Alexander of Macedon, later to be called Alexander the Great, faces the incredibly complicated Gordian knot that had, for centuries past, tied an ox cart to a pole in the palace of the former kings of Phrygia, then a province of the Persian empire. An oracle had prophesied that the one to untie the knot would become the king of Asia.
Alexander surveys the knot, and realizing that no conventional methods would work, slices it in half with a single stroke of his sword, producing the required ends. This was the "Alexandrian solution" for the intractable problem of the Gordian knot.
The courage of his convictions: There is a perceptible hesitation, for no one should underestimate what this gesture costs him. What he is about to do would be taken as butparasti (idol worship), specifically forbidden in Islam. If anyone had spread the word across the Mughal sultanate that their Shahenshah had paid obeisance to a Hindu but, there would have been an uproar, and not only among the maulvis. Even decades later , when he had long been the all powerful Emperor Akbar, his initiative to found a syncretist religion merging Islam and Hinduism, the Din-e-Ilahi, had attracted widespread criticism. Now he is, as yet, nowhere near that level of unquestioned domination, so the risks are that much more.
Still, he does not hesitate, for in Jodha's troubled and angry gaze, he sees not just the woman whose acceptance he craves, even if only subconsciously as yet, whose barely veiled hostility hurts him like nothing ever before.
He sees the whole of the Hindustan that he wishes to unite under his rule, not by brute force,but thru willing acceptance. Na ki shamsheer ki dhar se, par rishton ke reshmi dhagon me piroke.To win the heart of this Hindustan, he knows now what he has to do. For them to accept him, he has first to accept them.
Jalal already has the breadth of spiritual vision, the inner clarity, that lets him see his Allah in the Devi. Not many even today, anywhere in the world, are able to do that, for all the current politically correct patter about accepting all religions. And in the 16th century, when Protestants and Catholics were massacring each other and burning each other at the stake all over Europe and in England, for the Emperor Jalaluddin Mohammed to demonstrate such purity of thought, such innate humanisn, was nothing short of a miracle.
And this is not just because of Jodha, for even if she might have been the catalyst for this specific act of his, she is not the sole motivation for it. It is about something infinitely bigger and grander, Jalal's vision for this vast land that he hopes to rule one day in peace and prosperity.
Epiphany: The Gordian knot untied..
He bends down to the floor and pays obeisance to the Devi, his forehead at Her feet, and kisses the ground in the gesture of submission that is traditional for him. As he rises, his forehead is stained red with the kumkum.The Devi Maa has blessed him. His prayers have been answered. His sins, both those committed knowingly and those committed in his name, but unknown to him, have been forgiven.
In that one gesture of self-surrender to the Universal Divine, which he is able to perceive in the alien Devi Mahakali, in that act of submission to this Divine heedless of his ego, Jalaluddin Mohammed becomes Akbar.
All that followed in the years and decades to come was but the embellishment of the basic structure that was established in that single moment of epiphany.
The Gordian knot of incomprehension, of a sense of acute oppression, of discrimination, and of the resulting hostility and hatred, that divided Jalal, and the Mughal rule he embodied, from the Hindustan of his dreams was sliced thru as surely as the original one had been by Alexander's sword...
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Ab hamara ek doosre se hi wajood hai.. : Epi 167.
...
Of course I have to begin with what is being called, for lack of a better term, the "soul talk". At least, it seemed certain that the rooh in blue was Jodha Begum's, but seeing the brash aggressiveness of Jalal throughout that segment, I am not sure it was his rooh at all.
Surely the rooh of even such a great conqueror would be more subdued in the other world, just as one instinctively lowers one's voice in a place of worship? Jalal's whatever-it-is, on the contrary, steadily raises the decibel level, and by the end, he is hollering at her and the Almighty alike.
It is thus more that likely that Jalal has, by throwing his imperial weight around, bullied the guardians of the gates to the Parlok into letting him in.
I loved it that Jalal did not beg or plead for Jodha not to leave him. Neither with Jodha, nor with Kismat/Bhagya or even with God.
On the contrary, he denounces her perennial zid, which he will not allow to prevail this once. He announces his readiness to declare war on all and sundry if that was necessary to hold Jodha back.
His constant refrain is Hum aapko nahin jaane denge. Jodha Begum (incidentally, he called her Jodha Begum 37 times during that passage, often twice in a single sentence. This is the rule for all their conversations. Does he think she has forgotten her name, or that he is danger of forgetting it?😉)
His words tumble over themselves in a torrent of soul-baring emotion as he concedes, and immediately counters, the harshness of his last words to her, by telling her how she pervades his zehen hrough and through. Ending, with the stunning declaration: Allah kasam, hum aapse mohabbat karte hain!
I don't know about Allah, who is all knowing, but you could have knocked me down with a feather. It seemed that the ghostly Jodha felt exactly the same, for her face looks more stunned and still than moved. She is possibly pinching her spectral form to make sure she was actually hearing all this.
More in the same vein follows, all of it decidedly accusatory in tone: Hamare seene mein dil jagaakar aapko koyi haq nahin banta ise todkar jaane ka!...Aap aisa kucch bhi nahin karengi.. Aapko apni zindagi par koyi haq nahin hai ! (I was saying to myself : Now this takes the cake! ).
Jalal next shifts to open emotional blackmail to rout Jodha's aloof and depressing pronouncements about shanti, santrushti, vivah ke vachanon ki laaj rakhna, bhagya ka vidhan, and finally even a mysterious new vachan given to God alone knows whom (strangely reminiscent of Jalal's so-called zubaan that he would not touch Jodha without her consent) that if need be, she would be ready to give up her life to save his.
He enters the arena firing on all cylinders. Humein aapki zaroorat hai!.. Agar aap rahi to hum rahenge, agar aap chalee gayee to hum bhi zinda nahin rahenge!...
Game point. Game to Jalal.
Then the most vital assertion of them all, the one which now lies at the very heart of their present and future relationship. An assertion that Jalal makes confidently on behalf of Jodha as well as on his own.
Ab hamara ek doosre se hi wajood hai.. Aapke bina hum nahin, aur hamare bina aap nahin..
This is his version of her marriage vow: aapse hi hamara sowbhagya hai. For now he knows, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that that if his Jodha Begum were to die, something vital in him would die with her, that he would never be whole again.
He also knows, this too without the shadow of a doubt, that Jodha too would not survive without him. That this was why she did not mind dying if that could save him, for though she would be no more, that would, for her, be preferable to surviving without him.
Set point. Set to Jalal.
When Jodha's rooh, by now convinced that is ziddi insaan ko manaakar wapas bhejna us ke bas ki baat nahin hai, mumbles halfheartedly that they (not, be it noted, he alone) can do nothing against Bhagya ka vidhaan, and that he will be able to do nothing, that he is not the Shahenshah in the Parlok, the unfazed Jalal comes back with a clincher.
Coopting the Almighty to his campaign, he asserts that if there is indeed the Bhagwan (he does not say Khuda, for he wants to speak her language on this) before whom she, he and all of humanity bow their heads and who listens to all their dua and grants all their mannat, then Woh aapko kahin nahin jaane dega!
Match point, Match to Jalal.
And so, like the mythical Orpheus, who was able to persuade the King of the Underworld, Pluto, to let him take his dead wife Eurydice back to the world of the living, Jalal too fights for Jodha and with Jodha, and literally drags his beloved back from the very gates of the other world by the sheer force of his will.
Jalal dominates throughout, with the lion's share of all those splendid lines , with his voice alternating, pitch perfectly, between raw pain and desolation, near panic and never say die determination, with his relentlessly combative body language . And Jodha, her marble stillness and aloof dismissiveness hiding deep hurts, soft but firm in her desire to leave the world for good, provides a superb counterpoint.
...
What a fantasic writer you are Shyamala..
May the Almighty bless you with sound health and long life to cheer us with your inimitable style of writing...
Happy Birthday!
Saraswathi Akka.
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