Weekend Analysis Thread 3:What is Love ?

Friends, it was an interesting week with respect to the Jodha-Akbar serial. In the backdrop of the Rajput protests against Ekta, many of us have been keeping fingers crossed even as we continued to enjoy the episodes that came this week. Most gratifyingly, the spoilers and precaps with which this week has ended seem to give us the sanket of a marriage that may happen as soon as next week between Jodha and Jalal, so all in all, I am quite satisfied with the goings on …

Although I noticed a lot of focus this last week has been on the political rumblings in the Mughal household and family rumblings in the Rajput household, I want to stay away from the larger household politics at both places this week for my analysis. Instead I want to focus on something I noticed very sharply: it has to do with the "awakening of the insides" of both Jodha and Jalal. So many things happened this last week that convince me that while Jalal's HEART is stirring awake, Jodha's MIND is at the same stirring awake too. In a sense both the protagonists are seemingly undergoing an arousal of their previous peace, but to my mind, one of them is discovering challenges to his heart, while the other is discovering challenges to the mind.

I am not sure how many of you will agree with my analysis here, but these are the reasons why I feel so:

Jalal's HEART is beginning to make itself felt!

The first sign this last week of Jalal's heart doing a sudden palpable flip inside him came, for me, with that portrait burning episode. Why did he even commission that portrait? And having done so, why did he then lose no time in destroying it? My friend Jyoti told me she thought Jalal first asked for the portrait to be done out of a compulsion to put his heart out on canvas … but when the artist lady said she knows Jodha and started praising her beauty, suddenly Jalal may have wanted no one else to have their fill of Jodha after he had had his own eyes warmed by that portrait. Maybe he therefore burned the portratit from a jealous possessiveness to keep things inside his own heart and not "out there"? My own feeling was that Jalal wanted that artist to put on canvas the hard reality that his heart did not want to face: the vision of anger and hatred and the outstretched sword that Jodha showed Jalal in that Amer jail. And then he burned that portrait because the anger and hatred of Jodha was exactly what he wanted to burn or erase from his own heart. Whichever way you look at it though, the portrait and its burning was all about "heart on canvas" …

The second sign from Jalal's came during the altercations with Bairam Khan. The scenes were spectacular because not only did Jalal betray the floundering of his own mind against the stirrings of his heart, even Bairam Khan seemed not to know what to do with the sudden heart-yearnings for independence from a boy he thought he knew through and through. How this whole saga between them began with a tussle of minds and then eventually ended up as a saga of hearts (both Jalal's - and the hitherto man of steel Bairam Khan's!) was in itself a revelation of which way the winds of the future were blowing in the Mughal camp!

The role of Jalal's mother in awakening Jalal's heart was one of the high points this week. She did this twice: once in the Bairam Khan issue and the second time in the Farida issue. To me it was wonderful to see that it was Jalal's budding heart that made him even listen to his mother with a newfound respect for her words. Further, he later asks Ruqqaiya if his mother's "heart-related arguments" could be really valid about himself and Ruqqaiya not having a child because there was no "mohabbat" in their relationship. He even tells Ruqqaiya he is disturbed by all the recent challenges to his past thinking in recent days: first the Bairam Khan altercation and then the Farida dhoka … Jalal, to me, sounds like someone who knows something has awoken inside of him but he is not yet able to articulate or accept that it may be his heart!

The SBS scene they showed of a possible event next week of Jalal, uneasy of mind, praying at a dargah for relief from conflict, and then hearing instead a pirbaba's heart-churning prophecy that "something is indeed going to come into his life to turn his personal equilibrium upside down" is another sanket for us viewers … we have a hero now who has begun to feel something pounding away inside of him: a corner of vulnerability and softness he thought he never had!

My own happiness at Jalal's discovery of his heart:

I, for one, am thrilled that Jalal is discovering he has a heart by himself, and he is not waiting for Jodha to come and show him he has a heart! My respect for Jalal seems to be predicated on the fact that he is being led by his own inner intelligence and intuition to reach his conclusions. I am not a happy bunny seeing him all the time conferring to his All-Women-Advisory-Panel, every time he has to make decisions that show conflict between heart and mind. I want Jalal to be heart-ready for a future and an adult relationship with Jodha, and I don't want him to be like a little boy in search of "mothering" when Jodha comes into his life. Jalal, gratifyingly, seems to be getting there by himself, and that augurs well for the entry of Jodha into his life.

Jodha's MIND is beginning to make itself felt!

Contrasted with Jalal, in Jodha's case, it seems to be her mind that is the more challenged at the moment. Her upbringing seems to have been all about heart … soft feelings for her family, a world-view coloured by gentle tugs of the heart as to what is right or wrong, and even a passion for the right made ferocious by being entirely a heart-led person. The first sign that Jodha's mind is beginning to stir came, for me, in the face-offs she had with Ruqqaiya in the tax collection issue … as we all know Ruqqaiya is nothing but a "walking-talking-ticking mind", and when faced with Ruqqaiya, Jodha has had to summon a defence of her stance with arguments that are intellectually sound rather than just heart-right. What is the intellectual logic that only Hindus must pay tax to pray at their temples? Was Ruqqaiya really superior in rank to herself, and if so how? In the end she makes mental trade-off to pay more than due taxes with a precious necklace - thus putting her opponent on the defensive … that scene, for me, was all mind-games!

The second instance where Jodha's mind has to do a "reality check" on itself was when Sujamal suddenly appeared at the river side. Jodha's first instict to be heart-led comes in the form of adoration of her brother … but soon the mind is forced to reckon with the reality that she is bang in the middle of a war of minds and a war of principles between her brothers. One believes the kingdom is his due and wiill stand up for it with war, while the others challenge his "rights to it". Sujamal interestingly tells Jodha in so many words "not to stand in between in the case of a war within the family", and to me, that sounded like "Use your mind, girl, and don't be confused between mind and heart on this one!" It looked like a moment when Jodha realised that it was not enough to just be a person of heart!

The third occasion when Jodha's mind seemed to stir with more flurry seemed when she asked her mother "Why can a girl not have both her husband's heart and home as well as her maike? Why must one be left behind to make way for the other?" It's the classic moment when relocation is in her face, as with any girl, and she realises that love alone cannot help her survive this dislocation crisis and she needs to exercise some mental understanding and acceptance of the realities of life. It's a moment of growth that most girls reconcile to after a bit of turmoil, but for Jodha who all her life has lived largely on a staple diet of "love solves all", I feel, it must seem more complex as she has to bring a hitherto peacefully-slumbering mind into engagement-with-the-problem mode.

The precap of her mother giving her a bottle of poison to "make a radical decision with if needed" seems enough to make any girl's sleeping mind hyperactive with disquiet! I suspect that Jodha has this week been steadily exposed to more and more events that challenge her notion that life can entirely be lived by the heart's diktats, and she is realising that many confusing situations may need clarity that can only come with mental compromise and an ability to accept the arguments of "the other side". The coming week, if there is indeed a rushed tent-marriage to Jalal, should be another jolt to Jodha. Her father's alliance with Jalal, to save Amer by marrying Jodha to him, can never be a decision Jodha can take from her heart. She can save Amer only thorugh a mental compromise with herself, her kingdom, her father and even Jalal.

My own happiness at Jodha's discovery of her mind:

Just as I am thrilled that Jalal has begun to hear his heart on his own, without Jodha's prodding, I am very deeply relieved that events are forcing Jodha to start basing more decisions from the mind rather than just by her heart, without Jalal having to give her all the trauma to really wake her up . She is entering a family and a situation in the Mughal court that is a hotbed of politics, treachery, back-stabbing, manipulative cruelty … and a host of characters there are all engaged in games with extremely elastic rules! It's a situation where "all's fair in love and war" is the prevailing motto. If Jodha just enters this cauldron of sophisticated maneuvers with a childlike notion of "I play by my heart" she is not going to be able to withstand the diabolical elements. She can live by her heart only when she first quells the opponents to submission before her as a superior mind that can overwhelm them easily when required. Only when she has intellectually outplayed them will they then fall into line and allow her to unleash her game of the heart. I want Jodha, therefore, to get a real taste of "minds at war" before she becomes a part of Jalal's life. That's why I am more than satisfied that she is having some reality checks now that are preparing her to be more of a 360-degree person!