Friends, today's episode seems to have "blown the bugle" on the triangular relationship battle of Ruqaiya, Jalal and Jodha. The epicentre of the quakes that are beginning to be felt all around is Ruqaiya. Her unbearable personal torments are running out of her control. The resultant effect of Ruq's mental strains are then rumbling through the lives of Jodha and Jalal. Today we just saw the beginning of what may be very deeply uncomfortable times to come. Already I saw frayed nerves, troubled emotions, barely-controlled tempers and general unpleasantness spreading through dialogues and situations in which these three characters were involved.
I want to go into a bit of detail on the three protagonists of this "uncomfortable triangle" in just a bit, but there one thing to write about before that: and that's the question of whether Hamida is now deliberately grooming Jodha for the top job as the Marium Uz Zamani.
I also want to do a U-turn on my prediction for the pregnancy issue! The pregnancy issue seems to be now linked from the Jodha birthday issue, to the roaring Jalal -Ruq fight we saw in the precap, to the pregnancy issue. Today's episode seemed to create that path of progress into next week.
So here goes. Let me start at the beginning ...
Is Hamida grooming Jodha for the top job?
The precap a couple of days ago hinted at Hamida having a test ready for Jodha to pass. What that test was became obvious right at the start of the episode. Hamida wanted to see what Jodha's opinion was of how Jalal had handled the traitorous clerics the previous day in the Diwan-E-Khas. Even as Jalal was conducting his discourse there, we saw Jodha in that scene offering her offhand opinions on Jalal to Moti. But this meeting with Hamida was different because here Jodha needed to show seriousness in what she was going to say. Anyway Jodha acquitted herself remarkablly well. She made the point that Jalal's assessment was right, his handling of the issue was right, and his final decisions were right. But he failed to consult with other elders at the sabha which he could and should have. It was lucky that his decision was right, but had his decision been wrong, it would have been more useful to have consulted other elders as an insurance against adverse public opinion! Hamida was thrilled with the answer - and Jodha passed.
But let's look for one moment at what this whole strategy of Hamida was about? It seemed to me that more than just looking at Jodha to be the "love of Jalal's life and his wife" Hamida was looking to groom Jodha into occupying a darjah next only to Jalal in rank, so that she could become his adviser, confidante and go-to-person even in politico-religious and administrative affairs. In a scene long ago, when one of the harem ladies had had an external affair and was pregnant, Jalal almost killed her for treachery, but Hamida intervened to save that women's life saying her "bad bua" would leave Jalal without progeny. At that time Hamida had already seen that Ruqaiya was totally unfit to be Jalal's highest-positioned right-hand in state affairs or even in marital life, because Ruqaiya was actually instigating Jalal to kill the women mercilessly without a care for concepts such as "consequences or mercy or goodwill". It is no surprise then that Hamida is now looking to evaluate Jodha for a future elevation as an able and wise adviser to Jalal.
Till last week I would have doubted if Hamida herself was capable of such deep strategies and forethought, but after I saw her handle the "religious-conversion" issue of Jodha with a bit of deeply planned strategy, I am now sure that Hamida is not doing anything without some definite and big and silent plan. So Jodha's "career" as Marium Uz Zamani and Jalal's right-hand is in the right hands!
The Ruq Effect starts fraying nerves and tempers!
Okay now we come to the main body of the episode today. It was all about this tangled triangle of Ruqaiya, Jajal and Jodha. I want to take each of them separately to analyse them:
1. Ruqaiya and her situation:
Till yesterday we were wondering if Ruqaiya is already very jealous or not because she was in denial to Jalal about it. But today, we saw raw jealousy unleashed from her body language, face, eyes and tongue. She met Jodha in the corridor and on being greeted, directly launched into a frontal attack on Jodha. She asked:"Are you enquiring about how I tolerated Jalal's absence from my room yesterday? His night was earmarked for me. Yet you stole him from me. Its not great shakes if he spends a night here and there with you, but surely you know the difference between meeting him and stealing him from someone else?" Jodha reiterated that it was not she who called Jalal but that he wanted of his own volition to spend time with her. Ruq then began to mock Jodha, her face contorting with jealousy: "You who said so much about hating the sight and touch of Jalal are now desperate to sleep with him since that snowstorm night?" Jodha replied that she had spent more than one night at Amer in the same room with Jalal but added her own barb : "I thought he tells you everything, did he not tell you what we did together?" By now Ruq seemed filled with both curiosity and envy and she said: "You're dying to tell me about it, so go on, what did you both do?" To this Jodha lowered her tone of voice and said" Nothing. We did nothing you are imagining ... because he respects what I want and does not cross boundaries with me! And as for my keeping him chained to me, I have no interest even now in taking him from you!"
Okay, at the end of this discussion (catfight?), Ruq's expression was that of a pressure cooker that had built a head of steam and was waiting to shriek! Three big jolts must have shaken her to the core:
a. If there had been no sleeping between Jalal and Jodha yet, why did Jalal give her the distinct impression that he had already started having physical relations with Jodha? Why did he lie, even if it was a white lie?
b. If Jodha was not still interested in wooing Jalal, it was then clear Jalal was doing the running after Jodha and wanting to spend more time with her! Why was he respecting Jodha and not using and discarding her?
c. If Jodha was still untouched by Jalal the whole premise of Ruq that he would then discard Jodha had to be torn to pieces. Jodha with her stand-offish attitude was still tantalisingly available to Jalal!
Ruq's position is getting increasingly insecure because she is losing Jalal per se, and not necessarily losing Jalal to Jodha. It is becoming of no use to shout at Jodha, when the real break in the cozy arrangement of the past is happpening by Jalal's changing priorities and not by Jodha's manipulations!
2. Jodha and her situation:
Jodha, as we all already know is only now getting slightly comfortablle allowing Jalal closer into her private space. She has gone from deep hatred of him to slowly understanding him better and just about one or two days ago, the first harmonious meeting of minds has taken place. She is unready for any physical relationship with Jalal as yet, and this had been her consistent position for quite a while. She has not only set this as her benchmark for herself, but also been open about it and got Jalal's unconditional consent to this request.
Now suddenly, barely one day after she had an innocent tete-a-tete with Jalal, all hell is breaking loose from a jealous first wife. Jodha is perfectly within her rights to say: "Okay, when I am barely learning to tolerate him and make room for him in my life, complex as he is, I don't need this additional nuisance of his other wife screeching at my doorstep, calling me a husband-stealer or insinuating that I am desperate now to sleep with him. I don't need this mess in my life, thank you, so if it means that I have to shun him, I'll do that ... because if I encourage him to come and visit me, the atmosphere is getting vitiated by her, and I am becoming the scapegoat of their changing equations with each other!" I am not surprised therefore that Jodha was brusque with Jalal today. She did not want to be party to any bad blood between him and Ruq, spilling over into her life.
Jodha has also been a person who consistently has valued the way she is treated, and she demands respect (which to me sounds like a good thing). So when Jalal today summoned her to the games room to spend time with him, she feigned tiredness and sleep and refused his offer. He came himself to press the point that it was her duty to obey him, but she asked his if that was not different from the way a daasi is treated. He looked away knowing he too had overstepped the line. Then when she talked of how he should instead call Ruq to the games room for entertainment, his eyes narrowed as he realised that Ruq had had a catfight with Jodha. He wanted to know what Ruq and Jodha had talked about but Jodha wouldn't say. All she said was: "I don't want her to think I am stealing what is hers", to which he said with force and a sense of fairness: "No one can take away what is hers!" Jodha rounded on him then and said "It would be good if you could reassure her about that. For she seems insecure". He then of course changed the subject and l'll deal with his angle in the next section.
But the net result of the Jodha position seems to be "I am not playing this game with the two of you. Leave me out of it! I am not ready for you,Jalal, and I am even less ready for her!" Jodha's problem now seems to be about extricating herself from the mess that Ruqaiya is trying to create. Jodha is not an active adversary and nor is she doing anything to make her ownn life with jalal better. She is simply aloof, but the fracas is threatening to suck her in.
3. Jalal and his situation:
Jalal's positon as the sandwich filling between the two wives in not enviable. But putting aside how Ruq is behaving and how Jodha is behaving, Jalal today seemed more in a dismissive mood about the Ruq-Jodha equation and more preoccupied by his own priorities. His one single priority that I saw him repeatedly trying to achieve today was to spend more and more time with Jodha.
First he tried to call Jodha to the games room to be able to be with her alone. Whe she refused to go to him, he came to her. He then heard all the Ruq story from her, but very soon changed the subject back to :"Anyways, let Ruq be, now if I call you for a game, will you come or not?" She said "No I won't, and if that means you want to punish me for insubordination, feel free. Only choose a punishment I'd be ready to do!".
And what did he choose? He asked her to sing (for God's sake what kind of punishment was that?) The man's besotted annd wants to spend as much time as possible lingering in Jodha's room. He sat mesmerised through the song. He then bestowed admiration on her by saying "You are no ordinary begum, you are a Hunar Ki Mallika" and left the room.
The very next morning he was back in her room - ostensibly to find the dagger he'd left behind. Couldn't he have sent someone for it? It looked suspiciously like he was feeling compelled to keep creating reasons to come back to see her! Then after he'd retrieved the dagger and quipped about her being another sharp knife in the room, he stayed back to comment on her reading habit. He praised her love of reading and she said it was the Gita. And lo and behold, he then offered to personally teach her more of the Shah Nama. By now as we have all seen, she herself was getting frayed and churlish. She said she wanted to be under no obligation and would teach him the Gita in return. With that "teaching date" sort of in the pipeline, he finally went.
Now I suspect that after Rahim has told him about Jodha's birthday needing to be kept secret, he is going to carry that gleam in his eye till evening, when he will no doubt again try to visit Jodha's rooms, offer a gift and stay back for mitthais and tea? The man is feeling compulsively attracted to spend time with Jodha. Neither Ruq's jealousy and ramblings, nor Jodha's churlish rebuffing is making any dent on him at all. Alll he seems to be wanting to do is to:
a. Do as he wishes with no one telling him what to do with whom or when
b. Go to Jodha under some pretext as often as possible and try to inveigle time with her
c. Not accept her refusals as an answer even if he has to punish her (with mock-punishments)
Jalal's position seems to be to stay as undisturbed by the turbulence caused by Ruq and to pursue Jodha to his liking. He is not exactly in denial of the Ruq problem. He wants to solve that too. In fact, that could be one reason why he has been pressing Ruq all of last week to admit she was jealous, because he may be under the idea that to get it out of Ruq and to defuse the crisis early would give him more peace to pursue Jodha - rather than let Ruq reach boiling point and spoil his plans for Jodha.
Jodha's birthday, the precap and the pregnancy!
Okay let me end with a very short prediction for what may come next. I had yesterday thought Hamida's test would be the "fake pregnancy", but I now see that it was a bad guess,. After today''s epsiode I feel this is where things may head:
a. Jalal will go to Jodha's room for her birthday and overstay there and thus get late to reach Ruq.
b. The precap scene may happen where Ruq boils over that he is late, and when he says "What's the problem in waiting for me, I have waited for you often", she then shouts back: "I have an audha and it includes care of the harem issues on which I may have been busy and my audha also means your audha. So my being late is not a diminishing of you! But what you have done is to crush my audha to bits ...". If Jalal has brains he will get very alert to all this "audha business' and start feeling uncomfortable with Ruq's misplaced audha-priorities! And her temper at him won't help keep their relationship going for long either.
c. Ruq, then may plan this "fake Jodha pregnancy" in cahoots with the Khwaja Sera knowing that nothing really happened on the snowstorm night. She may think Jodha will suspect Jalal of crossing the line that night, while Jalal will suspect Jodha of adultery.
Sports
