Writing Essay on Jodhaa Akbar

Watching a full length history movie and not to forget it is in Hindi is not something I prefer. History had always been a difficult subject to me as it is always references with years. Being a guy who thinks "What" is important than "When" does not help in the history lessons in School. During the good old school days, I will easily know the result of history exams by reading the "fill in the blanks" questions itself. If the first 4 questions are about years, then we know the next 10 questions will be similar ones and it is not really my area of expertise. Though I would often remember the 1000s and final digits of the year, the 100s and 10s will confuse me all the time. As my errors would either be in decades or centuries, I could not even get grace marks that the teacher might give for closer answers. It is always confusing to me, when the whole point of learning history is to understand what our ancestors did, why should we know the exact years things happened. This is not like Rocket science that forgetting the years would cause Armageddon.
The biggest confusion next to years are the king names and their kingdom. Seriously, what is the relation between Gupta and Maurya dynasty? If both are different, which dynasty Chandra Gupta Maurya belonged? And where does the Mughals come in-between? As if North Indian history is not enough, we will have Cheran, Cholan and Pandyans in South India. These lessons were not much troublesome; thanks to our Tamilnadu state government for naming the various bus corporations by prominent personalities/kings of regional/national importance. There was Pandyan bus for Madurai; Cheran for Coimbatore and Chozhan for Tanjore. Though we all welcome the change of this practice to just TNSTC (Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation) to avoid communal violence, it is regretful that the current school students are borne to get confused with South Indian history also.
Ignoring these hurdles, the post period to the history exams are always fun when the teacher distributes the papers back. The rule for essays is always simple. 6 pages at the least with minimum of 4 sketches that might include maps, tables or charts depending upon the questions. The whole class will forget their low marks when we read each others' essays. It must be known that some of the strange and interesting histories are created in these exams only. For example, only in our exam papers will Adolf Hitler with the help of Wilson (Student was playing tennis lately) Churchill bombs China (obvious confusion) in World War 1 which ends with the Treaty of Constantine. There will also be some inspiring dreams like British fighting for Independence from India and Lord Mountbatten is a famous peak of Himalayas and India was discovered by Vascodagama in the year 1947. Many times, the teacher would be impressed and would award full marks for the essays just because the essay had 10 pages. He/she will even be pointed out as the outstanding student of the class and a girl who had written 4 pages for the essay with each word repeated exactly from the book will have to learn from the great historian. But luckily for me, I would never have to do any of these for the exams. The moment I reach the first essay question, the time would be almost up and I would scribble whatever that comes in my mind and finish 8 pages for each essay with 10 to 15 lines per page. My friends who are fast writers with nice handwriting will have to write 22 to 25 lines per page and will think hard on how to fill more than 6 pages. Though filling more pages will guarantee you 70% of the marks, if you need more you will have to employ the magic of the colorful sketches. Even though you are unsure whether Napoleon is from India or not, underlining his name, century he lived and important places that you remember the teacher telling you in the class added with adjectives and verbs which can help you expand the gap between two sensible words related to the essay guarantees bonus marks. Though I was not a historian like my friends, I do contribute my share for the history by changing the name of treaties more often. Treat of Versailles have ended French revolution and the pact that brought an end to Sepoy Mutiny is called the Treaty of Sepoys in our own versions of history.
So with such a level of learning history in School, watching Jodhaa Akbar on the big screen raised few questions in the mind like why is Akbar was never called by his name. This was clarified later when they announced that Jalaluddin Muhammad was his Original name and Akbar was a name bestowed on him at a later age. I am not sure how much the movie was truth with the history. May be the screenplay writer was like my friends in school and they added few contributions to the history on their own. There were scores of evidence for this given in wikipedia. Also the scenes in the movie like duel between Jodhaa and Akbar, Sujamal speaking for 20 mins before death and the final one-on-one battle between the hero (Akbar) and the villain (Sharifuddin) while the whole army watches silently reminds us of the countless bollywood, kollywood and tollywood and every other wood movies we have seen in the past. But leaving the history behind, this movie is definitely a major delight in terms of glory and richness of details and information about Akbar's rule. Though much information including the identity of Jodhaa appears to be fictional and controversial, the movie stands out and is a definite entertainer like Asoka starring Shahrukh Khan. And not to go unnoticed is the background score by A.R.Rahman especially for the war and song sequences. You can feel the horses galloping in the battlefield. He has proven himself once again. To sum it up, though Jodhaa Akbar is not a biography of Akbar it taught me few history lessons without any years and is big achievement in Indian movie industry and recommended to be seen on the big screen.