Shadow Princess

by Indu Sundaresan

  • • •

  That evening, after the sun had set, Shah Jahan ascended the three short steps into the baradari in Zainabad Bagh and knelt by the side of his wife’s grave. In his hands was a folded silk sheet, six feet by four, into which were sewn seed pearls, an inch apart. The Emperor laid the silk over the marble and unrolled it carefully, smoothing as he went, until it covered the whole grave. In the center of the sheet was a single pink pearl, the size of a rudraksha seed.

  Shah Jahan sat back on his knees and wiped his face. It was dark outside, and here, a single sesame oil diya cast its light over the pearl-embedded sheet, which glowed like the fresh snows of Srinagar at sunrise.

  He rubbed his fingers over its glimmering surface. Facing west toward Mecca, he raised his hands and whispered the Fatiha.

  In the name of God, the Lord of Mercy, the Giver of Mercy!

  Praise belongs to God, Lord of the Worlds,

  the Lord of Mercy, the Giver of Mercy,

  Master of the Day of Judgment.

  It is You we worship; it is You we ask for help.

  Guide us to the straight path:

  the path of those You have blessed, those who incur no anger and

  who have not gone astray.

  An unhurried breeze dissolved his shadow, cast large upon the walls of the baradari, and cooled the heat on his face. He had almost given up his Empire, floundering in his sorrow, and the thought that he could spend the rest of his days by his wife’s side had come upon him in a brief moment of lunacy. How could any of his sons rule yet? He bent down to kiss the hem of the sheet of pearls and remained thus for a few minutes, his head touching the ground. He could hear a rustle of clothing and small murmurs around him as the amirs bobbed in their boats in the pond—they had accompanied him to the edge of the island. Shah Jahan put their presence out of his mind and prayed for his wife again, this time in silence. He was Emperor, lord of those men, their king—while they could not have seen him in conversation with his most loved wife when she was alive, it was only fitting that they witnessed his first meeting with her after she had died. Kings had no privacy and no right to expect any.

  Emperor Shah Jahan returned from his wife’s graveside to the palace at the fort at Burhanpur, all the while immersed in thought. His fingers brushed over the long rope of blush pink pearls that adorned his neck, weighted by a ruby pendant encircled with diamonds. He could still feel the warm clasp of his sons’ hands, on either side of him on the jharoka balcony, and feel their presence around him, which had lent him credibility in the eyes of the Empire. Arjumand and he had had these children because they were the result of their love for each other, but over the years, each child had adopted his or her own personality, brought it to the fore, become something and someone other than his or her early self. Today, this morning, subduing their distinct natures, they had supported their father together in a time when he had most needed them.

  His tears had dried as he pondered all this, and he felt, with a slight pang, that one of the hands holding his ought to have been his beloved Jahanara’s, for it was she to whom he had called out when he was so overwhelmed, she alone who had known how to react in an instant.

  He took his pearl necklace off and weighed it in an open palm—by the end of this evening it would adorn Jahanara’s neck. A small gift from a grateful father who would never forget this act of kindness.

  And so, Emperor Shah Jahan and Princess Jahanara thought thus of the jharoka incident, as they began calling it over the years—that it had been beneficial. That last part too was true, useful it was, and to all of them. For the first time, Dara, Shuja, Aurangzeb, and Murad (young as he was) had tasted the heady power of arranging themselves in state above the crowds on the jharoka balcony. And from that time onward, each of them nurtured that thrill, even as the crown reposed on their father’s head. In attending to her Bapa’s immediate want, Princess Jahanara had inadvertently allowed her four brothers to see what it was to be Emperor . . . before their time. And they all wanted this. Yet, though each had a right to the throne of the Empire, only one of them could eventually be Emperor.

  And when he did so, to do so, he would take the lives of his father and his three brothers.

  rauza-i-munavvara

  The Luminous Tomb

  When a period of six months had expired after this grief-gathering event, prince Muhammad Shah Shuja’ was appointed to convey the holy dead body of that Queen of angelic temperament to . . . [Agra] . . . and all along the way, they provided food and largesse to the poor.

  —From the Amal-i-Salih of Muhammad Salih Kambo, in W. E. BEGLEY AND Z. A. DESAI, Taj Mahal: The Illumined Tomb

  Burhanpur and Agra

  Monday, December 15, 1631

  21 Jumada al-awal A.H. 1041

  In Burhanpur, it rained on the day they unearthed Empress Mumtaz Mahal’s body from her grave, as it had when they had buried her. It was an unseasonable rain, falling in thin, sharp, and evenly spaced needles like a silver curtain with a single weave. And unlike that day in June, every member of the royal family, including Emperor Shah Jahan, was assembled in the baradari.

  He had visited the grave every Friday since her death. Life had come back in slow increments as the days passed. When his distress had abated somewhat, he remembered her voice, the sound of her footsteps as she approached his chambers, the comforting hum of her breathing as she lay in bed beside him.

  Shah Jahan watched the diggers slice mud and carefully deposit it in piles around the grave. Jahanara stood at his right, her hand in his. They still wore white, for they had not begun to end their mourning for Mumtaz. Dara was at his left, Aurangzeb next to him, and by his side were Shuja and Murad. Roshanara stood a little behind Shah Jahan and Jahanara, trying, every now and then, to part them.

  The workers had uncovered the grave by now, and with gentle movements they lifted the Empress from the ground and carried her body to a waiting coffin built of sandalwood. The wood was hinged with clasps of beaten silver; the lid was decorated with the same silver inlaid into the material. The imams in the baradari intoned verses from the Quran, their musical voices soothing. The coffin was then lifted to a waiting boat, which rowed its lone way across the pond to the other side.

  Emperor Shah Jahan and his children followed in another boat. He leaned upon Shah Shuja on the way over the waters of the Tapti, intent upon the boat ahead. Go in peace, my love, he thought, soon I will follow you to Agra.

  “Guard your mother carefully, Shuja,” he said.

  “I will, Bapa,” Prince Shah Shuja said. He patted his father’s arm awkwardly. “I am proud to be the son chosen for this task. Thank you.”

  The next morning, at sunrise, Shah Shuja, Satti Khanum, and Wazir Khan, the head of the royal physicians, set out with an entourage to Agra, where the land for the yet-to-be-built Taj Mahal awaited them all. Jahanara watched them leave, Dara by her side. She said, just once, “You should have gone, Dara.”

  “My place is here, with my father,” he said.

  She shook her head. “I cannot go, and so Satti Khanum goes in my place. But . . . now Bapa will have a special fondness for the son who has performed this duty for him. You should have offered your services.”

  Dara made a small, impatient gesture, which Jahanara knew meant that no one could take his place in his father’s affections, and she knew also that this was true. Aurangzeb had wanted this task, Shuja had wanted it, and in the end Emperor Shah Jahan had chosen Shuja. For this insult, as he deemed it, Aurangzeb had sulked for the past few days. But Shuja was older than Aurangzeb, and so it fell to him. Jahanara felt a sense of unease as they stood together on one of the upper balconies of the fort at Burhanpur and watched the dust from the caravan diminish into the horizon. Dara was selfish—no, perhaps not exactly selfish but self-centered, his vision stunted at any point beyond his own immediate needs. The Empire was his to have, and she prayed that her brother would realize that, while the future seemed assured for him, in the end, the crown
still rested upon their father’s head. And their father was himself only the third son of Emperor Jahangir.

  She chewed on her lip, still thinking, now of the journey that they were to make also, northward to the capital city.

  • • •

  Some six months ago, Raja Jai Singh had departed for the final time from his haveli on the banks of the Yamuna River during the fleeting twilight that cast its coral hues over Agra. His effects were bundled, his household dismantled, his horses led out of the stables, his cows and goats and chickens hustled onto the road in the few short hours after he had received his Emperor’s orders to donate his land. In those hours, his servants had packed swiftly, stripping the rooms of curtains, piling rugs upon bullock carts, extinguishing kitchen fires that had burned for years (kept at a low ebb during the night and fed again in the morning), toting larger pieces of furniture on their backs and down the road to the first of the residences that Emperor Shah Jahan had given him. His wives had sobbed with frustration at the move but kept their tears hidden behind veils so that even the servants would not notice or think them anything less than joyous at obeying the Emperor’s commands. His children had swept through the empty, echoing rooms in glee, tripping upon the workers, injuring a shin here, an ankle there.

  As night came, Shah Jahan’s bailiffs thundered into the empty and silent courtyard of the mansion, leapt from their frothing horses, called for the torches to be carried in. They scoured the haveli, peering into every dark corner, throwing water on the cooling ashes of the kitchen’s chulas, digging up the flat marble stones that had paved the floors under beds, all in search of some treasure the Raja might have forgotten. But Jai Singh’s servants had been conscientious and thorough. Every piece of jewelry had been unearthed from its decades-old hiding place, every silk drape and bedspread had been folded and stowed away. There was nothing left but an empty house, a broad red sandstone terrace facing the river, the mud path down to the waters, and, at the very edge, the ancient tamarind tree, which seemed to droop at the loss of its owner.

  The next morning, work began at the site, even though Jai Singh’s letter of yielding was still running its way through the vast plains of Hindustan to his Emperor’s hands, for there had never been a doubt in anyone’s mind that Jai Singh would give up his land gracefully, and so there was no need to wait for Shah Jahan’s further orders.

  The tomb was still a myth, nebulous in shape, unknown in size, wraithlike in its presence. But here it would be built, and here would be laid to rest forever the woman whom their Emperor had loved . . . and perhaps still loved, more than anyone else.

  The morning brought legions of peasants into Raja Jai Singh’s courtyard standing close to one another, their callused hands holding the tools of their trade—a hammer, a block of stone, a chisel to pick out mortar between brick. The foreman, appointed only for the task of demolition, spoke his few poetic words.

  “Everything must be destroyed,” he said. “In three days, this haveli must seem to be a dream, and nothing else.”

  The destruction began. The men wrapped the poor, thick fabric of their turbans around their noses and their mouths, squinted their eyes against the dust, and strained their muscles. The rooms of Raja Jai Singh’s haveli, which had been designed and built by his grandfather fifty years before, crumbled into powder. The walls came down, the bricks were chopped up and carried away, the floors were carved out of the earth and thrown into a refuse heap. The red sandstone terrace, mighty and grand above the river, was cut into pieces and later, as the tomb began to take shape, slabs of stone from this terrace would be used to fashion walls and floors for the workers’ huts. At the end of three days, as promised, there was nothing left of the mansion, just a deep gouge in the warm earth and the tamarind at the waterfront, its diminutive leaves smothered by a fine red dust.

  As the months passed, the earth itself was moved from one place to another as Shah Jahan’s engineers took meticulous measurements and pondered on the acclivity and declivity of the site. Early word from the Emperor’s court at Burhanpur called for the land to be perfectly flat and for the waters of the Yamuna to run close by the site of the tomb. So the peasants lined up in unending rows—hundreds of them, men, women, and children as young as five years—with rolls of cheap cloth on their heads, atop which they balanced battered and curved vessels. These were filled with mud, and the workers swayed toward another part of the site and dumped the contents there as ordered, and the mud was raked down as soon as it fell upon the ground. Shah Jahan had mentioned, briefly, to one of his nobles that he wished for the Yamuna never to dry into its summer sandiness in front of the tomb. So the course of the river was changed, to curve closer along the work site, and again the workers carried their burden of earth across the river and piled it on the northern side, to nudge its waters closer toward the other bank.

  In flattening the land, trees were cut down. Raja Jai Singh’s grandfather had planted a guava orchard in the front of the haveli, and of those trees, forty-three had survived the torrid heat and aridity of Agra and flourished and grown to provide shade and color. When the trees were felled, despite their age, their trunks were as slender as a woman’s waist, but their branches were laden with the second, rain-brought fruiting—guavas the size of oranges, a mild green on the outside, pink and honeyed on the inside. The two enormous mango trees of an inner courtyard came down also, and their roots were harder to dislodge from the reluctant ground.

  By December of 1631, there were no more signs of inhabitation left on the land that Raja Jai Singh had “gifted” to his Emperor—the earth finally lay quiet and deserted, awaiting a new history.

  Along the way to Agra, everywhere the funeral cortege stopped for the night, a guard was set up around the coffin, torches kept burning, the Ahadis posted in a solemn circle, standing through the hours in full armor. Word had fled along their path of this coming procession, and in the towns and villages of Hindustan, people turned out in vast numbers to wait for their Empress and pay their last respects to her. In return, Prince Shuja dipped his hand again and again into bags of gold mohurs and silver rupees and threw them into the crowd to give thanks to the Empire that had come to honor his mother.

  They reached Agra on the eighth of January 1632, about three weeks after they had set out from Burhanpur. They had traveled fleetly these past weeks, stopping only briefly for the night, unhindered by the entire contingent of the imperial zenana, and made the journey to Agra in a relatively short time. At the site of the Taj, Shuja presided over a small tract of land as his mother’s body was buried with haste and a small, domed building of red sandstone, some twelve feet high, was raised over her remains. He looked at the tiny furrows that marked out the lines of the mausoleum his father was going to build. The temporary resting place was in front of the future platform on which the tomb would stand according to the architect’s plans. Here—once they moved Mumtaz yet again—would be the top left quadrant of the charbagh gardens in front of the Taj Mahal.

  Before he left Agra some twenty days later, Prince Shah Shuja knelt at his mother’s grave and prayed that she would come to his father in his dreams and speak of Shuja as a favored son. This he had not been when Mumtaz was alive. But there was some hope surely, he thought, in the fact that his father had entrusted this sacred duty to him. He put his lips to the cold stone slab, then rose. Through the morning fog that rolled landward from the Yamuna River, he saw another tomb take shape, resplendent in white marble, its very platform towering over the small structure in front, its frosted white minarets floating apart from the main building. The fog shifted in a streak of breeze and dissolved the outlines of the Luminous Tomb.

  Seven

  Whenever the King travels in . . . pomp he has always two private camps; that is to say, two separate bodies of tents. One of these camps being constantly a day in advance of the other, the King is sure to find at the end of every journey a camp fully prepared for his reception.

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

  Burhanpur

  Wednesday, March 17, 1632

  25 Sha’baan A.H. 1041

  Will we return here, Jahan?”

  “Bapa will not want to.” Princess Jahanara straightened from the edge of the balcony and stretched her arms above her head, easing the heaviness in her neck. It was early morning, and the air was still scented by the night and lay lightly upon the shoulders of the two women who stood atop the ramparts of the fort. Tea, fragrant with cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg, steamed gently in white and blue Chinese porcelain cups that had been laid on the flat edge of the balustrade.

  “Too many memories,” Roshanara said softly, more to herself than her sister. “Of the unwanted kind. And yet, there are others also; I was born here, Jahan.”

  “This is the first time Bapa and Mama have been apart.” Jahanara leaned over to search through the lightening gloom below. She could not see very well yet; the eastern skies were a melody of russets and reds, but the sun had not broken through, so the courtyard, lit only intermittently by torches, was more shadow than light. But they could hear sounds—the snickers of horses, a low trumpet from an impatient elephant, the clank of armor, swords against shields, buckles against mail, a water vessel falling to the ground with a thud. “Think about it,” she said, “in all the years that they were married, they were always together, and even in death . . . Mama lay but a mile away, but now, with her in Agra, Bapa did not want to delay our journey there. No”—her voice grew stronger—“we will not come back to Burhanpur.”