Aavarana- The Veil

by S L Bhyrappa

  But the women in Moinuddin’s zenana! They were beautiful, each in a different way. They were always bedecked, wearing the softest silks and a dazzling array of finely-crafted jewellery made of sparkling gold, diamond, pearls and rubies. The harsh rays of the Delhi sun didn’t touch their impeccable skin and thick tresses, meticulously cared for by an army of servants.

  Moinuddin had four wives, whom he had wedded in the traditional way. Each wife had about eight to twelve female servants. These female servants too, were young, pretty and adorned to the extent that their status afforded them. Their duties followed a fixed routine. They had to arrange for the mistress’s lavish meal, decorate her luxurious bed and massage her body with special oils to make her skin smooth and her muscles supple. While the mistress basked in the oil, they prepared her bath by heating the water to an optimum temperature. Once the water was ready, they gave her a leisurely bath, slowly rubbing the oil away, and then applied perfume all over, then again applied scented vapour to her wet hair before finally decorating her with clothes and jewellery that exuded her youth in the most seductive manner possible. If she was bored, they had to entertain her by singing her favourite songs or dancing for her. But then she was always bored, given that her husband was almost never with her. Mostly, it was because she was angry that her husband was spending more time with some other woman. And it was to these maidservants that she turned to confide her angst. The servant would listen sympathetically and offer a few words of comfort.

  One day, Moinuddin visited Begum Jamila Banu. The begum was thirty years old, I think. She was ecstatic. This visit proved to her that Allah’s grace was upon her. She seated him on the large swing, sat beside him and began to press his hands, feet and legs in soft, soothing strokes. She ordered her servants to entertain him. A troop of four of her servants applied perfume while another troop began to fan him from behind. After he showed signs that he was pleasantly relaxed, the first troop began to sing, while yet another troop of four began to dance to the music. The master was clearly savouring this performance. After a very long time, his eyes reflected the cloudy expression of desire. The begum knew when she saw this that her moment of salvation had arrived. She moved her fingers on the top of his palms in slow, deliberate motions. He did not seem to notice it. His vision was fixed on Keshara Bai, one of the most arresting dancers in the zenana, an honour Jamila Begum had herself bestowed upon her. After a long time, he rose. It was time to go to the sleeping quarters. The begum also stood up immediately, taking this as an unspoken hint. He took two giant strides, took hold of Keshara Bai’s hand and then pulled her into the sleeping room.

  The begum’s eyes now turned into a hundred knives. But she knew that to even mildly question the mansabdaar’s behaviour would be fatal. If he learnt it from other sources, he’d order her to be lashed or worse, pronounce talaq. With some effort, she regained her composure and commanded the troop to continue the music and dance. It was both impossible and unnatural for her to ever forgive Keshara Bai. But she had to be careful with the dancer who had suddenly risen in the mansabdaar’s favour. If she complained, he’d surely pronounce talaq and marry her. Or pull the slave girl into the bedroom in her presence just to spite her. Three days after the incident, she confided in Naheed Kanchini, one of her trusted servants, over several tearful hours.

  Naheed herself told me this after we became good friends and she knew she could trust me. Besides, Naheed hated Keshara Bai…no she was actually jealous of Keshara Bai who, according to Naheed, had deprived her of the pleasure of serving the mansabdaar. She was also glad that the begum was upset. The begum deserved it, she said, it was a fitting punishment for hectoring the servants throughout her life. ‘She has to have the best, the richest food every single day. Two, three, four varieties of meat, vegetable, curries and sweets and we keep her skin glowing and her muscles supple. There’s no way she won’t become fat. But look at us. We work the whole day. We run around. We dance. We eat in moderation. Our bodies are always youthful and flexible like a bow. Isn’t it natural that the master will desire us? Which is why she guards us like a snake guards a treasure. And she also vomits poison like a snake. Jealousy. But she knows that there is no zenana without us.’

  I thought about this and did a quick calculation. Four begums and fifty-two servants in all. Apart from them, sixteen kanchinis. They were also called prisoners. The scriptures prohibited a man from marrying more than four women, but he could take any number of prisoners. These were typically the women taken as prisoners in a victorious campaign. Or they were bought in slave auctions. Or gifted by a friend. While they weren’t legally wedded wives, their status was slightly better than the servants. And they didn’t have servants like the begums had. At best, they had a couple of assistants. They spent their days practising music and honing their dancing skills and when the master desired them, they had to consider it their great fortune. Food was cooked in a common kitchen but dishes were carefully segregated in containers of various sizes and the appropriate dish sent to the begum who ordered it made. Expert chefs used the best ingredients from a vast array of spices to prepare heavenly curries, among other things. The aroma of cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, almond, anise, coriander, chilli, cumin, cashew, fenugreek, copra and mustard was enough to make even an overfull man hungry again. Chefs commanded enormous salaries. There were gradations even there—cooks who were experts at making all kinds of sweetmeats earned better. The mansabdaar always had his meals inside the zenana, taking turns to eat with one begum today and the other the next day. The kanchinis ate after the begum’s meals were over and after the kanchinis, it was the turn of the servants and eunuchs like me. Our spread was nowhere close to theirs, but it was still really good and definitely, infinitely better than what the horsemen, mahouts and foot soldiers ate. These men cooked their own food with whatever they could afford. We mostly used to be given the extra food the master and the begums had left over. Once the palate was accustomed to this taste, the greatest dread of the lowliest servant in the zenana was the termination of services.

  The zenana had fourteen eunuchs, including me. One of them was from a country called Abyssinia. He was charcoal black, very tall and had an imposing build. He had curly hair and was about fifty years old. He told me he was a born eunuch. He was called a nazar, which meant he was the chief eunuch. He allotted work to the rest of us, supervised our tasks and kept a strict watch on our movements. He had the authority to directly report to the mansabdaar if any of us made a mistake. He could report on even the female servants in the zenana and his word was final. The mansabdaar blindly believed him and a bad report meant severe punishment. The entire zenana, including the begums, dreaded him.

  Five years ago, a female servant and a eunuch were caught making love in the bathroom. Both of them knew that the eunuch could do nothing but the urge was overwhelming. The nazar had long suspected them of having an arrangement of this sort. And so he waited and caught them in the act. It seems they fainted on the spot when they saw this fearsome nazar. The punishment for adultery was death. But the mansabdaar was out of Delhi on a campaign in the Deccan. The case was taken to Begum Sultana Banu, the first wife of the mansabdaar. She was a very pious woman who did her namaz five times daily as prescribed. She was always on a roza and chanted the holy verses from the Koran. In many ways, she had the main control over the supervision of the zenana, followed by the mansabdaar himself. She was flabby and fat stubbornly sat on her body. Age showed on her. However, the fact that the mansabdaar still retained her as his wife without giving her talaq showed how much he loved and respected her. She had made a name for herself as a pious and compassionate woman. When the accused stood before her, she patiently heard the case and pronounced her verdict. Both of them had to surrender their life savings. The eunuch was transferred to the stable. The servant was sent to the slave market where she was bought for twenty rupees. In the end, they were simply thankful that their lives had been spared.

  The remaining twelve eunuchs
were like me—prisoners of war whose testicles had been subsequently broken and then assigned to serve in the zenana. Two were from Malwa. Four were from Bundelkhand. The six of them were caught when they were very young. They had no memory of the pain of the treatment and showed no bitterness. They were loyal to the mansabdaar and accepted the authority of the mansion without opposition. They were about thirty to forty years old. The other six were from the Gouda country. They told me that parents in that country break the testicles of their own male children when they are four years old and then sell them in the slave market because they can’t pay taxes. After being repeatedly sold and after changing hands of many middlemen, they ended up here. They had no loyalty other than to the master who gave them food and shelter. Their minds did not admit even the notion of questioning the justness of the way they were treated in the zenana. The natural condition of their existence comprised food, work and sleep.

  Father’s research on eunuchs ran into thirty-two handwritten pages. It covered travelogues by prominent European travellers such as Manuki and Bernier who toured India during the Mughal period—books long out of print, long unavailable. Which means he had to sit in the library for several days and make notes. Which means he was in Bangalore. And he knew that I lived in Bangalore. And yet, he didn’t visit me even once…did he even think of me? Nothing in these thirty-two pages contains even a word of anything related to me.

  Father’s note read:

  In their boyhood, Mughal princes were trained in zenanas under the tutelage of women and Hijras brought in via the slave trade market from such countries as Russia, Ethiopia, Caucasia, and Gurjustan (Georgia today). Most of these Hijras were corrupt in proportion to their age, background, and the culture they came from. They coached the princes in the art of licking the superior’s shoes and kicking those below them. (Bernier. Travels in the Mughal Empire 1656–1668. Revised by A.V. Smith, Oxford, 1934, pp. 144–45.)

  Father’s note again:

  The main duties of eunuchs included serving the women, keeping an eye on their movements and reporting suspicious behaviour to the Nazar. This system meant that the women were compelled to treat the eunuchs nicely if they had to carry out their clandestine affairs. These affairs included obtaining liquor and opium and at the riskiest extreme, it included smuggling their lovers into the zenana. However, in some cases, these eunuchs were themselves called into satisfying the amorous needs of these women to the best of their ability. Such eunuchs had a special power over these women. (Pelsaert, Francisco. Jahangir’s India, translated by W.H. Moreland and P. Geyl, Cambridge 1925, p. 99.)

  Eunuchs also supplied women to princes who had just entered manhood.—Another note (K.S. Lal: Mughal Harem, pp. 158–59, 184–85, 187–88.)

  Aurangzeb had appointed a hijra as the chief jailor to guard the Agra prison where he had imprisoned his father. In his Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri or Jahangir’s Memoirs, Akbar’s son Jahangir writes: ‘In Hindustan, especially in the province of Sylhet, which is a dependency of Bengal, it was the custom for the people of those parts to make eunuchs of some of their sons and give them to the governor in place of revenue (mal-wajibi). This custom has been adopted in varying degrees in other provinces, and every year some children are thus ruined and cut off from procreation.’ The Bengal of those times spanned a very vast area, including the hilly ranges of the north, the Sarkar region of Orissa and parts of Bihar. This custom quickly spread throughout the Mughal Empire. Jahangir issued an order prohibiting this custom as well as indulging in the trafficking of eunuchs. However, this order didn’t meet with the expected success, as the governors made use of the existing legal provision that allowed them to take eunuchs in lieu of money. Jahangir further says that Syed Khan Chugtai had twelve hundred eunuchs in his service. Besides, eunuch-trafficking was very profitable because eunuchs fetched three times the price of an ordinary slave. Indian hijras were in great demand in not just Delhi but Isfahan and Samarkhand. Although Aurangzeb banned the practice of castrating boys owing to religious reasons, he didn’t prohibit the practice of castrating grown men. During his reign, Golconda city (today’s Hyderabad) in the year 1659 witnessed some 22,000 castrations. However, Jahangir exhibited better wisdom in comparison: he wanted non-castrated boys in lieu of tax. He would first convert them, thereby ensuring that the future generations that emerged from these boys would be Muslim.

  I want to incorporate all of these thirty-two pages of research into my novel but it’ll ruin the novel’s tempo. Father’s research and pointers to further reading ensured that material was available in abundance. However, abundant availability of material doesn’t automatically translate into a quality work of historical fiction. The work must exhibit the essence of all that research. I wasn’t writing an academic work on history. Father had planned to do that.

  I continued reading his notes, fascinated:

  Several hijras went on to become mighty generals. Sultan Balban’s Vazir, the minister Imaruddin Rehan; Allah-ud-din Khalji’s general, Kuffr Hajjar Dinari; and Kutub-ud-din Mubarak Khalji’s confidant, Khadausha, were notable hijras who rose to positions of power. In 1394, Sultan Mahmud honoured his minister, a black eunuch named Khwaja Jahan Malik Sarvar, by bestowing the Malik-us-Shirk title upon him and made him the subedaar of Jaunpur. A few days after he assumed control of Jaunpur, Malik Sarvar launched a blistering campaign that led him to capture the entire region encompassing Kol (today’s Aligarh) in the west to Tirhat in Bihar in the east. This campaign earned him the title of Sultan-us-Shirk. During the Mughal rule, eunuchs belonging to the lower ranks of naazir and khwaja saras eventually rose to the ranks of mansabdaar and subedaar. However, these lower ranks were not wholly derogatory. They were regarded as Aitmad Khan or Aitbar Khan (trusted courtiers). One of the Aitbar Khans, who served both Babar and Humayun, was made the subedaar of Delhi by Akbar in recognition of his loyalty. Akbar also made another Aitbar Khan a thousand mansabdaar and entrusted him with strengthening the economy, and yet another was appointed as a four thousand mansabdaar and sent to Gujarat. Aurangzeb promoted Bakhtawar Khan, the chief supervisor of eunuchs, to the rank of a thousand mansabdaar. Manuki has provided a list of forty naazirs along with the titles and ranks of each naazir in the service of Aurangzeb. These eunuchs might have risen up the ranks by displaying fierce valour as a means of compensating their lost masculinity. However, these were stray exceptions. Not every hijra could dream of catching the emperor’s attention.

  I contemplated turning the destiny of my novel’s protagonist in such a way that he would attract the badshah’s attention but immediately abandoned the idea because if I did that, it would not only be contrary to the insights Father had gained from his back-breaking research but it would be twisting history itself: it would mean justifying the testicle-smashing culture.

  ~

  About two months after I was put in the zenana, Sultana Banu Begum sent for me. No servant had the freedom to initiate talk with any begum. It was considered disobedience and bad manners. Begum Sultana kept track of every new slave who joined or others who left the zenana. Nazar had told me very early that she was akin to an administrative head, when he coached me on every nuance of my behaviour and conduct inside the zenana. In fact, I was formally inducted into the zenana only after he was satisfied that I was fit to move in. When I arrived, the begum sahiba was reclining against a soft pillow on her swing, which swayed back and forward very slowly. A maidservant standing at a short distance was fanning rhythmically by pulling the jute wires attached to the khuskhus grass fan—which measured three yards long and a yard wide—hanging down from the ceiling. She was holding an incense stick in her hand and when she saw me, she motioned with a finger. I moved closer but stopped at a respectful distance, then said salaam aleikum, then bowed and did the mujra.

  ‘Are you a eunuch by birth or did you undergo the treatment?’ the begum questioned in a firm but dignified tone.

  ‘I underwent treatment. Mansabdaar sahib bought me, and then made me undergo the treatmen
t before putting me in the service of the merciful sahiba,’ I submitted with utmost humility.

  ‘Weren’t you captured in battle?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If you hadn’t forsaken the false faith and accepted the Only True Faith before the battle, you wouldn’t have had to suffer this fate even if you were defeated in battle. Why did you delay?’

  I didn’t reply…I had no reply. I have asked myself this question a hundred times. Why? Father didn’t abandon his faith when he had a chance. Why? The badshah, the alamgir, ruler of the world wouldn’t have attacked us if we had converted to Islam. We would still be the rulers of our kingdom. At the worst, we’d be a feudatory of the badshah. Or I could have led the life of a mansabdaar or subedaar of a trusted principality of the badshah. We were completely ruined by our faith in a powerless god made of stone. I could have had a mansion similar to this and I could have owned a zenana like this. Now I was just a hijra and a slave. Why? These thoughts would always end in violent but helpless fury against my previous faith of ignorance. The begum’s question lit this fuse and I exploded again inwardly, but showed nothing on my face.

  Sensing that I wouldn’t reply, she continued, ‘Do you do your namaz five times daily?’

  ‘I do, but not regularly.’

  ‘Do it. It will do you good. I have heard that many hijras have become mansabdaars and subedaars. You were once a prince. Your conduct is cultured and your speech is refined. Which is why I gave this advice.’

  I thought her advice was sensible and from that day, I began to perform namaz regularly.

  After four years, life in Moinuddin Sahib’s zenana had become a benumbing activity of watching the lives of others. I had no private life. It was the same—new kanchinis and prisoners were admitted at unpredictable intervals and existing ones whose youth and beauty and charm had begun to fade were sold away to lower-ranking mansabdaars or other courtiers. Some older women were retained but such women had won the hearts of the mansabdaar and his begums by the sheer force of their faultless conduct and stainless obedience. They were provided with food and clothes and somehow continued their lives. However, not all women could force themselves to show this kind of faultless conduct, knowing every minute that their fate would turn for the worse once their youth faded. They obeyed the rules of the zenana because they had no other choice, but they used to seethe with the hopeless rage that boiled inside them. The women that were sent out of here usually found a home in Shaitanpura, notorious for prostitution. It was said that Shaitanpura was under the direct watch of the throne from the time of Akbar Badshah, who had appointed a special record keeper who made note of the men that visited the place. However, the amirs, subedaars, mansabdaars and other noblemen took their friends there to entertain them and bribed the record keeper not to enter their names in his register.