Shadow Princess

by Indu Sundaresan

  Had Jahan spoken to Dara earlier and asked him to bring Mirza Najabat Khan to her? No, this was not likely. So openly, so much in public—Jahan would never give anyone an opportunity to gossip about her; she was too aware of what propriety demanded. Outside, the sounds of activity diminished until there was only the crackle of campfires and the subdued step of the watchman as he patrolled the lane. The torches, left burning all night, gave off a muted glow, their light seeping in through the material of her tent’s walls, palely blue. The acrid tang of the enveloping smoke came to her nostrils, and she flipped over and buried her nose in the pillow. Jahan could not want him, and there was no marriage contracted yet between them. And she had so much else; she could not possibly care about a man who had ridden a few yards by the side of her palanquin. If she did care . . . Mirza Najabat Khan would be the best judge of which sister he found most appealing. And there was only one way to give him that opportunity, by letting him see her. But at the tent, her courage had faltered and she had not been able to lift the cloth that covered her. She thought, though, that she had made an impression upon him, that he knew who she was—it did not strike Princess Roshanara Begam that Najabat Khan could have mistaken her for anyone else, for she was a royal princess, proud and certain that everyone who crossed her path would not only know her but remember her for the rest of their lives.

  Lying on her bed, she made her plans methodically. She would have to wait until Jahanara married, as Jahanara was the older sister, but when she did, Roshanara was determined that, somehow, she would become the wife of Mirza Najabat Khan.

  rauza-i-munavvara

  The Luminous Tomb

  A period of one year had elapsed since . . . the sudden death of the Lady Mumtaz al-Zamani, and the time had arrived for observing the customary ceremony, known in this country as ‘Urs.

  —From the Padshah Nama of Jalala Tabataba’i, in W. E. BEGLEY AND Z. A. DESAI, Taj Mahal: The Illumined Tomb

  Agra

  Tuesday, June 22, 1632

  4 Zi’l-Hijja A.H. 1041

  Prince Aurangzeb knelt, and beside him Abul Hasan and Muhammad Ali Beg went down on their knees also, much more slowly. The three of them closed their eyes, raised their hands, and recited the Fatiha. When they had finished, they sat back on their heels, reflective, and in a while, as the imams began to chant suras from the Quran, they settled more comfortably against the silk-upholstered bolsters which lay strewn on the divan.

  The long night passed thus, voices raised in prayer and praise of Mumtaz Mahal on the first anniversary of her death, Aurangzeb upright in the main tent, flanked by his grandfather and the Persian ambassador. The tent was filled to thronging—all the important amirs at court, the mullas and Hindu priests, Buddhist and Jain monks, the Jesuit cleric Father Busée, who presided over the church in Agra that Emperor Jahangir had allowed the Portuguese to build. Aurangzeb stiffened and glanced at his hands, clasped rigidly in his lap. Bapa had been too tolerant in allowing these other men into the Jilaukhana of the tomb, where the ‘urs, the anniversary, was being held. At other times, especially during Emperor Akbar’s rule, they had actually been invited to take part in religious discussions—to express the merits of their own religions and perhaps discount those of others. A philosophic conversation, Aurangzeb’s great-grandfather had called it. The prince reddened and covered his face. How could that even be? Islam was the one true religion, Allah the only true God—why even invite other talk?

  There were arguments in favor, of course, that even Aurangzeb, only fourteen years old, understood. The acceptance of other faiths was necessary in an Empire that was largely populated by infidels—Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, the Christians whom the foreigners regularly converted—and it created the basis for political solidarity. He turned and scowled at the Jesuit priest again—he had forgotten his name, but Dara would know, because he was friendly with this man. The news from Bengal about Portuguese aggression on the Empire’s subjects had led Emperor Shah Jahan to retaliate—swiftly and powerfully—and yet this priest came with a put-on solemn face and listened to the holy words from the Quran. He came, Aurangzeb thought, not as a man of God but as a representative of the crushed Portuguese in Bengal begging for the Emperor’s mercy, insinuating himself into this sacred assembly.

  “Are you tired, beta?” Abul Hasan asked, touching his shoulder.

  “I think you must be, Nana,” Aurangzeb replied, turning to his grandfather and clasping his hand. Much to both of their surprise, he kissed Abul’s hand, then let go, his face crimson. “You loved Mama very much.”

  “I did,” Abul said, wiping his eyes though he had not shed a tear. All of his crying had dried up in Burhanpur when he saw how his son-in-law and his Emperor had been devastated by Mumtaz’s death and how the children had begun to loosen their ties to the family and spiral out into minor acts of rebellion that their father had not noticed or tried to control. “It is terrible to lose a child before her time, worse yet to be sitting at her first ‘urs knowing that she will never return to me . . . to us. If things had taken their proper course, I would have gone first and she would have done something like this in remembrance instead, as it should have been, Aurangzeb.”

  They sat quietly awhile, Aurangzeb thinking that his grandfather was not so old yet, only in his sixties, but Mama’s death had aged too many people because she had been deeply loved.

  “What are these ‘urs, Nana?”

  Abul turned to him in astonishment. “You don’t know? You should have asked the mulla at the mosque. It is a custom here in Hindustan, among the Chistis—the Sufi order in Ajmer—to celebrate death. Not a strange ritual if you think about it. The word ‘urs come from Arabic, meaning marriage, a meeting between Allah and the soul of the departed.”

  Prince Aurangzeb had been born in India, and he was Indian in every aspect—his knowledge of the countryside, the customs of the subjects of the Empire, the passing of time and seasons, the varieties of foods. He had not lived anywhere else or even visited anyplace where he could not claim to be master and of the royalty. And yet, when his father had chosen to mark the first anniversary of the death of his mother with a ceremony called the ‘urs, he had not known what it was. His upbringing had been Persian and Turkish, much like those of his ancestors, and this was the first time that one of the Mughal Emperors of India—some one hundred years after becoming sovereigns here—was adopting one of the local death customs for his own. It was unusual enough that a royal prince had to ask for an explanation.

  Upriver from where they sat, in the fort at Agra, Emperor Shah Jahan prayed alone, for the same amount of time as they did in public—as the ‘urs ceremony recommended—one whole day and one whole night. At the end of which, they would distribute food for those who were assembled and alms to the poor who had been gathering outside the Jilaukhana.

  Dara, the favored one, and Shuja, only a little less in favor, were with Bapa, and he, Aurangzeb, had been dispatched here. But he did not mind very much, for it gave him an opportunity to present himself to these grand and powerful men of the Empire, for them to see him and to know him in circumstances such as these. Aurangzeb knew, even this young, that if he was to become Emperor after his father and displace the much-lauded, much-blessed Dara, it would be with the help of these amirs.

  “Look how magnificent all this is, Aurangzeb, and remember to be grateful,” Abul said. He gestured around them at the silken tent, thirty feet by thirty feet, the first of three in the courtyard. There were twelve smaller ones around, all colored a pale blue—butterflies perched on the open earth left after the demolition of Raja Jai Singh’s haveli.

  “Grateful, Nana?” Aurangzeb said with a quick flash of a smile, which disappeared almost as soon as it had appeared. That little movement softened the burn in his normally intense gaze, made him look more youthful, more of the child he really was, his face smooth with its darkening of hair on the upper lip and the few hairs on his chin that he resolutely refused to shave. “Why?”

 
; His grandfather took hold of his hand and drew him closer. “I can remember when my father, your great-grandfather, made us leave Persia in the middle of the night. And on the way, in the great desert, we were beset by dacoits. Somehow, we survived, but they took everything we had. And then Qandahar . . .” His voice trailed away, and Aurangzeb, who had heard this story in some form or another many times from this man, knew that he was thinking of his sister’s birth at Qandahar, of her marriage to Emperor Jahangir, of her perfidy toward Shah Jahan and toward her brother. “And then,” Abul continued, “we came to Agra. My father was nothing very much at court for a very long while, even though Emperor Akbar had noticed him, been benevolent enough to grant him a mansab, but he worked hard, beta. Well before my sister married Emperor Jahangir”—and this time he talked of her without flinching—“my father was made Treasurer of the Empire.”

  “I know, Nana.” Both of them conveniently forgot other misdemeanors on the part of the family—Abul’s older brother Muhammad had tried to assassinate Emperor Jahangir, and his father had embezzled fifty thousand rupees from the treasury—all of which were magically forgiven when Mehrunnisa became the twentieth wife. They forgot that, responding to Abul’s pleas, she had made the marriage between Mumtaz and Shah Jahan happen. That she had built her father’s tomb north of where they sat, on the other bank of the river. But they did remember that it was this tomb—Abul’s father’s and Aurangzeb’s maternal great-grandfather’s—that had provided the plan, the sketch, the very idea for Mumtaz Mahal’s tomb.

  “So this,” Aurangzeb said, looking around, though seeing nothing more than the walls of the tent, “is going to be the part of the complex where the Jilaukhana will be.”

  And they both thought of the vast plans that the architect had drawn up for Emperor Shah Jahan and the exquisite miniature model he had made of the Taj Mahal’s complex, intricate in every detail, attention paid to every facet.

  The complex was to be in three parts—the tomb itself on its red sandstone platform at the edge of the river, flanked by a mosque on one side and an assembly hall on the other. Its gardens, with a red sandstone reflecting pool along the center, would be in front of the tomb—landward, naturally. At the southernmost end of the gardens was to be a massive gateway in red sandstone—the main entrance to the tomb. This gateway was part of a forecourt called the Jilaukhana, and this was the second of the three parts—on the land for which the first ‘urs for Mumtaz took place.

  The third part, beyond the southern gateway to the Jilaukhana, was to be the Taj Ganj—a mammoth square complex that housed bazaars and four caravanserais, the incomes from which would fund the care and upkeep of the tomb and the forecourt.

  The tents for the first ‘urs were pitched on a flattened piece of land, ready and awaiting the building of the Jilaukhana. The forecourt would be a rectangular courtyard, built especially for the purpose of allowing visiting nobles to dismount, tether their horses, and refresh themselves before entering the tomb’s gardens. It had four gateways—east and west, from which, down a long corridor of verandahs, there were two bazaar streets; and the southern gateway, up a short flight of stairs because of the slope of the land, which eventually gave out into the Taj Ganj. But the courtyard, the other three ancillary gateways, the bazaar streets trimmed with red stone chajjas or eaves that sluiced rainwater down into the yard—everything paled in comparison to the northern gateway, the darwaza-i-rauza. Quite simply, the entrance to the tomb, but really called the Great Gate.

  This darwaza was to be a magnificent structure, seated on its own sandstone platform, the floor of which was inlaid with white marble. It would have a high central arch flanked by four smaller arches, two on each side, and every arch would actually be a rectangular portal culminating in a peak on top. There would be four engaged minarets on the four corners, octagonal in shape, topped by white marble cupolas, and the front and back portals were to be capped by eleven freestanding marble cupolas. The building would house a central hall, decorated with marble inlay, with tiny transom windows along the roofline to let in natural light, and when it was completed, a shimmering Aleppo glass chandelier, lowered for lighting by thick chains, hung in the center of the ceiling.

  The front of the darwaza would also be built of the red sandstone so prolific in the quarries around Agra but inlaid with white marble, into which would be carved, in calligraphic script, the eighty-ninth sura from the Quran, which invited believers to step into Paradise.

  “There’s hardly anything here now,” Aurangzeb said. “But the architect’s model was meticulous. Mama would have liked it, but then, she liked anything Bapa did.”

  Abul Hasan nodded, his heart brimming. Even in times of such plenty, he could not forget those early days of the flight from Persia or his envy when his sister became an Empress. Now his child would lie for eternity in splendor; one day her husband would join her here, or he would perhaps construct a tomb for himself elsewhere; such were the privileges of royalty. Something his grandson took so much for granted, mocking him when he spoke of being grateful. He studied the boy next to him and felt an abrupt tug of fear. These children his Arjumand had borne, each was an independent, fiery spirit. At times he wished she had had only one son; then there would be no question of succession, no fighting, no fragmenting of the family. But he was nonetheless thankful that she had been so fertile—four sons, three daughters, these were all good, wanted, blessings from Allah. Though he was still uneasy, somewhere inside, knowing Aurangzeb well. The boy was affectionate and could be kind if he wanted, all hidden, alas, under a mask of strictness and rigidity, so unappealing in someone this young.

  Unaware of his grandfather’s ruminations, Aurangzeb listened to the chanting, joining in, falling silent. He desperately wanted to be king after his father, and he wanted them all to agree to this, even Dara, who thought himself secure and the position rightfully his. And he wanted his beloved Jahan to laud him, to put her hands on his face and smile as she did upon Dara and Shuja. But as he sat through that night, he was afraid, because he knew that none of this would be easy and that, like his father, he might have to wash—forever—the blood of his brothers from his hands.

  As day dawned, fifty thousand rupees were distributed to the destitute who clamored outside the chintz screens which had kept the ceremony from the view of the common people. The men left an hour later, and the grounds were cleared of every living person before the ladies of the zenana came into the enclosure to perform their own ‘urs. This went on, also, a day and a night, and in the end, Princess Jahanara and Princess Roshanara gave out an equal fifty thousand rupees, with their own hands, and from their own incomes, to the poor women assembled.

  And so ended the first ‘urs in the Jilaukhana, the brilliant entrance to the tomb.

  Emperor Shah Jahan viewed the final resting place for his wife thus, a little slice of Paradise, set in lush gardens. He had thought of everything in designing the tomb, consulted for hours with his architects on the buildings that would decorate the waterfront and house the grave of his wife, so the entrance to the gardens could not be any less grand for this Luminous Tomb.

  Nine

  His Majesty also plays at chaugan in dark nights, which caused much astonishment even among clever players. . . . It is impossible to describe the excellency of this game. Ignorant as I am, I can but say little about it.

  —S. L. GOOMER (ed.) AND H. BLOCHMANN (trans.), The Ain-i-Akbari, by Abul Fazl Allami

  Agra

  Monday, December 22, 1632

  10 Jumada al-thani A.H. 1042

  By the time the male players had left, the ghariyali was ringing in the end of the second watch of the night. It was so quiet that the sound of the brass gong being struck by the leather-headed mallet rolled cleanly over the walls of the fort and into the chaugan field. The ghariyali paused for five seconds when he had concluded measuring out the gharis, seven in all, and then lifted his mallet to follow up with two more strikes in quick succession to indicate the end of
the second watch. Midnight. And the moon was centered in the sky, its pearl-like face streaked by wisps of thin clouds.

  Jahanara stood alone in the middle of the polo grounds, a silver brilliance of moonlight around her. Dara, Shuja, and Aurangzeb had played here earlier in the evening, and Roshan and she had watched from a zenana enclosure on one side of the field. Aurangzeb’s team had won—Dara and Shuja had played on the opposite side, but they were no match for their brother. When they had been younger, he had run faster than all of them, pumping his arms and legs, his face red with effort; he could ride better, straddling a horse as though he had been born on one; his mouth, even, was quicker to retort. So Aurangzeb had won, because he had wanted to win, and because he had not been expected to do so. Dara was slothful, assured of his position and so uncaring about “little” wins and losses, as he termed them.

  Then they had all left. The torches lining the length of the chaugan field had been extinguished, the slaves and servants had carried away the refreshments, the noblemen watching had gone to their homes and their beds, and the moon had climbed higher, breaking through the low clouds that thronged the horizon. When Roshanara had ascended into her palanquin, Jahanara had made as if to follow her, then slipped back quietly.