Folks,
I could not resist the temptation to cover the 150th episode, though there is hardly anything worthwhile to say from No. 148 to last night. No wonder even Vicki has abandoned this forum for Rang Rasiya, and Lashy has, for the most part, fallen silent. As for me, I am nearly at the point of reaching nirvana, which here would be the state of complete detachment from the whole of Jodha Akbar.
So much so that I shocked some of my readers a couple of days back by hoping that Benazir would bite Jodha instead of Jalal, and he would expire trying to save her by sucking out the poison, so that I, and probably a good many of you, could be at peace at long last!😉
But one has to take notice of No. 150. So here I am. And no, the "Lost" in the title is not a typo, a mistake for The Last Emperor, with apologies to Bertolucci and his film of the same name on the last emperor of China. Here, when I say "lost" I mean just that.
The dictionary meaning of "lost" is one who does not know where he is, or how to get where he wants to go. Does this not fit our Shahenshah-e-Hind to a T? Let us take just the last 3 episodes.
Jalal tells Ruqaiya, in an incredible assertion, that he has lost none of his fire and his anger, Wohi taap hai, wohi gussa hai! Even as he says it, and storms off in a huff, he knows perfectly well, in his heart of hearts, that he is lying thru his teeth. Every word of Ruqiaya's impassioned lament, about what he was and what he has become, is true, and he knows it. But of course he cannot acknowledge it, whence the anger and the frustration.
He is angry, but more at himself than at Ruqaiya for holding a mirror to his face and showing him the Jalal he is now. A Jalal who is enslaved by a woman who has, as of now, nothing to offer him. A woman who snubs him and mocks him at every opportunity, who holds up his younger brother as a paragon far superior to him. A woman who is ready and glad enough to swan around as his Begum and enjoy all the prestige and privileges of that rank, but is unwilling to fulfil her duties as his begum, and shoves him away roughly when he seeks caring and affection from her.
He raged for a while after The Shove, and still says that he has not forgotten that humiliation. But his words ring hollow nowadays, and in fact they mostly mean nothing. Indeed, his reference last night to his beizzati sounded as if he was complaining about a bad meal she had cooked him.
And Jodha's expression, as she turns around on hearing that question, was as flat as a pancake. There was not an iota of the dismay and desire to clear things up that one would have expected. Just a wide-eyed look that is exactly the same after this question, and again when he stops her for returning the payal.
Jodha is an obsession that Jalal cannot overcome, try as he may, and he does not seem to be trying too much either. Never was this more apparent that in last night's episode.
Jodha sashays up the Mughal equivalent of a red carpet in that green, overdecked and too heavy Mughal joda that weighs both her and her beauty down. Incidentally, why is it that Jodha, who looked like a gorgeous ambulant sunflower in the episode after the exposure of Bakshi Banu, looked anything but that last night? Somehow, the Mughal dress does not suit the otherwise beauteous Paridhi at all. It adds years and hardens the soft lines of her face, and I for one hope she goes back pronto to looking lovely in the Rajvanshi chakmak!
Up on his throne, the Shahenshah-e-Hind looks at her, and his expression is exactly like that of a small boy with his nose pressed against the glass display case of a sweetshop, full of yearning for the laddus he hankers after but cannot get. '
It was not touching - though full marks to Rajat for conjuring up that look. It was depressing and disheartening to see a man in his position, after having been, as he believes, deliberately set up and humiliated by this very woman, so much a prisoner of his weaknesses as to wear his heart so openly on his sleeve.
Later, the way in which he tries so hard, and with so little dignity, to extract some kind of acknowledgement from her that she wore that green Mughal outfit at least partly to please him, would be laughable if it was not so pathetic, like a lovesick boy angling after a disdainful woman.
I was reminded of the scene in the iconic The Ten Commandments, when Moses knocks at the door of the chamber of his beloved, Princess Nefertiti, and when she takes a while to open it, asks from outside Nefertiti, would you keep the Prince of Egypt waiting like a beggar at your door? That was a joke, but when Jalal behaves exactly like a beggar, seeking some sign of caring from an unmoved Jodha, it is a very bad joke.
What was there so wonderful and praiseworthy in her wearing that outfit anyway? It is shown as if she was making some huge concession to her in laws, and both Hamida and Jalal seem to feel so.
If Jodha had had a proper Ekta-style Rajvanshi saas, who would have make her bahu dance to her tune day in and day out , to the accompaniment of sharp rebukes with and without reason, she would have been trained to become a proper 16th century bahu and patni. Here, you have an unbelievable cheerleader of a saas, and an obsessed husband who does not know how to handle her. So no wonder Jodha is the way she is, always taking, and convinced that this is her God-given right, and that she owes Jalal nothing in return. I for one do not blame her at all, any more than I would blame a badly brought up child for the way it behaves.
To revert, Jalal's attempts last night to get her to react to his stated preference for Benazir were stupid even by his current standards. In particular, that comment of his that the Mughal dress would look better on Benazir was so ludicrous that it does not even merit comment. He was even worse yesterday than with his earlier, puerile manoeuvres to make Jodha jealous of Benazir.
What would any woman with an iota of perception, and some of that celebrated feminine intuition, make of a man who seems to be so pathetically eager to get her to acknowledge that his favouring another woman upsets and angers her? Why, that he is so desperate to make her care for him that he is ripe and ready to be walked over, like a doormat. But perhaps Jodha does not need this confirmation, for she has been walking all over him for ages now.
Well and truly lost: So where exactly is our Shahenshah now? He does not know. And where does he want to go? Obviously into the aagosh of Jodha Begum, only he does not know how to get there. He is thus well and truly lost.
So, like a man in a fog blundering blindly along and ending up going in circles, our Jalal is oscillating between all too brief fits of imperial pride and/or anger, and a tenacious weakness when it comes to Jodha and her family. There was real anger in his eyes at the end of the darbar scene, where he is finally able to affix his proforma seal of approval on the marriage which had already been tied up by Jodha without his having been even told of it in advance.
But then where was the need to praise Jodha's role as his wife so lavishly? Both of them know that his praise is a farce, and why this need on his part to make it appear to the Ameris - whether it is Shivani during the tel maalish (I am daily expecting Dabur Amla Hair Oil to start sponsoring Jodha Akbar) or Bharmal & Co. now, that his marriage with Jodha is flourishing?
Jalal works so hard at pampering his Rajvanshi inlaws to the top of their bent, and praising Jodha Begum to them in such excessive terms, that he must have been the eklauta damaad in all of Hindustan in both these respects!
In fact, his paean to Jodha should have made them smell a rat. Or rather, they would have smelt it if they had not been too busy thanking Kali Maa for their extreme good fortune in snaffling another prize son-in-law for their youngest and last without having had to lift a little finger, and that too when no Rajvanshi royal family would have agreed to this alliance. So they, having long abandoned the beti ke ghar ka paani bhi nahin peete traditions, are busy living it up in Agra, having lugged the whole parivaar, minus only the family dog, there for the nikaah.
And here I was, thinking that weddings are to be celebrated at the girl's place!
The Great Betrayal Part 2: The precap last night would seem to indicate that Shivani does indeed manage to do a bunk before the nikaah. But why does her whole family look so bewildered and shocked, including Sukanya and Dadisaa? Surely these two, especially Sukanya, should have been in her rooms getting her ready for the wedding, instead of sitting around like guests and looking dismayed at her no show?
Jodha seems to be missing too, so probably she was the one to find out that her beloved kid sister has brought the deepest and most public shame possible not just on her own family - who perhaps deserve it for having had so little inkling of what she had been up to for months now - but also, and much worse, on the whole Mughal imperial family.
In fact, I am just waiting to see Jodha's face when Shivani goes missing, having shredded the Rajvanshi sanskaars that Jodha was boasting about to Jalal just recently. Schadenfreude, yes, but amply deserved.
This Great Betrayal Part 2 is in fact infinitely worse than Part 1, the one by Bakshi Banu. That was largely a private affair within the palace, and its sinister ramifications were never known to the awaam at large , Now, the fact that a Rajvanshi princess has made the worst possible fool of her imperial fiance, and of her brother in law the Shahenshah , would spread like wildire across the land, and all of Jalal's enemies - from Abul Mali to Kunwar Pratap and all those in between - would be chortling in glee. There is nothing more corrosive of power and prestige than such ridicule.
I do not know how Jalal is going to react to this horrible fiasco, but those who seem to expect him not to blame Jodha for it are must be dreaming. She pushed it thru without so much a by your leave to him, sneered at him claiming that Hakim was better that he was,and now her choice of bride would have managed to make both brothers the laughing stock of the whole of Hindustan, not just of Agra.
What do people expect, that he should "understand" and condone the awful, self-righteous mistake Jodha made in refusing to consult Shivani (that the girl lies about it at the darbar is something else; she could hardly have done anything else, even if there had been no Mahaam factor) and ending up heaping this public humiliation on his whole family?
She never meant this to happen, of course, and it was an honest mistake, though one rooted in her trademark conviction that she is always right, and an inexplicable disregard for both imperial protocol and the respect due to her husband as the head of the family. But then the negative fallout from a mistake is in direct proportion to the damage it causes. Not fair, true, but to quote JFK, who told you that life is fair?
What is more, why should Jalal believe, after seeing all those prempatra that will undoubtedly be produced from the right place at the right time courtesy Mahaam, what Jodha will be offering as excuses : that it was never intentional on her part? That she and her family never knew of this secret liaison of Shivani's, and did not try to make Mirza Hakim a bakra to ward off the likelihood of Shivani disgracing them with this kaarigar premi?Jodha never believes Jalal when he says something sincere to her, now how can she expect trust where she offered none?
As for those who feel that Shivani is 16 and did not know what she was doing, I am afraid that will not wash at all. A 16 year old in 1563 was not the same as a 16 year old in 1963 (I am not even referring to 2013, for the chances are that a 16 year old girl now would be far more clued up about such matters than a 36 year old 40 years ago!) . She would normally have been married off 2 years earlier, even if she was not sent to her husband's home till she attained maturity.
And as a Rajvanshi princess, who would have been taught since childhood that she was expected to uphold the honour of her family at any cost, she should never have entered into such a relationship that would disgrace her whole family forever. Shivani is heedless and utterly selfish, that is all.
If her liaison had been revealed in Amer itself, Tejwant would have been either killed for his presumption (though the fault was all Shivani's) or had every bone in his body broken by Bharmal & Co. Shivani would have been locked up till her marriage to the first Rajvanshi who would have her. But at least Jalal, Mirza and the rest of the Mughal imperial family, would have escaped this very sad fate. Now, the whole Amer lot will have to pay for the crass folly and selfishness of their youngest.
But maybe, just maybe, the shock of such a betrayal by one she loves so much and trusted so blindly, coupled with the humiliation she and her whole family will now have to face, not just in Agra and Amer but all over Rajputana and in fact across Hindustan, might teach Jodha something worthwhile. It might teach her to understand what Jalal went thru when Bakshi Banu betrayed him.
Plus it might spare us any more homilies from Jodha about rajvanshi paramparas and sanskaars. Not a negligible side benefit.😉
Let us see what happens. If Jalal actually swallows this terrible insult and humiliation to his brother and his family, not to speak of himself, and gets Shivani's amar prem ratified, indeed sanctified by making the kaarigar a subedar or a mansabdar, and presiding over their marriage, that will be, as far as I am concerned, the last straw. For he would then have been transformed, irretrievably, into a straw man, inside and out.
Begum Benazir?: I am not shocked at this prospect, but much amused. I did say that even if the "TRP aunties" did not like the khaas tohfa, as Lashy claims, they would be more than made up for by the uncles who would flock to the idiot box and make sheep's eyes at Benazir! 😉
What is more, there will be extra suspense as to what would happen to Jalal if he does marry the KT. Will she oblige Abul Mali, or will she opt for the bird in the hand, instead of the Malika's status that is, after all, buried in the bush? She is no fool, the KT, and if she believes that if Abul Mali gets the throne, she will actually become his Malika, she must have bats in the belfry.
So I suppose that kind of suspense should step up the TRPs. At the end of the day, if you run an entertainment empire, you have to mind the business side of things !
It is of course a ludicrous idea, and it will never reach the stage of fruition. But for now, I wonder what poor Ruqaiya will feel about this new announcement. As for it adding one more layer to Jalal's idiotic "make Jodha jealous " campaign, that hardly matters. He is already pancaked with distilled folly, so a bit more will make no difference.😉
Finally, here is wishing you all a happy and fruitful Pongal, or Makar Sankrant, today. Even if you do not celebrate it as part of your personal family tradition, it is a harvest festival for the winter crop in India, and the harbinger of a new, happier beginning. Let us hope for new and better times for our (still) favourite serial as well!
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