Shadow Princess

by Indu Sundaresan

  “Mirza Najabat Khan thinks we should do something.”

  Dara had lifted a languid eyebrow. “He does? Why the interest in Mirza Najabat Khan?”

  “He has helped me. Dara, you know Bapa is in no fit state to tackle this, and you insist upon your entertainments; Hugli cannot be ignored. The Portuguese grow more and more conceited every day, and they must be stopped.”

  Prince Dara Shikoh had shaken his head, and Jahanara had sat back on her knees beside him. He would not listen to what was patently common sense because he had begun a friendship with the Jesuit priests at Agra, especially Father Henry Busée, and invited them into his apartments for religious discussions with the Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain priests. As a mode of study, this was all very well, but grumblings had reached her ears from court, carried in Aurangzeb’s voice, that Dara was too lax in following the precepts of Islam, that he paid too much attention to other religious beliefs and not enough to his own. As of now, the talk was so little as to be insignificant, and it was untrue, this much Jahanara knew. Dara’s curiosity, his open-mindedness, were purely intellectual, but even such little talk was dangerous. They were Muslim, Islam was their one and only faith, and it was unimaginable that the Mughal Emperor of Hindustan could profess or be devoted to any other religion. Dara had to take care. But how did one tell him this? He was as obstinate about his beliefs as he had been indolent about politics.

  When she sighed, he had said, “I know as much as you do about Hugli, Jahan, and troops will be sent there. I’ve asked Bapa to send a farman to Qasim Khan, the governor of Bengal, to lay siege to the Portuguese settlement at Hugli and demolish it. Not a single able-bodied man will survive, and if the women and children live, they will be our slaves for the rest of their lives.”

  And so it had come about. The assault on the Portuguese should have been brief, thunderous, ravaging, but to everyone’s surprise, they had held out long beyond any time frame considered reasonable—a whole three months. It had taught them all a lesson, Jahanara thought now in December of 1632, about the value of allowing foreigners to entrench themselves so deeply in Mughal land that they began to consider it their own.

  The Portuguese had first come to the Indian coast in the late 1400s, when Vasco da Gama landed a ship in a southeastern kingdom, and had departed, cannily, with a vague treaty for trade from the local king and left behind a battalion of men to form a settlement. The first Mughal Emperor found his way to Hindustan only in 1526, over a quarter of a century later. Then there had been an English embassy at the Mughal court headed by Sir Thomas Roe and a slew of representatives from the Dutch East India Company. All of these other firangis the Portuguese Jesuits had fought hotly in skirmishes around the Empire, slowly acquiring the lands on the western coast—Bombay, Daman, Diu, and Goa, at the last of which was the seat of the Portuguese Viceroy to India. They had made forays into the eastern coastline also, in and around the Bay of Bengal, settling first at Satgaon and moving to Hugli, on the river by the same name, when the river’s waters near Satgaon began to silt up and left the port unusable for large ships.

  In Hugli, the Portuguese had begun to build in earnest—a fort at Gholghat, a Jesuit church, a seminary, splendid mansions for people. And in the transferring of the crown from Emperor Jahangir to Emperor Shah Jahan, their confidence had grown, resulting in this wrecking. But they should not have underestimated either the wrath or the power of Emperor Shah Jahan and his favorite daughter, the Begam Sahib Jahanara.

  At the end of the imperial siege, Hugli lay devastated. Five thousand men from the settlement died violent and terrible deaths. Their women and children were fashioned into a walking caravan and made to cover the distance between Hugli and Agra, some seven hundred and fifty miles, on foot like cattle. When they reached Agra, they were given two choices: convert to Islam or die. In the end, most of them converted, and they were given away to the amirs at court for use in their harems, or for use as slaves, or as anything they wanted.

  When the news of the conquest arrived, Jahanara had come upon Dara in his gardens, staring morosely out into the deep afternoon shadows under a tamarind tree.

  “What is it?” she had asked.

  “The Jesuit fathers will not come to my religious sessions,” he had said.

  “Dara.” She had put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t feel compassion for them or rely so entirely upon someone else who is but a servant in your lands. A good and just Emperor will not. So you must learn too.”

  He’d stripped a stalk of the green tamarind of its leaves, scattering them on the ground before him. “I want to marry, Jahan,” he had said. “It is time this good Emperor had sons for the Empire.”

  “Who?” she had asked, amused by his change in mood. “You are thinking of someone, or shall I find her for you?”

  Dara had said almost shyly, “Nadira.”

  Their cousin, Jahanara had thought, their uncle Parviz’s daughter, who had come back to Agra with them when they left Burhanpur. There was no reason to consider this anything other than a good match—she was a royal and had no brothers who would cause trouble in the future for Dara in coveting the throne, and they had all known Nadira as children.

  “I will talk to Bapa,” she had said, rising and thinking of how easy it had been to furnish Dara with a wife, and one of his wanting. If only she could herself arrange . . . And so, a few months later, she had sent a summons to Mirza Najabat Khan to meet her in the chaugan grounds, setting unwittingly into motion an open, though unacknowledged, war between her sister and her.

  Ten

  The first-born son of King Shahjahan was the prince Dara, a man of dignified manners, of a comely countenance, joyous and polite in conversation, ready and gracious of speech . . . kindly and compassionate, but over-confident in his opinion of himself. . . . He assumed that fortune would invariably favour him.

  —WILLIAM IRVINE (trans.) Storia do Mogor, or Mogul India, by Niccolao Manucci 1653–1708

  Agra

  Monday, January 25, 1633

  14 Rajab A.H. 1042

  The rubies, your Highness?”

  “The tray sits in its own stand, on your right,” Jahanara called out. The servant looked about indecisively, shoulders hunched over by the weight he was carrying, not daring to lift his gaze in the direction of her voice. When he did not move, she sighed and said sharply, “Near the silks, no, not the reds, the blues. Move it closer.”

  She watched his fumbling movements with exasperation, her fingers entwined between the carved floral gaps in the two-inch-thick marble screen behind the throne. It was the middle of the third watch of the day, around two o’clock in the afternoon, and the winter sun had finally seared through the morning’s mist to fling a sheer golden veil of light around the courtyard. But Jahanara’s vision was limited by the screen, and press as she would her face to the cool stone, she could still not see what the servant was doing and whether he had followed her orders.

  When she leaned back, the pattern of the marble was stamped on her cheek, the side of her mouth, and a part of her forehead. She was in the zenana enclosure behind the throne in the Diwan-i-am, the Hall of Public Audience, at the fort at Agra. The hall itself was a mammoth open courtyard, circumscribed by one-story-high corridor arches in red sandstone. At one end of the yard was this rectangular verandah jutting out into the grass—with nine arches on the front and three on each of its two sides. The fourth side of the verandah was built into the fort itself and contained a throne room—a little corral—built entirely in gleaming white marble, whittled with niches for candles around Emperor Shah Jahan’s gaddi. The marble was inlaid on every possible surface, flat and recessed, with gleaming blue and reds and greens—turquoise, corals, and jasper—wrought in the shapes of blooming flowers and vines. The throne room was the jewel set within the verandah of the Diwan-i-am and had been, solely, Emperor Shah Jahan’s vision. The verandah had a flat roof and sat on a three-foot-high sandstone platform. Its pillars were white but actually built in sandstone
and polished with a high-gloss lime chunam.

  Princess Jahanara Begam was standing behind the throne’s recess, within the walls of the fort, and trying to direct from there the thirty servants who were scurrying around in the verandah. She had ordered the floor of the verandah to be meticulously cleaned and laid over with cotton mattresses, and she had had brought thick Persian rugs in deep reds and carpeted the whole from one end to the other. When that was done, the men had disappeared one by one into the zenana behind her, to a special anteroom where they were given their precious burdens, which they brought out in a procession. These were all presents that Jahanara was giving to Dara and Nadira for their wedding, and today she was going to display them for the court to see, as was traditional before a marriage took place.

  Jahanara put her hand on the latch of the door which led into the throne area, and another hand was laid on her wrist at the same time.

  “What are you doing?” Satti Khanum said. “You cannot go out until the servants have left.”

  The princess took her hand away from the door. “I know, Satti, but they are dolts, with no sense about how to arrange the gifts. Look, that man has spilled the rubies.”

  And so he had; as he turned, the lower edge of his qaba had brushed against the tray and sent it thumping onto the carpets. The rubies had scattered over the red Persian rugs, glowing with a fire’s heart. The man glanced behind him toward Jahanara and Satti Khanum, whom he could not see, and crouched to gather the faceted stones in the skirt of his long tunic. When the rubies were collected, he stood there staring at the burden on his lap. His mouth was loose, his face filled with longing and awe. His monthly salary was three rupees, and in the folds of his clothing he held a khazana worth at least forty thousand rupees. His hands quivered with want.

  “I must go,” Jahanara said, and, pulling her veil over her head, she opened the door and stepped out onto the balcony. As the servants watched in mute astonishment, she drew her long ghagara around her knees and vaulted down into the verandah.

  Ishaq Beg said harshly, “Get out!” and the men fled down the long halls of the verandah and into the tepid sunshine. The fifteen eunuchs guarding them brushed and patted them down as they exited the courtyard, tripping over each other in their haste to leave.

  Satti Khanum followed Jahanara into the verandah in a much more leisurely fashion, out into the zenana at the back of the throne and down steps.

  “You are always in a hurry, Jahan,” she said. “Some caution would have been advisable.”

  Jahanara nodded, only half listening. Satti was the older sister of Emperor Jahangir’s poet laureate, Talib-i-Amuli, and had lived in Persia until he called for her to come to Hindustan. Here, Talib had the Emperor’s ear, and he had his sister assigned to Jahangir’s son’s harem when she was forty years old, aged already by Mughal standards. To the young Mumtaz Mahal, she had provided counsel and companionship and stayed by her side through her numerous confinements, looking after the children as they grew older, taking over the education of the princesses.

  And yet, Jahanara thought, as Satti and Ishaq fetched and carried the trays on her orders and laid them out where they would be viewed at their best, she was stifled by Satti’s sternness, her constant cautions, her very chatter. Satti was an old woman now, as old as Jahanara’s grandmothers would have been, her face lined deeply in the forehead and around the mouth. Her back was stooped, and some of her teeth were missing. For Satti Khanum, entry into the imperial zenana, being attached to the quarters of the woman who became Empress, had been beneficial. She had an adopted daughter, a girl she had taken for her own upon coming to Hindustan, who was married to Amanat Khan, who had been recently hired as a calligrapher for the Luminous Tomb. She had continued on in the imperial harem, had amassed riches in gifts and bonuses from her mistress, and thought of herself as supreme . . . after the princesses. Satti had taught Jahanara Persian and verses from the Quran, and, in the change of power from Mumtaz Mahal to her daughter, had forgotten that Princess Jahanara Begam was no longer her student.

  When all had been arranged, Satti and Jahanara stood in the center of the verandah.

  “Such treasures for the prince and his wife,” Satti said in a whisper.

  For treasures they were. A month before, Jahanara had sent a hundred thousand rupees’ worth of jewels and clothing to her uncle Prince Parviz’s widow, who had taken a house along the banks of the Yamuna River a short distance from the fort, for the first part of the wedding proceedings. That had been merely a promise. Laid out in front of her was the rest of what she was going to give Dara and Nadira.

  Massive gold trays piled with lustrous raw silks from Thailand in colors of rose and pearl, ten diamond necklaces worth between fifty and a hundred thousand rupees set in heavy gold, bangles studded with rubies and pearls, muslins as fine as summer mist fashioned into pantaloons and bodices and veils—and each of these had gold and silver zari embroidered into the fabric, strewn with diamonds, emeralds, pearls, and rubies. A merchant had brought a bag full of rubies from Badakhshan, and Jahanara had bought his entire inventory for Dara, unable to resist the glow of red, like luscious pomegranate seeds, overcome by emotion because the Balas rubies were mined in the land where Mirza Najabat Khan claimed his ancestry. He would see these rubies also, later in the evening, when the Begam Sahib’s gifts to her brother would be presented to the nobles at court by the light of torches and candles, the colors of the silk muted, the diamonds sparkling. And a few hours from now, Emperor Shah Jahan would visit the Diwan-i-am himself, along with the ladies of the imperial harem, to view the gifts.

  Jahanara recognized the wonderment in Satti Khanum’s voice, mingled with a little jealousy and some frustration, and she smiled to herself. She had a huge income from her father, and this was the value of all that money. The envy was directed toward her, not Dara or Nadira, who would receive all this magnificence, because it meant she could so easily give away so much and not miss it.

  There were perfume bottles at another corner filled with musk oil from Bhutan, and the bottles themselves were created out of turquoise enamel, studded with crystals and corals, their stoppers made from blue Aleppo glass.

  “How much did this all cost?” Satti asked.

  Jahanara laughed, her voice echoing off the walls of the Diwan-i-am, and she said, as carelessly as she could, “About two million rupees. I think; I do not know for sure, Satti.”

  “You are a generous sister, Jahan.”

  “Yes, I am. But this is not everything.”

  “Is all this for us?”

  They both turned to see Nadira standing at one end of the verandah. She was clad in thin white muslin, six layers of peshwaz, flimsy pants underneath, her head uncovered. A breeze stirred through the cusped arches that linked the pillars, and her clothes swirled around her. Nadira had the capacity for immense grace, Jahanara thought, and then wondered if that was why Dara had fallen in love with her. There were others he could have chosen to marry—and he would eventually marry others—but Nadira had captured his heart. It was difficult for Jahanara to see what the attraction was for this creature who glided everywhere, whose presence was so light, whose laughter was like the tinkling of bells heard at a distance. She was a wraith, with little substance. Nadira was slight, in her physical appearance and in the force of her character.

  “For Dara and you,” she said.

  “How lovely all of it is. The wines”—Nadira touched a light finger over the green glass bottles embellished with gold stoppers—“are they from Kashmir? The ones you like so much?”

  “Yes, Dara enjoys this wine also. Nadira”—Jahanara tried to be gentle—“do you wish to be married to Dara?”

  Nadira looked up at her—she was a couple of inches shorter than Jahanara—with a steady gaze that turned her hazel eyes dark. “What a ridiculous question, Jahan. And so close to the wedding.”

  Satti Khanum cleared her throat, and Jahanara stepped back. It was preposterous to ask a bride this just be
fore she was to be married, especially since the couple were all but married—the wedding presents had been sent to Nadira’s mother’s house in December as a guarantee, Jahanara herself had spent lavishly and worked tirelessly on the preparations, and there were only six days until the official ceremony.

  “A husband,” Nadira said slowly, “is a blessing from Allah. I could not ask for another man to be my husband, one so accomplished, so beloved, so erudite; but then there is no one such as Dara. You should know all this, Jahan.”

  “I do, my dear,” Princess Jahanara said. “I wanted to make sure you did also.”

  “Enough,” Satti said, bristling. “Enough talk. Nadira, you must go back home now; it is unseemly for you to be here in the imperial palaces looking over your presents.”

  Nadira nodded. She said, with a half smile, “Jahan, once Dara and I are . . . in a few months, I mean, we will look for husbands for both Roshan and you. As your sister, as your brother’s wife, I will take it to be my duty.” She waved to them and left the verandah by the steps leading into the zenana.

  Jahanara felt laughter spill out of her. “She is not as inanimate as she makes us think. She is going to find me a husband?”

  Satti Khanum’s expression was somber, her mouth tight, her eyebrows rigid. “It is good you find mirth in this situation, Jahan. But remember, a married woman has more influence, more standing than an unmarried one. We are born to but one purpose—to be wives and mothers; there is no other self to us than that. You must marry too, someday, and go to grace your husband’s home.”

  There followed a long pause as Jahanara thought about this. She roamed the verandah of the Diwan-i-am, smoothing out the drape of a silk here, tapping the dazzling stones of a pair of earrings there. She did not believe Satti Khanum entirely—there was some truth to what she had said, but it applied only to women who had no wealth, no status, no eminence in society. Princess Jahanara Begam was the head of Emperor Shah Jahan’s imperial zenana, the Begam Sahib. The title itself was constructed to place her in the harem; if she had been the ruling wife of the Emperor, she would have been called the Padshah Begam. But both of her Bapa’s remaining wives were shadow women, as insubstantial when her mother was dead as when she had been alive. They lived in the luxury they expected, with sizable incomes, servants at their call any time of day or night, silks and jewelry in piled masses, but without any actual authority. In the Mughal harem, the most powerful woman was the one most dear to the Emperor, and in this case, for the first time in the history of the Mughals, it was the daughter and not the wife. Satti Khanum knew this, of course she knew this, Jahanara thought, as she listened to the skirts of Satti’s ghagara sweeping the thick pile of the carpets behind her. This was why, after Mumtaz Mahal’s death, she had attached herself to Jahanara, not Roshan, not the two other wives of the Emperor.