The Feast of Roses

by Indu Sundaresan

  The Shaikh’s tomb was within the mosque. Here there were numerous lamps lit, in the open verandah in front and within the tomb itself, visible through the latticework of marble screens.

  “I must go now, your Majesty.” Mahabat bowed to Jagat Gosini and vanished into the night, leaving her well within sight of the tomb.

  She leaned against the walls of the main gateway, waiting until her breathing slowed. Mahabat Khan had shown an admirable courage in bringing her back to the tomb and her servants. He had acted with decisiveness. Jagat Gosini wiped her face with the edges of her veil. She was not foolish enough to think that he had done this for fear of her safety, but mostly his own.

  She could hear voices now from within the tomb. The night was still warm, but the sweat on her back cooled rapidly and Jagat Gosini shivered. What was it Mahabat had seen outside the window? A man? A ghost? She ran across the yard to the front steps of Shaikh Chisti’s tomb and sat down there near an oil lamp, the screen behind, of interlocking circles in marble, throwing its pattern over her. She could hear her servants’ chatter, and Shaista Khan’s querulous voice raised above the others.

  It was time to leave and go back to Agra, or rather to the sarai a mile away—a sixteen-mile journey was not that easily undertaken in a night’s span. But Jagat Gosini sat where she was, thinking. Anger was long gone, or she had cast it away with a force of will. It rose at times, though, as now, when she least expected it. The day Hoshiyar Khan had come to take the imperial seal away would forever prey on her thoughts. When he had said why he had come, she had been too stunned to think.

  “Where? . . .” Where did this request come from?

  “At his Majesty’s behest, your Majesty,” Hoshiyar had said.

  She had possessed the seal for six years, since 1605, when it was wrenched away from Ruqayya’s unwilling hands at Akbar’s death and Jahangir’s ascension. As the head eunuch of the imperial harem had waited, Jagat Gosini had gone to the teakwood trunk in her apartments and taken out the bag. She had handed it to him, and he had still waited. One by one, the other paraphernalia of the seal had gone to him—the qalam wood pen used to sign farmans, the nephrite jade inkwell, the wedge of ink in a gold box, and the gold knife with its ruby and pearl hilt used to chip at the ink. She had kept the heavy silver water vase that she had commissioned for diluting the ink. Hoshiyar knew of its existence, of course, but he had not asked for it, and neither had Mehrunnisa. They had allowed her that small dignity.

  As he had left, Hoshiyar had said, “Her Majesty has asked permission for her brother’s visit, your Majesty. In two weeks. He will pass by the courtyard in front of your apartments in the third pahr of the day.”

  So Empress Jagat Gosini had stopped Hoshiyar and Abul on their way. She had been curious about Mehrunnisa’s brother. As she had stood next to him, she had tried to make out his face through the shawl, judged how high he rose from the ground—a mere elbow length above her—inspected the silk of his pajamas and the embroidery on his qaba. All this had told her nothing and yet had told her something about Abul. He had fidgeted, moved his head this way and that as though trying to see her; he was a man of volatile emotions, short of patience.

  She wondered just how much care he had for his sister. His coming to visit her was no indication; any man would visit a sister who had entrapped his Emperor. Jagat Gosini remembered that Abul’s daughter was betrothed to Khurram. This was a fact she never forgot, and it was something she had been very careful to guard from both Jahangir and Khurram. If the marriage took place, Abul would be father-in-law to her son, and if his daughter had the same charms as her aunt, she could lose Khurram all over again.

  “Your Majesty?” Shaista Khan stood next to the Empress.

  She looked up at him. “It is time to go, Shaista. Call for the horses.”

  The servants carried lanterns to provide light on their ride. Guards ran ahead of her entourage, their feet slapping on the earth, as the horses pounded through the darkness, flinging dust into the night air. All the while, her veil plastered to her face, the reins taut in her hands, Jagat Gosini thought.

  Khurram would never marry Mehrunnisa’s niece, not if she had any say in it. He would not become part of her family. And without someone like Khurram—an heir to base hopes upon—Mehrunnisa had nothing.

  • • •

  As the moon swelled to fullness at the end of February, the festival of Holi was celebrated in the imperial palaces at Agra. The days were increasingly hot, the nights still pleasantly cool. The winter’s wheat harvest had been cut, threshed, stored, and traded, and now it was time to celebrate.

  Holi was a Hindu festival, born of legends of kings and demons, Gods and devotees. It was a time for enjoyment, whether its revelers were Hindu or Muslim, or indeed, pledged to any other religion. This liberalism had not always existed. When Emperor Babur conquered India in 1526, some eighty-five years ago, celebrating a Hindu festival was not even considered. He had instead instituted a jizya—a tax paid by a head count by those whose minds professed Hinduism. But then Babur had never really considered India home, or her people his. It wasn’t until Akbar ruled that the jizya was abolished and Hindus were put on equal footing with the Muslims at court—an extremely political move, for the country itself was largely Hindu, the Rajput warriors at court were Hindu, and many of Akbar’s wives were Hindu.

  Once that barrier was destroyed, everyone could enjoy every festival. Even the Jesuit priests were allowed to celebrate mass, to convert the people of Hindustan to Roman Catholicism. They were even tolerated when trying to persuade the Emperor himself to their religion. This last would never happen, of course, no Mughal Emperor of India could profess anything but Islam, but the priests still tried.

  Holi was celebrated for five days. On the first night, the ladies of the harem went out into the courtyards of the palaces and swept dried leaves and twigs arranged there by the malis with gold-handled brooms. This was what the peasant women did outside the walls of the harem, clearing the ground around their huts of winter’s debris. They piled the branches into heaps and set fire to them. All around the city of Agra, bonfires illuminated the cool night sky. The burning of fires signified the end of a long winter, the welcome of new life in spring. Bazaars stayed open late, selling silver-leafed cashew burfis, gold rounds of jalebis, saffron-tinted kheers, and other sweets and savories.

  In the palace kitchens, the Mir Bakawal hung over huge vats of bhang—hemp—marinated in water. The next day the cooks would mash the bhang to a white, sticky paste and then boil it with milk, sugar, almonds, and sultanas. There would be no taste of the hemp left, only a sweet almond-flavored milk, drunk in abundance, with one glass powerful enough to turn eight hours into a pleasant, many-colored haze.

  The palaces woke to the first rains of the year. In the streets, children rushed about wetly, screaming with delight, throwing gulag—colored powder—on each other. In the imperial zenana, the morning started with the customary glass of bhang, then the ladies went out into the gardens to play. They smeared each other’s faces with pomegranate reds, sunflower yellows, indigo blues, paddy-field greens. Little squirt guns were filled with colored water. The idea was to sneak up on an unsuspecting victim and douse her with the water. Faces, arms, legs, clothes were all stained in a mélange of dyes. The stains would remain for the next three or four days, resisting baths and washings—they were the proud signs of having played Holi. By afternoon when the rain stopped, most of the jugs of bhang provided by the cooks were empty, and the ladies of the harem floated around dizzily, happy and careless.

  Prince Khurram went looking for Mehrunnisa as the sun climbed high above Agra. The initial euphoria of the morning had worn off, and the women lay under the shade of the mango and tamarind trees in the gardens, talking softly, listening to music, and eating their noon meal. He walked through the courtyards holding a fistful of purple gulag, searching through the groups of people. He was accosted at almost every step, colored water thrown on him from behi
nd, from a verandah, from a balcony. And Khurram good-humoredly fought back, chasing a slave girl, cornering her against a pillar, and rubbing the gulag over her body as she giggled in delight. He was more decorous with the older women, bending so they could powder his face and sipping bhang from the glasses they offered him.

  Finally, an hour after he had thus danced his way through the zenana palaces, he saw Mehrunnisa sitting with his father under the shade of a slender-leafed mango tree. Emperor Jahangir was leaning against the tree trunk, and Mehrunnisa sat forward, one elbow resting on his knees. They were not talking. As Khurram watched, his father’s hand went to touch Mehrunnisa’s back, and she turned to smile at him. They were alone, and this surprised Khurram. He had never seen his father alone—always surrounded by wives, a number of eunuchs and slaves—never with just one wife.

  The prince went up to the Emperor and bowed with the taslim three times. Then he bent to kiss his father’s cheek, and Jahangir patted him on the shoulder.

  “Al-Salam alekum, your Majesties,” Khurram said.

  “Welcome, Khurram,” Jahangir replied. “Sit with us for a while.”

  “I hesitate to disturb you, Bapa.”

  In reply, the Emperor glanced at Mehrunnisa. It was only a slight movement of his head, nothing blatant, but Khurram saw this, and before he could look at Mehrunnisa, his father said, “We have not seen you in many days, Khurram.”

  “Happy Holi, your Majesty.” Prince Khurram rubbed the gulag on Jahangir’s face, but respectfully, and he turned to do the same to Mehrunnisa, who had her chin up to him. She was smiling, her blue eyes muzzy with bhang. They were both quite drunk, he realized. Her hair was matted with maroon, and not an inch of her skin showed through a dusting of other colors, the powders even creeping under her fingernails. Mehrunnisa’s ghagara was drenched in some undistinguishable shade, and her veil bloomed a green that could only come from indiscriminately mixing colors. Jahangir had suffered a similar fate, his silk kurta not white anymore, the skin on his neck an alarmingly unnatural red.

  “Happy Holi, your Highness,” Mehrunnisa said, and she dabbed a finger into Khurram’s palm and drew a line of purple across his forehead and down his nose. “Now that is a definite improvement on your looks, Khurram.”

  He shrugged. “I can only agree with your Majesty. Perhaps it is so.”

  Mehrunnisa laughed, a slow, languorous sound. “When did you become so humble, Khurram? I have never known you to be anything but imperious, anything but arrogant. I know you well, remember.”

  He nodded, sat down next to them, and dusted the rest of the gulag from his hands. They did not speak for a while. The afternoon passed lethargically, every minute unhurried but not weighty. Khurram could sense Mehrunnisa turning her head, looking at him for a few minutes, and then turning away. A bee came humming by, and he swiped at it, watching his hand move deliberately through the air. He had drunk more bhang than he thought he had.

  “Tell us what you have been doing, Khurram,” Jahangir said.

  “The usual things, your Majesty. I apologize for not coming earlier to pay my respects, but I thought you might need some time.”

  “And how is your child? Well, I trust,” Jahangir said.

  “A delight, your Majesty. I will bring her to visit.”

  The Emperor and the prince talked thus and Khurram tried very hard to concentrate on what he was saying, but the heat went to his head. He watched as Mehrunnisa put her hand in Jahangir’s and his father absentmindedly kissed her fingers and then kept her hand to his chest. This open affection between them, taken so much for granted, flustered Khurram. The touching did not bother him, he had been brought up in a zenana and had one of his own now. Khurram had seen his father leave for his bedchamber with a hand on a slave girl’s hip, and there had been no mistaking that gesture—it spoke of sex and lust. But this . . . this intimacy not of the flesh but of the mind, which bespoke a comfort Khurram was not familiar with, this disconcerted him. He knew his mother and Jahangir had never had this indefinable quality of ease. Khurram was not envious of Mehrunnisa for his mother but for himself. He wanted this intimacy that his father and Mehrunnisa had. And not knowing what it was, or how it could be acquired, but seeing it so evidently, disturbed him. As he conversed with his father, he moved restlessly, dashing bits of grass from the carpet.

  Khurram wished he had found Mehrunnisa alone so he could talk to her, to tell her that she had his support in anything she wanted, well, anything within reason.

  “Why are you here, Khurram?” Mehrunnisa said suddenly. She had stopped Jahangir in midsentence, and more surprising than that, he had let her. Now his father was alert too.

  “Your Majesty, I come to bid you welcome into my father’s harem.”

  He said this without thinking. It was a phrase of politeness, of etiquette, but it was not enough.

  “Just that, Khurram?” She said this softly, now leaning back against the Emperor. Khurram did not know how to react to this. She was telling him that the Emperor and she were one, that if he had anything to say to her, it would be best said in Jahangir’s presence. But how could he even start what he wanted to say? That he came to make his bid for the throne before his father had any idea of relinquishing it. That he had no design of displacing Jahangir but merely securing his own place for the future. How could an intention such as this not be misconstrued?

  “Your Majesty,” Khurram said, thinking for the right words, words that would please and not offend, “you are new to his Majesty’s harem. I offer my compliments at your place here. Would you wish to command anything of me, I will be a willing servant.”

  Jahangir laughed. “Well said, Khurram. Your flattery does us all proud.”

  “I do not flatter, your Majesty,” Khurram said in a flurry. “The word has unpleasant connotations. No, I merely speak of my affection for my new mother.”

  Jahangir opened his mouth to reply, but Mehrunnisa put a hand on his arm and he stopped. “He speaks well, your Majesty,” she said. “Here is a son we can all be truly proud of. Go now, we must rest. We shall remember this courtesy, Khurram. I will remember it.”

  Prince Khurram rose from the grass and bowed to them. As he walked away, he was aware that they were still looking at him, but when he turned, Mehrunnisa had rested her head on Jahangir’s chest and had her eyes closed. Khurram muttered to himself, cursing the bhang he had drunk, which had made his language too flowery and indistinct. But then again, how to ask without seeming greedy? More to the point, what to ask for?

  Under the mango tree, Mehrunnisa and Jahangir slept for an hour, still sitting as they had. When Mehrunnisa woke, she knew the Emperor was awake too, although he did not move; the beat of his heart under her ear was less steady, not the regular beat of sleep.

  “He comes to be nice, Mehrunnisa,” Jahangir said. “But he wished to know if you will nurture his dreams.”

  “Should I do so, your Majesty?”

  “I am not dead yet, Mehrunnisa.”

  She looked up and put a hand over the Emperor’s mouth. “You must not even say this. Where would I be if you are gone? What could I do without you?”

  He smiled at her. “I have many years left. But I can remember wanting the throne for a long time. I believed my father greatly unjust in not giving it to me. More importantly, I feared that Murad and Daniyal would lay claim to it, even though I was the eldest born son.”

  “Khurram is the most likely to succeed you, your Majesty. The other three . . . they are nothing compared to him,” Mehrunnisa said.

  “True, in Khurram I have my heir.” Jahangir’s voice hardened as he spoke. He was still bitter about Khusrau, a son he had once loved dearly, who had betrayed him in rebellion, whom he could not seem to forgive. Khusrau reminded him too much of himself, of when he had rebelled against Akbar and caused him pain, and Jahangir did not want that wash of guilt. Parviz was a drunkard, a weakling, not cut from the cloth of kings. He too reminded Jahangir of himself in many ways—his drinking, f
or one. Jahangir had eaten opium since he was very young, lost many an hour in cups of wine. Mehrunnisa checked this when she could, when he allowed her to, but it still seduced him beyond all reason at times. And at those times, he was too much like Parviz.

  “So shall I talk with Prince Khurram, your Majesty?”

  Jahangir kissed her on the head. The colored water had dried in the heat of the day, leaving little flakes of maroon and red scattered over her hair. As long as he lived, Mehrunnisa would get what she wanted—she only had to ask. But when he was no longer here, things would be different. She would just be a Dowager Empress, with no son to lay claims upon, no right to occupy the front of the zenana screen at court. No voice in anything. But through Khurram . . . if his support for Khurram came through her, she would have some authority. For it would seem to his son that Mehrunnisa had strengthened the affections of his father. And Jahangir wanted Khurram to be Emperor after him—he was the only one of his sons who would cherish this empire and look after its people.

  “You must bathe now, Mehrunnisa, else the colors will stick to your skin for days,” Jahangir said. He snapped his fingers, and Hoshiyar Khan came running up from behind one of the pillars in a far verandah. “Prepare our baths, Hoshiyar.”

  “Yes, your Majesty.”

  They followed Hoshiyar into the palaces at a more leisurely pace. As they parted to go to their own apartments, Jahangir said, “Khurram would be the best person to give the throne to, Mehrunnisa. But he is still raw, much a child. He needs to be groomed, he needs advice. I can think of no person better than you for this, my dear.”