Friends, okay, something is beginning to happen in this serial at last after all these episodes of just seeing Jalal using Benazir to make Jodha more and more jealous. Finally the rumblings of a real plot against Jalal's life and takht are beginning to take shape ... and the Jodha-Jalal antipathy is fast fizzling out into more of a "faked anger hiding a deep friendship".
In fact I would say that Jalal is doing two things here:
At one level Jalal is overtly toying with Benazir, using her to get at Jodha, but underneath it all, he is still quite "deep friends" with Jodha. Neither the "Suryabhan issue" nor the "mardangi insult issue" seems to have fazed Jalal at all. He seems contented to tease Jodha and to enjoy his friendly banter with her too! I have covered the sweet Jodha-Jalal scenes later in this post.
At another level covertly Jalal is already playing a deeper and more deadly game. It looks like he is getting ready to handle a serious threat to his life and throne from some real enemies working at a sinister level via the same Benazir! I feel he has sensed this and is bracing himself to deal with it!
Folks, we have to note two very important things in today's episode that suggest that this time the threat to Jalal's life and takht is not coming from Sharif or Adham or Maham. This time it looks like the Kabul faction of Jalal's family is plotting against him, and the key players in this plot are trying to congregate at Agra in readiness for the fall of Jalal. Here are these two important things I thought I should bring to everyone's notice.
One, there was the very strange behavour of one sipahi in the garden today when Benazir and her baandhi were taking a walk. First of all the baandhi was carrying something covered on a tray when the sipahi asked the baandhi to put that tray down ... but the baandhi refused. My antennae got alert at that stage itself. Then the sipahi seemed to assume an air of authority over the other sipahis there ordering them to get out of the way of Benazir and her baandhi, and when he then got a chance to walk alongside Benazir, the sipahi actually seemed to have the temerity to tell her "I am enraptured by your beauty. I beg of you to grant me one night with you!". Now I started thinking to myself "What kind of sipahi is this, with such guts to ask this of Benazir, knowing that just yesterday Jalal has given her a diamond and a title and given everybody the impression as if he favours Benazir as his new "interest"? Knowing she may be the latest pet peeve of the Shahenshah, how come this sipahi has got such temerity to proposition Benazir?"
Then the penny dropped for me. I realised that this sipahi may well be Jalal's own henchman testing out this Benazir! Of course, Benazir refused to give him what he asked, but when she gave him her threat to tell Jalal about this propositioning, he immedietaely apologised and begged she wouldn't tell Jalal. But he did not look that worried at all as if fearing the Shahenshah's wrath!
Anyway, Benazir was then seen in her room, with all curtains drawn, writing a secret paigam to her "Ammaji" in Kabul ... it was on the face of it a poetic sounding paigam of how she was missing her Ammaji, and it was in a non-Urdu language. But she herself told her baandhi it was all in code and the real import of the paigam was something else. Now watch what happened after that! The baandhi took the paigam to the despatch-sipahi handling all letters and things going to Kabul ... and lo and behold, it was the very same sipahi who had earlier tried to proposition Benazir.
He immediately felt alerted by her "poetic paigam", and started reading it (although he gave the impression he was curious because it was from Benazir). But the biggest surprise came when the sipahi knew exactly how to decipher the code on the paigam. Seeing it to be so poetic, he got a whiff of something not quite right about it, and then he started covering all the letters except the first letters of each sentence. That seemed to immediately give him an insight into what the paigam was really all about and he was seen saying to himself "Oh my God, so this Benazir is indeed here with an evil plot!"
My questions are these:
1. How is a lowly sipahi able to have the audacity to propositon Benazir knoowing her to be a new toy of Jalal himself ... unless the sipahi and Jalal already had some connection? Was he a jasooos of Jalal delegated to sound out Benazir?
2. How is this same sipahi also the in-charge of all despatches to and from Kabul ... is it a co-incidence or is Jalal keeping a watch on all the links between Kabul and Agra via the offices of this sipahi?
3. How did this sipahi so quickly and so deftly decipher the code and the non-Urdu language on the paigam ... unless he was already a trained code-breaker?
All this leads me to believe he must be Jalal's man in disguise! And to me it shows that Jalal is already very "Kabul-conscious" and is watching Benazir not just for her own role as a "seducer" but is probably probing to see who she is working for really and who is the mastermind at Kabul behind her sudden appearance at Agra. That Benazir is helping make Jodha jealous has become a very incidental part of Jalal's game. The real covert mission of Jalal seems to be the Kabul-connection ferreting!
Two, Hamida tells Jalal later in the day in the garden that he is to be visited by his half-brother Mirza Hakim soon from Kabul. Jalal says he knows about that already, he has seen the official paigam about this visit. Now, folks, I am not a historian, but from the little I have read on the Internet, it appears that among the immediate circle of enemies Jalal had, we can definitely count Mirza Hakim as one. Mirza Hakim appears to be the second son of Humayun, born to another of his wives, who was given charge of Kabul and he ruled from there. Do you all remember that Jalal himself once said (when the maulvis were asking him to step down because he visited Jodha's Amer temple) that one of the people in line for the takht after himself was Mirza Hakim from Kabul, but rather than give his title to Mirza Hakim or Bakshi Bano or any of these family contenders, such as his brothers and sisters, he would rather nominate Rahim as his successor? That was the first time we heard Jalal mention Mirza Hakim.
Anyway now if we juxtapose Mirza Hakim's sudden visit to Agra against the fact that Benazir herself has arrived with a sinister plan from Kabul, and is writing paigams in code to some "Ammaji in Kabul" we can probably smell a clear Kabul-based plot against Jalal. Probably, if she is still alive, Humayun's other wife in Kabul (Mirza Hakim's mother) may be this "Ammaji" to whom Benazir reports? Or else, it could be some other lady or even a man connected with Mirza Hakim. And it looks like this Ammaji and Mirza Hakim have sent Benazir to Agra first to entrap Jalal ... and now Mirza Hakim is himself aiming to enter the picture in person probably to try and close out the plot against Jalal. I think neither Maham nor Sharif nor Adham have any clue as to this Kabul plot. These three duffers are in their own La-La-Land oblivious to what's going on from another quarter.
Okay now that we know that this intrigue is going to become interesting, let's focus on the Jodha -Jalal scenes today for a sweet change ... there were three interactions between them that felt good to watch! Plus I also wanted to include the two scenes where Jalal showed Benazir the door!
Jodha and Rahim with Jalal
Jalal was stationed in the garden (as he seems to do a lot these days) when Rahim and Jodha chanced upon him. Already in the very first scene of the episode we saw Jodha carrying a shawl sent to her by her father from Amer, and Rahim was hurriedly pulling her along. Jodha could barely keep up with Rahim's speed. In the end it seemed Rahim was pulling Jodha towards where Jalal was.
There Rahim proceeded to ask Jodha and Jalal to both help him as a team to fly a kite. But Jodha demurred that it was a very cold day and Jalal agreed that Rahim would catch a chill if he played outdoors on such a day. They both maanged to convince Rahim that tomorrow would be a better kite flying day, to which the cute Rahim agreed. Soon his mother sent a baandhi to fetch him, so Rahim ran off leaving a very pleased Jalal alone with a seemingly nonplussed Jodha.
Jodha then started talking to Jalal about the shawl her father had sent her and asked him if he thought it was a nice one. He said it was a very nice shawl indeed. Jodha then wrapped it about his shoulders and said, "If you like it, then keep it!" He thanked her for it profusely and then added with a lot of mischief "I think Benazir would also be feeling the cold, so maybe it would be a good idea for me to give it to her!" Jodha looked crestfallen and Jalal seemed to hugely enjoy seeing her like that!
The thing is folks, this was not a great scene dialogue wise or even storyline wise, but I was struck with the fact they they both seemed still such friends underneath all that supposed revenge that Jalal talks about! If we didn't know the background of that spurning that night, we might never have guessed they were supposed to be at loggerheads with each other!
The leg and the lep and Hamida
Jalal was again in the garden, lying on the garden seat with his hurt leg outstretched, when Jodha arrived with a tray in hand and was announced. Jalal immediately told her "I was expecting you. I knew you would arrive here the minute you heard about the hurt on my leg. You must have brought your lep. So start applying it!" Jodha churlishly replied "You who are so surrounded by baandhis, why do you need me to apply it?" But he then just dismissed all the bandhis around him with a "Takhliya" and then deliberately began needling her. He said "Benazir says thanks for the lovely shawl you gave for her." Jodha sounded angry as she said "That was a special gift from my father and I gave it to you as a gift. If I'd known you'd give it to Benazir, I wouldn't have given it to you at all!" Jalal answered "What can I now do Jodha Begum, I cannot take back from Benazir what I gave her, can I? It would not look good for a Shahenshah to do that!" The look of scorn on Jodha's face was to die for!
Suddenly then Hamida arrived there - and both Jodha and Jalal started looking as if they were on extremely cordial terms. Hamida was all concern about Jalal's hurt leg but he said it was just a small wound from swordfighting practice ... and then looking slyly at Jodha he added "After all wounds and Mughals are old friends." Then he says with a lot of deliberate naughtiness "Jodha was just about to apply her lep on my leg, but Ammi Jaan please tell her it should be the work of baandhis , not the Begum of the Sultanate." Hamida then tried to tell him that this was quintessential Jodha and she knew well her role as a caring wife!
As Jodha applied the lep in front of Hamada, a whole lot of self-talks happened. Jalal thought to himself "Jodha Begum, I can make you do what I want, I can keep you crushed under my feet". Jodha replied him via her own thoughts "If Hamida wasn't here, I wouldn't let you do whatever you wanted!" He then answered her with his thoughts "I am the one hurt but the pain in seen in your face Jodha Begum!"
With all this seeming cordiality, Hamida then turned to leave ... and immediately the fake looks of friendship between the two dissolved into a fight. Jodha said "Who do you think you are? I'm not going to be doing what you want!" Hardly had Jodha said that than Hamida returned ... and the fake smiles returned to Jodha and Jalal's faces.
Jalal said to his mother "Ammi Jaan look at this Jodha, she's fighting with me again". Jodha then cleverly countered "Of course, I will fight. How can you ignore such a deep wound and insist on walking again?" All this TLC pleased Hamida no end!
Hamida then went into another topic entirely - the impending visit of Mirza Hakim from Kabul. Jalal said he had lots of work to do to prepare for this visit, but he knew he could lean on Jodha's support and walk to the Diwan-e-Khas to do his work. Jodha looked daggers at him. But in front of Hamida she was forced to help him walk. They went a small distance before he was unable to go further. Jodha then started giving him a piece of her mind saying "All this naatak in front of your mother. You should have been an actor not a King. Where was the need to keep railing me?" He said "If you didn't like it, then why try to help me?" She replied loftily "Because its my principle to help the wounded!".
By then Benazir appeared and Jalal seemed rather over-eager to take her help in walking. Jodha gestured to Benazir that the pleasure was all hers - and walked off in a huff, much to Jalal's delight!
What a fraud pair these two are! So in love already, I suspect, yet unable to get out this anger-faking and jealousy-teasing pretence. I feel like smacking the two of them ...
... but just when you think they are really pushing each other too far, their faces start wearing sudden smiles of a deep friendship at a whole different level, and I can't help falling in love again with both of them!
The precap and the shudh hindi
The precap was an absolute delight. First Jalal was seen telling Jodha "Don't worry, I will myself take this medicine to Benazir and then I will sleep peacefully" ... perhaps again trying to give her the impression that he was going to Benazir's room that night. Jodha was naturally looking rather upset.
But then he said something that brought a slow and sweet smile to her face. He said "I forgot to tell you, Mirza Hakim from Kabul is to visit us tomorrow. He is my sautela brother ... yanni aapke zubaan mein kya kehte hain? Aapke devar!" And then - lo and behold - he added in a mock-Jodha voice in her shudh hindi "Toh hamara aadesh hain ki unka swagath ke liye aap paramparith rup mein upastith ho!". He not only tried to imitate her voice but also her very feminine head and face movements as he spoke. Oh my God was that a sensationally funny moment or what?!
Reminded me of how she mimicked his voice so perfectly once before in the garden. And I loved the way he smiled wickedly after he did that mimicking! No wonder she found herself smiling too!
I'm seeing that precap over and over again and it doesn''t feel like enough!
The two scenes where Jalal sent Benazir packing!
To my utter delight there were two scenes where Jalal just dismissed this Benazir out of his sight!
The first scene was when Benazir went to Jalal's bedroom, and tried to seduce him, but he was curt and said "You can sit or stand only by my orders". Benazir then said "You look worked up, let me give you sukoon - especially as you have kindly gifted me a title." She poured water for him and held his hand. He pulled his hand away and said "Go now, if I want will call you tomorrow". After she left, he self-talked wryly "I don't want a night with you, I'm just using you to make Jodha jealous!" Dear Jalal, you deserve a hug!
The second scene was in the garden after Jodha and Jalal had their talk about his walking to the Diwan-e-Khas on his hurt leg. Jodha hadn't been able to help him get very far. Seeing Benazir, Jalal had lost no chance to tell Jodha he would ask Benazir to support his weight as he walked. Jodha said to Benazir "He's all yours!" and walked away. But the moment Benazir tried to really give Jalal a hand, he curtly refused it and said to her "I don't need your help. You can go. I can walk by myself quite well." Benazir was seen self-talking that she has to do something fast about this touch-me-not Jalal, as her real goal was going adhura! Mmwwaah, Jalal!
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