Friends, after this Friday episode I notice a lot of confusion in all quarters on the Forum. I too was all thoroughly confused because the episode looked like the old Jalal had reverted, the Ruq equation with Jalal was back at its strongest, and the Jalal-Jodha fights had re-started ...
... that was till I saw the episode about three times. Eventually I saw some clear patterns emerge that told me an entirely different story, and so I want to share these inisghts I got with you all, to see if it makes sense to you also.
Here are my thoughts (please do feel free to differ from them!)
I am focussing my analysis on Jalal in this post because he showed two clear trends of behaviour today that gave me clues as to what he may be up to. Although he first had an interaction with Ruqaiaya, I am going to focus on his talk with Jodha first because I think it has a bearing on all the other talks he had with Ruqaiya!
The Jalal-Jodha situation:
I am now firmly of the opinion that after the suicide attempt and the subsequent trip to Ajmer, Jalal has dropped all his anti-sentiment against Jodha and now sees her follies with a very kindly and comfortable eye than ever before. She is the same Jodha more or less as before, with a lot less conviction in her "ghrna" and a greater readiness to see good in him. But outwardly she still is prickly and self-righteous to a fault.
Since his "same boat lonely hearts" speech, however, Jalal has changed a lot more than Jodha has. Further he has had subsequent lighter and comfortable moments with her on the Ajmer trip, and he must also be remembering moments of how she tried to help him in the forest after the tiger bites. And then he has also obviously been hearing about how she has admitted the bullet-issue openly to everyone in Agra and then made that life-saving lep to save his life and thus make amends. Jalal has had many good reasons by now to start seeing Jodha in an entirelly different and kinder light. He is not yet ready to give a name to his feelings for her, but he at least knows that its not a dull, platonic type of connection, it's a connnection with some buzz about it - and he realises that he enjoys her company, especially relishing every opportunity to rile her up, as he knows now that she gets wound up so easily! Moreover, she is guilty annd vulnerable about the bullets issue, and so she is easy prey for his mischievous baiting!
Where earlier he used to find her barbs hurtful, or arrogant or even full of genuine "ghrna", he now finds that maybe she too is upholding an artificial "ghrna" that seems to lost some of its teeth. He has saved her life twice, annd he knows she is fair enough to be beholden to him for this. He has realised he can now safely amuse himself with Jodha's "self-righteousness, Ameri pride, stuffy sentences of advice, ready repartee and her sense of what is appropriate or not", without her getting all heated up or contemplating dire enmity (or even desperate reactions like suicide).
He no longer resents her ... in fact he finds excitement in sparring with her "sharp eyes, her hasty tongue or her razor-sharp words". He finds these to be interesting to play with, to toy with. He is therefore licking his chops and relishing the prospect of the Amer trip when he can get that close proximity with her again after Ajmer, plus his wounded condition can provide many opportunities for him to tease her to care and cook for him at Amer, and he can generally amuse himself by pushing and prodding her in private and in public where she will find it difficult to demur.
Jalal has therefore decided that the trip to Amer, officiating as the major couple in all the wedding ceremonies, is going to put him in a deliciously close position with Jodha - where like a cat playing with a ball of wool, he is going to enjoy entangling her in his web of words, prods, pokes and deliberate teasing. Not for anything in the world would he want to miss out on the Amer trip.
OK, now that he has decided to go to Amer therefore, he is also being the typical Jalal he was even at his own wedding. When he had decided to marry Jodha at all costs (I still think it was because of a deep attraction to her but an attraction he was in denial about) he always found it easy to suppress the objections of Maham, Sharif, Adham and any of his clansmen by using the "political decisions" argument.
How many times did he do that during his own wedding, getting his people to excuse every one of Jodha's antics and sharths, always turning to the tried and trusted formula that he was doing this for the "political gains to be had and the wafaadari of the Rajputs to be had"? That same tactic is now out of Jalal's cupboard of tricks again - and with Maham, Ruq, and everybody else who has an objection to the Amer trip, Jalal is playing his "politics is the key" card with as much success as before. If people push him too hard on the point, he then just turns around and says "That's my final decision!" (exactly as he used to do during his own wedding) and that ends the objections. It happened again like that today with Maham!
This is my reading of where Jalal is at with regard to Jodha, and what he was trying to do with Jodha today! He is flirting, he is enjoying the playful game of non-serious cat-and-mouse - and if you all notice one important thing, you'll know why Jalal is enjoying it all so much. Earlier Jodha was constantly trapping him into reactions, with her "first moves" of enmity against him. Today there was a huge difference in their dynamic. He was the man on top, and she was barely catching up with the speed of his mischievous sentences. Jalal has manouevred himself into position he is going to enjoy in this relationship! The first phase was hers, this next one is going to be his!
The Jalal-Ruq equation:
This relationship has entered a very difficult phase for Ruqaiaya because it looks like Jalal has decided he wants to pursue a relationship with Jodha (whatever that relationship may be) but he is not sure now of what Ruqaiya's reactions may be to any kind of relationship he many have with Jodha. Jala is therefore on a private mission to try and guage Ruquaiya's reactions to his potential relationship with Jodha.
Till now he had Ruqaiya believing, as he did, that Jodha hated him, he hated Jodha, he had no heart, he was incapable of falling for any woman, and Ruqaiaya would always be his Number 1. Now Jalal himself is questioning every one of these givens, in the light of his new interest to start some kind of relationship with Jodha, whatever form that may take. Maybe Jalal still feels he has has no heart and is thereore not in any danger oof reallky fallling for Jodha. Nevertheless he does seem keen to having some kind of starter relationship with Jodha, and he is unsure of hoow Ruqaiya may react to any form of connection he may form with Jodha. How possessive is Ruqaiaya, and how far will she let him go, if at all, with Jodha, is what he wants to know.
Jalal is also subtly beginning to question the exact power that Ruqaiya has over him and that could also be because he is now assessing a potential for relationship with Jodha, and it would make things awkward for him if Ruqaiya exerts power over whom he should or should not befriend. Normallly in a polygamous relationship like the Mughal situation, it would seem that the emperoro needs no one's permission to be with anyone else, and these things are common in a harem where he can choose to be with any woman. But the Jalal-Ruq equation so far has been different. He has allowed her to rule the harem, and she has been more of a close friend than a wife, and thus tacitly she has assumed a control of what he does annd with whom. She may not have the ppower to object, but she sure has the power to sulk or protest or insist he change his ways! That much leeway he himself has given her!
We all remember that dialogue of Salima to Jodha when she first toold Jodha how Ruqaiya and Jalal had entered into a nikaah at a very young age and from then on "Ruqiaya has developed the art of "haq jathao-fying" on Jalal, and Jalal too had falling into the "aadath" of allowing her to have her way. Today again we saw Ruqaiaya not only questioning Jalal as to why he is going to Amer but we saw her end that interaction by saying: "I don't want you to go, and I will not let you!". My God, if ever there was some evidence of haq jataho-fying, that was surely it! But hear what Jalal then said to himself after Ruq pranced away ... he said: "Apne haq jathake meri haq cheen rahi hai". In a direct dismissal of Ruq's orders, he then agrees on the Amer trip to Bharmal. So here we have a Jalal at last who has begun to slightly resent the way his own rights are being usurped by Ruq exerting her rights over him! Ruq lost a fair bit of ground with Jalal in that altercation!
Then came the scene with Ruq (after she had been told by Maham that Jalal had gone against her wishes and agreed to the Amer trip) when she seeks out Jalal again. It was interesting to note that Jalal was actually admiring the sunset (long the hallmark of new lovers!) when Ruq comes to him, and his first remark to her is about how the sun is settting. (Jyoti would be proud of me noticing the sunset as a symbolism of the sunset of the Jalal-Ruq relationship!).
Ruq asks him again why he needs to go to Amer when he is a far higher emperor protocol-wise. The answer to that could have again been a political one relating to kingly protocol for that was the question asked. So why did Jalal launch into the personal issue of having fallen in love with Jodha? The question was different, the answer was from another angle altogether. He then went on with at least four or five sentences of how he had fallen for Jodha, she had got under his skin, he could not stop thinking about here etc etc.
He then took one long moment to really study Ruq's face, and then he released her tension by saying "For the first time I have seen what the creases on your forehead looked like", and then he said it was all a joke! Again he couched his reasons for the Amer trip in "politicalese" and talked about "keeping Rajput heads bowed" and seemed to have found a way to satisfy her. She was also clever enough to not press the point except to tell him "You really had me scared there!" - a point he keenly noted. Then she talked of his safety and he reassured her on that point.
But that was not all. He then asked her if she was also not going to Amer, again waiting for her reply. When she said she couldn't go to Jodha's maike, she added "... and you know why I can't!" and she walked away. He turned back to the camera then with the look in his eyes that said he had got his answers for the moment.
He had all evening been trying to see what would Ruq's reactions be if he were to pursue a relationship with Jodha as he wanted to (maybe even just a friendship of some small depth) but he wanted to be careful that he had done a pre-test of Ruq's likely reactions before he let himself go further with Jodha. By pretending a joke, he gave Ruq a sharp "reality check" before letting her off the hook.
With Ruq he had two things he wanted going forward: on the one hand he was also keen to be able to exert his rights in situations where he did not want Ruq butting in (like going to Jodha's maike) and on the other hand, he wanted to see what Ruq would feel or do if he should start a liking for or even a slightly deeper friendship with Jodha.
I think Jalal got some measure of both situations today. He came to know a little more about what life in the next teasing phase of relationhip with Jodha would be like, and what Ruq's behaviour would be should he pursue the course he wanted to follow now. Now he needs to hone his strategy to pursue the one wife with a tactful handling of the other wife!
I can only say one thing now: Jalal is one astute guy, extremely street-smart, even if uneducated formally. He is one hell of a people-manager, and he is readying himself to play, it seems, the classic game of "expectation-management" with both his wives - in a way I can appplaud.
Arjun
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