Folks,
The one common factor in every segment of today's episode was the confusion about what our principal dramatis personae were really feeling, as distinct from what they professed, to others and to themselves, that they felt. It was this emotional fog in which they, especially the Shahenshah and his rebellious Begum, were groping that lent this otherwise overly melodramatic episode an edge.
Jalal: What he feels most strongly, when Ruqaiya tells him about Jodha's desperate wish that he stay away from her, is anger. But at what? Ruqaiya, whose perception of what makes others tick is totally blurred by her extreme self-centredness and vanity, thinks that his ego is hurt and that he will react accordingly.
Jalal himself believes that he hates Jodha as much and more than she hates him, and this bit of one-upmanship salves his ego, badly bruised at the very thought that she, a mere woman, can actually reject him. For that is what Jodha's wish really amounts to. But is this ego hassle all that it is?
His whole tirade against her is, on the surface, predicated on this egocentric approach. By asserting that his hatred for her is not merely greater than hers for him, but is far more effective when measured against its objective - which is the humiliation and the overall crippling of its object - he wants to prove that she can never win against him. That his will must always prevail, that he has won and she has lost.
When he tells the cornered Jodha, in a superbly violent and stormy encounter, that he can do anything to her by right, but will not, that he will in fact not even touch her, he adds that this is so that she does not develop any delusions that he desires her or loves her. But why does he have to say this at all? A king, or indeed any man, does not have to love every woman with whom he has intimate relations, and where Jalal is concerned, the extent of the Shahi harem should be proof enough of the truth of this dictum. Why then?
Methinks Jalal protesteth way too much; more than trying to humiliate Jodha, he is really trying to convince himself that this is what he feels and this is why he behaves the way he does.
Mansi, where are you? This is a situation tailormade for your wise uncle's mirror image interpretation. This one, however, is not a rational explanation meant to cover up an emotional reason; it is one emotional outburst to cover up another emotional hurt, almost a wound, that is none the less deep for being unacknowledged, suppressed and totally denied.
Mills and Boon will not be denied, apparently, for the very thin line between hate and love is the leit motif of their brand of romantic fiction. Anything is better, to their way of thinking, than indifference, which is the true negation of love. Hate, on the other hand, is a very near relation .
Jalal is clearly moving from one stage to another in his emotional graph, but how far, or how fast, one can only guess. The irony of this situation is that the catalyst for this shift in his subterranean mindset has been catalyzed, however inadvertently, by, of all people, Ruqaiya!
Jodha: Hers is an even more abstruse case. The clear-eyed and lucid conviction with which she seeks to bargain with Ruqaiya to secure her immunity from Jalal's unwelcome and frightening attentions speaks, again on the surface, of acute dislike, even hatred, for him, and an aversion to any and all contact with him.
Incidentally, Paridhi is very convincing in that scene, and the shifting emotions that flit across her face with each boastful sentence of Ruqaiya's are a treat to watch.
When Jalal does turn up, drunk and aggressive, Jodha's instinctive but rather childish attempts to hold him off are of a piece with the above, though they are bound to be not just useless but counterproductive.
This includes her maddeningly logical explanation - abandoning her earlier tack of the need for him to respect her maan sammaan - for why she sang what she sang at the jashn.That too in a delightful little girl voice, like a schoolgirl trying to convince her furious teacher that she was being wrongly scolded and punished. Anyone could have guessed that this would ony enrage Jalal futher.
Let us grant that she knows no better, having led a very sheltered life. So what happens next, right up to the time Jalal storms out of her boudoir?
First, she listens to him declaring in the most emphatic fashion possible that (a) he hates her from the bottom of his heart, (b) that he had married her only to crush her personality and cage her in the harem, (c) that she would learn what beizzati really was, and mar marke jeeyegi and finally (d) that no one could protect her from him.
When she shrinks from the amorous advances he then makes, he is further enraged. That ends in his pushing her against the wall and then asserting, as noted above, that despite his conjugal rights, he would not touch her, in order not to give her any illusions that he desires her or loves her.
At the end of this ultra turbulent encounter, Jodha, who by all logic should have been limp with relief and thanking her Kanha on her knees for having listened to her prayers is, on the contrary, shattered. Her drawn face as she watches the retreating Jalal is a study in helpless anguish. The same desperate sense of loss, of being without a mooring in life, is evident from her subsequent conversation with Motibai.
I thought I was making a sacrifice for Amer, she wails, but Jalal has married me only so that he can destroy my life and salve his ego and arrogance. I thought that for the sake of the dignity of Amer, I would live out my life somehow, but now my existence is rudderless. What shall I do now? Where shall I go?
What is startling about this undoubtedly sincere lament is the lack of logic that lies at its core. Now that she is sure that Jalal is not, for whatever reason, going to make unwelcome advances towards her, that he also says that she will be safe and outwardly well respected in the harem, whatever his personal hatred for her, she should in fact feel that she is in clover. This, after all, is exactly what she was seeking when she proposed that bargain to Ruqaiya. What then is so different, so hurtful, now that it causes her so much anguish?
There is only one thing that has changed between Jodha's tete a tete with Ruqaiya and after she has faced Jalal's venomous tirade. It is this: earlier, she had thought that Jalal had manoeuvred her father into this marriage because he wanted her, Jodha. She hated him, but she assumed that he cared for her, in whatever fashion, and that he did want her. His behavior all thru the wedding phase, and on the road to Agra, must have strengthened this assumption of hers, which she undoubtedly told herself was hateful to her, coming as it did from Jalal the Jallad.
Now, that bubble has burst, and she faces the ugly new interpretation of all that Jalal has done to secure her. It is not wanting of any kind, but virulent hatred, and the accompanying urge to humiliate and cripple her whole being. And this 'truth' is something she is unable to stand. It reduces her to a level of abject misery never before seen on the face of this feisty young lady, who earlier stands firm in the face of great adversity, but is now crushed by the realization that Jalal hates her with a corrosive hatred.
Why this should be so is something she, clearly, does not know. But perhaps we do.
There are others too who are befogged, beginning with Ruqaiya, but I will stop here, for my eyes are still far from recovered, and if my doctor knew what I am up to past midnight, or Gargi had any idea where I am, meri to khair nahin!
The latest Mansingh episode is of course going to turn out quite differently from the anticipated outcome over which Mahaam Anga and Adham Khana are licking their chops in anticipation, and the cheeky brat will undoubtedly become even cheekier thanks to Jalal' s indulgence towards him. He will probably be allowed to meet Jodha outside the harem.
And the latest promo, with the Shahenshah promising the victor in the chess match between Jodha and Ruqaiya one wish, whatever it might be, signals a clear shift, on Jalal's side, away from the overt animosity of the boudoir clash with Jodha. Jodha will win, of course, and what then will her wish be?
Plus, shatranj being Jalal's favourite game, what does Jodha's now demonstrated expertise in the game of kings imply for their future interactions?
The Begum-e-Khaas will soon realise the wisdom in the warning of Mahaam Anga's mother: Beware of those who have no fear of losing anything, and of those who have no desire for anything. In that passage, when she warns Ruqaiya not to be complacent about the threat that Jodha, who is so alag from others, will pose, Mahaam Anga shows the acute understanding of human nature, and the clear-headed sense of judgement unimpaired by wishful thinking, that have made her what she is.
Question of the day: How the devil did young Mansingh get into the Shahi harem? It seems to me that is what the Shahenshah should be looking into first!😉
Shyamala B.Cowsik
CID
Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi 2
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