Statutory warning: Satire ahead! Proceed at your own risk, and if allergic to having your tongue stuck in your cheek for a while, please jump straightaway to the Dil ki kashmakash section below. No subsequent complaints about bruised sensitivities will be entertained.
Folks,
I am proud and pleased to make an official Shahi announcement on behalf of His Imperial Majesty Jalaluddin Mohammed. His long lost dil, which had been the object of a treasure hunt for the past several years, and the very existence of which had been denied by many, including its presumed owner, has now finally been located.
Not only that, the aforesaid Jalal ka dil has been duly certified to be in perfect working condition by none other than the ex-Amer ki Mirchi, his Jodha Begum of nirdosh praani fame.
This momentous discovery is actually some days old, as it was made by Jodha Begum in Ajmer, when the Shahenshah , inspired by the trancelike absorption of the sufi dervishes, himself joined them to pay obeisance to the Almighty in like fashion. He could not quite manage to do a Hrithik, but that was not to his discredit, as it is something very few can do.
More to the point, Jodha Begum, who had never seen Hrithik in action, was quite satisfied with the Shahenshah in action, and even more so with this unimpeachable evidence of the existence of a dil in the imperial chest cavity.
She was prevented from issuing an immediate press release about this earth shaking revelation by certain unforeseen consequences of her Save nirdosh praanis campaign. She had forgotten to provide for the possibility of khoonkhari praanis, one of which leaped off a tree branch at them, and nearly put paid to both Jalal's jism and jaan, which would naturally have included the precious, rediscovered dil.
But all is well that ends well. We had to endure a couple of nerve-wracking episodes, in which every deity within hearing range of the Agra palace was bombarded with heartfelt petitions, for the Shahenshah's life to be saved, from an assortment of petitioners. To list them all would take up another episode, so I will content myself with listing those who were NOT sending up the aforesaid petitions. These were, in no particular order:
1) Adham Khan, who forgot to instruct his soldiers not to speculate loudly, as soon as they sighted Sharifuddin's lot, as to whether the latter were aware of Adham Khan sahib's saazish. No wonder one of Adham's subsequent brainwaves led to his being defenestrated on Jalal's orders.
2) Sharifuddin, who, having gained Agra on (very thin) paper from Adham, also sent his soldiers to block the Gwalior hakim, with no follow up instructions about cooperating with the Adhamites. End result: a disaster, with the hakim sneaking off to the palace, unnoticed in the melee.
3) Adham's 2 Keystone Kops sidekicks, who did what they usually do: precisely nothing.
4) A clutch of most unroyal looking Rajvanshi types, who had so little faith in their credibility with the Almighty that they did not want to venture a direct approach. Instead, they were planning to endorse the prayers of Jalal's enemies for his early demise.
The Shahenshah does a Lazarus: With such a bunch of jokers plotting against him, and the likes of Jodha Begum and Hamida Banu, both with hotlines to the Almighty, batting in the imperial team, no wonder the Shahenshah came around in a dramatic fashion.
He opened his eyes feebly as soon as the Gwalior hakim trotted into his chamber, sniffed at the bowl of Jodha Begum' s lep (which had been preserved by Mahaam and Ruqaiya as future forensic evidence against her) and declared that
a) he knew of just one other person in the whole wide world who could have made this lifesaving lep because he had taught that person (he obviously did not believe in the guru-shishya, or rather ustad-shagird pratha and thus had no other pupils to whom he might have passed on this unique expertise).
At this point, as the lady in question, with a perfect sense of timing, swam into his view behind the gauze curtain, he exclaimed gladly Begum Jodha! , and praised her in fulsome terms for having been a perfect shagird and having preserved the maan of her ustad by correctly remembering what he had taught her even after all these years.
Hakim Sahib obviously also had a secret memory enhancement dawa, as he could remember not only the name of his beauteous pupil, which was entirely understandable even at his venerable age, but also those of her portly Babasa, with no such inbuilt memory stimulator, and of Sujamal! đ
His ex-shagird blushed becomingly and, not yet having assimilated the adaab of her sasural, folded her hands in a pranam to her former guru.
b) that his attentions were in fact redundant, as the fever was only a symptom of the body healing under the influence of Begum Jodha's lep, and the Shahenshah would be as right as a trivet in no time.
At this point, the Shahenshah, not to be outdone by his Jodha Begum in the matter of timing, opened his eyes, and spotted her unerringly thru the gauze curtain. He then feebly gestured, in excruciating slow mo, towards something that only she could decipher as a desire for water, thus demonstrating the new level of wordless understanding between them . The words, alas for poor Jalal, will soon follow, and in abundance, never fear!đ
To revert, Jodha Begum, in her present capacity as Jalal's hakim in residence, promptly shot this down as forbidden at this point .She thus delivered a neat, metaphorical black eye to the outraged Ruqaiya who, when she tried to contradict Jodha and put her in her place, was shushed by the Gwalior hakim, who backed his shagird forthrightly.
The shagird, her pallu demurely in place as soon as she had sighted her ex-ustad, then departed, fixing her new 24 carat plated halo, conferred on her jointly by the Hakim Sahib and Hamida Banu Begum, firmly in place around her pretty head.
She needed to change at last out of her days old joda, which had seen so much of adventure : the kissa Mohan ka and its aftermath in rain and shine, its wearer being slapped and shoved to the ground by Ruqaiya Begum, and then being seeped in the miasma of her own helpless misery. All things considered, it had borne up amazingly well, but a fresh joda was clearly long overdue, if only to cheer up the viewers, who were by now feeling almost as bedraggled as the dress.
Hare rang mein rangi:We next see Jodha Begum lighting lamps in front of her Kahna, who is now relaxed after an overdose of reproach a little earlier. This was for, inter alia, having got his wires crossed, and responded to his mahaantam bhakt's plea to save the nirdosh praani from the prahaar of the heartless Shahenshah (Jodha had temporarily forgotten about having unearthed his dil just the day before) by kayoing her patidev instead.
She is looking gorgeous, having changed into a rich lehenga and an even richer odhni in, ahem, ahem... green (the yellow stripes in the lehenga don't count). For those of you suffering from temporary amnesia, I will offer a clue, and if that still does not work, I wash my hands of you! Hamein hara rang khas pasand hai. Use pehene rahiye.
Along comes her Ammijaan, with the gift of a copy of the Quran-e-pak, and is mesmerized by the grace with which her paragon of a bahu receives it and, what is more, prays in front of it, hands raised in devotion as she was taught to do by, wonder of wonders, the Shahenshah himself. Hamida Banu is undoubtedly pinching herself real hard, and her face is a study in delighted wonderment at this karishma of the Divine.
She now voices my own deeply held belief that contrary to her earlier assumption, it is now Jodha who is learning things from Jalal.
At this point, Motibai, who has suddenly reappeared after having been AWOL thru the worst crisis her mistress had ever faced, is ready with a brand new soapbox. The last one was lost in the jungle, when a wickedly teasing Jalal was circling Jodha; he stepped on it by mistake, and then Mohan completed the demolition job.
Jodha promptly clambers on to it, and launches into one of her trademark pravachans. This one is not about the Khwaja's holiness or the wanton wickedness of those hunting down nirdosh praanis akaaran (those were for Ajmer). It is a neat distillation of the sarva dharma samabhava of Sant Kabir and Surdas and Rahim (the later version, not this 4 year old).
As the beautiful words roll off her tongue with practiced fluency, and she looks as lovely as a fervent angel, her Ammijaan looks, it at all that were possible, even more dazedly beatific than before, while Motibai is busy keeping her jaw from dropping in shock and astonishment.
But there is more to come. Her bahu rounds off her peroration by describing, with succinct but profound and touching eloquence, the Meerbai-like epiphany that the Shahenshah had undergone at Ajmer. He had then displayed a hitherto unimaginable roop of his, she says, and most important of all, made it evident, beyond any doubt, that he DID have, what else, a dil. Naysayers, she warns, had better back off and vamoose. This is official and irrefutable.
So there we are, folks, dil mil gaya!! Hallelujah!!!
Dil ki kashmakash: It is then that the single most arresting shot sequence of the whole episode comes up. As Hamida Banu, who is over the moon with joy at this unexpected manna from Heaven, gushes that there would now be a new phase in Jalal's life because of Jodha, there is a very curious, and revealing, progression of expressions on Jodha's face, especially in her mrignayan ( doe-like eyes).
First, they freeze over in a kind of shock, for this is an interpretation she had not foreseen. She has been, ever since the terrors of the jungle, so caught up in the shifting present and the frightening future that she has not thought of anything beyond that. Or felt anything beyond that and, now, the tremendous relief that courses through her whole being.
Next, there is a filming over, as she withdraws, in an initial shying away, from the prospect her Ammijaan is confidently predicting. It is perhaps not so much that she rejects it, as that she is confused about what she feels, and unsure about how to react to it.
Finally, there is a mute longing as the beautiful eyes look, not at her ecstatic Ammjaan, but inwards, into the depths of what Jalal would have called her zehen. What is it that she sees that makes her eyes cloud over in doubt? Is it about what she feels now, of what she is afraid that he might not feel in return? This is unknown territory, and she is afraid. Afraid of losing her footing and falling into she knows not what.
As I watched her, I was over the moon, for it did seem as if Kanha might have, for a change, have listened to me, and that at least one of my special wishes might, just might, be coming true. I had written in my The turning of the tide post on Episode 79:
It would do her(Jodha) a lot of good to fall helplessly in love, and have to try and win over the object of her affections. I hope this happens, in the sense that she discovers she is in love with Jalal before he discovers that he is in love with her. It is not impossible, for he will, for quite a while, interpret his soft corner for her as due to the kinship of ek hi kashti mein sawaar hone ki. Let us see!
Let us see, indeed. For now, I can do no better than to borrow these lovely lines for our Jodha:
Le jaayegi kahan ye raah, kahan wo manzilein apni
Anjaane, andekhe raaston se guzar rahi hai zindagi
Ye kashmakash ka silsila, ye ummeedon ke jalte diye
Andheron ko hata kar roshni ki de sehar ae zindagi
Jalal: At episode end, in the precap, he was back in form, as teasing and mischievous as ever, and that made my spirits rise even further.
As Moontide & Preeti have pointed out on my last thread, it is interesting that the first thing Jalal sees when he opens his eyes is the vision of Mohan charging down on him. Not Jodha trying to keep him alive. This is clearly an attempt to blank out her pravachans in the jungle. But she will be back, my poor Jalal, now, for the rest of your life, and even beyond! In fact, she will become even more preachy, as you will now come under the category of 'reformed sinners' needing extra pravachans. You had better take some preventive measures: borrow Kanha's now redundant earplugs, perhaps?
It is not that I have anything against the high romantic, it is just that I prefer Jane Austen to Mills & Boon. So, I was greatly relieved by this indication in the precap that Jalal is not about to be transformed by his near death experience into a lovelorn Majnu, and will be back to his disputatious ways with his Begum Jodha as soon as he is rubaru with her (or as she would put it, sakshatkaar). Now that will be something to look forward to!!
Pot pourri: I would not say that the begums planning a mass suicide is depressing . It might not have the ceremonial splendor of the jauhar pratha among the Rajputs, but it is just as sensible. As women, would any of us choose a life of slavery and degradation over an instant release from such a terrible prospect? This is not cowardice, for what you would be escaping serves no purpose whatsoever for anyone except your captor, who gloats over your helpless misery. It is a commonsense choice.
That the majority of his begums opt for it is proof that they are loyal to Jalal, the man, even if many of them barely know him, and not just to the Shahenshah. I wonder where the rats who were jumping ship went in the end. Probably sneaked back in and joined quietly in the namaz-e-shukrana.
Nor would I mock Ruqaiya for asserting her precedence even in death. She has seen her identity always in that framework, and it is to her credit that she has the pride of her position to buttress her unquestionable love for the Shahenshah, and does not spare even a passing thought to some siyasati chaal that could help salvage something for her out of the wreckage of the Shahenshah's passing. Anyone aspiring to the throne of Agra would have been to glad to buttress his claim by marrying her, given that she is a paternal granddaughter of Babur-e-Azam, and of the pure nasl-e-Timuri.
So, folks, alvida for now, as we await the updated Jodha's first meeting with her ek hi kashti ke humsafar. For a change, andaz bahut hi achche nazar aate hain.
Shyamala B.Cowsik
Anupamaa
Health and Fitness
68