Jodha Akbar... peek into the mughal era

We watched the latest 'Jodha Akbar' movie on President's Day. It was a very well made movie and we got to feel and see Ashutosh Gowariker's immense talent in almost every scene. I think the story line, plot has a very contemporary relevance while the period/historic settings just added to the grandeur and beauty of each and every scene. I was particularly impressed because it was only recently that we visited these forts in Fatehpur Sikri, Agra, etc and do remember how run down they were and it must have taken lot of hardwork, coordination and planning to make them look as beautiful as one could imagine.
The part that I really liked and got me thinking was how Jodha slowly makes the best of the situation she is thrown into by way of using her marriage more for political reasons than anything else. The way she puts her conditions forward before accepting the proposal and does it directly to Akbar showed a lot of maturity and strength in her beliefs. I wonder how one gets this.. are some people just born with such clear thinking and can somehow easily figure out whats right for them and standby those beliefs at any cost?... can we teach or learn such behaviors or build such strong characters?
Also, the way Jodha fits into the Mughal family and slowly gains the love and respect of her husband and her in-laws family/empire was shown very well.
I also liked how Akbar (Jalaluddin) does mention couple of times that all along in his life somebody else made decisions on his behalf and that he now wants to start making his own decisions. Again, this shows a lot of strength in character and conviction. Its very easy as we move up to leadership roles in our professional or personal lives to just start imitating our predecessors or just do what we think our higher ups will like us to do...instead to break away from that and make an effort to stand up for what you believe shows a lot of strength of character and integrity.
These are some of the aspects of the story that I think made the storyline very relevant even to current times and hence made the whole movie very captivating....
I think I will have more fun reading about the Mughal era now than I did many years ago in school since I have Ashutosh Gowariker's 'Jodha Akbar' to help my imagination :-)

"K" in the Knight

I think this is one example of how our children can help us learn and grow along with them. Well, Avinash has just started reading the 'Magic Tree House' series of books and one of them is 'The Knight at Dawn'. Here is an excerpt from our conversation:
Avi: Mommy, you know the 'night' as in opposite of 'day' and the Knight with the silent K in the beginning?
Me: Yes, what about them?
Avi: What is the difference between the two?
Me: Night is the time of the day when the sun is on the other side, its dark and time for us to wind down and sleep. Knight is like a very good soldier who protects you and takes care of you
Avi: Why did they have to use the same word and just put 'K' in front of the soldier one
Me: hmmmmm (thnking hard so I don't look stupid) So when we read, we know the difference and we know which night/knight they mean
Avi: But, they could have made another word for one of them?
Me and Chandu: (giving up on answering logically and correctly). Lets look it up to find out

Anyway, the above conversation made me curious to learn more about the word. I found the origin of the word 'Knight' here and here and also found that Avi was not the first person to question this.
Also, another interesting concept I learnt about Etymlogical Fallacy and that the word 'Knight' is an example for something called 'Amelioration' (The meaning of a word may show improvement, as when knight (originally: "servant", like German Knecht) came to mean "military knight" and subsequently "someone of high rank")