Shadow Princess

by Indu Sundaresan

  Jealousy flamed through Abul at the thought of this injustice, and then he heard that Mehrunnisa intended to convert the gardens that their father had owned on the Yamuna’s eastern bank into a tomb for him and for their mother.

  The tomb took a mere six years to build, and politically for Abul and Mehrunnisa those were turbulent years—Mehrunnisa was still Empress and her word held sway, but Abul clung to her side, determined that, when Jahangir died, it would be Khurram, the third son, who would become Emperor next, not a puppet of Mehrunnisa’s manipulations. And so it came to be in 1628, the year Ghias Beg’s tomb was completed. Abul imprisoned his sister and any other man who would dare to claim the throne, sent word to his exiled son-in-law and daughter, held a fierce and tight grip over the Empire until Khurram could be crowned Emperor Shah Jahan and he could finally become hugely powerful himself—as the father-in-law of the fifth Emperor of the Mughal dynasty.

  But Abul did not know then that the sister whom he had once adored, whom he had grown to loathe in later years, would leave a legacy in the shape of the tomb for their father, which she commissioned, which she designed, and for which only she could pay with her wealth. When it was completed, Abul knew that his hand could neither have shaped this graceful building nor reached into his purse for the money required—only Mehrunnisa had the incalculable elegance, the determination to succeed, and the imagination to raise a building over their parents’ remains that was an oddity for its time.

  The tomb, Itimadaddaula’s tomb (for this was the title by which Ghias would always be known), was built in the traditional charbagh style that the Mughal kings had brought into India from Persian gardens. The main garden was walled on four sides to keep out heat and dust and prying eyes. When she first looked over Ghias’s gardens after his death, Mehrunnisa decided to keep the charbagh that her father had built—the garden crossed over with two raised stone pathways that bisected at right angles in the center, where was housed a baradari, a small pavilion. The bisecting pathways created the charbagh—or the four compartmentalized gardens. Mehrunnisa had the center pavilion demolished, for there the tomb would rise. And at the center of each wall, where the pathways began, she constructed four ornate gateways of red sandstone inlaid with marble, each identical to the others, and had three of them bricked up, so that the only entrance to the tomb was from the eastern gateway, and the western gateway would overlook the riverfront.

  For six years, a fine powder of marble and sandstone clotted the air around Ghias Beg’s gardens, and the chink and click of chisels and hammers on stone plagued many a child’s dreams in the stonemasons’ huts that sprang up around. When the dust subsided, the tomb radiated charm and allure, but Mehrunnisa was never to see the finished product of her creation—by 1628, she was already deposed as Empress, her brother had imprisoned her, and when Khurram became Emperor, he sent her into a semiofficial exile to Lahore, three hundred and seventy-five miles from Agra.

  The elevated stone pathways that created the charbagh met in the center of the garden, and here was another raised red sandstone platform, on which the tomb stood. The platform itself was unornamented, simple slabs of stone mortared to one another, but the sides were inlaid with hexagonal patterns in white marble. The tomb was wholly built in the white marble that came from Raja Jai Singh’s quarries in Markana. At one point during the construction, Mehrunnisa had thought of covering the walls of her father’s tomb with beaten silver sheets that would glow in the sun and smolder under an overcast sky, but her architects persuaded her otherwise, citing the weather, the wear on silver, the fact that stone would be more enduring. And what stone? Until 1622, none of the Emperors’ tombs—those of Babur, Humayun, or Akbar—had been built in anything other than the red sandstone that came from the quarries near Fatehpur-Sikri. Marble was used as an inlay, but in small quantities, sparingly; it was expensive, it had to travel many miles from Markana and arrive intact at Agra.

  Mehrunnisa, Empress Nur Jahan, was disdainful of the price; by the time she came to build her father’s tomb, it meant more to her than just a memorial for her parents, it symbolized her power, her authority over the Empire, her immense wealth (which was why she wanted to adorn the walls with silver sheets)—it also meant that she, and not Abul, had the opportunity of leaving something for posterity to wonder at. Thus far, only the Mughal Emperors had had the privilege of raising a marble dome over their remains, but Mehrunnisa decided to build one for her father—who, not so many years ago, when appointed treasurer of the Empire because of his merit and reputation, had almost wiped himself and his family’s name from Mughal documents by embezzling fifty thousand rupees from the imperial treasury. But then . . . his daughter married Emperor Jahangir, his granddaughter married Prince Khurram . . . for all his greed, his teetering on the edge of honesty, Ghias Beg was an extremely fortunate man.

  The tomb was designed after a jewel box that Mehrunnisa owned. It was square, sixty-nine feet long on each side. Each corner had an engaged minaret, which was octagonal until the flat roofline and circular beyond, topped with a rounded cupola. On the center of the flat roof was a square baradari, its walls punctured by marble jalis, and inside were two cenotaphs in white marble signifying the resting place of Ghias and his wife Asmat. Their actual remains were in the central room on the ground floor. Here also were two cenotaphs in the center of the room, this time covered with a polished chunam, a lime plaster that had been dyed yellow with limestone. The floor here was marble inlaid with semiprecious stones; the jalis on the ground floor were again delicately fashioned out of lightweight pieces of marble.

  But it was the outside surface of the tomb that was designed to awe a visitor. Every surface, every surface, was covered in a profusion of precisely rendered patterns of stars, hexagons, squares, flowers, curves, and arches, all this display inlaid into the base of white marble so that it seemed more inlay than base.

  When she had thought about the color scheme for this pietra dura inlay, Mehrunnisa had spread out chips of semiprecious stones on the carpet in front of her and pondered for a long time. In the end she had opted for muted colors—sard for brown, yellow limestone (the brightest of her choices), a dull green jasper, and the sharp black-olive of bloodstone. The reds, the blues, the pinks were left on her carpet. Abul had participated even in this choice and had laughed at her, but she had been resolute. “You will marvel at it, Abul,” she had said.

  And a marvel it was. A passerby strolling on the western bank of the river and looking east toward Itimadaddaula’s tomb would see the sheer red sandstone walls of the gardens rising from the bank and in the center of the wall the western gateway, embedded into the stone, its detail picked out in white marble. And behind the arches of the gateway, there would be a little glimpse of a hushed white marble tomb, with its four minarets, its flat roof, its square, domed pavilion on the rooftop. But when the passerby crossed the river and entered the tomb from the eastern gateway, he would be confronted with a spectacle his eyes would not at first be able to believe and his mind would never forget. A serene tomb in translucent white, daubed in ochers, blacks, and greens, perfectly framed by the gateways of its gardens, a glimpse of the river beyond the tomb, the dark of the cypress trees on the lawns, the gray of the monkeys romping along the stone pathways. Mehrunnisa had thought of everything in planning the tomb for her father, and in the end nature and artifice collided to bring her imagination to life.

  And so, Emperor Shah Jahan would see this tomb that the woman who had sent him into exile had built and use it as a model for the one he was thinking of building for his wife at Agra.

  On the other bank of the river, and south of Itimadaddaula’s tomb, Raja Jai Singh had received the imperial farman from his Emperor with the royal seal at the top and, by its side, the imprint of Shah Jahan’s thumb dipped in a saffron dye. It was midafternoon, the air blighted of moisture; heat hazes wavered over the placid waters of the Yamuna, and Jai Singh sat under the shade of the tamarind at the very edge of his property, the
farman on his lap. Behind him, he could hear the muffled breathing of the runner who had brought the Emperor’s orders as the man wiped his forehead and splattered sweat on the dry ground.

  Jai Singh put a hand up in dismissal.

  “An answer, Mirza Raja?” the man asked in a low voice, his head bowed in deference. “I am to bring back a letter to his Majesty.”

  He would not himself, of course, but his orders were to take a missive from Raja Jai Singh and run with it to the next stopping post—nine miles away—where another fleet-footed messenger waited night and day, hand held out for the bamboo tube that enclosed the letter, his legs moving into a run even before this man would have come to a halt. In two and a half days, perhaps just a little more, Jai Singh’s response would be in his Emperor’s hands in Burhanpur—some four hundred and thirty miles away. This system of communication, wrought in Emperor Akbar’s fertile mind, had reached an efficient peak in his grandson’s rule. In the Emperor’s service, distances evaporated under the runners’ feet; they had smooth roads carved out for them that spun through the entire length and breadth of the Empire, so that an event had only to occur in one corner of Shah Jahan’s lands and it would be breathed into his ear before a week had passed.

  “Yes, there will be an answer to his Majesty.”

  Raja Jai Singh called for his writing materials and penned the only reply he could—he was overwhelmed with joy and gratitude on receiving his Majesty’s farman; he was blessed indeed that he could be of such service to his Majesty; the grant of the four other mansions in return for this worthless piece of land of his on the Yamuna was too generous, not necessary, but as his Majesty had seen fit to give these to him, he would accept with a deep thankfulness. Raja Jai Singh signed the letter to Emperor Shah Jahan and then added a small postscript—one he knew would be of great interest to his ruler: he would be packed and would leave his haveli by nightfall. Under all the writing, Jai Singh placed his own seal—at the very bottom, as befitted his status inferior to his Emperor.

  And so Raja Jai Singh, willing or not, gave up his land. The four mansions in Agra that he received in return were but a poor trade, that much he did think privately, although the buildings themselves were superior to the one he had just relinquished, the lands more extensive, his total assets greatly augmented.

  The land was now Emperor Shah Jahan’s (and it had always been his; he was Emperor and Jai Singh a vassal king who had enjoyed his tenancy on the land for so long), and the idea for the tomb was already present, in Mumtaz Mahal’s grandfather’s tomb across the river.

  As much as he abhorred her, Emperor Shah Jahan very briefly acknowledged Mehrunnisa’s contribution to Mughal architecture in deciding that Mumtaz’s tomb would be constructed in white marble. But there the similarities would end, for the Taj Mahal would be of a purer white, flawless, such as the world had never before seen—a Luminous Tomb.

  Five

  The elder daughter of Chah-Jehan, was very handsome, of lively parts, and passionately beloved by her father. Rumour has it that his attachment reached a point which it is difficult to believe . . . it would have been unjust to deny the King the privilege of gathering fruit from the tree he had himself planted.

  —ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE (ed.) AND IRVING BROCK (trans.), Travels in the Mogul Empire, by François Bernier A.D. 1656–1668

  Burhanpur

  Thursday, June 25, 1631

  26 Zi’l-Qa’da A.H. 1040

  Bapa.”

  Princess Jahanara sat down beside her father, wrapped her hands around his arm, and rested her head on his shoulder. From this close, with his spent breath fanning her hair, she could hear the sounds of his chest. He had caught a cold the evening he spent outside on the ramparts of the fort, watching as they buried their mother. The servants were supposed to have wrapped him warmly, held an umbrella over his head, brought him inside after a half hour, but none of her instructions had been followed. So Emperor Shah Jahan had tarried in the rain too long, until he had come inside shivering, his qaba drenched, his hair clinging to his head, the skin on the palms of his hands shriveled as though he had immersed them for a while in water. Jahanara, drained as she had been after her mother’s burial, had undressed him herself, wiped him down, put him to bed, and slept on the floor on a mattress so that he could hold her hand through the night.

  “What madness is this?” she said, her voice muffled in the cloth of her father’s white cotton kurta.

  When he responded, she heard the smile in his voice and her heart eased. After so many days he had found mirth in something, a little, inconsequential statement that had a wealth of meaning in it. “So you have heard?” Emperor Shah Jahan said. “And from which one? No.” He put her away from him. “I do not want to know. Aurangzeb was at the door to the next room when Mahabat Khan was granted an audience. That boy needs a horsehide whip against his back for listening in. Dara or you would never have done something like this.”

  Jahanara kissed her father’s hand and tried to keep her voice even. “You cannot give up the Empire, Bapa. Whom will you grant it to? We are all so young, so untried . . . and you have fought too long for this crown.”

  “Yes,” Shah Jahan said deliberately, “you of all people would remember the trials I have faced. You were with us all the time.” He looked down at her young, earnest face and thought for a moment he was looking into Arjumand’s face in those early days when they were just married. But it was a fleeting thought—although Jahan was uncannily similar to her mother in personality, physically, they were very dissimilar women. When he used that word, woman, in his mind, the Emperor felt a sense of upset. His wife’s death had created a woman out of their daughter, who had always seemed like a child before.

  “If Dara, Shuja, and Aurangzeb take your past troubles lightly, Bapa—” Jahanara began, and Shah Jahan hushed her, holding his fingers over her mouth.

  “I do not say they are irreverent,” he replied, “not in my presence. But they were not here, with us, during those last few years before the throne of Hindustan became mine. Empress Nur Jahan”—here his forehead furrowed with a frown of loathing for his father’s twentieth wife—“demanded them as surety in 1626, and so your Mama and I had to send them to the imperial court. She thought that if she retained the sons, I would not rebel again. She was right, but my sons were her husband’s grandsons; my father would not have allowed them to be harmed.” His voice faltered at the end, for he still doubted what he said. His father had been swayed by that evil woman and had disinherited Shah Jahan after declaring him heir. The boys would not have been safe if his father-in-law Abul had not kept them out of Mehrunnisa’s reach. He had never asked them about their life in the imperial court during those last two years of his father’s life, if they had been happy, discontented, homesick for their parents . . .

  “Dara talks sometimes, Bapa,” Jahanara said, thinking back to those days herself. “The Empress was kind to them; they were treated as royal princes, provided mullas for study and entertainments to amuse them, but kept under guard. Aurangzeb once said that it was only right—Emperor Jahangir and his wife were victorious, and they, the boys who would one day inherit the Empire, were the spoils of the battle between you and your father.”

  “Aurangzeb talks a little too much.” The Emperor rose and walked into the verandah, fretting the raised embroidery around the neck of his kurta with his fingers. In his father’s place, with a quiverful of male heirs given as a guarantee, he too would have posted a rigid guard around the boys, and perhaps not given them as much liberty, but he disliked being reminded of any thoughtfulness on Mehrunnisa’s part. He stood still as the thin silk curtains pushed inward, carving out his figure, their skirts whispering on the speckled marble floors. Every piece of fabric in the Emperor’s apartments—the covers on the bed, the cushions and the pillows, the drapes on the windows, the overhead punkah’s rectangular cloth, even the light Persian rugs on the floors—had been changed to a shade of white for mourning. The noncolors of the r
ooms created a cool and clean space. Shah Jahan stretched his arms over his head and swayed lightly on his feet. His body ached, his eyes hurt from the weeping, his chest seemed blocked by tears and grief, and in all these days that he had cried for his wife, and cried himself to sleep, Jahan had been by his side. He turned to see her watching him, her gray eyes somber. She was worried, he knew that, even though she had said little, only called his conversation with Mahabat a madness. These past few days had been an insanity to him, unbelievable, astounding, implausible. Yet here they were, the two of them, bereft of a wife and a mother whose every word had been a blessing to them, whose every deed a revelation. Allah had seen fit to call Mumtaz to His side and had taken her from them.

  He drew in a deep breath and let it out in a fit of coughing. At once, Jahanara was by his side, leaning into him, allowing him to rest upon her sturdy shoulders. Emperor Shah Jahan put his arms around his daughter and held her, as much as she held on to him, her arms around his waist, her head on his chest. Girl children, he thought, were blessings from Allah; sons only caused worry. Almost from the beginning, Jahanara had been steady, calm, and had passed through her childhood without actually touching it. She was old beyond her years, and now, when he most needed the will to live, he remembered that he had her. Shah Jahan knew her every mood, her every wish (often subordinated to his), her sense of sacrifice, her pride—this last of immense importance to a princess.

  “When did you think of this?” she asked.

  “When your mother died,” he answered, knowing she was talking of his madness. “There did not seem any necessity to rule anymore.”