My very dear friends,
I have not done any posts after this one, either for 93 or 94, the latter mainly because the only aspect about which I have a radically different take from the roseate romanticism flooding the forum over the weekend, would not justify a full post.
In any case, once one decides that all of Jodha's acts of commission and omission are governed solely her hidden pyaar for the Shahehshah, which she is held to be deliberately masking, when with him, with her arrogance and her obtuseness, there is nothing that one cannot explain or explain away. For others, there is not arguing with this approach, for it is a self-fulfilling one.
Unless of course Jodha does an about turn again tonight or the day after, when Jalal, as is very likely, refuses to believer her 'evidence' against Sharifuddin and Adhan (Badiammi is sacrosanct for Jalal, and Jodha, if she has any commonsense, would do well to leave her out of her prosecutor's brief).
To revert, this is, firstly, to thank you all very much for bearing with my vitriolic post of Wednesday night, and for offering so many well thought out comments, almost unanimously endorsing, and almost as vehemently as I had done, my reaction to Jodha's unbelievably harsh and unfeeling words to Jalal in that episode.
I was also very pleased to see a similar, if not quite as unanimous reaction to Jalal's sudden about face, from the restrained but deep bitterness in the scene with Jodha, to the chichorapan of the end, when he was planning to watch Jodha Begum's nritya (his charming, awkward attempts to get the word right were, to me the only saving grace of that segment).
To tell you the truth, I was even more dismayed by the prospect of a Jalal running after Jodha regardless of the way she treated him, than about Jodha's misbehaviour, for I had by them stopped expecting anything much of her. My post on Episode 91 was a sort of last ditch hope, and by the end this episode 92, that hope had died.
Next, to apologise for not responding individually, as I always try to do, to these comments. I was not in for most of the weekend, and then again, it seemed to be too late by then. But I could not let all those comments go unanswered, whence this omnibus response, bringing things up to Fridays 's Episode 94.
So here goes, and those short of time, or patience, or both, can move down to the part marked Episode 94!
Post Episode 92: My state of mind on Thursday morning was perhaps best summed up in what I wrote on Meghana' s thread: I think one can twist oneself into knots trying to explain the Jalal and the Jodha one saw last night, and still get nowhere.She was appalling, and what appalls me even more is the warm approval for her behaviour that seems to be so widespread here, of course with a gentle little caveat to say that it was ok, all that she said, only it should have been said a little more gently. I am sure that even had she stabbed him with a stiletto, there would be explanations that she spared him pain by not hacking at him with a blunt axe.😉
Episode 93 (Thursday): 'I' stands for Inconsistency:
What followed on Thursday was partly dismaying, partly reassuring. To my mind, what the Jodha-Jalal scene is Episode 93 showed is the yoyo tendency among the script writers, leading to a total inconsistency of characterisation for both Jalal and, even more so, for Jodha.
The scene the day before was very unpleasant, but it was in a way mature in its very off putting harshness, like something out of Who is afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Thursday had the two of them doing a Govinda-Karishma Kapoor impersonation.
I was more startled than anything else to see Rajat do a Govinda without any warning, and I, frankly, as an old fuddy duddy of GenPrevious, who feels awkward with double entendres and the like,
did not like it. It could easily have been scripted sensually instead of like a version of sarkaiyo khatiya jaada lage!
I never watched IPKKND but the odd episode, but I can visualise how Arnav Singh Raizada would have wooed a reluctant bride. Not like this, I am sure. Rajat should have been grateful that his dress probably prevented the CVs from demanding that he go whole hog with the Govinda act and do pelvic thrusts as well, horror of horrors!😉
It was not really vulgar, and it was quite funny, but I would definitely have preferred more intelligent if even more aggressive sensuality. And of course Rajat was marvellous, but what is new there? The boy is a perennial source of wonderment to me.
Partly reassuring because, and this came to me as a profound relief, Jalal did not turn into a lovesick poodle, as I had feared, nor did they make him do a Salman Khan in HAHK , with a dupatta over his shahi pagdi! Yes, yes, I know that would never have been an option, but given the shock that Jodha gave me the day before, I have become profoundly distrustful of even these CVs, generally far superior to the run of the mill lot at Balaji.
I was very happy that Jalal was dominating, unsettling, and even,as Vicki put it so well last night, predatory. Anything, even this Govinda act, is better than Jalal as a doormat to be walked over.
This said, the total lack of consistency in Jodha's characterisation was bewildering. Watch her in the kahin bhi jaake mariye, par hamare Amer mein nahin scene, lecturing him on her life and his, and look at her the very day!
They have obviously never heard of either progressive track development or of intelligent romance. It has to be the icebox or the khatiya, it seems, nothing in between. Alas for my hopes of a Jalal-Jodha between whom there is mutual caring and affection developing, slowly but surely...an edgy friendship morphing, insensibly, into love, with all its yearnings, its restlessness, the misunderstandings, the jealousies, the protectiveness and the possessiveness, and beneath it all, the undercurrent of a hidden sensuality.
I suppose I should be grateful if Ekta does not decide to graduate from the Govinda template and borrow scenes from her contemporary horror shows like Kya kool hai hum in future episodes!
Episode 94 (Friday): 'I' stands for Integrity:
The outpouring of relief and joy across the forum, after Jodha's ringing endorsement of the Shahenshah's refusal to hand over the Ratanpur fort, was directly proportional to their residual worries, the Govinda-Karishma stunt notwithstanding, that there would be a reversion of the cold war between them over this issue.
There was a near unanimous attribution of her endorsement of Jalal's stand on the fort to her caring, if not love as yet, for him, and her protectiveness of him, and never mind if neither of these was anywhere in evidence on Wednesday night. She was just keeping them carefully under wraps, you see!😉
As for Jalal, the forum was in ecstasy over his referring to her as apni Jodha Begum.
My own take on this episode is quite different, and if you consider it carefully, you might agree with me that this take is more consistent with Jodha's yoyo like behaviour over the last week.
To my mind, however, nothing of what Jodha - or Jalal for that matter - does in this episode is dependent on the current state of their relationship. It is solely a question of the personal integrity of each of them.
Jalal would have called her apni Jodha Begum in any case, for that is what she is. Remember what he tells Mahaam in that quasi-soliloquy about ek hi kashti mein sawaar? She is his legally wedded wife, and so is entitled to all the public and private respect that goes with that position. As for the possessive adjective, what else would she be but his Jodha Begum? He would not refer to her as if she was some casual outsider.
As for Jodha, she defends Jalal because of her sense of right and wrong is always very clear. She knows that he is a man of his word, and so she backs him by saying that HE did not give this promise. It need have nothing to do with a greater understanding of what it means to be an emperor, as man are happily concluding. In fact I am pretty sure it does not.
As I wrote to Lashy in response to her question on her thread, it is not just a question of Jodha's personal integrity but of her assessment of the Shahenshah's personal integrity as well. She knows that he has kept every promise he ever made to her, even when it was something that went completely against the grain for him. As he never tires of repeating, the Shahenshah's word is patthar ki lakeer. So, it is but natural that she defends him on the promise issue, affirming that if he said he had not given that promise, it meant that he had not. This does not need any new and warm personal feelings for him on her part at all; it is her objective assessment of Jalal's persona.
The only change now is that she does not deny or contradict , as was her habit earlier, whatever good she has learnt about him from his behaviour, and dismiss it by saying "Isme bhi unki koyi chal hogi" As no one can prove a negative, she was home and dry, and did not need to face up to facts at all.
But she now takes it all at face value, that he has been a man of integrity in the matter of Sukanya's marriage as well. The elaborate statement of backup arguments to buttress her affirmation is the same, though in a different context, as the arguments she once offered against the execution of Abdul.
That she perceives and accepts Jalal'a integrity is obviously the cumulative impact of a number of recent happenings: his not having uttered a word of blame to her for the narnaal fiasco, his epiphany at Ajmer which makes her conclude that he too is a man of God, and finally what he did to fulfil her sankalp during the Kali Mandir visit. But still, at the end of the day, it comes round to her faith in his integrity, in being what he appears to be.
Secondly, her stand against the demand for the durg need have nothing to do with anything she feels for Jalal, any more that Pratap's identical reaction has. She thinks such extortionate and improper demands are disgraceful, and that the Dhawalgarh lot have no right to demand as part of the kanyadhan something that does not belong to Amer and is thus not theirs to give, and she says so.
It is another matter that, with her usual disregard for logic, she brushes aside the point repeatedly made by Bhagwan Das, that it is not now a question of whom the fort belongs to, but of a promise made, if not by the Shahenshah, then on his behalf, and thus of the violation of that promise.
There is nothing new in her opposing her own family. She did it even for Abdul, remember? She marches to the sound of her own drummer.
So do both Jalal and Pratap. The latter was superlative on Friday, and Jalal was all Emperor, at long last. His looking at Jodha just before he leaves the assembly, a look that conveys both his inability to do anything else and his regret at that, is his only concession to his personal ties to those involved.
All this said, I am getting to be rather tired of all this parsing every look and every word of this couple in 9 columns, as we used to do in my schooldays in English grammar classes.
This seems, increasingly, to be all the more pointless as the character graphs oscillate wildly from episode to episode, as far as the Jalal-Jodha equations are concerned.
But their sense of personal integrity is a constant. It is like the difference between those grossly misleading promos and a precap. I thus prefer to base myself on this integrity angle to try and explain what each, and especially Jodha, does.
Need for voice-overs in Jodha's solo scenes: Lastly, I agree with Lashy that there is a sad lack of any voice overs showing Jodha arguing with herself or mulling things over, about Jalal and otherwise.
I have long felt the same, and I have written in the past about this absence of such an inner voice, in the solo scenes for Jodha, being a roadblock when the viewers try to understand what makes her tick. The only exception to this was the Green Jodha /Yellow Jodha scene, but that was a one shot affair, never repeated. Jalal has the occasional scene of him ruminating and thinking aloud. Jodha, never, bar that one exception.
This should be rectified, but it will not be. This will be, to my mind, not because the CVs are not sure of themselves. It seems rather to be because they want to keep open the one step forwards, 2 steps backwards option. Otherwise, how will they churn out 500 episodes?
Shyamala
PS: The Dhawalgarh Raja looks like a character out of Ratatouille. There is something very ratlike about his face. don't you agree?😉
Cricket
Arjun
Jhanak
Tum Se Tum Tak
367