Jodha Akbar 130: Heartbreak Road

Folks,

I know that fully 99% of you must be still in a daze from the sustained and effortless sensuality of tonight's episode. And that you are not likely to come out of it till at least 7:59 pm torrow, when the boom is lowered and there is a strange tinkling noise that startles you.

That will be the sound of Jalal's heart breaking.

Same to same:What haunted me tonight was not anything in the body of the episode - not even the somewhat awkward take off that iconic love scene in Mughal-e-Azam, with Anarkali stretched out and covered with flowers dropping from the tree above her, while Salim, seated next to her, caresses her face delicately with a white plume, and Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan's sonorous voice, singing a nishi raga, weaves patterns of sound that echo through the night and eddy around the couple.

The nakal is, as they say in Mumbai lingo, "same to same".

Instead of the majestic Bade Ghulam Ali, immersed in his nightlong sur sadhana and impervious to the presence of the lovers, there is the peevish Tansen-to-be, galvanized into performing after having his ribs grazed , and his impertinence knocked out of him, by the Shahenshah's khanjar. Jalal brought me to my feet in applause as he put the arrogant singer in his place with a single, dead accurate throw of his knife, and brought back, if only fleetingly, the imperious Shahenshah we knew and loved, and now miss so much.

There is a peacock feather, possibly an oblique tribute to Kanha, instead of the white plume. And Jodha too is stretched out full length, and Jalal does a Salim with the peacock feather.

But, true to Ekta's less than delicate tastes, the fragrant garden of Salim and Anarkali is replaced by the ubiquitous hamaam (can we never be free of these endless hamaam scenes?), and Jodha is dangerously close to the water. I am sure poor Paridhi's mind must have been more on the risk of her toppling over than on gazing back into Rajat's bedroom eyes! 😉

The director seems to have cottoned on to the fact that Rajat's abs are not meant for public display, whence the discreet scarf draped around Jalal's torso. Clever. But his eyes more than make up (to his deewaanis here and elsewhere, that is) for the absence of an abs show. They are lambent with hidden emotions, dark and inviting, as come hither as he can be in a 8 pm show.

Paridhi makes a brave attempt to match him, and does quite well both then and later, for all that the script and the camera angles do not give her much scope for anything but looking shy and lovelorn at the same time.

The chemistry :The alternation of the singing and Jalal's fantasy love scenes with Jodha, again borrowed from Mughal-e-Azam, comes off perfectly. And if the languorous, muted passion of Salim and Anarkali is here replaced by more conventional romance, complete with Jodha's lajana sharmana, Jalal and Jodha do make a remarkably handsome couple. Knowing that this is not the real thing, and that Jalal is going to have a rude awakening , does colour one's reaction to their imaginary love scenes, but if one can stand aside from that knowledge and view them dispassionately, they do splendidly together.

In terms of performance, there was practically no awkwardness on Paridhi's part, which was a pleasant surprise, and bodes well for their real love scenes to come. As for Rajat, as they used to say of the great Kamalahaasan, he could romance a wooden chair convincingly, and here he has a beautiful co-star. So he pulls out all the stops, and the wattage is so high that I am sure in households across India and abroad, the demand for smelling salts must have gone thru the roof at 8:20 pm! 😉

Comic panache:Then there was that wonderful scene between a thoroughly sozzled Jalal, wobbly on his feet after endless goblets of wine and drunk on the music as well, and a Mahaam bent on ensuring that he does not collapse into his own bed, as he seems intent on doing despite all those supercharged fantasies. Jalal's expressions, as he struggles to focus on what his Badiammi is saying to him, are to die for. The eyes widened and fastened on her face with an obvious effort, the head nodding in exaggerated agreement, the sweet, unfocussed smile at the end as he totters off towards (where he thinks) Jodha's hoojra would be - it was impeccable, like a tutorial in comic timing.

The high water mark:But in the end, what stayed with me was none of the above, immensely appealing though it all was. It was a couple of shots in the precap.

As Jodha's hand closes over his from behind, Jalal's face registers a kind of startled, frozen expression of suspended disbelief. He cannot quite take in that this is actually happening to him. Then he turns and there is his ravishing Begum Jodha, lovelier than ever before, with her hair loose (and blessedly free of her regular cartload of clinking jewellery). He looks then, not like a Shahenshah in love, but like a little boy who has unexpectedly got the gift that he had long yearned for. There is, in his eyes, a wonderment at his good fortune, a childlike delight. As he seeks reassurance from Jodha that this is indeed true, the husky voice is thickened by emotion, and when she answers Yes, Shahenshah, his eyes gleam with pure joy.

It was a mesmerizing performance, and the one thought that came to my mind was this:When this boy gets into films, there will be no holding him. He will chew up both the scenery and the competition.

Heartbreak ahead:This brings me to what haunted me. It was the realization of the vertiginous fall that awaits Jalal tomorrow. For the higher his heart soared today in imaginary bliss, the greater the depth of the hurt and the heartbreak that will follow, as surely as the night follows the day.

For this is not the haughty Salim of Mughal-e-Azam,who never abandons his imperial pride and condescension even in his obsessive passion for Anarkali, who never stoops even in love. This is a vulnerable Jalal, bewildered by hitherto unfamiliar emotions, by a tug at his heartstrings that he has never known before. There is here no proud Shahenshah, only a young man in love, overflowing with a happiness that he does not hesitate to reveal to his beloved. There is no pride, no male ego, only joyful gratitude for her reciprocating, as he sees it, what he feels for her.

Tomorrow is going to be terrible for this Jalal, aur uske bare mein soch kar hi dil ghabrata hai.

Ancillary tripe:The rest does not count, whether it was the entirely pointless comedy segment with Mahaam and Javeda, who is here as irritating as a buzzing bluebottle fly, or the equally irritating exchange between Mahaam and Ram Tannu Pandey, replete on both sides with much smart alecky posturing for effect. Truth to tell, I voted for Mahaam in this scene, for the unseemly arrogance of the obnoxious musician grated on my nerves from the minute he made his entry.

So, in the darbar scene, I was delighted when Jalal, treated to a fresh dose of impertinence, took RT Pandey down several pegs with true imperial panache. I only wish the khanjar had drawn some blood; a bit of blood-letting would have done him a lot more good!

And as for his singing, well, the less said the better. I was bewildered by Jodha's readiness to declare Ram Tannu Pandey the 8^th wonder of the world before hearing even a single note, and correspondingly pleased when Jalal walked out before the end (even if it was only because he was too sozzled to last it out), and did not shower him with unmerited praise. This Tansen is clearly not going to light any lamps or bring the rains down. Why can Balaji not get some really sublime classical vocal recordings and use them after getting permission for it?

Shyamala B.Cowsik