Folks,
So it was not hope belied after all!
The CVs redeemed themselves substantially as Rajat returned to form in the Diwan-e-Khas, with Shamsuddin, and finally with Salima, and Paridhi's Jodha outdid herself throughout, while looking good enough to eat even when glowering at Jalal thru her long veil. The girl is tailormade for all this chamak dhamak jewellery and rich looking fabrics; gone are the days when she used to look like an upmarket version of her prettiest daasi.
Jalal-Jodha 2- Conclusion: I was grateful that this was there right at the beginning, so that the dramatic tempo was carried over from the previous day.
It was one crackerkjack of a winding up, with Jodha's bottled up anger and grief cascading over Jalal in a relentless flood, as her eyes welled over with hot tears and her voice cracked under the emotional strain. Paridhi did herself proud, for it was a very demanding scene, and her Jodha could easily have tipped over into shrill hysteria. She managed to stay in control throughout, and if she took what could be called creative liberties, as when she said that he had imprisoned her and her family sakhshya ke bina, disregarding the whopper of a clue, the dature ka ark in the kesar, that is the standard tactic of any lawyer for the defence!
Incidentally, Paridhi has one tremendous advantage that ought to stand her in good stead in her future career. She can cry buckets of assorted tears - angry tears, grieving tears, whatever - and still look gorgeous, and not, as most of the rest go, like something the cat just brought in. Her nose never looks like that of Rudolf the Rednosed Reindeer, her eyes do not puff up and become unsightly slits, and she must the delight of the make up artist as the least demanding of the lot!
To revert, I was delighted that Jodha did not let Jalal get a word in even edgeways. There was no let up, from the moment when she rose to confront him, like a furious nagin with her hood spread out and ready to strike and let him have it with both barrels (apologies for the mixed metaphor!), till the time she folded her hands in savage irony and demanded that he leave at once.
Not that he was at all ready to say anything, and that pleased me a lot too. I was afraid that he might fold up and start apologizing abjectly, for while that might have forced her to relent, it would have detracted heavily from his aura as a Shahenshah (well, a nutty Energiser bunny at times, true, but a Shahenshah all the same, and not Manav or Arjun from Pavitra Rishta!) , and it is crucial for the Jalal-Jodha love story that he retains that aura.
No one would have dared to dress him down like that ever before, or dismissed him in his own palace, or told him so many home truths about himself, his methods of meting out justice and much else. It would all be salutary from him in the near future, as he ponders over the words and absorbs the lessons they hold for him, but for now, he is both speechless and uncertain of his ground. Which is why, after listening to her tirade with a rigidly resentful expression, he beats a strategic retreat to recoup and rethink his tactics and his Jodha strategy, even as the other problem of tackling the latest suspect simmers at the back of his mind.
Oh yes, before I forget. There was, as Ela has cleverly noted, amidst the torrent of anger and resentment, a fleeting but tantalizing flash of a different emotion is Jodha's eyes in the beginning of the scene. This is when she says Humne bar bar saugandh khayi ki humne kuchch nahin kiya, par aapne meri ek nahin suni. Ruqaiya Begum ne keh diya ki koyi aur doshi hai aur aap maan gaye! Clearly a touch of the little green monster, good old jealousy, and this without Jodha even realizing it! š
Plus, one would have expected that after getting all her bile off her chest, Jodha would feel limp but light hearted at what she had achieved. Not so, for she sits down and dissolves in a fresh bout of tears. Why?
Is it that just as Jalal raged against the loss of what he had believed Jodha to be, she too is mourning the loss of the budding empathy that she had felt after Jalal's praise of her poem and the special respect and regard he had showed her at the jashn? Of the prickly but real camaraderie that had put out a few tentative shoots after the duel and the aarti ki thali encounters? Of what might have been, but is now, as she believes, scorched to dust and ashes? I believe so.
FAQ 1: Now here is my take on a question some have posed to me, which might be of general interest. This was about why Jalal went to Jodha to question her about the minor matter of her lying, and not to Salima to take her to task about the much more serious matter of her supposed guilt. The pat answer to that, which is the most popular here, is that Jalal is obsessed with Jodha and thus hurt by her lying to him.
I feel that he went to her first not because he was obsessed with her, which he is, or hurt, but because he was on the defensive. He is above all a warrior, and in a battle, when you are on the defensive, you attack at once. It is a running battle between them and he has lost this round, so he wants to pretend he has not by getting on a high horse and accusing her before she accuses him. He is defensive and so extra aggressive.
Whereas Salima is different. He is not sure about her guilt from the beginning, as the whole back story as far as she is concerned, from her being a close relative to the present, has been positive, and that gives him pause. Perhaps also he has become more cautious in this second case because of the Jodha fiasco. This is even before Jodha's calling his justice a joke, which of course reinforces this hesitation, whence the appeal to Shahabuddin.
FAQ 2: The other question: why does Jalal go to Ruqaiya for consultations about Jodha's reaction this time, whereas he did not do so on earlier occasions? I think it is because
(a) he does not realise where he is headed with Jodha. If he did, he would never include Ruqaiya in the matter. And
(b) he is now on very uncertain ground, having been blindsided, not only by the unexpected vehemence of Jodha's searing denunciation, but also by the depth of the pain that lies beneath it, which he grasps, though not completely. He wants to consult the only woman he is close to, to get a handle on this poori tarah se alagh female's mind, but he has dialed a wrong number, for a Ruqaiya can never understand Jodha.
There is only one woman who can be in sync with what Jodha feels at the moment, and she is his Ammijaan. He will, I think, turn to her eventually, but he is not there yet. This is in fact the whole purpose of that incredibly warm scene between Jodha and Hamida Banu; it has set Hamida up to play the bridge between the two she cares for the most. You would all have noticed that while Hamida never fudges Jalal's faults, she invariably also puts them clearly and lucidly in context, gently but convincingly. No one else could have done that for Jodha, and certainly not Jalal himself.
Thus, as Hamida leaves her, it is patent that Jodha is busy assessing what percentage of the blame for her patidev's atrocious behaviour should be assigned to the lack of laalan paalan from her beloved Ammijaan. The look on her face at the end of that passage is inimitable!
The Diwan-e-Khas: The BIG question after Episode 62 was of course how Jalal would get out of the pit he had dug for himself without losing his dignity and, as a supplementary, how he would, given that his sense of justice is very strong, make public amends for the public accusations he had made against the Amer quintet. In the Diwan-e-Khas scene, he manages the second gracefully, but the first is of course for the long haul.
The preceding consultation with the wise and sincere Shahabuddin brings us a troubled and tentative Jalal, who realises what he has to do regarding both Jodha & Co and Salima, but not how he should do it. That Jalal both seeks candid advice and, when told that he has done wrong and has to set it right, takes it in the right spirit, says much for his innate good sense.
I am sure that Jodha's strictures of a short while earlier must still be ringing in his ears, but we have also to note that if the ground had not already been fertile, not the best of seeds can take root there and flourish. Jalal already carries the proto-Akbar within him. Jodha waters this seed and provides the warmth of her own moral certitudes. Both count, but neither counts for more than the other.
Rajat's Jalal excels in the Diwan-e-Khas segment. An emperor cannot and does not apologise in public for his mistakes, any more than the government apologises these days when a murder suspect is found to be innocent and is released from jail. Mansingh and the Amer princes understand this, even if Jodha does not.
But Jalal does everything short of apologising, and does it with sincerity, candour and what, in a lesser man, would pass for humility.
This is unknown territory for him, but he tackles it head on, and tries his best to look them all in the eye as he speaks. He falters only twice. The first is when Mansingh, visibly relieved at the turn of events, conveys the readiness of his father and uncles to stay on as imperial guests till the culprit is caught, and expresses their sorrow at death of the heir. Jalal looks down and away, and when he raises his head again, he is unobtrusively blinking away his tears. There is still a film in his eyes as he expresses his khwahish, not his decision, that Mansingh should come back to him.
The other is when he tells Jodha Begum' that she can return to her khwabgah (a lovely term, the house of dreams). He raises his eyes to hers, and runs full tilt into the cold and unrelenting hostility in hers, which could scorch a rhinoceros at 100 yards. He holds her gaze as long as he can, but his eyes fall and he looks sideways to hide that fact. As she turns on her heel and leaves, his troubled gaze follows her. And Ruqaiya's eyes never leave his face.
Salima: It might seem premature to comment on this scene, which is only in the opening stage. Jalal is smoothly assertive as he declares his intention of staying the night and moves into the first stages of unfamiliar intimacy, ignoring her petrified stillness.
His expression in the closing shot is fascinating. His eyes question without being too obvious, try to gauge her with limpid persistence, again without betraying the least hint of animosity or suspicion. For the success of his experiment depends on her remaining unaware of his real intentions, and thus unwary. I could not help thinking that in another age and another station in life, Jalal would have made a superb poker player or counter-intelligence agent.
As for Salima, she might be Jalal's cousin now, but she must have been Bhagwan Das's sibling in a prior birth. Both have a talent for utter and total blankness of expression, no matter what the circumstances!š
4:20: But what really made my day - and I hate the Comedy Central types of show - was the 4:20 minutes (what a perfect fit for that master charsaubees , Mahaam!) of a laugh riot between Mahaam and Javeda. Entirely predictable, at times corny, but good, clean, old-fashioned fun of the old Johnny Walker type (yes, yes, I know that shows me up for the Jurassic relic I am, but at least some of you must have heard of perhaps the best ever comedian in Hindi filmdom!) and I was still gurgling with laughter in the third viewing.
It was all such a pleasant change from the raving and ranting and poisoning and plotting of the last fortnight! To top it all, the left handed compliment that Javeda unknowingly pays her saas - aap to auron ko phansati hain, wo bechari to khudh phans gayi - at the very end was deadly! I also liked the way in which Mahaam is, overall, indulgent towards the inanities of her scatterbrained bahu.
Things are looking up, folks! Mansi, did I not tell you we would climb out of this slough of despond?
Shyamala B.Cowsik
Tum Se Tum Tak
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