Friends, I saw the episode yesterday many many times, I recorded it and watched repeatedly. Not because it was so totally flawlessly wonderful from start to finish ... but because I felt as if I was missing something quite important in the first half of the episode, which was getting shoved away in my mind by the sheer rubbish in the second half of the episode.
Anyway, here's my take on all that happened yesterday ... and I have no doubt some of you would agree with me, some would disagree, and some others may have interesting takes of your own of what happened ...
The beautiful first half
Since I never expected that scene between Jalal and Jodha in the first half of the episode (I thought they'd start directly with the sabha!) it was a surprise scene. The way the scene started, with Jalal arriving without fanfare, and barging into her rooms (even as the curtains were drawn for privacy for Jodha getting all ready to undress), gave signals of something very important and unusual being on Jalal's mind.
Once he'd come into the room and startled her, came a piece of awesome dialogue that I can never tire from hearing again and again. I am repeating that whole dialogue here verbatim just for the sheer pleasure of going through it one more time.
Jalal said: " I've told you many times before a husband needs no permission to enter his wife's room. As for my laugh, I find strange things very funny. Just think, our every meeting happens in strange circumstances. A husband meets his wife but feels as if he is meeting a stranger, isn this not strange? A wife who gets startled to see husband, is this not strange? When every woman in this harem is yearning for one look from me, but you don't even want to meet my eyes, is this not strange? As a husband it is my haq that I should be able to look at you with appreciation, but if I don't feel like doing that ... is it not strange? And even today, the way you are startled when undressing as if some stranger has looked at you, is that not strange? Anyway tonight you needn't fear I have come here to touch or possess you. And yes, while it does give me satisfaction to keep berating you, I have come for something else. As a Shahenshah I believe I needn't apologise to anyone nor have I done so till now. But today, in front of you I want to express regret. I know I have unfairly suspected and blamed you. I have made a mistake. And now I want to rectify this mistake by catching the real culprit. And no, I have not come just to say this much. As a Shahenshah when I ask for something I have to give something in return, or it is an insult to my status. I have asked for your forgiveness and in return I will give you two choices. You have many times said you unreservedly hate me. You feel suffocated here. You don't even want to see my face. It is your accusation that I have brought you here, far away from Amer, under duress. And so I will open up a path for you, after listening to which you will get release and can return to Amer. You will get relief from me and my face. As per the rules of talaaq a wife can choose such divorce if her husband agrees to it. And I hereby give you my agreement to it. After that I will send you back with full dignity to Amer, in the satisfaction that you are still as pristine as the day you came and I have not even touched you. I know that after you go back you will have to live your whole life alone, but at least it will be better than having to live with someone you hate. Now you have two choices - either you take your freedom or you continue to stay here, as my Begum. And I love the colour green. Do keep wearing it!"
Friends, it was not just the words that were so well said, so arranged in a logical sequence (that showed careful planning of what he was going to say). It was the tiredness in his eyes and his voice, the resignation with which his shoulders drooped, the smirk that had become a self-deprecatory half-smile, that told me that this was a man who had enough of the ego games he had played with Jodha and had even exceeded his limits with. He wanted out from these games, he wanted out from his own self that he had started seeing unfavourably through her eyes, he wanted to make amends for what he had done to her, he wanted no more of her hatred, and he wanted to make peace. More than everything else, I suspect, he wanted (in a corner of his heart) for her to chooose to stay because he made the very very beautiful attempt to add that last line about liking her in green. Many forum members have suggested that the colour green has some symbolism, but I didn't heed that as I watched. I just saw a poor boy, saying sorry in the best way he could, with as much dignity as he could, and letting free that which he wanted so much to hold, and adding a small bit in the end that he had "reasons for wanting her to stay". If he had not added that soft bit in the end he may not have betrayed his heart (to me!) but he did say that line, and I am so grateful he did, because I so wanted to hear something like that from him.
Eventually, as they say "When you love something set it free. If it comes back it is yours, if it doesn't it never was!" This verse seems made for the situation that Jalal was in yesterday.
When I quote that verse I am conscious of the fact that it asks the one in love to set free what one loves to know if it is yours at all or it chooses to go away. I thought in yesterday's dialogue of Jalal, for the first time, I heard the articulation of love in its most nascent form, where even the person in love may not have suspected that he was as yet in love!
And as for Jodha, the fact that she was asking him, "Is that all you have come to say" or "Have you come here only to scold me more?" ... did I hear a need from her side to also hear that he had come for something more? And when she later hysterically laughed and wept to Moti that, "He has done it again. He's now given me two unsavoury choices", did I again hear a need she had to hear something different from him? "Ghrna" be damned, Jodha was trying too hard to hang on to this "ghrna" argument. The lady looked like she did protest too much! That laughter and the crying was hiding something else that went deeper. The thought that he was ready to set her free must have stabbed her!
The crappy second half
I want to say very little here about this unveiling of the culprit, because it was pure soapy rubbish, hastily thought up and poorly executed. Am I to believe that a humshakal of Maham had been floating in and out of rooms in this palace, unknown to anyone? That Jalal would use some of the most amateurish sleuthery to unveil the culprit? That he would deem the following as "evidence":
a. Chillum-smoking
b. Not knowing his history of how he was saved as a young boy and by whom
c. Writing in a language not known to the reall Maham
d. Not knowing he hated teekha food
e. Having access to the same humshakal fabricator that made Humayun's humshakal
Do we believe that Jalal discredited the word of Jodha and Rahim instantly because of such utter and abiding faith in the love of his Badi Ammi? And was that surang the entry route for Jalal and not the humshakal?
In the final analysis, there must be 100% merit in Jalal saying that his Badi Ammi knew him better than anybody else, as she has been the closest to him from childhood. Because if you look at the way Maham planned the hoodwinking of Jalal, she must have known him and his mental working style pretty well to leave that surang open to him to come and spy on the fake Maham, and she must have been ready with "wrong answers" to his "very expected probing questions on food and his young age",etc.
What all this says about the cleverness of Badi Ammi I am not sure, but it does tell me a lot about the childish mental logic of Jalal, which made me very sad. Anyway, the less said the better, and may this whole miscarriage of the miscarriage saga rest in peace.
What next?
And with that we now proceed to the Holi saga, it appears , and if SBS is to be believed, then the Holi story has a romantic touch to it as well as a suicide drama. It is plain that Jodha prefers to stay back in Agra and tells Jalal this and he gives her a white dupatta as a "peace" gift, which she then rubs pink colour on to "hint at love" ... which is what Paridi says in the SBS interview.
(For her reasons for staying back in Agra I think Jodha may use the same arguments as Aishwarya Rai did in the movie ... ie. Hindu traditions hold marriages as "janam janam ka bandhan" so divorce is not a way out for her at all, and neither is it good for her parents and her sister who is yet to be married. So she will rather stay on and soldier on in Agra. How Jalal will take this is anyone's guess ... will he feel glad she's staying but sad she's not staying on more cordial terms, and that she is not staying out of her liking for it but from a need to uphold family and Hindu values? Is that what later makes him mad at her again when Holi colour falls on Maham?)
But then, it appears, a spot of Jodha's Holi colour does accidentally fall on Maham who brings the roof down, and Jalal again reverts to his nasty self, and it appears Jodha finds a third route in her life (not among the two choices that Jalal gave her). She decides enough is enough and she needs to go to Heaven and not Amer or Agra. This is what may happen if we believe SBS (who these days are a bit unbelievable!).
Since we have been deprived of the scene of Jalal saving Jodha from the tiger (who is taking long to get "animated" in the studio), we may at least get to see Jalal saving Jodha from suicide. Do we need this new melodrama? Alas, what choices do we have but to take what's thrown at us?
Cricket
Cryptocurrency
Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi 2
