Friends, yesterday's episode, for me, was all about how some three silly women used their their stalls at the Meena Bazaar to sell their silliness! I am not sure if all of you will agree with my pick of the three silliest women in Agra that I have found, but as usual (anticipating your kind barrage of rotten tomatoes, footwear and other flying objects,) here goes ...
Silly Chick No. 1 and her dupatta stall:
Yes I am talking here about Ruqaiaya. And I know that most of you won't agree with me that she was one of the silly females on display at the Meena Bazar yesterday, but that's because she had some "relatively saner sounding" dialogues than the other two I am shortly going to write about. But Ruqaiaya was silly, for me, because of three reasons:
a. She continues to be in some high heaven of confidence that she will always - repeat always - be the belle of the ball at the Meena Bazaar
b. The Shahenshah buying the most expensive gifts at her stall is, according to her, a measure of her importance in his life
c. His pink dupatta, was his "first gift" to any of his begums and therefore she believes it marks her out
Notice how to Ruqaiaya, being the first, the most expensive, the best etc. is still the key thing in life! She has not changed one bit after the loss in the shatranj game and the more shattering miscarriage issue into valuing "ooncha darjah" less - and she still totally fails to value the finer sentiments behind the actions people take - notably the Shahenshah. Is she completely impervious to sentiment?
Ruqaiaya, if she had been any other woman, could well have asked herself: What does pink mean? Was his choice of dupatta colors for me symbolic? Was he trying to tell me something? Does he value my love? Do his eyes on me first, my stall, mean anything more? Even if he had bought the smallest thing from me, and I was the last stall he visited, would it mean anything less?
No such doubts or delicious thoughts assail Ruqaiya at all, because she has assumed that the Shahenshah is not capable of finer sentiments. That sentence not only speaks poorly of her assumption, but also very poorly of her judgement of the Shahenshah. She does him a grave injustice by believing him incapable of softer emotions. No one is ever devoid of softer emotions, and only an insensitive boor can believe that another insenstive boor exists in this world. And since Ruqaiaya, we are told, from a very young age, has remained consistent in her "priorities and judgement yardsticks" of anything, we can only assume that she stays locked in a time warp where an emotionally ungrown girl became friends with an emotionally ungrown boy.
I know that from the beginning of this serial Ruqaiaya's character has been steady in its minimalistic expectations of "soft sentiments" from the Shahenshah and maximalistic in its coveting of "audha" in any form. But I must confess I was hoping to see some small change at least in Ruqaiaya after the totally chastening experience of the miscarriage and all that went along with it. Everybody grows from setbacks, but the biggest silliness, if I may call it that, in Ruqaiaya yesterday was that she looks untouched by the whole miscarriage saga and has reverted to her normal mode in lightning quick time ... she is back to being "competitive" and "thrilled with attention" and if she has plenty of these two things, she is one satisfied and upbeat woman. She will ever remain silly, to me, because she will ever remain a "girl" and never let herself become a "woman"! Maybe her shock will come when she realises that her "boy" Jalal has decided its time to become a "man"!
Sillier Chick No. 2 and her paintings stall
Pooor Javeda, I should not be calling her silly at all. Because underneath the silly exterior that this girl puts up, there seems a hint of "inadvertent smartness" in knowing exactly how to nail Mahamanga like no one else can!
Javeda is overtly silly, and her speeches wear thin on me, not to speak of how they completely befuddle Maham herself. Javeda has a highpitched whiny voice that adds to the discomfort of hearing her. And finally she belabours her points to such a degree of silliness that her logic often is lost in the cascade of tripe that leaves her mouth.
That stall she put up of the "rare smiling portraits" of Maham did look rather silly in the larger Meena Bazaar scheme of things. Where other woman were displaying variegated wares, often precious, often lovingly hand-made, and often thoughtfully designed and displayed, Javeda had decided she would just sell the one sure thing, and she would try to sell loads of it. Now how many households in the Mughal Sultanate were yearning to cover their walls at home with a smiling Mahamanga? Maybe Javeda was counting on people obligated enough to buy the paintings or even feeling scared to be seen not buying them.
Eventually they were so embarassing that Maham bought the whole lot herself if only to rid the Meena Bazaar quickly of the stupidity and self-display of Javeda's "intelligence". It was funny how Maham at first thought it must be Ruqaiaya's stall looking at the "bheed" outside it, only to quickly find that her own priceless daughter-in-law was doing a "low-price" sale strategy to outsell competition!
But as they say, sometimes the stupidest people say or do the cleverest things. Javeda came into that category for me today - when she was silly enough to remind Mahamanga that "she too was a miscarriage suspect like Jodha and may decide to return to her maike" and when later she thought "a smiling Mahamanga is an object that has never been seen and may thus be of the rarest value" to the people of this Kingdom.
You know what friends, it was an utter pity that Jalal never visited Javeda's stall, because I would have given anything to just see his reaction to Javeda's wares! I doubt even Jalal has ever seen such an unrelenting display of Maham's smiles, and a lot of his respect for Maham would have vanished, I guarantee you, if he saw so many of Maham's teeth at one sitting!
Silliest Chick No. 3 and her Holi colors stall
Yes the prize goes to Jodha for her unforgiveable "ass-ness" yesterday. Here was Hamida taking the trouble to tell her the value of the Meena Bazaar in the cultural life of the Sultanate. And there was Jodha eventually deciding to participate with Holi colors on display. Having decided thus, where was the need to be the surliest and most disagreeable marketing person on the face of this earth when Jalal visited? He was, from the face of it, her only customer for the whole evening!
Jodha was ungracious, full of self-pride and downright rude to Jalal, when she said there was no need to explain her stall - to him of all insenstive people! In contrast, the Jalal we saw did not wear that usual smirk or sneer, he was all ears as he listened with equanimity even to this display of disaffection and disparagement, and he found he had the depth to counter her vile attacks with polish and patience and politeness.
Jodha did the crassest thing possible by defacing the dupatta of the "white shaanthi ka rang" with the most godawful pink smear she could have found, and she ruined the dupatta before his very eyes. I was at first wondering if there was some thought behind his deliberately buying the white colour for her (and almost expected that Jalal himself would sneer at me for thinking so), but he re-iterated that he had indeed applied mind to it and had bought the "aman ka saphed dupatta", so I can have no counts on which to deem him insensitive. He had clearly come with a peace offering and had made a point to greet and meet her with courtesy and even friendliness. And here, she sounded like a shrew, barking at him, deriding his "taste for fine things" and "lecturing him on the strategic value of colors in one's life" not realising how colourless was her own performance!
One can ask: is Jalal now being nice to Jodha because he knows she is going to leave? But we can also ask the reverse: does Jodha need to be so angry with Jalal, spouting bile at him two days before the date she was supposedly going away from his life forever. Even if it were ceratin she was leaving, could she not have left with more grace as she exited Agra? Could she not have tried not to spoil the beauty of the mela (which she herself was admiring earlier) with such unpleasant behaviour that left a bad taste in everyone's mouth?
It is to Jalal's total credit that:
a. He was unfazed by the barrage of verbal acid and actually remained with his wits and temper intact
b. He was able to show her that she was tasteless, the way she had ruined his gifted dupatta
c. He was still the loftier soul as he bought all her colours to re-gift them to her when he alllowed her to play Holi with her Hindu baandhis the next day
Has Jalal changed? Or is he in the throes of changing? I think the very fact that Jodha is leaving soon has made itself felt in his heart a wee bit, and so he definitely looks a bit softened. But we have to wait and see if he reverts to type when Maham complains to him about Jodha's throwing rang on her and Jodha then decides to jump into the lake to "wake him up", as she says!
I could fill more pages here with what I think of Jodha's rudeness yesterday, and how pleased I was with Jalal's behaviour in response. But I'll stop here. You all get the point, anyway!
The least silly woman and how she sold "dignity"
Salima, by sheer contrast with the other three sillies I have mentioned above, actually showed what dignity and grace was all about. She made the minimum of fuss about her ittar, waited for her customer (the Shahenshah) to compliment its quality and his fondness for it, and she spoke only when she was asked to explain how she knew it was his favorite. And then in one simple unfrilly sentence she said "It's the pleasure of a wife to know all her husband's preferences". In that one sentence, she not only showed her marketing acumen but also silently told him that even if she will always love Bairam Khan more (as he knows too!) she will still value Jalal in his capacity as her husband now! What nice words, what a gentle way to say it, what a nice place to say it all in, accompanied by the merest touch of the finest ittar!
Now to the three mysteries of yesterday's episode:
a. Who told Maham that Jodha was leaving? And will Maham later tell Jalal she got the news from Jodha herself, thus compounding his anger at Jodha and leading to more misunderstandings?
b. What's happening in the background to confirm or not confirm Jodha's leaving? Yesterday's episode was silent on this front, so it gives a sense of "something brewing".
c. What exactly will Jalal's reaction be when Maham complains to him about Jodha "deliberately defacing her white robes with Holi colour". There was a tweet from Zee asking if there would be the first bit of bad blood between Jalal and Maham now (and they showed this picture of Maham with a red face complaining to Jalal) so one got the feeling that maybe Maham would not be able to actually bite Jalal's ears with this Jodha-Holi colour story. But then we also had the suicide SBS segment yesterday showing Jodha reacting badly to Maham's sneaks to Jalal about herself and his subsequent anger with her. So which version do we believe? Maybe both? Maybe Jalal may snub Maham a bit, asking her not to make much of Jodha's playful accident - and he may then also go and berate Jodha for lack of propriety while playing her Holi?
