Friends, yesterday's episode was a kind of transitional one for me between the romantic high of Tuesday ... and the impending new twist we can expect to blow up in our faces by the end of the week or next week. (I am talking of this new "Jodha pregnancy track" that seems to be in the offing soon.)
In yesterday's episode it looked to me like three key conflict areas got highlighted - one, Ruqaiya's conflict within herself; two, Jodha's conflict within herself; and three, the conflict Jalal faced between the overlapping jurisdictions of religion and politics in his state.
One lovely memory also got re-ignited yesterday - the lost payals story that traced back to the beginnings of the Jalal-Jodha romantic saga.
And two more incidental issues also came to the fore that may have future consequences - Javeda's veiled hints of becoming a source of inside info on Maham, and Jodha's interaction with Sharif that aired the latent enmities.
Finally, I want to give voice to my own perception of this news of the Jodha pregnancy track and where I think it may be a positive to the overall story.
So here goes ...
We were all given to understand via many small bits of dialogue that during the previous night Jodha and Jalal had sat in the garden talking to each other right through the night. What they found so much to talk about beats me, but I can only assume that because they had spent days and months before, doing little other than tana maro-ing, there must have lots of things on both minds that they had been dying to share with each other which they never got around to earlier.
Maybe there was just the sheer loveliness of companionship that made them open up to each other on mundane subjects that in themselves were meaningless, but acquired a value because it was each other they were talking to. Or perhaps a lot of the time was just spent in companiable silence. But the net result was that the all-night sojourn in the garden helped accelerate two separate conflicts in two separate people.
a. Ruq continues to be in personal conflict
When the episode opened we saw a livid Ruqaiaya in the bath, throwing a massive tantrum. The scene was not just one of a woman who felt scorned by Jalal - I thought it showed beautifully the nuances of the conflict that Ruqaiaya herself was facing on deciding what was the more troubling issue for her: her loss of Jalal to Jodha, her loss in no longer being Jalal's confidante, or her loss of control over Jalal's actions and movements.
It was interesting firstly that Jalal came to her, rather than she going to Jalal to demand explanations. So that shows that he knew she would be in a lather and he was prepared to go across and face it, even if he was not going to apologise for what he did. Secondly, from the way he posed his questions he still seemed to probing to see if there were any signs of jealousy in Ruqaiaya. But again today, while there were outward signs of possible jealousy, he was unable to extract from her in words that she was jealous. So the conversation ended with her re-iterating that it was not jealousy from her side, while on his side, he underscored the point strongly to her that he was not going to account for his actions to her come what may.
After Jalal left, Ruqaiya was seen saying: "Its not Jodha, it's the fact that you didn't tell me". This position of Ruqaiaya seems much later re-emphasized in the precap. From the way Jodha speaks to Ruq it looks like Ruq has been "thirsting for information". Ruq seems to have asked to know what transpired between Jodha and Jalal that night. A very perceptive Jodha hits Ruq exactly whereit seems to hurt: "Why are you asking me about my night with Jalal? Doesn't Jalal tell you all this any more? At any rate, please know that whatevver happens between us he would never go against my wishes and he will do only as I ask!". Jodha's tone now looks superior and confident, and she seems to have touched the rawest nerve in Ruq by saying "Does Jalal not confide in you any more?".
Do you all also think (like me) that to Ruq "knowledge is power", and the absence of explanations and confidences from Jalal seems to be the biggest setback to her power-mongering ... more so than his growing relationship with Jodha?
b. Jodha continues to be in denial
Okay, if Ruq exposed her conflicts, so did Jodha. It started when Moti was combing her hair, ostensibly blown out of order by the wind on the night of the long talks with Jalal. Moti gently teases Jodha about the reasons for her having so much coochey-coo with Jalal, when Jodha rounds on her to say: "Don't mistake my intentions. I have not changed towards him. It's just that I am thankful to him for his help to Sukanya, his help on my religious conversion issue etc. etc."
Now why should Jodha be at such pains to try and say she has not changed towards him? It's when people make such knee-jerk responses to innocuous questions that we start to wonder if that's exactly the point they want to cover up!
What is clear though is that ambivalence has Jodha firmly in its grip now. She is attracted to having a better relationship with Jalal sans old angsts, and yet is unable to give up on the "angst position" lest she lose the protection she has built around herself. One interesting fact in her utterances to Moti was that: "Of all the help Jalal has given, the most important is the fact that he did not take advantage of my vulnerability on the storm night and impose himself on me physically. I now trust him".
Now that is a sanket again that the impending "pregnancy story" is going to hit the roof for Jodha. For whatever reason, the Creatives continue to imbue Jodha with this dichotomy about whether she trusts Jalal or not, because it serves the further purpose of the story. So we will all have to live a little longer with this Jodha who shrinks at the mention of physical contact, because it seems the Creatives wish her to be so until the pregnancy story can blow her cover on this inhibition once and for all.
The third conflict: bifurcation of religion and politics in the Sultanate
The last of the conflict issues dealt with yesterday was very interesting to me. I'm not much of a history buff, but I have always found it fascinating to see how kings and emperors - in Europe, England and even in India - have always come to the crossroads when religious power centres in their States have sought to arrogate power to themselves and overstepped lines to enter the political space.
More often than not, we have then found the kings choosing not just to redraw the lines for the religious clerics, but to "divorce religion and politics altogether". (Some kings have gone to the extent of even creating new amenable religions (to neutralise the old powerheads) to and thus establish their own political supremacy over the Church - notably Henry the Eighth when he formed the Church of England in place of the Catholic Church just so that he could divorce and remarry as he wished.)
Jalal yesterday also used the route of breaking apart religion and politics in his Sultanate by saying to the protesting clerics: "You are not the final arbiters of all things political and religious. In fact the political does not subserve the religious. I, as Shahenshah, am the supreme decider of all things political and religious and you are there for me to confer with on matters that pertain to religion. But you cannot have the temerity to usurp political space. As such you are not just over-reaching your religious boundaries, you are traitors of the State for you have planned to gain poliitical clout by inciting public protest behind my back, and tried to bring me down for your own gain. You deserve worse, but I am banishing you to Mecca, all expenses paid, to redeem your souls. Henceforth religion and politics will not mix in this Sultanate."
The scene between Jalal and Jodha in the garden was again very sweet because it touched on Jalal's first Amer trip, which has always been one of my favourite parts of the serial so far. When Jalal saw Jodha in the garden, through the latticed window in his room, it was a lovely moment as he gave a half-smile and was drawn to join her there. When she lost a payal there and he picked it up, and the strains of the Jodha-Jalal Amer music played as he remembered the last time he picked up her payal at Amer, I was on Cloud Nine.
Nostalgia is one of my favourite things in a romance, and I thoroughly enjoyed the way Jalal reminded Jodha of the payal she had lost in Amer on the Gangaur night, near the river where she was floating her lamp. She remembered it too, and realised that he was the "payal chor". But he said "I am no thief, I just picked this one up today and couldn't help remembering the other night far away. And if you ever want that old payal back, you only have to ask me, for I have kept it very safe!" Oh what a lovely thing to say, that he was keeping something that belonged to her very safe with him!
I absolutely loved the reverie, the dialogue, and the way it was all said, and then the way he tossed the new payal back to Moti to put on Jodha's foot as she would not let her "pati" touch her feet. I also liked Moti's teasing smile, as she realised she'd been witness to a very romantic moment between the two! How cute was this whole scene!
Why can't the two of them see that "love" may have been born that night itself when her payal fell off her foot and ended up among his "treasures" to keep safe?
Two other incidentals to watch out for on "longterm consequences"
I thought that scene where Javeeda came to Jiji Anga and Gulbadan was important in the long-term. Javeeda said "Anytime you write a book on Maham you can count on me to reveal a lot of inside info about her. We are inseparable, my mum-in-law and me, like two sides of the same coin". This suggested to me that at some future date, Javeeda could become a valuable "prosecution witness" if ever there were a case against Maham!
The other scene between Jodha and Sharifuddin also seemed to have "long-term impact" written all over it. I was wondering if Jodha should have been rattled so much by a snide Sharif that she let slip that she had spied (in disguise) on him and Adham plotting at Amer against Jalal. That information may look like it had affected Sharif momentarily, but it looked like too much information given away ... the anti-forces would now only harden against Jodha, because she looked like an "active enemy" than a "passive irritant".
Okay, here's my take on this Jodha pregnancy track to come now
I have already done a tiny post yesterday on this, so a lot of you may already know my views on this one. I think I will put the precap of Monday and this pregnancy spoiler together to make my picture clearer. Hamida told Jodha in the precap on Monday that she is going to subject Jodha to an important test. Now what would that be, and why, in the first place, does Hamida need to give Jodha any test at all?
My surmise here is that either Hamida has been talking to Moti, or else she has eked out information from Jodha herself, that she is still unable to shake off her questions about Jalal and that "stormy night". Hamida in all her good intentions to bring Jodha and Jalal together must be realising that while they are sharing bedrooms to keep her happy, they are not exactly sharing a bedroom-life together!
I think therefore that it must be Hamida's idea to plant a "well-meaning lie" into their lives that would expose the gulf between Jalal and Jodha and thus help them heal the breach. In cahoots with Khwaja Sera, Hamida may now get the Khwaja Sera to say that Jodha is pregnant (maybe after giving her something slightly iffy to eat and to vomit). Hamida may also say that this information of the pregnancy must stay within the four of them - herself, Jalal, Jodha and the Khwaja Sera - since the last time there was so much treachery at the mention of a waaris.
Now with this lie, Jodha's doubts o n Jalal are going to get exposed as she accuses him. And if he has had latent "romantic feelings" about Jodha, they too are going to manifest as "jealousies" when he thinks: "How did she get pregnant when I did nothing? Was there someone else?" Either way the pregnancy track can be only positive if it can help both Jodha and Jalal realise that they feel negative about this pregnancy because their negative feelings are caused by other positive feelings inside that they won't admit to.
Another fallout of all this could also be that if this news reaches Ruq's ears, she may betray her anger that her ambitions for the Marium Uz Zamani audha are lost forever and that may make Jalal all the wiser about Ruqaiaya and her real motivations.
(Of course there's also the possibility that either Ruq or Maham - if she has returned by then - could have engineered this whole pregnancy story just to find out what really is the state of the physical relationship bbetween Jodha and Jalal. I thought about this, but I still feel I may be more right in suspecting the Hamida hand in all this, as she expressly talked of a test for Jodha and then that precap never took shape in Wednesday's episode ... so it is hanging above us all as a deliberately planned suspense.)
I think this whole pregnancy track too, like the other incidents in this story, will rush along at a very fast clip, and within maybe a day or two of the news of pregnancy hitting Jodha and Jalal, and their displaying their thoughts and feelings of anger and doubt and confusion, Hamida will call them both, explain what she did and why, and counsel them on the need for genuine trust in relationships! If Hamida does that I think she would also break Jodha's resistance about physical inhibitions regarding Jalal, and help Jalal realise he is more than just attracted to Jodha. After this washout of old positions, a newer Jodha and Jalal may emerge, more readier for a deeper relationship (even if that tantalising suhaag raath is still a reasonable way away!)
Cricket
