Once again, the most interesting part today came at the very end, just before and during the precap. As Chugtai Khan (who seems to be on excellent terms with the Shahenshah) mentions Bharmal's wanting to meet the Emperor, Jalal remembers his visitor's desire to send the battered Abdul's head back to the Mughals. But there is no overt sign of anger; his lips curve in a half smile as he asks, Kis silsile mein (milna chahte hain)? When Chughtai Khan begin his recital of Bharmal's sad plight at the hands of Sharifuddin, the smile broadens into one of sheer delight. It is as if Jalal were saying to himself Gotcha!
In the precap, Bharmal seems to be displaying his usual propensity for spouting hot air and vainglory. His fellow Rajput kings have turned down his pleas for help, and he is on his last legs, with his back to the wall, and no escape route in sight. But he still does not see the irony of his telling Chugtai Khan that he is willing to meet Jalal; a casual listener would have imagined that he was doing Jalal a favour!
Now, he is in the presence of the most powerful ruler in Hindustan, who has done him the courtesy of offering him a seat ; this is clear since Bharmal bounces out of the self same seat, ejaculating Bas! when Chugtai Khan proposed the marriage. One cannot blame him for being shocked and dismayed, but surely a more measured and diplomatic reaction would have been both graceful and pragmatic?
Jalal is still smiling to himself at the line about a rishta, for he immediately knows what is coming next (assuming that the whole is not something preplanned between him and Chugtai Khan, but I think that is unlikely). His head and eyes are down, but as the rude, overloud Bas! registers, the eyes slowly rise to Bharmal's face. They are expressionless, cold as icicles and as sharp, unreadable, calculating. If I had been at the receiving end of that look, I would have been really scared. Rajat, always very good, was superb in that instant.
As for the rest, one can take it character by character.
Jalal: He shows once again what it means to be an absolute monarch. A head shorter than the gigantic Adham Khan, Jalal has to look up at him, like Jack facing a giant. Anyone will tell you how difficult it is to dominate the opponent under such circumstances. But Jalal's total self-possession and his natural kingliness ( if there is such a word!) make it seem not just easy but completely credible. When he plants his foot on the lolling Adham Khan's chest in one swift move, it reminded me of the samhaar of a rakshasa whose sins had passed all bounds, and I could not help hoping, against both hope and history, that Adham Khan's sar would be kalamofied. Alas, it was not to be!!
Chetan Hansraj, who has played positive roles in other Balaji serials, manages to bring out the casual brutality, the coarseness and the unbelievable stupidity of Adham Khan. I am sure Mahaam Anga must be half convinced that he is a changeling, for no son of hers could be such a walking disaster!😉
Jalal is out-manoeuvred once again by his wily Badiammi, who levels the score with him after being checkmated in both the Bakshi Banu marriage to Sharifuddin and the Jalal-Salima nikaah. But it is a very near run thing, and not only in terms of the shamsheer halting, in one heart-stopping moment, a hair's breadth away from her neck. How I wished that it had not!
Plus, Adham Khan has now used up the last of his nine lives and is, from now on, exposed, suspect, and on his own. The Wazir-e-Aaliya's post is now a mrigtrishna (mirage). The fury in Jalai's eyes, as he looks back at him while leaving, is like molten lava, and for Adham Khan, the bell has started tolling. It is only a matter of time before his double defenestration (the punishment of throwing the condemned man from a window, hopefully to his death. The name comes from the French word for a window, fenetre) on Jalal's orders. It will probably need about 6 able-bodied men to heave a struggling Adham Khan thru a window, not speak of lugging him up again preparatory to throwing him down again!
Jalal also betrays once more how much he is still a prisoner of his close relationships. He knows perfectly well that Adham Khan is guilty as charged, but the proof melts away, and there is his Badiammi/ Ammijaan at his feet, shedding enough tears to put a 3 inch hosepipe to shame. So he is reduced to talking of doodh ka karz, and threatening that this will the last time Adham Khan goes scot-free (famous last words!), while the fact remains that he has been effectively stymied.
What Jalal clearly needs is a Lord Krishna to make him disregard any and all extraneous holds on him as he moves to enforce justice and right wrongs. He might be as great a warrior as Arjun, but there is as yet no Parthasarathy to guide him and prevent him from faltering under emotional blackmail. Will Jodha be that guide ? Only time will tell.
Mahaam Anga: The lady is truly terrifying, Not the sort you would care to meet down a dark street at night. The ease with which her minion slashes throats is as appalling as the ease with which she herself manages to make her Goebbelsian lie (so called after Hitler's propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, best known for his maxim that any lie, repeated often enough, becomes a truth) hold up to Jalal's scrutiny.
Equally chilling is the unconcerned ease with which she offers her namaz, with all the appearance of piety, apparently confident that the Almighty would understand! I momentarily expected Him/Her to hurl a thunderbolt from on high at Mahaam Anga, but it seems that the Almighty was busy elsewhere.
Well, the wheels of God grind slowly, says the Bible, but they grind exceedingly small. Bairam Khan might have been checkmated by his bete noire, but he is surely going to have the last laugh. His prediction to Mahaam Anga about Adham Khan, woh to doobega hi, par aapko bhi le doobega, is going to prove prophetic any day now.
Jodha: In the nightmare scene at the beginning, she rolled her eyes enough to give Mamma Dearest stiff competition, but she did manage to convey the blind panic that had gripped her, with nerves frayed to breaking point under the strain. Mrs. Popeye, aka Rani Mynavati, was as ineffective as ever as she flapped around her daughter, and it was, as usual, left to her sturdy and courageous dadi to calm Jodha down.
Jodha's plea to her father not to think of her or his sons alone, but in the first place of all the Amer soldiers now in Mughal custody, is what one would expect from a true royal. It was of a piece with her reaction to Suryabhan's gruesome end and the catastrophic defeat of the Amer forces.
I had then written, in response to some criticism of her for not displaying desperate grief at her fiance's death, trying to explain her attitude and to defend her. I will reproduce those comments here, and perhaps many of you might share my take on this matter, which has considerable relevance for the future Jalal-Jodha relationship.
"I do not think that Jodha has as yet developed any deep and abiding love for anyone, and not at all for Suryabhan. From her side, theirs was a pleasant, conflict-free, passionless and gentle relationship, facing no difficulties, no opposition, no discord of any kind. She liked him a very great deal as he was a familiar entity from her own milieu. He was also reassuring as a potential husband; he fitted in with her requirements under this head, such as bravery, and a readiness to stand up to the Mughals; Plus he was not bad looking, which always helps😉, and he was head over heels in love with her, which is always a great recommendation to a woman!
All this, even put together, does not add up to love, and definitely not to the deewangee that haunts one's soul night and day. Both Jodha and Jalal are capable of such deewaangee, but neither knows that as yet. There were hints of it earlier, when Jodha is puzzled and disturbed by her inability to forget the face seen in the water, despite her knowing that she is to marry someone else. Of late, she had suppressed it, because of her hatred of the man whose image had obsessed her, and under the overlay of new experiences, in Bhanpur and earlier. But the instinctive attraction is still there, and it will reemerge when the times comes.
When it comes, it will be an all consuming passion that can see nothing and no one else but the beloved.
So, when she now learns of Suryabhan's gruesome end (which, one has to keep in mind, would not be as shocking to a 16th century Rajput princess familiar with deaths in war as it would be to us today; after all she always wanted Jalal's head at her feet, did she not, the bloodthirsty wench?), it is with great shock and sorrow, not an all consuming grief.
She is also a princess, trained from birth to look to her responsibilities first and foremost, and that is what she does yesterday.
I have not been an admirer of hers, and I have always held that her veerangana title was yet to be proven. But yesterday, she was brave, with a kind of cold, calm courage that is more impressive than the adrenaline-fuelled do or die courage in the battlefield.She does not think of herself or what is to happen to her now, she does not weep and lament like her mother. She does what a wise and responsible ruler should do, compromise with the yuddha/raj dharma of a king to fulfil the other royal duty of being a protector of his subjects, whatever the cost to his ego. It is good for her strutting, vainglorious fool of a father that Jodha was there to steady him".
Jalal-Jodha: The sky is darkling, and thunderstorms lie ahead. When Chugtai Khan mentions a rishta, what comes to Jalal's mind is Jodha holding a sword to his throat. His resentment at her pushing him into an unaccustomed and very tight corner runs deep, and he wants above all else to get his own back at her. Whence, perhaps, once he has maneuvered the pompous Bharmal into agreeing to the marriage, his letter (to Jodha?)with its blatant and deliberate arrogance. No wonder the fireworks start even before the traditional aatishbaazi at the wedding celebrations!😉
Well, well, we all know where they are eventually headed, so we can take these fierce fallings out far more philosophically than the principals, and concentrate on enjoying the wedding tamasha.
This bids fair to spread over the whole of the week beginning August 5 , for I am sure Ekta, having saved all that moolah on the barebones Jalal-Salima nikaah and the offscreen Bakshi Banu-Sharifuddin wedding😉, would have rustled up enough of a spectacle for 210 minutes of grandeur.
Shyamala B.Cowsik
... Mayb all this question can be answered by Shaguni Bai 🤣 
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