I didn't at first know what to feel ... I didn't like the way the love letter track was thus being confused with the Tansen track! I was thinking "Oh no, not again! Here we go expecting love between Jodha and Jalal, and instead we are getting the Agra contextual story back again via the Tansen track". In fact as events unfolded, it looked like the Tansen entry was the main centrepiece of today's episode and the love letter itself seemed relegated to making its full impact felt only on Monday!
But then when Maham started that self-talk today that she had planned this Tansen entry just so that Jodha and Jalal would get inextricably intertwined with each other, thus causing big rumblings between Jalal, Jodha and Ruqaiaya, I suddenly got the picture of what the Creatives may be trying to do. Further my suspicions got even more confirmed when I saw what kind of an eccentric, irreverent artiste this Tansen was and how he was so disdainful about the Agra court. He in fact started out his Agra visit today with a forthright dismissal of the Agra atmosphere and soil declaring both as "not too good"!
Folks, I think the Creatives are bringing in Tansen with two big ideas in mind:
One, Tansen's music is going to be used by the Creatives as the force that brings the minds and hearts of Jodha and Jalal together. As Shakespeare puts it "If music be the food of love, play on!" Already today there was a beautiful garden scene between Jodha and Jalal, where Jodha was saying she didn't think Jalal was the "music type" of person and the idea of bringing Tansen to Agra couldn't have been his! To which Jalal replies that he has heard and enjoyed the musical rhythms of the pounding hooves of his horses in war, and in the clash of sword blades! (I thought that was sensational, and so did Jodha!) And of course, she in turn goes into a full five-minute poetic eloquence about how music is as limitless as the countless beauties of Nature (I can't remember half of that list!) and he looks mesmerised. Both Jodha and Jalal seemed to click at both the mental and heart level with music as the entwining foil ... so that seems to be one of the objectives of the Creatives in bringing Tansen andhis music into the picture now as the "catalyst of love".
Two, here's another big point. I think Tansen has been brought in as a counter-force to Mahamanga. Maham and Tansen seem to be diametrically opposite personalities. Just as Maham is an ace plotter and saazishist and a totally political specimen, Tansen is shown as totally contemptuous and scornful of all forms of court games and politics! Thus I think that every time Maham thickens the air at Agra with her evil plots and plans, and tries to enmesh Jodha and Jalal in her strategems, this Tansen is going to be shown as the person who systematically unravels the strands of Maham's plots and plans by injecting into the air his eccentricity and his notes of lyrical and musical beauty. His irreverence will be shown as checkmating Maham, while his music will be shown, perhaps, as the thing that transports Jodha and Jalal away from the nastiness of evil minds into the realms of heartfelt beauty. It's probably going to be a sort of "political games shattered by poetic strains of pure music" kind of storyline. The epic love of Jodha and Jalal may probably be shown as rising above the dirtiness of the Agra cauldron into higher and subtler realms of the spirit and the heart thanks to a maverick and moving artiste!
(I previously thought that Hamida may be used as the counter-force to Maham, and her benign but loving personality would help Jalal and Jodha discover what real love is. But instead, I love the idea that the Creatives may have found the more colourful and flamboyant Tansen to bring about that clash of personalities with Maham and her wiles ).
Don't know how many of you see it the way I do? If I am right, we may have loads of fun seeing Maham and Tansen trying to neutralize each other's influence.
Okay, now on a more immediate note, let's wait for the concert and the "night" between Jodha and Jalal ... because I think this "night" is going to be hilarious! That sheepish look on Jalal's face in the precap, anticipating that Jodha is waiting eagerly for him, made me laugh. I think he's in for it, but I also think Jodha's in for it, because he is going to come on heavily at her! Let's enjoy this scene when it happens!
Meanwhile, there's one more thing to say ... as I expected Jalal has blundered majorly by putting Adham and Sharif into the same jail cell! OMG, what do have here now! Adham admitted he was here for his misdeeds, but Sharif seemed to say that he's plotted to be captured just so that he can get back into Agra and can get at Jalal better from here! Both seemed in sync on their common agenda: to separate Jodha and Jalal for their own individual reasons! I am waiting to see when Maham will join this "jashn in the cell"! I won't be surprised if suddenly we see a mashaal-holding Maham sneaking into the cell in the dead of some night soon with an "idea" of how these two gaddaris can work together against Jalal!
Maham and the letter twist: she has started the Jodha-Jalal romance!
In the opening scene of the episode, Jodha is in her room, ruminating about the strangeness of love, especially the kind that Bakshi Bano seems to have for Sharif. Moti then asks her if she managed to talk to Jalal, but Jodha said though she had met him she didn't quite get the opportunity to tell him what was on her mind. She then asked Moti to fetch pen and paper to put into a paigam all her gratitude to Jalal for solving the Tasneem issue.
Poor Jodha, all she wrote was a simple letter that conveyed thanks to Jalal for the concern and adroitness with which he had handled the new law and the Adham case. As letters go, I thought Jodha could have injected more feeling into it, but hey, she thought what she had written was heartfelt, and so the letter went with Moti to Jalal. There in Jalal's room, Maham was visiting, and they were discussing how both Adham and Sharif had turned out to be such bad eggs, when Moti arrived with the letter. Naturally Jalal's first reaction was "Why is Jodha writing a letter to me when she's just in the next room?". But then he wanted to know what was in the letter and since Maham was to hand he asked her to read it to him, as he couldn't read himself! Maham acted a bit shy at first to read a wife's letter to her husband, but in her mind wheels were turning. Here was an opportunity to make something more of this letter than its contents covered!
I have never felt worse that my dear Jalal was such an illiterate person! Maham not only read out the contents of the letter but then went on to add such frills to it, that if I were Jalal I would have become instantly suspicious, for it didn't sound one bit like the writings of the Jodha he knew! According to Maham, Jodha had added the words "I love you ardently. I want to now be the kind of wife to you that you always wanted - as you too want to be the kind of husband I wanted. So please come over to my rooms tomorrow night so that I can become completely yours!". Oh my God! Did Jalal really believe that Jodha could write such stuff? I can only think that Jalal was so wanting to believe Jodha wrote it, that he believed every word of it!
Anyway Maham then offered her congratulations to Jalal that he had managed to bring his recalcitrant wife to such quivers, and Jalal looked as sheepish as a schoolboy caught out in his first crush. But just for a moment I though he had some small doubts, when he asked Maham "How come you're so happy for me when your son Adham is in jail?" Maham quickly recovered from that sharp question by saying "You too are my son, and so I am happy for you!"
Later, the next day, when Jodha and Jalal met in the garden anticipating the music concert from Tansen, it was absolutely funny when Jodha said "I can't wait for tonight" meaning the concert ... and Jalal kept looking at the ground before answering "Me too!". Further in the precap, Maham is seen priming Jalal for the "night" even more, saying "Jodha seems all ready for you, so don't make her wait!" Thanks to Maham now I cannot wait!
The beauty of this whole letter exaggeration by Maham is not that she has just tried to create a rift between Jodha and Ruq by giving Jalal enticements to get romantic with Jodha ... but this is now a Pandora's box situation she has created. Even if Jodha spurns Jalal and tells him that she never wrote all that in the letter, Maham has opened up up "romantic thoughts" between them. Each will now be very sensitive to whether the other one is showing any romantic tendencies. Both will realise that you can't put the "romantic genie" back in the bottle, so to speak. So inadvertenly Maham may have played reverse-Cupid of the best kind!
(Sorry the Pandora's Box analogy suddenly became the Genie in the Bottle!)
The eccentric Tansen makes an entry: to clean the "Agra soil and air"?
I liked the way the entry of Tansen was introduced to us via the Akbar Ka Makabra scene where Akbar is telling Jodha about how this was the moment in time when Tansen arrived to fill their lives with his magic and his music. That scene seemed to set the tone that the music of Tansen was indeed going to be a "love catalyst" of some sort for Jodha and Jalal.
Maham was in a later scene shown as the ideator and organiser of this whole Tansen entry. Although she did it to suit her own evil plans, everybody at the Palace seemed all agog awaiting the arrival of this great renowned Hindu singer Ramtanu Pandey from the Gwalior court of Raja Man Singh Tomar. Jalal was thrilled to bits to hear of Maham's plans to bring Ramtanu Pandey to Agra, as was Hamida, Gulbadan and the rest of the ladies gang. Jodha too was excited as she had heard nothing but great things of this great singer. I suppose Maham's plan in all this was to ensure that the musical concert in the evening would enhance the romantic mood between Jodha and Jalal so that the "night" would be a sure thing, and thus Ruq could be turned into a simmering foe.
Unsuspecting of all this, the great Ramtanu Pandey got permission from Raja Man Singh Tomar to visit Agra, and it was not his intention to stay beyond the one night of the concert for he stated openly that he intended to go back. History however tells us that stayed on to become Tansen, one of the famed Navaratnas of Akbar's court.
Even as Tansen entered the Agra Palace, Atga was seen receiving him, but seeing a peacock in the garden, Tansen was inspired to start playing his veena, whereupon the peacock started dancing, with its feathers all fanned out - this famous anecdote comes straight out of history, I guess? Then after that stint of very moving music, Tansen proceeded towards Jalal's sabha, but complaining about the soil of Agra being unfit for his shoes. It seemed to be a sanket that he thought things were not kosher at the Agra Palace!
Upon entering Jalal's Diwan-e-Khas, Tansen began showing the extent of his eccentricity, which seemed actually to amuse Jalal. He first admonished a lesser singer that he didn't know which raag to sing at which time of day! Then he exchanged tongue-in-cheek greetings with Jalal, and Jalal told him to rest in his special rooms till the evening jashn, but the singer looked a little uncomfortable. Jalal then asked him if he didn't like the Agra air. Tansen replied that Jalal was very astute and read people's minds. All this seemed to me to imply that Tansen's role was going to be more than just that of a court entertainer. He was going to help clean the "air and soil of Agra" if he could help it! This is what leads me to the assumption that he is going to act as a counter-force to Maham, foiling her machinations with his seemingly eccentric but actually very sharp mind - and with the uplifting purity of his music as well.
I want to wait and see what is now going to happen to the love between Jodha and Jalal. I know this "night" of mistaken intentions will be more fun than love, but if I were to assess the larger pattern that the Creatives seem to be following, I get the impression that this "epic love" is going to first grow from a "meeting of minds" into a "meeting of hearts" and then only to a "meeting of bodies". I think we are still in between the first and second stages i.e. meeting of minds has just happened after Jalal's birthday and the Adham issue - and now Maham via this "love letter" exaggeration has just about opened the pathway for the meeting of hearts to begin in some small measure. That's my guess about where we are in this whole saga. I want to know what everybody else thinks ...?
Udne Ki Aasha
912