The Feast of Roses

by Indu Sundaresan

  But it was the monk’s demeanor that enchanted Mehrunnisa. Siddhicandra moved as though at rest, his limbs fluid. She had never seen him angry or even upset. He was very young, almost too young for such self-control. She had invited him into the zenana to teach her Sanskrit, logic, and poetry, in all of which he had an excellent understanding.

  For all his calmness, Siddhicandra was a man not connected with the royal family, and so could not come into the harem and sit with the women. Mehrunnisa had followed those rules, though only in spirit. She had a scaffolding erected outside the balcony of her apartments, and once a week, Siddhicandra was lifted on a swinglike contraption to come level with her balcony, and thus she studied with him. He was but three feet away from her, but hanging in midair—not exactly within the walls of the imperial zenana.

  They worked in silence, and while Mehrunnisa struggled with learning the conjugation of verbs, Siddhicandra read a book he had brought with him. She had asked for him as a teacher because he brought peace with him when he came. Sanskrit she would probably never master, although she did try. But what she wanted most was to know how he could let the world fight and destroy itself around him and yet not be affected by it. He had no wants, none at all. He did not even seem to need anything.

  “Tell me, how does it feel to be surrounded by men who enjoy all earthly pleasures and not enjoy them yourself?” Mehrunnisa asked.

  Siddhicandra put down his book. “Your Majesty, it takes a strong mind. For years, I have cultivated my mind to obey the rules of my religion. My mind is detached from its outward shell”—Siddhicandra gestured toward his body—“and is thus not attracted either by the pleasures of my body or those of others.”

  “Have you never indulged yourself? Even a little?”

  “No, your Majesty, it has not been necessary. I have never felt the need.”

  As he spoke, Emperor Jahangir came into the apartments. The monk immediately bowed his head.

  “Your Majesty, I have been chiding Siddhicandra for his unreasonable celibacy,” Mehrunnisa said. “And that too in one so young and beautiful of form . . .”

  “Then I shall join you in persuading Siddhicandra to give up his quest for chastity.” He turned to the young man. “Why do you persist? Don’t you see all around you the luxury and sensuality of a good life?”

  “Besides, austerity is only for those who have been sated by sensual pleasures,” Mehrunnisa added. “What is the difference between Jainism and Hinduism? The asceticism that Hindus have to undergo comes only in the fourth phase of their lives; they live first as the child, then the student, then the husband and householder, and finally, when they are old, they renounce the world for God. But the Hindus have already, in their youth, experienced pleasure and give it up only at an old age. How can you renounce worldly pleasures without experiencing them? How can you know if one path is better than the other if you have traveled but in one direction?”

  “Your Majesty,” Siddhicandra responded, “what you say is true. But reflect for one moment upon the world we live in. Would you frankly acknowledge that the old today are as disciplined as they were a few generations ago? It is the youthful who have more control of their minds and bodies and who have the strength to give up physical gratification.”

  Mehrunnisa fell silent. What was he saying? That she was too old to gain any sort of peace? This power she had now, that Jahangir had given her, was exhilarating. But it came with an unsettled mind. She worried all the time—there was always something or the other to give her pause. Now it was Khurram. She had not heard from him, had not seen him, either at the darbars or in her apartments. Was he hiding from her? Why had he not responded to what she had suggested?

  She would never be able to duplicate Siddhicandra’s sheer uninterest in anything but his God. Even here, in the zenana, looking through the doors at the thickly piled Persian carpets, the silk-covered divans, he was not tempted to lay his body upon them to rest. Where did this willpower come from? He was barely two years older than Prince Khurram, but in everything else, he could not be more different. She listened as Jahangir and the monk sparred with each other in argument. They talked often like this, for the Emperor it was unimaginable that the body must not be listened to, that its needs be ignored. How else would heirs to the empire be born? Without want, there would be no getting anything. Ambition needed to exist. And Siddhicandra insisted upon his love for his God as fulfilling his needs.

  The Emperor turned to Mehrunnisa during a lull. “Convince him that he needs to take a wife, my dear. How can he not have what we have?” He put his hand on her shoulder, and Mehrunnisa leaned against Jahangir.

  “What is it?” he asked, moving her face until he looked into her eyes. “What bothers you?”

  They forgot that the Jain monk sat in front of them on the scaffolding, that he still watched them and listened to what they were saying.

  “I asked Khurram if he would be willing to marry Ladli,” Mehrunnisa said. “Not now, of course, but soon.”

  “And there is a problem here?”

  “I do not know,” Mehrunnisa said slowly. “He has said nothing.”

  She then told him about the whole of their meeting at Zahara Bagh. Of what they had said to each other. Jahangir asked if she wanted him to interfere, and Mehrunnisa thought about it and then shook her head. She was Ladli’s mother and should manage this herself. Besides, she could not go to the Emperor for help each time she wanted something.

  They talked thus for a while, still not aware of Siddhicandra. Finally, he asked for permission to leave. Siddhicandra beat against the ropes two times, and the workers below began to haul down the swing. As he left, he said to Mehrunnisa, “Your Majesty, no man can be moved against his will. If the prince hesitates, it is not because he is influenced by a wife or a father-in-law. It is his own determination that dictates his decision.”

  “As you resist your Emperor’s command to take a wife,” Mehrunnisa said, leaning over the parapet.

  “Yes, your Majesty.” Siddhicandra raised his hand in salute as the swing took him down to the ground.

  The Emperor and Mehrunnisa watched him go. “Do you think he is right, your Majesty?” Mehrunnisa asked. “Is Khurram not to be influenced?”

  Jahangir shook his head. “Khurram has not Siddhicandra’s austerity, nor his strength of character. None of my sons have this. Perhaps I am at fault for having been too indulgent, but,” he grimaced, remembering how once he had been misled too, “I cannot make too strong a claim to a lack of weakness myself. Do what you will with Khurram, Mehrunnisa. Nothing would please me more than to be able to call Ladli a daughter-in-law. And I have three other sons.”

  She laughed for the first time, the worry lifting from her. Of course. None of the other three had Khurram’s charm, but charm could be cultivated, could it not?

  Hoshiyar came to stand behind them and they turned to him.

  “Your Majesties, the Dowager Empress Ruqayya Sultan Begam seeks an audience.”

  Mehrunnisa leaned over to kiss the Emperor’s cheek. “I should go to her, your Majesty.”

  “Both of you, your Majesties. She wishes to see both of you,” Hoshiyar said.

  • • •

  Ruqayya met them at the door to her apartments. The curtains had been opened, and summer filled the room with light and air. There was no darkness anywhere, no sense of the sloth and ease the Dowager Empress liked around her. Ever since Emperor Akbar’s death, Ruqayya had been thus—lying on her divan with the hukkah smoking gently in her hand, the essence of opium in the water pipe swirling about, waiting for news, waiting for knowledge. Her quickness had gone, and she had let herself grow more fat and more gray in the head. So this was a change indeed, Mehrunnisa thought, as the Emperor and she bowed to Ruqayya.

  “Come in, come in,” Ruqayya said. “Do not dawdle outside.”

  She settled them on divans and subsided opposite them. When her little Chinese dog came up to nip at her fingers, she slapped it irritably and sh
outed to her eunuch to take it away.

  “You commanded us, your Majesty?” Jahangir said. He was always this polite, insisting that all the women his father had married required this respect; they were all, in a sense, in the place of his mother. Ruqayya especially had been Akbar’s favorite, and that favor Jahangir gave her too. Besides, she had looked after Mehrunnisa in those years when she was a widow, she had made their marriage possible, and for that he would always be grateful. He did not always listen to her, as he had not when he was a prince, but that was entirely another matter. He gave her the courtesy of seeming to listen.

  The Dowager Empress frowned. “I have heard news from Surat. The Rahimi has been captured.”

  “By whom?” Mehrunnisa sat up on her divan.

  “The Portuguese Viceroy at Goa. She has been taken there as she was, with her crew, the cargo, even the passengers.” Suddenly Ruqayya seemed old and tired. Defeated. Once news such as this would have sent her into a flying temper, flinging curios and shouting curses at anyone who would care to listen. But the capture of the Rahimi seemed to have broken her.

  “Why? . . .” Jahangir said, and then he stopped. He turned to Mehrunnisa, and she was watching him. They both knew why. It was the imperial farman to trade that the Englishman Thomas Best had carried with him to England. Unable to defeat the English, the Portuguese had turned on Indian ships.

  “I will not see my beloved ship again,” Ruqayya’s voice rose to a wail.

  Mehrunnisa smiled and then quickly hid that smile. Ruqayya had seen the Rahimi only once in fifteen years. It was not easy, living as they did at court at Agra or Lahore, to travel to the westernmost reach of the empire merely to visit a ship. It was easier to own the ship and send it to sea from this far. What Ruqayya was bemoaning was the rich cargo in the Rahimi’s hold.

  “Do not smile, Mehrunnisa,” Ruqayya said sharply. “How would you feel if this were one of your own ships?”

  “I apologize, your Majesty,” Mehrunnisa said. “But did the Rahimi infringe any of the conditions on the cartaz?”

  “Of course not,” Ruqayya snapped. “I have a very honest captain, and he has strict orders not to do any such thing. The Rahimi’s cartaz was up to date, and all the customs duties had been paid.” She looked at Jahangir. “What are you going to do about this? Will you let them get away with something so unlawful? If the Portuguese have the temerity to reach within the zenana itself, how long will it take for them to grab for the throne?”

  And so she scolded them for a while longer and they listened. Ruqayya was not always reasonable in her arguments, but she was afraid. The Rahimi had contained most of her wealth—she had disregarded the advice she had given Mehrunnisa about diversifying her investments and had put most of her money into this journey to Mecca.

  Jahangir and Mehrunnisa left her apartments after an hour and went back to their own. On the way, they talked. No word had come from the Portuguese Viceroy about the Rahimi’s capture, why it had been done, when the ship would be released, and what conditions had to be met before that happened. Ruqayya was right about one thing. There was no possibility that the Viceroy did not know who owned the Rahimi. The biggest insult was that it was taken from the bar at Surat, on the very shore of the empire. It was an act of war. The Portuguese had been indulged too long, given the right to ply their religion and their might at sea. But they had forgotten that it was a benign hand that allowed this. They might have been in India longer, but the Emperor still owned every breath of their bodies. They had forgotten this.

  • • •

  A farman was sent immediately ordering the release of the Rahimi. The Portuguese Viceroy returned a polite but impudent answer. The Rahimi would not be released until certain conditions had been met; English privileges were to be revoked; and the Emperor had to surrender the English in India to the Portuguese Viceroy.

  Mehrunnisa was enraged by the demands. Letters flew back and forth between Agra and Goa, neither side willing to concede defeat. The tone of the letters, on both ends, was diplomatic at first, and then threatening. The Empress did not want to insist too much or too harshly, for Ruqayya had set her mind on getting her ship back. The empire could not go to war with the Portuguese, at least not yet. And because Mehrunnisa did not insist, the Portuguese Viceroy sent her a bundle of passes, to distribute as she wished. He knew she owned ships too, and he was enticing her with these passes in which the terms were so liberal, the payment so light, that Mehrunnisa’s ships would be traveling as though for free in the Arabian Sea. The frigates would still defend her ships from pirates and marauders, she could trade at whatever port she wanted, customs duties were banished and not even to be thought of. Mehrunnisa knew this to be a bribe, but it was so tempting to use this new cartaz that she hesitated returning them.

  And as much as greed overcame her, the simple fact was that the Portuguese still provided protection, such as it was, to the Indian ships. The English had promised to guard them instead, but this would only be done upon drawing up a formal treaty between England and India, for trade all over the empire. For the treaty to be drawn up, the new and first official ambassador, Sir Thomas Roe, had to come to the courts. Roe was on his way, the Englishmen said. The problem was that it was not enough that Roe was on his way. He had to be here to sign a treaty to provide security for the Indian ships. The promise of Roe was not enough.

  So Mehrunnisa accepted the “gift” from the Viceroy but still insisted upon the return of the Rahimi. He still resisted, and as the months passed, the standoff continued.

  While the Emperor and the Portuguese were debating on the matter of the Rahimi, Rajput chieftains in Mewar revolted against the imperial army.

  • • •

  Mewar lay within the Mughal Empire, a thorn lodged in its heart. For years, ever since Emperor Akbar’s rule, the Rajputs of Mewar had defied invasion. They had lost land, of course, as the edges of the kingdom had been eroded away and added to the empire’s boundaries, and now Rana Amar Singh, ruler of Mewar, had been pushed into hiding in the Aravalli range of Rajasthan. Here he reigned, his back against the rock of the mountains, one hand forever on his sword. When Amar Singh’s father was dying, he saw his son’s turban tumble off his head, and he took it as an omen that Mewar would soon be lost to the Mughals. But that prophecy was yet to be fulfilled. It had been twenty years since Rana Pratap Singh’s death, and Amar Singh still ruled over the hillside he could now call his kingdom. Below him, in the flat land of the plains, was the brilliant blue of Pichola Lake, the half-built palace of his ancestors, the lush green of the fields fed by the lake’s waters.

  Rana Amar Singh had grown old in his mountain fortress. He was tired of living thus, sleeping—if he slept at all—under an open sky, battling the sudden monsoon rains that left his men and his army sodden, trying to rear his children on the hills, where every bush hid a legion of cobras and vipers. They had never known the luxury of a roof over their heads that was not made of loosely knitted jute, or the comfort of a bed that did not have a boulder to support it.

  Even Amar Singh’s memories of the palace that lay below him were faint at best. The conflict with Akbar had started while he was still a child, and the most he could remember was his father’s stubbornness and determination that Mewar would never call itself part of the Mughal Empire. That no matter how vast the empire stretched, how many other kingdoms it encompassed, how many other Rajput kings swore fealty to the Mughal Emperor and gave their daughters into the imperial harem, this Rajput warrior would be a warrior until death. And that meant Pratap Singh’s head would not bow to Emperor Akbar, and so Amar Singh’s could not to Emperor Jahangir. Father had fought father, and so son fought son.

  For years, the Rana’s men had come down from the Aravalli when night had provided them cover to pillage a caravan of hapless merchants, to set off mines against the ramparts of the fort on the Pichola, which now housed the Mughal army, or to fill the ponds with poison. This was the only way they could battle.

&nb
sp; But this time, the Rana had come down from the mountains to stay. The Mughal army in the plains had grown weary of the fight. Soldiers had fled, leaving in large numbers each day; not even the promises of promotions or higher pay would have made them stay. The Rana had come, they had fought him, and the crafty Amar Singh had then retreated to his mountain home. Nothing had been achieved. It had been in a situation like this, with half the army gone, the other half indifferent, that Amar Singh had come down for one last foray—and taken over his ancestor’s palace on the banks of the Pichola.

  When the news of this latest rebellion reached the royal court at Agra, Emperor Jahangir forgot, briefly, the problem with the Portuguese. And when he talked with Mehrunnisa, she forgot her hostility against Khurram. Mewar should not have mattered so much. But the Mewar problem had uneasy roots for Jahangir.

  Akbar had sent Jahangir there when he was a prince, but Jahangir had not had the patience to stay and see the campaign through. Instead, he had decided to storm the treasury at Agra; the bitter years of estrangement from Akbar had followed, and Mewar had been overlooked. When Jahangir came to the throne, he tried to subdue Amar Singh again, but just as he had rebelled against his father, Khusrau chose the moment of the second Mewar campaign to rebel against Jahangir. And again, Mewar was forgotten, as Jahangir went racing after Khusrau to Lahore. So that pocket of land remained independent within the empire—and not placidly independent either.

  “I can no longer go to the battlefield, Mehrunnisa,” Jahangir said. “Who shall I send to lead the army? Amar Singh will surrender himself, or his life, this much I am determined about. This has gone on for too long.”

  They talked of the possible candidates. Parviz was in the Deccan, supposedly overseeing the campaign there. Besides, Parviz could not be given command of the Mewar invasion—he had already had that when Khusrau had rebelled, and he had proved useless. There was no question of Khusrau even being considered—a blind prince to be put in command of an imperial army? He could not even climb his own horse unassisted, let alone chase the wily Amar Singh up and down the gullies of the Aravalli. Shahryar . . . he was still a child. And that left only Khurram.