Devian, plus assorted daasis and baandis, to the momentous information that she had only ghrina for Jalal from the time her hand was given in his (by her father, to save his backside and those of his sons and his praja). Then, just 10 minutes later, she marches up to him when he is weighing rings in the insaaf ka tarazu, and delivers the whole spiel all over again. Why? Does she think he is suffering from short term memory loss?

Then again, during the whole of Salima's long, patient and lucid explanation of how both Jodha and Jalal could be right, and her plea to Jodha to keep an open mind and see things from his point of view as well, there is not the slightest change on Jodha's face. Not a flicker of curiosity or anything else. Just a blank.

If it had been Rajat's Jalal, there would have been any number of micro-shifts, so many nuances, that would have way gone beyond the script.

Unacceptable crudeness: To revert, what I really hold against Jodha is that she repeats, ad nauseum, her ugly assertion of Jalal's supposed yen for his vaasnapoorti - coupled with her old perennial, the ghrina mantra - in private to him, as also in front of Ruqaiya, till mere to kaan pak gaye, and I was sick of looking at her sullen, puffed up face.

Worst of all, Jodha does so even in public at the jashn, about what she instantly assumes was Jalal's intention of having what is crudely called a "quickie" with that green kadaawali daasi . In doing so, she demeans herself very badly, for this is not how a highborn princess behaves, even in private, not to speak of at a public jashn. She sounds more like an inmate of a bordello .

On hearing this, the worst accusation that she has hurled at him, Jalal's face twists in sudden disgust , and so did mine. Rajat was superb then. That is what I meant by nuances and going beyond the script. His opposite number is almost always flatfooted on the ground, and there is no question of her going anywhere beyond the script.

It is a wonder that after hearing her make that very ugly comment , Jalal could ever see Jodha in the same way as before. I could not have done so, but then he seems to be made of indiarubber!

An aside: Re: the Diwan-e-Am scene, in 2013, Vicki and I were for once of one mind that for some reason, Mughal attire does not suit Paridhi at all - she looks dismally commonplace - whereas the heavy post-marrriage Rajput attire makes her look gorgeous. Then again, some of her reaction shots when Jalal was raging at the defendant as a badzaat aurat were very weak - as he was roaring that she looked blank, not shocked and scared. Her tirades at her husband, and her pleas when she was being led away, were far from impressive - they sounded like something out of a school play, the lines being delivered any which way. It must have been one of her off days, but they should have called for a retake.

OK, folks, I have had enough of this, and so I am sure have you. Let us move on, in Part II below, to the finale. I do not say happy ending, because while Jodha must have been delirious with relief, though tempered with guilt for her behaviour towards apne niraparadh Shahenshah , Jalal was crushed by an unbearable betrayal.

Shyamala/Aunty/Akka/Di

Jodha Akbar 105-114: Of human bondage

Part II: Episode 111-113: The many shades of love

Folks,

As noted above, in 2013, I never wrote anything about this benighted track till the very end, thus giving my long suffering readers a holiday for over a week😉, because I was, in that order,

- bemused, and quite put off, by the idea that the fate of the Mughal empire was dependent on the precise colour of Jodha Begum's digestive excretions!

The one thing that the CVs forgot to specify was: Which blue? Sky blue, midnight blue, cerulean blue, new blue? One does not know, and meanwhile, I thanked my lucky stars that they forbore from presenting us with the grisly evidence, ugh...!

-fatigued by all the raging battles in the forum over the relative culpability of Jodha and Jalal, whereas the goings on reminded me of nothing but a French farce: Did Jalal do IT or did he not do IT, and last of all, did he and she do IT!?!

Then by the furore over Jodha's off the cuff statement that she would leave her baby behind and depart from Agra , presumably to settle in Mathura and plague her long suffering Kanha even more😉, seeing that Amer would be off limits even for a self-parityakta.

Second cousin to love: A statement which Jodha clearly never meant, for she adds that Jalal need not glare at her (he is thinking of something entirely different, but she does not know that) for Is nirdosh baalak (Jodha never even thinks that it could be a baalika!😉) ko hum koyi haani pahunchana nahin chahte hain, but she had made up her mind to leave even if - and this is an outlandish statement meant to provoke him into a response - iske liye aap humein maar hi kyon na dalein!

Methinks Jodha is here angling for Jalal - for all that he is now ( bar the short intervals for which he is merely a nirankush samrat intent only on getting an uttaradhikari for his raj singhasan any which way) a triple ghrinit non-insaan verging on a pashu, full all the time of vaasnapoorti le liye laalsa (please overlook the mixed metaphor, but I could not resist stuffing in all the choice Jodhaisms that I could think of!😉😉) - to declare that he would not let her leave Agra and that was that!

This seems to be a second cousin to love, for it is the desire, perhaps incomprehensible even to herself, not to lose the saath of the very man whom she hates right now.

Unfortunately for her, Jalal is lost in his own world, and is dreaming of the names he had chosen for a son or a daughter when Ruqaiya was expecting. So he says, all of a sudden: Salim! That, and the explanation that follows, drive Jodha to comment angrily: Kitne prasanna hain na aap? Aur kyon na ho? Pita banne ka swapna jo poora ho gaya hai!, before storming ahead, while Jalal is left behind, frozen in his tracks , as the pain of his bikhare khwab catches him by the throat.

Jodha tries again a little later, when she asks him, out of the blue: Kahin aisa to nahin, aapke is vyavahaar ke kaaran aapke man mein apradh bodh jaag gaya ho? Now what is one to make of this but what I had inferred earlier?

Jalal's response - he has by now picked himself up and is once more ready to provoke and rile her😉 - that all that mattered to him was his becoming a walid, and he could not care less what she thought of him, produces another curious and suggestive retort from Jodha: that he was not even an insaan, for even a pashu, after spending so much time (she does not specify with whom, but no prizes for guessing!😉) , would have prem, but he had absolutely nothing! She clearly implies that by now he should have developed prem for her, which he had not, and so he was worse than a pashu.( I dislike this use of pashu as a pejorative term, for many animals are far superior to many human beings, but that is not the issue now). My point about the second cousin to love is pretty much made, would you not agree?

As for Jodha's follow up to this, about a nirankush samrat and what he was ready to do to get an heir, and what it leads to, we will take it up somewhat later. To revert, I was, in 2013,

- badly put off by Jodha's permanently sullen, puffed up visage , and the excessive demands she was making on the studio's glycerine stock. And most of all by her monotone reactions, which never seemed to change, no matter if it was Salima dishing out distilled wisdom to her, or she herself was repeating to her imperial husband, for the umpteenth time, that she had double or triple ghrina for him. She then proceeded to surpass herself when she made a very unbecoming comment about Jalal and that baandi; I could not believe my ears when I heard it. 😡

My heart went out more than ever to poor Paridhi, locked into the straightjacket of this acutely frustrating character, when she could, given a free hand, have been a splendid combination of a Diana and a Juno, who could bring even an arrogant , turbulent emperor to heel.

Whodunit?:Then followed all the cloak and dagger (literally, when it came to the poor Hakima Sahiba) stuff. Here, I was seriously disappointed that the body did not, in the classic whodunit style, tumble out of a cupboard on to the unsuspecting Salima Begum. Now that would have been fun!😉

Instead, it was decorously laid out on the floor, with next to no blood in sight, probably because it was not considered appropriate to bring on the tomato ketchup in an 8 pm "family" show (never mind all the distinctly adult passages about the virtual baby!). Someone remarked wickedly on my 2013 thread that the hakima was very likely chronically anaemic!

Not that the manner of the Hakima's passing was a matter for joking. I was deeply touched, not only by her unshakeable devotion to the Shahenshah, but also by the quick-wittedness and the resourcefulness she displays even with death just a few feet away. Truly a heroine of the old school, in the mould of her near contemporary, Panna Dai of Mewar, who sacrificed her own son to save the life of her nursling, later to become Maharana Udai Singh of Mewar, Kunwar Pratap's father.

Tours de force: Then, perhaps as compensation for having survived all the above tripe, came something that raised these episodes far above the average. A series of magnificent scenes: Jalal-Bakshi Bano, Jalal-Jodha, Jalal-Maham Anga.

Jalal-Bakshi Banu: Raging grief: The confrontation between Jalal and Bakshi Banu is a must watch, with Rajat pulling out all the stops in his magisterial handling of a very demanding scene. As has happened time and again, the boy manages to go well beyond the script, and bring out nuances that might never have occurred to the writer.

Even on the fourth re-watching, when, after his initial questioning glance at her face, then the hug and the infinitely tender kiss on her head, he moves away and asks Bakshi Banu: Jodha Begum ko wo ark aap hi ne pilaya tha na?, the expression in his eyes simply blew me away. They were so still and knowing and so very, very sad.

Then the deep, ruminative grief in his sotto voce lament: Afsos is baat ka hai ki gunehgaar wo nikla jiske baare mein farishtey bhi aakar humse kehte to hum yakeen nahin karte.. The tired rejection of her attempted apology: Nahin!.. Safayi nahin!, his eyes closed as if to shut out the very sight of her.

Then he slowly builds up steam, his words tumbling over each other in staccato bursts, the pitch steadily rising, to eventually reach a crescendo of anguish.

Anguish about what could have led Bakshi to (as he assumes) hate Jodha Begum so much that she did not care about what her bhaijaan would suffer when he believed that Jodha had been unfaithful to him. Did not care that he could have killed Jodha in a fit of blind fury. Bas tum yahi chahti thi ki hum use zinakar maankar unka qatl kar dein, ya unhein apni zindagi se, ya Agra se bedakhal kar dein! .. Wo khuda ka shukr hai ki usne khud par qaboo rakhne ki taaqat humein ada farmayi, varna hum to gusse mein unka qatl hi kar dete!...Itni nafrat kyon, Bakshi, itni nafrat kyon?

Anguish about what he fears Jodha would feel at having motherhood snatched away from her, what she would feel when she learns the truth about Bakshi - the Jodha in whom he, who did not trust even his own shadow, had begun to have faith: Batayiye humein, batayiye ki hum unse kaise kahein ki wo maa nahin bannewaali hain? Kaise batayein unhein ki hamari hi behen yeh chahti hai ki wo riyaya ke saamne ruswa ho? Kaise batayein, kya kahein hum unhein ki hamari hi behen unke paaksaaf daaman ko daagdaar karna chahti hai?

And so on and on, accusing Bakshi of the murder of the Hakima. Declaring finally that Sharifuddin ki hum saansein hi bandh kar denge, and that he would announce her sentence in court the next day.

It was all micro-controlled and incredibly effective, and yet Jalal never went over the top. Amazing.

A carping note: This is about Jalal as the Shahenshah. He learns that Sharifuddin has escaped from the Agra fort on horseback just then, and instead of having him chased by Atgah and brought back in chains, he announces with annoying insouciance Hum us par kabza baad mein bhi kar lenge ( famous last words!). For he has a more pressing matter to attend to. And what is this supremely urgent matter? Why, to clear his character in front of Jodha Begum. Why on earth could this not have been done ten minutes later, after setting off a posse after Sharifuddin? In a Shahenshah, such a totally mistaken sense of priorities was pathetic😡.

Jalal-Maham: Emotional symbiosis: If one was to look for a template of the unexpected tragedies of the human condition, and the misery that unconditional love can bring in its wake, one need go no further than Jalal here, coming straight to his Badiammi after dragging Bakshi Banu to Jodha and making her confess to her crimes. Till then, he is upheld by the urgent need to clear his image in Jodha's eyes. But once that has been done, he is crushed under the load of his grief, as limp as a doll whose stuffing has been entirely eviscerated.

As he turns, instinctively, to his Badiammi for solace from the anguish that racks him, Rajat's Jalal made my heart turn over with the depth of his pain and his sense of abandonment and betrayal. He is bleeding inside, from the deepest and most poisonous of cuts, those inflicted not by the enemy outside, but by the enemy within, hidden behind the mask of a near and dear one.

When he enters, he looks like an automaton, eyes looking straight ahead, blank, empty. Maham reaches out to him, her own eyes dark with a matching, questioning sorrow. She is the only one who really understands what Jalal must be going thru now, the only one who feels for him in his grief. For as soon as she hears the news about Bakshi Bano, her first reaction is about is waqt Shahenshah ko kya pareshani ho rahi hogi.., about the questions that would be lacerating his zehen. So she touches his cheek gently, with a Jalal?, and then says simply, Aayiye!

He seats himself, and she kneels at his side as his words begin to tumble out. Jis tarah hum aapke pas aaye hain, Bakshi Bano bhi hamare pas aaya karti thi, jab wo udaas hoti thi...Uski khushi mein khushi, uske ranj mein ranj.. Phir kyon kiya usne hamare saath aisa?

His tears gather and trickle down his cheek. Kyon apne hi bhaijaan ki aankhon mein aansoo laye? Maham wipes them away gently. Jise hum apna samajhte hain, wo hi gairon jaisa kaam kyon karte hain Badiammi? Pehle Abul Mali, phir Sharifuddin aur Bakshi Bano, hamari behen aur behenoyi..

Maham, her voice almost suspended with empathetic grief, her hands clasping his in an effort to comfort him, tries to explain why this is so: Shahenshah ke koyi dost nahin hote, Jalal! Shahenshah ke sirf dushman hote hain. But he will have none of this. To yeh dushman apnon ka naqab kyon pehente hain, Badiammi? Kyon?

Now his real, tragic dilemma surfaces. Hamara asal gunehgar Sharifuddin hai, lekin is gunaah mein uska saath hamari hi behen ne diya hai. Hum dushmanon par to shamsheer utha sakte hain, lekin apni hi behen ko kya sazaa dein? Wo bhaijaan kehti hai humein - his eyes gleam with the affection of old - usi ki jaan kaise lein? Hamare andar ek jung si chhid gayi hai, Badiammi, ek Shahenshah aur ek bhai ke beech mein..

His last sentence - Jeet chahe kisi ki bhi ho, shikast to hamari hi hogi - cut me to the quick. As Maham raises herself to embrace him and cradles him in her arms, Jalal weeps on his Badiammi's shoulder, and murmurs again: Shikast hamari hi hogi... And I was glad that at least she was there for him.

In 2013, some wondered why he goes to Maham. But where else would he go? Not to Hamida, who was not there for him when he lost his Khan Baba, nor when he was crushed by the loss of his unborn child. His Badiammi has been his refuge from every storm since he was a child, hunted and driven from one temporary refuge to another.

And however Maham might scheme and plot to benefit Adham (and I personally do not believe she really contemplates, at this point of time, Adham's ascending to the throne by getting rid of Jalal, as she tells him plainly after the butparasti crisis with the maulvis), there is not the least doubt that she loves her erstwhile nursling, and will fight to defend him against all comers.

Unlike Jodha, or even Hamida, Maham Anga understands perfectly ki Jalal abhi kis daur se guzar raha hai, and the two are literally symbiotic in their emotions. Her eyes reflect this empathy, as does her tactile affection, hugging him, cradling him in her arms and soothing him, her own voice breaking under the emotional stress that is, for the moment, genuine and deeply felt. Rarely has the special quality of their relationship come thru so clearly.

Together, they just blew me away. And also demonstrated how much a scene can be burnished and enhanced, far more than could be thought possible, when two actors of comparable calibre play off each other to perfection. The difference between Ashwini's Maham and Paridhi's Jodha in their respective scenes with Jalal in these episodes was the difference between excellence and competence.

Jalal: Other touches: Less striking than these two segments, but undoubtedly moving was Jalal's leaving the jashn to comfort the miserable Ruqaiya. The empathetic sadness in his eyes as he reaches out to her, and then as he watches her retreating form, was amazing.

As was the almost involuntary bobbing of his Adam's apple, and the sucking in of his nose as he struggles, when he is back in the jashn hall, to hold back his tears. I have never before see this done by any actor, male or female, and I was amazed by how imaginative, subtle and entirely appropriate it was!👏

Jodha: Drastic re-orientation:This follow up to the revelation about Bakshi Bano was promising. Even if Jodha was using up still more glycerine, she was at least not mahaan and instantly forgiving with Bakshi, which was a relief. Better still, she was, at very long last, for the first time after the Green Jodha- Yellow Jodha scene, actually doing some introspecting.

She is unable to go beyond tear-filled eyes and the lament: Kitna bada apradh ho gaya hai humse! Apne niraparadh Shahenshah ko kitna bura samajh liya!, and she does not have even a fleeting thought to spare for what Jalal must be going thru (which, incidentally, is the first thing that strikes Maham when she gets the news), but that is par for the course for this Jodha. And the very limited range of expressions on Jodha's face made me long for Rajat's Jalal and his infinitely nuanced takes on any scene. This Jodha remained firmly below the script.

But what struck me was the unexpected Apne. I cleaned out my ears and rewatched it, but yes, it was Apne. Holy smoke! I said to myself, What has got into the girl?

The wonders did not cease there. When she went tripping into Salima Begum's rooms to thank her, Jodha, radiant in golden yellow, looked like an ambulant sunflower. She was such a treat to eyes lacerated by her dismal looks and worse expressions of late, that I was prepared to forgive her for at least 70% of all her manifold follies of the last several weeks! See the unfair advantages of being such a gorgeous looker!

She looked suitably chastened and receptive as Salima Begum advised her about the need for her to be hoshiyaar about the nazakhat of the shauhar-biwi ka rishta, adding that she was sure ki aap achche se jaanti hain ki apne shauhar ke saath kis tarah ka bartaav karna chahiye. This was manifestly a white lie, for this is the very last thing Jodha Begum knows,😉 but the point was made and, more important, taken. And so on to the Jodha-Jalal scene.

Jalal-Jodha: Study in contrast: When I watched them together, what hit me was the difference between Jalal and Jodha in terms of both complexity and depth of character.

Jodha is like a brisk, gurgling stream flowing over a bed of pebbles. The water is pure and clear, and you can see right thru to the bottom. What you see is what you get. There are no treacherous eddies, no underwater currents to drag you in. But there is also much less gravitas, less depth, less subtlety. It babbles on, this brook, unconscious and uncomprehending of any world but its own simple, and simplistic, one.

Jalal is like the ocean, where the tides rise and fall, and storms whip up savage waves, or even a tsunami. There is almost unlimited power, both to hurt and to heal, but there are also unplumbed depths - depths of feeling, of hidden heartache, of an ever present loneliness that hurts the soul.

There is no comparison possible at all between the two.

Jodha: Total self-absorption: This came thru here with startling clarity. Facing a sombre, withdrawn Jalal who is too emotionally worn out to even tell the guard to let her in - he merely nods - and who halts her in her tracks by apologizing to her for his sister's crimes, Jodha's understanding is limited to what concerns herself.

Of this more below. Right now, her question: Parantu abhi humein samajh nahin aa raha hai ki aap kya hain? Kaun hain? produces a strange and intensely moving self-revelation from Jalal.

Hum wo insaan hain, Jodha Begum, jiski insaaniyat ka qatl jung ke maidan mein kiya gaya tha jab wo mehaz 14 baras ka tha.Hum wo hain jiske pas dil nahin hai, wo jo bharosa karan nahin jaanta.Hum wo hain jo kisi bhi aurat par apni chahat, apne kabze ka mohar laga sakta hai.Par na jaane kyon aaj humein ek aurat par hi bharosa hai.Humein uski paakeezagi par, uski nekchali par bharosa hai..

What touches Jodha deeply is this simple affirmation of his trust in her, and perhaps even more so his saying that he does not know why he trusts her, why he believes in her purity of mind and body, in her integrity. For when she asks him the obvious question: Parantu hum par itna vishwas kyon?, his reply is a classic of understated emotion that is infectious.

Hum nahin jaante, Jodha Begum. Bas hum karte hain. Shayad hamare andar se awaaz aayi ki aap paak hain. Shayad humne aapki aankhon mein aapki nekchali dekh liya hai. Shayad koyi aur wajah hai ( this is the hidden, unvoiced reason why) , par jo bhi ho, hum aap par bharosa karte hain.

Jodha's undoubtedly heartfelt regret, and the gratitude she now feels towards him, are both again related only to what she did wrong - in so gravely misjudging him when he was doing so much to protect her reputation and secure justice for her, whereas, as she says herself, she was busy demeaning herself by maligning him more harshly than ever before.

Her eyes brim over with grateful tears as she thanks him with folded hands, and this gratitude is not just for what he has done to defend and restore her reputation, nor for the understanding he displays for the often ugly way in which she had behaved with him.

It is as much for lifting from her soul the burden of not being able to reciprocate the affection or love he might be thought to feel for her, by assuring her that nothing of what he did for her was out of mohabbat for her. Nahin, hargiz nahin! Humein aapse mohabbat nahin hai! Humne yeh sab isliye kiya kyonki hum nahin chahte the ki koyi bhi ek Shahenshah ki begum ke saath aisa wahiyaat mazaak kare.

The relief in her sudden smile as he says this is like the sun coming out of the clouds, and she nods her head in happy acknowledgement. She then folds her hands once again in deep gratitude for all that he has done to preserve and protect her aatma, her charitra, her astitva, and leaves the room.

During this entire passage, Jodha clearly has no notion of what Jalal is going thru, of how his innermost feelings are being put thru a wringer. She does not have the imagination, the perceptiveness, to feel his anguish and the horrendous dilemma he is facing. She cannot understand how it feels to be betrayed by a dearly loved sister, the terrible sense of alienation that it creates; she sees it simplistically, as a case to be solved by magnanimous forgiveness. And even here, she has no idea of the implications of a pardon in terms of the very bad precedent it will set and the damage it will do to the image of Mughal justice and of imperial governance.

This is not to blame Jodha. She is what she is, a clear, flowing stream, transparent and unaware of what all can lie beneath deep, still waters. In time, she will learn, but that time is not yet. If and when she gets there, she too will feel pain that is not hers as deeply as if it was her own. That will be her introduction to the perils of human bondage.

For this is to be a love story, and without such symbiosis, there can be no true love.

Jalal: Of the human condition: As for this beautifully written scene with Jodha, Jalal walks off with it effortlessly.

The tired, detached look on his face as she comes in, most of his mind elsewhere as he drags himself back to the here and now.

The candour and directness, devoid of any sentimental overtones or undertones, with which he explains why he, who trusts no one, yet trusts her.

The matter of fact generosity with which he brushes aside her apology as unnecessary.

The deliberate assertion that he did all this not out of love for her, but in order to demonstrate that no one, but no one, could malign a begum of the Shahenshah and get away with it. He might very well be sincere in this statement, and I myself believe he is. Or then again he might not. His face, after Jodha has left, betrays nothing, and there is no revealing soliloquy.

Whichever it is, he clearly intends to put her at ease and prevent any awkwardness in her future interactions with him. That despite his distraction and emotional trauma, he can still find it in him to think of how to put Jodha at ease is further proof of his sensitivity, rare in such an alpha male, and his ability to gauge the feelings of another person. The relief in her face, and the cheerful smile with which she receives this assertion, show that Jalal has achieved what he set out to do.

But it is clear that in the whole of this scene, not even half his mind is on Jodha, and his nod of acknowledgment as she thanks him profusely before leaving is visibly abstracted. He is preoccupied with the one gnawing question that continues to torment him: What should he do about Bakshi Banu?

Such are the shackles of human bondage.

Bakshi Banu: Malignant love: Bakshi Banu is a revelation here, and her character takes a giant leap towards hitherto unimagined complexity and displays hitherto unsuspected facets. She is the real surprise package, and I was fascinated with her. Not that I have any sympathy for her, but I can clearly see where she is coming from.

Bakshi Banu is not a victim of the society she lived in. When she confesses that she loves her (wife beater of a) husband in a beinteha fashion, that because the fear of losing him haunts her, humne aapko ruswa kiya taaki hamari mohabbat humse ruswa na ho jaye, and finally, that hum unke liye apni jaan de bhi sakte hain aur kisi ki jaan le bhi sakte hain, she shows that she has been a willing tool in her husband's hands, and more important, that she is speaking not just for the past, but for the future as well.

So it is not the beaten woman syndrome at all. It is deliberate, and she is one of those women in whom the love of a man outweighs all other loves and all other loyalties.

It is very difficult to comprehend, this kind of abject emotional subjugation of a woman to a man who cares not a jot for her and who abuses her physically and emotionally, but such women do exist, and not just in ages gone by. They are around us even today, and the Bakshi Banus of the world are a reality check for all the rest of us who imagine that the education and empowerment of women would have eradicated such crippling human bondages.

Jodha: Shock and dismay: Which is more than the simple Jodha, who has never encountered obsessive love, not to speak of such malignantly obsessive love, can comprehend. So she asks Bakshi with patent disapproval : Yeh kaisa prem hai jisme aapko uchit anuchit kisi bhi baat ka bhaan nahin raha?

And Bakshi's answer surely frightens Jodha even more as she contemplates such excesses of the divine passion. Mohabbat ki koyi had hi nahin hoti. Insaan (mohabbat mein) har had paar kar jaata hai, aur humne bhi wohi kiya. Na wajah jaante the na anjaam.

No wonder Jodha exclaims: Humein samajh nahin aa raha hai kyon prem mein insaan is seema tak pahunch jaate hain ki swayam vinaash par utaaru ho jaaye? Apne astitva ko daav par laga de?

Later, the patent bewilderment with which she consults Salima, her "go to" person from now on, would be amusing if it was not so sincere. And I am sure she did not grasp even ten percent of Salima's amazingly perceptive take on mohabbat:

Sabse badi burayi wo hi hoti hai jo kabhi sabse badi achchayi rahi ho. Mohabbat mein bhi aise hi hota hai. Agar koyi kisi se beinteha mohabbat kare, aur wo dorahe par khada ho, ek or neki ho aur doosri or mohabbat, to wo mohabbat hi chunta hai. Bahut mushkil hota hai uske bina reh pana jis se aap mohabbat karte hain.

For Jodha's face shows zero comprehension of this distilled wisdom, and instead she is back in her patented do-gooding mode, seeking margdarshan from Salima as to how she could "save" Bakshi Banu! And no wonder. The misery that clouded her spirits for so long has vanished, thanks to Jalal, and Jodha the Mahaan has been duly resurrected!😉

NB: As for Jodha's unguarded comment about her having cared for her erstwhile fiance Suryabhan, even if not as much as Bakshi Banu does for her husband, it would have been most ill-advised if she had said it to anyone but Salima. Not even Hamida Banu would have taken it well; not in those days, and not even today. Perhaps it was meant to show the depth of the trust that Jodha has in Salima, and how comfortable she feels with her.

Ruqaiya: The heart has its reasons: As Ruqaiya sets out to shed the shackles imposed on her by Jalal's earlier aversion for any mention of mohabbat in their relationship, and to win his heart as well as his mind, she is again making a fundamental mistake, of ignoring and dismissing uncomfortable possibilities. Hoshiyaar is as amazingly perceptive in his summing up of what Jalal might now be feeling for Jodha as he is ill advised in voicing it, and as Ruqaiya is in brushing it aside. It was as well for him that she was in the hamaam and thus could not hurl anything at his head!

It will not come just yet, indeed not for a while yet, but the time will come when Jalal's Gatti will realise that Jalal's heart is no longer hers to claim. We know, alas!, that the CVs, as is their wont, opted for crass melodrama and a crude jealousy track. It was so sad to watch one more tale of human bondage that corrodes and distorts.

Significant titbits:

- Jalal's Rabelaisian explanation, during that walk with Jodha in the corridors, for why he, or rather she + he , did IT.

To my mind, Jalal was on a fishing expedition with that elaborate piece of bluff on Jodha, and he netted a big one, in the sense that Jodha exposed herself far more than she had ever done before. He was trying to get her to consider the idea that, for all her constant ranting about her ghrina for him, she too might be physically attracted to him. No other explanation holds water.

In fact, for me, that was the single most revelatory part not just of that episode, but of the past several ones, as far as the inner workings of Jodha's mind are concerned, for we have no idea of what she is thinking given that there are no voiceovers for her.

She is not afraid of Jalal, she is afraid of herself. She is afraid, above all, once he has finished his Puckish recital, of what she felt or did not feel, and what she did or did not do. She is not at all sure he is lying, and that is what shocks her to the core.

So there is hope yet for our ice maiden!😉

-The Shahenshah is far too quick to reward good service, and does it beyond all proportion. First, he made Sharifuddin his behenoyi for having got him Amer, which is what gave rise to all of Sharifuddin's corrosive ambition. But for that, he would have remained an aspiring subedar, attentive to all his master's wishes and whims and scared to death of him, as he was in the pre-Amer days.

Now, Jalal is going to make that Munim Khan the Wazir-e-Aala, or Bairam Khan's successor. But why? Because he handled Kabul well, and defeated Jalal's rebellious brother-in-law Abul Mali? But is that not his job? This kind of undue largesse is the best way to spoil good staff officers.😡

The result this time will be that Adham will start dipping not just his hands but his whole arm into the imperial till courtesy his protege Munim Khan. This will end in his murdering Atgah Khan when the latter catches on to this loot, and Adham will be defenestrated (thrown out of a window - fenetre is window in French - to his death).

That is of course a long way off yet, so it will be happy pickings for the trio (Sharifuddin will also be angling for a share, to make up for the loot he was forced by Jalal to disgorge and return to Bharmal). And all because of Jalal's impulsive and excessive rewards system.

OK, folks, that is it for Part II. I will be back later today, for it is now well past midnight, with Part III. This will cover Episode 114, which winds up this whole track.

Shyamala/Aunty/Akka/Di

Jodha Akbar 105-114: Of human bondage

Part III: Episode 114: Imperator summe regnat

Folks,

No, no, I do not mean to sound pompous by quoting a Latin tag - it means The Emperor reigns supreme - but somehow I love the word Imperator, so do bear with me!

As for our own Shahenshah, unki hukumat to na sirf unki riyaya ke dil aur zehen par hai, jaise unhon ne farmaya, par hum jaise anginat darshakon ke dil aur zehen par bhi hai. After watching Rajat's Jalal sweep all before him here, despite the complex and demanding script, I was simply mesmerized. By episode end, I had all but forgotten that there was a Rajat. For me, and I am sure for many of you as well, there was only Jalaluddin Mohammed, Shahenshah-e-Hind. Which is the ultimate compliment you can pay an actor.

Sarvavyaapi Shahenshah: Jalal explaining in the Diwan-e-Khas , with painful but candid dignity, why he was recusing himself from sitting in judgment on his sister's crime. Visibly struggling, as he called on Jodha Begum to pronounce judgment in his stead, to veil the trauma of betrayal by perhaps the only one whom he had ever loved unreservedly, deeply, truly.

Jalal in Jodha's rooms, deeply troubled, his zehen wracked by bitter anger, unable in the end to hold back his tears as he insists that he can never forgive Bakshi Banu for what she had done.

Finally Jalal, because he feels it to be his duty to prevent Jodha Begum from becoming the subject of salacious and defamatory gossip across the empire, battling overt grief and hidden hurts that constrict his throat, for an unprecedented face to face with his riyaya, his awaam.

A face to face that is not simply an emotional catharsis, but a carefully constructed speech that is artful without seeming to be so. Which achieves in full what the Shahenshah set out to achieve: that his millions of subjects should believe in him, and not in idle rumours about him and the imperial family, and that their loyalty to him and to his empire should be further strengthened by bonds of affection and a sense of belonging.

To sum it up, the Shahenshah was, as Jodha would have said in her shudh sanskritised Hindi, sarvavyaapi. Wherever you turned, there was only Jalal.

A Jalal angry, but even more so, distraught and devastated by the most painful of betrayals - like Julius Caesar. who exclaimed, when he saw his dearest friend Brutus stabbing him, Et tu, Brute? Then fall Caesar!

Achingly lonely and bleeding inside, but yet somehow dredging up the strength to live up to the image of the Shahenshah that his awaam expects of him. And even amidst such personal despair, finding it in him to go out of his way to protect the wife who, he believes, cares nothing for him or worse.

Hamari riyaya hamari aulad hai: They used to say of Mahatma Gandhi that he could draw millions into a circle with him. Jalauddin Mohammed that day might not have managed millions, and then the distance, literal and psychological, between the emperor and the awaam in those days was huge, almost unbridgeable.

It was thus all the more remarkable that Jalal too could, in those few brief moments, with words so simple and direct and sincere, draw the mass of his subjects into his inner world. To take them into his confidence. To communicate to them both his sorrow at having been deprived, for so long, of the joys of fatherhood, and his stoic acceptance of whatever the Almighty might have in store for him. To speak to them from his heart about his hopes that had been dashed, about his fear that what he sought so desperately- the personal joy of fatherhood and the political insurance of an heir for the Mughal empire - might never be his. All this without giving the impression that he was holding anything back, and without any sense of shame, any false pride.

Chanakyan candour: It was undoubtedly enormously appealing to the crowd of his subjects, and I am sure Jalal was entirely sincere in all that he said there. But it is also true that his speech was artfully constructed, to give the impression of total candour, and to underline the bond of affection, over and above that of loyalty on the one hand and of duty on the other, that linked the Shahenshah to his riyaya.

It revealed only as much as could be shared with the awaam and omitted what could not be revealed. Thus, while Jalal tells Maham, at the meeting of the senior ladies in the harem, that he saw no problem with telling the truth to his riyaya just as he had done in the Diwan-e-Khas, when it comes to brass tacks, he offers only what could be called a censored version, which omits not only all references to Bakshi Banu - which was entirely understandable - but to Jodha Begum as well.

Despite this, he manages to ensure what he had asserted earlier, that whether people sympathized with him and shared his sorrows or even mocked him, par in sab ke bawajood, hum Jodha Begum ko kissa banne nahin denge!

Superb structuring: The sequencing in the speech was also obviously carefully thought out.

Jalal begins by telling the assembled throng that he is blessed to have aap jaise mohabbat karnewali riyaya. That he thanks the Almighty for enabling him to say with pride ki humne na sirf aap logon par, aapki zameen par, balki aapke dilon par bhi hukumat ki...Mughal sultanat ka parcham aapke zehen par bhi lehraya hai!

He then proceeds to make his subjects feel all the more cossetted and protected by telling them how much he cares for them and their needs- Hamara Khuda jaanta hai ki humne wo tamaam koshishein ki hain apne awaam to wo har cheez muqarrar karne ki jo ek badshah ka farz hai.

Then comes the crux of the whole speech: Aaj humein ranj hai to sirf ek baat ka, ki hum aapki ek ummeed ko poora na kar sake, hum aapko is sultanat ka waliaahat na de sake.

He looks down at this point, his throat constricted with emotion, and struggles to recover his composure. Maham, her eyes wet with tears of empathy and rage at his having, as she sees it, to stoop so far, swears that she will never forgive Bakshi Banu for having brought him to this pass.

An assurance of complete openness towards his awaam comes next. I do not know what fate has in store for me, he says, par ek badshah ka kya farz hai, yeh hum bakhoobi jaante hain. ..

His hand on his heart, he goes on Aur yeh farz hai ki hum hamari har haqeeqat awaam ko bata sakein...so he had summoned all of them here yeh batane ke liye ki - and then comes the core fact - aapke Shahenshah abhi walid nahin banne jaa rahe hain. Ki hamari koyi bhi begum maa nahin banne jaa rahi hai (note the discreet collective assertion, without any specifics. But of course the people would know which begum he was referring to).

He is again forced to look down at this point as his voice thickens, but he gathers himself and proceeds to tell his subjects that the Mughal sultanat would have to wait some more for an heir, that he knew that this news would make many of them maayoos, while his enemies would celebrate.

Climactic closure: Then comes a grand surge of emotional overdrive meant to wipe away their disappointment and worry about the continued absence of an imperial heir : Par hum maayoos nahin hain.To kya hua agar Jalaluddin ko aulad na ho? ... ek badshah kabhi beaulad nahin hota. Kyonki ek badshah ke liye uski riyaya, uski awaam, uski sultanat uski jaanasheen hoti hai, uski aulad hoti hai. Aur aap sab hamari aulad hain! Aap sab hamari jaanasheen hain!

Jis badshah ke liye anginat mohabbat karnewale hon jo uski ek awaaz par uske saamne aa jaayein, to use beaulad hone ka ranj nahin hai! Humein kisi bhi baat ka malaal nahi hai, aapko bhi nahin hona chahiye!

With this final, climactic affirmation, Jalal's peroration reaches heights of eloquence and conviction worthy of the great orators of ancient Greece and Rome, of a Demosthenes or a Cicero. Indeed, as there appears to be, in this emperor reaching out to his subjects, no striving for effect, no attempt to make an impression, he is far more appealing, far more touching than those legends could ever have been.

Especially because he makes no attempt to maintain the traditional imperial stoicism, no attempt to hide the grief that pervaded his zehen, but literally bares his soul to his people, heedless of the likely pity that so proud a ruler would normally resent. Heedless of those who might mock him for a supposed lack of manliness, or those who might, as he said, rejoice at his loss.

Vocal virtuosity: Jalal's voice is like an instrument that does his bidding and reflects every emotion of his, be it none so fleeting. At times, it is hoarse as grief and disappointment. At times it becomes almost suspended and he has to pause to regain control. At times it wavers as if his soul was paralysed by his sense of loss, and almost of hope as well.

And finally, it soars effortlessly in the emphatic declaration that marks his personal triumph over his loss, as much as his sense of oneness with his awaam. A sense of oneness that allows no holding back, that wipes away any sense of shame in so exposing his innermost feelings to them.

Imperator regnat: And the Shahenshah triumphs. For he achieves what he had set out to achieve: that the millions across his empire who look up to him, who cling to the hope that his just and caring rule would be maintained even after he was gone, would no longer be disturbed by strange and demeaning rumours, whatever their source. That they would believe what he had told them, and would dismiss anything contrary to it that they might hear.

There could not have been a single dry eye in his audience as his voice finally dies away, and he turns to one side, surreptitiously wiping away a rebellious tear that clouded his vision. There surely was no dry eye among his court (bar only Adham Khan).

Jalal probably did not see it, nor was he, lost in his own thoughts, looking for it. But as Jodha Begum, for whose sake he had done all this, wipes her own tears and looks up at him with unfeigned admiration and pride in eyes that glowed like stars, I was reminded once more of what Cleopatra had once said to Julius Caesar, with the same admiration and the same pride, but also with deep love. But for you, the world is full of little men.

Maybe Jodha is not yet quite where Cleopatra was, but she has taken her first step on the path that leads there. And I, remembering all that she had said and done which had constantly set my teeth on edge in recent weeks, was duly grateful.

In the Diwan-e-Khas : The opening sequence, which saw Jalal ceding to the main affected party, Jodha Begum, his judicial powers, as the Shahenshah, to pronounce sentence on Bakshi, was perhaps less dramatic than the closing one, his opening up to the awaam, but it was, in its own way, as emotionally powerful and, for Jalal, emotionally draining.

One could see that in every frame as Jalal stood up to explain why his sister was now being judged for a crime, and then why he was not judging her himself but commanding Jodha Begum to do so. It was visible in his lowered eyes, in his straining to appear at least partly normal, to retain the aura of an emperor who has to be above all sentiment, above all ties of blood and affection, when he ascends the throne and becomes solely a dispenser of justice.

That he chooses not to do that is not - as Hamida Banu states with characteristic lack of understanding, whether of her son or of the issues involved- that the Shahenshah in him has not been able to prevail over the brother. It is rather that for the Shahenshah, the imperative of not just doing justice, but being seen to do so, is paramount.

He recuses himself because, as he himself states, if he were to decide the case himself, no matter how harsh the sentence he pronounces, keeping in mind that Bakshi Banu has no blood on her hands, the feeling will always linger among the awaam that he let her off lightly because she is his sister. There being no way of proving a negative, this impression would have remained as a black mark on his reputation.

Moreover there is , in Islamic jurisprudence, the option, even in cases of murder, of a compromise settlement between the accused and the victims of the crime, even a full pardon, which can then be approved by the court.

So what Jalal does here is neither irregular nor extraordinary. Nor is the above reason that he advances for it at all flimsy, and in fact it is the only logical course for him to take in order to preserve an image of strict impartiality. Even today, in the courts, no judge will hear a case in which he has any personal interest, such as the defendant being a close relative or friend.

No 16^th century Portia: Jodha's preamble, the sentence she pronounces (after the mandatory suspense, while they show the reaction shots of everyone present😉 ), and her final explanation of the sentence, as it is called in legal parlance, are all done very well, with compelling dignity and lucid eloquence. Paridhi looks lovely - sunny yellow seems to suit her the best - and puts up a very convincing performance.

As for the rationale Jodha advances for her pardoning Bakshi Banu outright, and, in effect, letting go scot free - that a judicial punishment frees the criminal from the apradh bodh, or feeling of guilt, while prayaschit, penance after repentance, would keep the pain and the aatma glani alive - it sounds lofty and superficially convincing. It It may or may not hold in this particular case - though I am pretty sure Bakshi Banu, if she were once more in Sharifuddin's orbit, would soon revert to her old, slavishly obsessed wife pattern, ready, as she says herself, to kill for him.

The point is that Jodha sees the redemptive power of forgiveness not as something applicable in this one case because of the circumstances, but as a general and universally valid principle, which it most assuredly is not.

Interpreting it thus would knock the bottom out of the entire judicial system and the very concept of crime and punishment. In fact, most hardened criminals, and criminals in the making like Sharifuddin or Adham Khan or Maham Anga, would laugh their heads off at such indiscriminate generosity, and promptly take advantage of it, only to revert to type very soon.

Not that Jodha, with her limited vision, can be expected to understand any of this. It is curious, however, seeing that she must have been used, even back in tiny Amer, to harsh punishments for traitors or even spies, witness Bharmal condemning Abdul to beheading without an instant's hesitation. Jodha was able to rescue him only on what would be called a technicality, not by citing the sweeping principle she enunciates now.😉

Bakshi Banu's crime is no less than treason, and she is also, indirectly, the cause of the murder of the Hakima. In fact, if the Hakima had managed to tear off her veil the first time, Bakshi Banu, with images of her husband being executed by Jalal flashing thru her mind, would very likely have stabbed the Hakima in blind panic. For there is no one so violent as a weak person who has been cornered. But the gravity of even what she did do, which is considerable, does not seem to weigh with Jodha.

It was precisely this kind of self-indulgent leniency which led Prithviraj Chauhan to not even imprison the defeated Mohammed Ghori, but let him go home, only to have him return the very next year, 1192 AD, defeat Prithviraj, and wreak unimaginable horrors on the population across North India. It is typical of our national psyche, and our passion for being thought of as mahaan, that while he is justly lauded for his tremendous courage and his prowess as a warrior, he is never criticized for this irresponsibility which had such horrendous consequences for his subjects.

Jodha and Jalal: Predictable preachiness: I was not overly impressed with the follow up scene in Jodha's rooms, where Jalal questions the rationale for Jodha's pardoning Bakshi Banu. She parrots what Salima and Bakshi Banu herself told her earlier, like a lesson learnt by heart, as if it was Holy Writ, while the fact is that she does not know anything about what she asserts with such assumed certitude.

A hopeful preceptor: What I found particularly presumptuous was her opening remark: Pata nahin aap is baat ko samajh payenge ya nahin, before going on to expound on Bakshi Banu's atyadhik prem for her absconding pati, beginning with Prem to hota hi aise, jisme insaan apna niyantran kho deta hai... When I heard that, I said to myself Now this is the ruddy limit! Jodha Begum is setting up as the resident shrink in Agra!

When she noted that she felt jealous of Bakshi because of her ability to love so deeply. kisi ke prem mein itna doob jaana ki apne astitva ko hi kho jaana... kathin hai... I was irresistibly reminded of Jalal Jodha Begum ke prem mein doob jaane ke baad. Uska to astitva hi kho gaya tha. From a buccaneering young emperor, he was transformed by degrees into what we would call in Tamil Jodha Begum's jalra😡, ie the accompanist in a musical performance,and that too not the main one!😉Well, let me not go down that road, at least not so soon!

As for Jodha, she has a permanent lifebuoy attached to her😉, so wo to kisi ke prem mein doobne se rahi! I have never ever seen her as capable of the kind of deewangee that Jalal is capable of. So they fit nicely into their allotted slots: he is the lover and she the beloved. No sweat!

It is a thesis of mine that Jodha comes to love Jalal not per se, but the obedient, admiring and enthusiastic pupil of hers that he becomes, praising everything to do with her to the skies while she purrs like a cat that has lapped all the cream. Till, of course, the night of the dhakka!

Here, when she looks at Jalal's retreating form, there is a gleam in her eyes of the kind with which a determined teacher eyes a promising pupil who has not yet enrolled for the courses she teaches! Never mind, Jodha Begum, he will be there soon enough!😉

Dangerous arguments: What is more, Jodha ends up portraying Bakshi Banu to a mindless puppet, which she most definitely is not, neither now, nor when she lied about her husband's role in the Ratanpur fort fraud. Both times, she is perfectly conscious of what she is doing, and this time she is, moreover quite ready to take the initiative and prepare more of the ark for spiking Jodha's food and drink. Is this a poor, helpless, manipulated wife, or a willing accomplice currying favour with her husband?

Most serious of all, Jodha's argument, that a woman's blind adoration of an evil and manipulative husband is enough of an extenuating circumstance for pardoning her for even a deliberate and serious crime, amounts to a complete negation of the universal moral and legal principle of personal responsibility for one's acts. This sort of exemption is valid only for a child, not for a grown up, twice married woman.

Moreover, for Jodha to equate her relationship with Bakshi Banu, the nanad with whom she has had barely a few cordial meetings, with Jalal's lifelong bond of deep and protective love and caring, and using this false equation to demand that as she has forgiven Bakshi Banu, so should he, is nonsense.

That she even advances this thesis, and does not have a word of understanding of, or empathy to offer about the depth of Jalal's grief at the betrayal he has suffered only betrays her shallowness and lack of either perception of or sensitivity to his feelings. As I had noted above, she sees it simplistically, as a case to be solved by "magnanimous forgiveness".

So, when Jalal turns away to hide his helpless tears, she interprets that by her lights, as proof that he loves Bakshi Banu regardless of whatever she might have done and will soon pardon her. She cannot see that while he might well still love his sister, his tears are an expression of a pain too deep to hide, and a heart too lacerated to heal any time soon. That there are hurts that are too visceral to be healed by facile, pious pronouncements.

The only lasting foundation of true love is understanding and empathy, which in turn means the ability to see situations thru the eyes of the other. As far as Jalal is concerned, Jodha, as of now, has neither.

Jalal: He walks alone: No wonder that (and I repeat myself, but please bear with me!) Annie (loveanime) noted 2 years ago that "Jalal has gone so forward in character development that he is walking alone, and his apparent soul mate is nowhere near him".

But it is Salima Begum who, watching Jalal struggle to control his emotions when he has returned to the jashn after his brief attempt to console Ruqaiya, puts it the best when she says to herself, with her characteristic understanding of human nature and her lambent wisdom:

Ek Shahenshah hone ke naate hi nahin, insaniyat ke naate bhi, jo aap kar rahe hain, wo kar paana bahut kam logon ke bas mein hai Shahenshah. Shayad koyi kabhi na jaan paaye, magar apna sabse bada sapna tootne ke bawajood, aap ab bhi apne farz aur sach ke liye jis bahaduri se khade hain, wo jazbaa aapko duniya ke baaki logon se alag karta hai!

I could practically see the CVs tearing their collective hair, wondering what to make now of their tagline Jalal ko Jodha ne haivaan se bana diya insaan.😉

OK, folks, we are home and dry at last!😉 I would like to once again send you all my warmest good wishes for the New Year 2016 to be good for you in every way!

Shyamala/Aunty/Akka/Di

My Dear Shyamala Aunty,

🤗

You never cease to amaze me...You are special & unique !

Fantastic post once again !!! 👏 👏 👏

B/w

I am not late to wish you happy birthday

I am just early for the next year 😳 😳 😳

Wishing you good health & happiness in life forever...

Happy Birthday Aunty !!!

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o8bkXkIrqk&feature=youtu.be[/YOUTUBE]

PS :

My Sincere apologies for

- Posting this video without your permission (I shall edit/delete, if you are unhappy with any part of this video). 😊

&

- My No show will continue bcos of my personal & professional commitments.😭

Originally posted by: sashashyam

Folks,

Relax, I am not going to make a series of "last" appearances before finally signing off😉! Just as my post on my last thread, on Episode 104, Sri Jodha Tulaabharam, was to coax young Lavanya out of being rusht with me for stopping this series, this one, on the whole of the Jodha false pregnancy track, is to please a couple of other young friends, Munni and myviewprem.

Anyway, thank you for providing the life support for us at the appropriate time!

I had initially thought of covering only the last 3 episodes of this track, Nos.111-114, for the beginning and the middle, which I re-watched last week, at one go, from my own recordings (as Zee Anmol has got to only No.110 as yet) made me distinctly queasy, and this not just because of the idea of everything hinging on the colour of Jodha Begum's ulti!

But when I got started, I realized that I needed to cover the build up as well if the finale was to make any sense at all, and this not in terms of the events, which you would all know, but in terms of what they indicated or implied. In 2013 I had, sensibly, taken a week off till the track moved to its conclusion, but that showed up as a distinct discontinuity in my analysis. So this time I will be covering the whole, and for the first 6 episodes, the analysis will focus on concepts and trends thru this period, rather than taking each episode separately. Here goes then.

Part I: Episode 105-110: Vishwas evam avishwas

The title for this section comes from the key element in the whole of the false pregnancy track: faith and the lack of faith.

Jodha-Jalal: The limits of faith: Firstly, faith is not faith if it needs proof.

Given this, there are two kinds of faith. One is total, blind, instinctive, based on a love beyond reason. Mera beta aise kabhi nahin kar sakta, asserts a mother who has this kind of faith in her son.

The other is what can be called rational faith. This is anchored in one's knowledge of the other person's character, based on personal experience of him/her, which assures one that this person could not have committed the crime of which he/she is accused. One might have hoped that by now, both Jodha and Jalal might have developed enough of this kind of rational faith in each other to be able to defuse this ugly crisis right away. But that was not to be.

Taking Jodha first, the vital factor that should have given her pause while declaring Jalal guilty of violating his vachan to her is this. She has had repeated proof of Jalal's capacity for self restraint, not just on the road to Ajmer, but day after day after day in Amer itself. She must have realized that none of this would have happened if Jalal had been a standard issue husband who claims his conjugal rights at once, and she, as his wife, would be expected to comply. That, to use her pet term, Jalal had demonstrated that his vaasna was firmly under control. In fact, Jodha affirms this proudly to Ruqaiya when she tries to needle her: Shahenshah ne hamara maan rakha! Apna vachan nibhaya!

Then there was Jalal's epiphany at Ajmer, and again at the Kali temple, where Jodha herself perceived his capacity for absorption in the Divine.

There are the persistent efforts Jalal has made recently to woo her, to take her likes and dislikes into account, and this with rare perceptiveness and sensitivity, such as the revelation about her lost payal, the exquisitely chosen gift for her birthday.

That after the tiger mauling him, a disaster due solely to Jodha's unthinking folly, even when Jalal believes he is dying, he does not utter a single word of reproach to her. It was incredible.

Shyamala, You repeat this whenever you get a chance!😉

His going out of his way, even handing over a fort that has deep sentimental associations for him, to make sure that Sukanya not only gets married but has a place of honour in her sasural, but largely for Jodha's sake, and his telling her so.

It is true that Jalal has a very soft corner for Jodha and he shows this convincingly in his every action and I think Jodha is also aware of it. We see her expressing her gratitude by serving him the food specially cooked for him.

But, in spite of all these, she is convinced that Jalal might have had his desire fulfilled. She does not consider this as illegal but an act against her wish!

Above all, his readiness to abandon his throne and his people to keep his promise to her , with what I see as criminal, self-indulgent irresponsibility. But Jodha should have seen it very differently.

NB: It is revealing of Jodha's limited comprehension of matters political, that despite her being a princess born and raised to always place a king's rajadharma first, she does not even think of this, the biggest sacrifice that he is ready to make for her sake. She instead harps only on his standing up to the maulvis.

To revert, any normal woman would have taken note of all this, drawn her own conclusions, and developed some rational faith in him. She would not accept so readily that such a man could suddenly lapse so badly, and her anguished question to him would then have been:

Aap aise kabhi nahin kar sakte, Shahenshah, to yeh kaise ho gaya?

That would have given him pause, and might have let reasoned faith reassert itself on both sides. But perhaps that was too much to expect from Jodha, who is nothing if not blinkered by her self-righteousness and obtuseness, and who is, right now, rocked to her foundations by this apparent revelation about Jalal.

For Jalal, the breakdown of his faith in her is easier to understand.

For this faith is limited to believing that though she hates him, she will not plot to kill him. She has never been even civil to him, quite the opposite. What has she ever done for him that he should trust her in depth?

Besides, he knows nothing of her personal morality.

He hears about her being spoken highly of before he took a venture to go to Amer in disguise. Will any girl with ill reputation be given such a high praise? I don't contribute to this idea Shyamala.

All he knows is her distaste for any kind of intimacy with him. This cannot, when faced with what looks like incontrovertible evidence from the Hakima, add up to blind faith in her personal virtue.

As for this Rajput honour business, I am sure there were the female equivalents of Jaichand among them, and unfaithful wives as well. No one can claim a blanket halo for a whole race! Then again, even if Jodha had been a Jezebel, she would have cried the same way and made the same assertions of innocence., in fact more vehemently and convincingly. Why then should Jalal believe her?

Moreover, just as Jodha accuses him of having taken revenge on her for hating him, Jalal could say the same of her, that she had taken revenge on him for forcing her hand and getting her to marry him.

It has also to be remembered that the loss and humiliation for Jalal is infinitely greater than for Jodha, for it is not just a sense of personal betrayal, it is a political and personal fraud of the worst kind, as he sees it.

Othello strangled Desdemona on similar suspicions, and on far, far less "evidence". Men, and emperors more than ordinary men, see red in these situations.

Jalal: Perceptive faith: But then, eventually, Jalal's essential faith in Jodha surfaces, asserts itself, and governs all his subsequent actions.

This faith is based on nothing more than his belief in the paakeezgi that he sees in her eyes, and on the absence of the fear that a zinaakari aurat would display, when she refutes all his accusations, and proudly proclaims that she is a Rajput queen, and koyi paraya manushya humein choona to door, hamari saaya ko bhi nahin choo sakta!

Plus her, for once, calm and dignified demeanour at the insaaf ka tarazu, when she asks him, as her husband, not as the Shahenshah, what she, an innocent wife accused by her husband, should do under these circumstances.

One can also interpret Jalal's belief in Jodha's innocence as due to his ability to judge an individual based on his interaction with that person, a flair essential for any leader, be it a CEO of a company or the absolute ruler of an empire. Except that this flair seems to desert Jalal when it comes to Adham and Sharifuddin, not to speak of a whole host of others. So this hunar of Jalal's is clearly Jodha-specific!😉

Jodha: Persistent lack of faith:In contrast, there is Jodha's persistent lack of faith in the man she sees, at the drop of a hat, as a kutil, kroor vyakti - she does not even accept that he is an insaan - who is perennially intent on nothing more than his vaasnapoorti, be it with a daasi or moorchit avastaa ka laabh uthana with herself. And this despite all the counter- facts I have listed above.

But then, deductive logic is not among the long list of Jodha Begum's hunars! Nor inductive logic, for that matter. For Jodha does not see any inconsistency in demanding that her husband trust her on her word alone, while she does not extend any of same faith to him or his word of honour.

However, even despite all these precedents, I do not blame Jodha for not believing Jalal's assertion that he did nothing at all that night, for she has received a huge shock. She knows that she is innocent of any wrongdoing, so that naturally leaves only one explanation, that he has broken the (virtual) zubaan he had given her. So it is perhaps natural that her trust in him, such as it was, is shattered.

Jodha doubts Jalal only for the reason that he went against his promise,and there was nothing to complain about any immoral behaviour. And who knows, eventually, she would take it on her stride. But that is not the same as Jalal's doubt about her . He suspects her fidelity.

Then, to compound the initial shock comes the horrible wave of the most demeaning insults against her that Maham stirs up in the harem, which sucks in even her tower of support, Hamida Bano.

I wonder if Maham is really a woman or a ******🤬

My heart went out to her as she gazes, in uncomprehending horror, at the transformation of her incredibly affectionate Ammijaan into a vengeful Malika-e-Azam who tells Jodha that she should fall to her death on a temple steps or drown herself in a water body, but she, Hamida Bano, would not allow her to stay on in the Agra palace any longer.

**On top of this, there are Jalal's demeaning references to the possibility of her having had a pre-marital relationship in Amer (he makes them deliberately, to save Jodha from the shameful accusations that Hamida Bano levies at her, but Jodha does not know that). This is the last straw, and Jodha is shattered.

**I was shocked when Jalal made such a reference. What was the possibility? There is a difference between a 'premarital' and an 'extra marital' relationship- If it was premarital, that is her (physical) relationship with someone before his marriage to her, and if she had got pregnant by that , will it take that length of time to come into the open? Wouldn't she have shown symptoms of a pregnant woman at early stages even before this situation? And to Maham Anga's greatest joy and exhilaration,( that can be seen on her face) the hakima declared that it was her first month(!) of pregnancy. MA, as it is natural to her, looks for the possibility of Jodha having an extramarital relationship with someone in Amer during her latest visit! Chee!

And added to that Jalal tells his Ammijan (epi 109) that he was with Jodha on the stormy night, and when he was asked why he did not admit that previously, he says he had a doubt whether anyone (here Jodha) can become pregnant when they spend only one night together! It is disgusting! I cannot imagine any son talking like this to his mother! The treatment of the whole track was so bad and filthy that it degraded all the characters of the show!

Sorry Shyamala, that is my opinion.😔

The Holmes principle: This last scene, interestingly enough, shows how even the strongest faith of one human being in another can, when faced with the Sherlock Holmes principle in action - When you have eliminated the impossible, what remains, however improbable, is the truth - can collapse in an instant.

When Hamida Bano, for whom it is impossible that her son should lie about his not having touched Jodha, confronts the fact of Jodha being pregnant, she shifts to believing the improbable, that Jodha, hitherto the apple of her eyes, is guilty of infidelity.

There is another aspect to this. Hamida Bano's savage reaction is a measure of the seriousness the imperial family attaches to the matter of infidelity to an emperor. Remember that they - Hamida, Jalal, Ruqaiya - are used to treachery from those close to them. So it would not be too difficult for Hamida to believe that she might have been completely mistaken in Jodha.

To revert, the same principle is at work with Jodha. For her, the impossibility is her having been unfaithful of her pati. So it follows that the (in any case, for Jodha, never strong) improbability, that Jalal had betrayed his vachan has, for her, to be the truth.

Seen against this, how much more admirable is Jalal's faith in Jodha's purity, once he sees it in her eyes and her fierce, unafraid denials of any wrongdoing! He does not fall into the Holmesian trap. For him, now, it is the idea of Jodha's infidelity that is the new impossible. So it follows that the diagnosis of her pregnancy has to be shifted to the "improbable" category, dissected and disproved. It is this that elevates Jalal as a character way beyond all the others.

Reactions: Jalal: Rajat brought Jalal's distilled fury vividly alive on the screen , especially during the savage, almost demented sword practice. That scene was splendidly visualised and shot.

Yes, Jalal is wonderful here as usual.

...

Methinks, however, that in these particular circumstances, that is not the main reason for his seething, glowering silence, interspersed with fleeting, pathetic attempts at projecting gladness, rather than exploding, as is his wont, in destructive rage.

Jalal's restraint is mostly because he cannot stand the idea of a public scandal, which would inevitably lead to his being branded a cuckold by the whole of the court and the awaam, and mocked at and derided for that. That is the one intolerable insult for any man - even today, this is the prime reason for crimes of passion ending in the murder of the unfaithful spouse (for which French courts used to routinely acquit husbands, under the crime passionel defence, till late into the 20^th century!). How much more hellish must the very prospect have been for a 16^th century emperor?

And this one is not about a baandi like that Farida. This is a Shahi Begum, jiske saath baakayda nikaah karke use Agra le aaya tha. The corrosive ridicule would have eaten away at the roots of even imperial power. His image would never have recovered from that.

Not every king can be a Henry VIII, who did not care a hoot for any ridicule on this count. As you might remember, he tried 2 wives publicly, without any hesitation, for the same offence, and executed them both. One, Anne Boleyn, was innocent of the charge, and the other, Katharine Howard, was not.

But in private, Jalal's restraint can and does break down when he confronts Jodha after the chadar ceremony. He says nothing on the earlier occasion, when Jodha accuses him of having broken his word to her, because Ruqaiya is also present. If she had not been there, his fury would have broken its bounds then itself.

Reactions: Ruqaiya: This was a tour de force, and it was a relief to see the old Ruqaiya back, and then some more. She redeemed herself magnificently. For what came thru was her essential decency, and her respect and feeling, as a woman, for another woman's motherhood, no matter that she detests that other woman and no matter that she personally has lost out to her in the motherhood stakes. Also, the affection and loyalty she has for Jalal ki aulad, which is but a reflection of the loyalty and love she has for him. That says a lot about Ruqaiya, much more that had been shown even by Smiley's version.

Yes.

Later, when Jalal calls her to meet him, and she comes reluctantly, he needs her desperately. I think he is on the verge of telling her the truth from his side, and perhaps asking her whether a woman like Jodha could actually commit such a crime. Her reply would, I think, have been in the negative. But then Jodha barges in and the opportunity is gone.

Reactions: Jodha: As noted above, I can understand where Jodha was coming from. So I did not mind it that for almost the whole of this track, Jodha is desperate, angry and weepy: in private, bewailing her fate to Moti and raging against the ghrinit Shahenshah, and looking so consistently sullen and angry even in public that no one but the purblind Hamida Banu, and her even more purblind coterie of Gulbadan and Jijianga, would have been taken in.

Nor even her falling back, characteristically, on what she now sees as the basic difference between the Mughals and the Rajputs, the breaking or keeping of the vachans they give. Of course she forgets the like of Jaichand, and even her Sujamal Bhaisa, who betrayed Amer to the Mughal Sharifuddin for his own selfish ends, but then, as noted above, Jodha Begum has little use for logic.

Nor even that she seems to suffer from short term retrograde amnesia, a la Aamir Khan in Ghajini. First, she treats the Teen Devian, plus assorted daasis and baandis, to the momentous information that she had only ghrina for Jalal from the time her hand was given in his (by her father, to save his backside and those of his sons and his praja). Then, just 10 minutes later, she marches up to him when he is weighing rings in the insaaf ka tarazu, and delivers the whole spiel all over again. Why? Does she think he is suffering from short term memory loss?

Then again, during the whole of Salima's long, patient and lucid explanation of how both Jodha and Jalal could be right, and her plea to Jodha to keep an open mind and see things from his point of view as well, there is not the slightest change on Jodha's face. Not a flicker of curiosity or anything else. Just a blank.

If it had been Rajat's Jalal, there would have been any number of micro-shifts, so many nuances, that would have way gone beyond the script.

Yes.

Unacceptable crudeness: To revert, what I really hold against Jodha is that she repeats, ad nauseum, her ugly assertion of Jalal's supposed yen for his vaasnapoorti - coupled with her old perennial, the ghrina mantra - in private to him, as also in front of Ruqaiya, till mere to kaan pak gaye, and I was sick of looking at her sullen, puffed up face.

Worst of all, Jodha does so even in public at the jashn, about what she instantly assumes was Jalal's intention of having what is crudely called a "quickie" with that green kadaawali daasi . In doing so, she demeans herself very badly, for this is not how a highborn princess behaves, even in private, not to speak of at a public jashn. She sounds more like an inmate of a bordello .

On hearing this, the worst accusation that she has hurled at him, Jalal's face twists in sudden disgust , and so did mine. Rajat was superb then. That is what I meant by nuances and going beyond the script. His opposite number is almost always flatfooted on the ground, and there is no question of her going anywhere beyond the script.

It is a wonder that after hearing her make that very ugly comment , Jalal could ever see Jodha in the same way as before. I could not have done so, but then he seems to be made of indiarubber!

...

Quite a fantastic review Shyamala. Thank you!

Shyamala/Aunty/Akka/Di

Anjali, sweetheart, is there nothing you cannot do?

I am quite bowled over by your video; where on earth did you dig up all these photos of mine? I have not seen the half of them myself, and I had no idea that my speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in Montreal was up there somewhere in the cyberworld! I simply do not know what to say to thank you for this most charming of birthday gifts, my darling girl, but I shall give you the bigggest e-hug there ever was! No IF emoticon will do justice to this giga-hug, so consider it given!

Do tell one thing before you disappear again: how do I save this video? I have now learnt how to copy paste photos. but I am not yet up to copying videos. So be a very good little girl and educate me on this, will you?

Where precisely are you now, and how have things been at your end? I did not realise, till Sandhya told us the other day, that you were in Singapore and that you had been affected by the air pollution from the forest fires across the straits in Indonesia. I do not know if things are better now in this respect, I do hope so. When I was posted as the Ambassador of India to the Philippines at the end of 1992 - probably just about the time when you descended on this planet because the Almighty's ribs had begun hurting from laughing at your gags! 😉- the ash from the volcanic eruption of Mount Pinatubo nearly 18 months earlier still used to blanket Manila periodically, so a continuing forest fire must be far worse.

I have missed you more than I can say, and this not just because of your nutty jokes and your ubiquitous cats of all shapes and sizes. So when can you be really back with us? Do tell!

Thanks a million once more, you imp, and much love from.

Shyamala Aunty

Originally posted by: harrybird

My Dear Shyamala Aunty,

🤗

You never cease to amaze me...You are special & unique !

Fantastic post once again !!! 👏 👏 👏

B/w

I am not late to wish you happy birthday

I am just early for the next year 😳 😳 😳

Wishing you good health & happiness in life forever...

Happy Birthday Aunty !!!

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o8bkXkIrqk&feature=youtu.be[/YOUTUBE]

PS :

My Sincere apologies for

- Posting this video without your permission (I shall edit/delete, if you are unhappy with any part of this video). 😊

&

- My No show will continue bcos of my personal & professional commitments.😭

Thanks a lot for this post

Jodha-Jalal: The limits of faith: Firstly, faith is not faith if it needs proof.

Jalal says he loves jodha - atleast all his actions suggest that. But when it comes to proving in false pregnancy track he wants proof. With proof full world shall belive anyone, then where is that true love? If proof is required to trust someone than that is not true love simple.

Regarding jalal being great for not claiming his rights over jodha - we must remember jodha is not his only wife he has many wives and he has not married jodha because he has no attention of females in his life. He has married her because he is attracted to her at first sight and later to take revenge for keeping sword on his neck that is to show her down to get her to dance to his commands. That is already achieved to a large extent jodha married agianst her wishes mostly has to do what he says in agra, only because she has not allowed him some rights that does not mean jalal can be called great.

Now for the pregnancy

Jodha thinks that when she was unconcious jalal took advantage and she got pregnant. And jalla thinks she loved someone and cheated him. Fine but the way these two were speaking so openly all this in front of maham, moti was very down town below the dignity. I can stuill understand these two fighting in front of hamida and gulbadan they are family but maham and moti is a no no. Jalal had no rights to say that he wanted to know if jodha had an affair in amer before he married her, that means he do not trust her and jodha accuasing him is ok because she has not had relation with anyone. A womans respect comes supreme in society than a mans. So jodha accusing jalla of having spent night with her is not a big thing as per society but jalla doubting jodha and her baby in womb is very big matter.

Hamida believing jalla coming to question jodha should not be viewed in horror. Its what any parent would do even today in similar circumsatnces more so a royal parent. Now no one would want a rajvanshi fathers son to sit on mughal throne will they? (Similar to the british monarch issue). But in anger she exceeds limits by saying jodha has to die secretly. Why? What has the innocent baby in womb done(if she was truly pregnant)? Why not just tell her to go to amer till some solution is found or truth is gotten?

Jalal telling he lied that he had not spent night with jodha and after math was over the top melodaram that no emperor would indulge in. The tarazu scene atleast was more dignified a woman asking her husband to decide if she was pure or not in his mind and inform her. Because then she can decdide her next course of action. Jodha says she hates the baby but it would be interesting to see if she would want it to be born at all etc and where would she go f jalal abondoned her and hamida threw her off the palace. Would ameris accept her?

Originally posted by: sashashyam

My dear Saraswathi Akka,

It is a relief to realise that you are OK, and that the tornado that was reported to have damaged parts of Sydney so badly yesterday spared your place. I was worried about you as soon as I saw the news in the morning paper, but of course I had no way of contacting you. So this is good news!

Yesterday, I could not nibble at your masala vadai or delve into your kattu saada koodai, for once I went there, I would have got bogged down responding to the posts, especially your nursery rhymes remixed - your latest hunar is dazzling! - and the posts above would have got derailed.

I was totally preoccupied with other work almost all of yesterday, and will be again tomorrow, including a visit to my orthopaedist, so I have to finish Part III as soon as I can this morning. To top things off, I had singed my right forefinger against a hot casserole 3 days back, and that burn was inconsiderate enough to swell up and burst now, necessitating a band aid around that finger. This makes it a bit tough for me to type, and as it is I am not a fast typist. I got Parts I & II done so late last night that you must have been up when I finished them! And I was too tired to send out the PMs. That is the first thing I must do now, before sitting down to our morning meal.

Bye for now!

Shyamala