Shadow Princess

by Indu Sundaresan

  “Thank you, your Highness,” Jai Singh muttered, his face pale, his right arm swinging awkwardly by his side.

  “I must thank you instead,” Aurangzeb said. “I will remember that you saved my life. Now”—he touched Jai Singh on his shoulder—“Wazir Khan should look at that arm.”

  “Later,” the Raja said. “After we are done here.”

  The fight went on for twenty more minutes until the unseated mahouts came to collect their charges, to part them with fireworks and torches, to calm them by leading them to the waters of the Yamuna and plunging them in until their blood cooled.

  In the quiet that came afterward, Emperor Shah Jahan yelled from the balcony at Aurangzeb. “What madness was this, beta? To stand in the path of an elephant and court death? You should have fled as the others did.”

  Prince Aurangzeb turned stiffly to his father, bowed, and said in a voice that had not lost its quaver, “Bapa, death comes even to Emperors. There is no shame in that. The shame lies in what my brothers did.”

  Only a few people at the base of the Shah Burj heard this statement. Dara did, and he flushed at the implication that he was a coward. Shuja bristled, because he had come to Aurangzeb’s aid. Both Sadullah Khan and Raja Jai Singh mulled over what their prince had said, and when they raised their glances to that slight, boyish figure staring up at his father, they were thoughtful.

  Long after the maidan had been cleared, during the brief twilight that swung over Agra, Jahanara stood by one of the pillars of the Shah Burj, her arms around it. Below, she heard the sweep of brooms as workers cleared the ground strewn with broken paper flags, cummerbunds wrenched off during the melee, plantain leaves that had held the kabab skewers. By morning, when her father appeared for his jharoka, it would all be pristine again. Her brow was furrowed with a frown. What had Aurangzeb meant by those words? She had seen the two ministers, even Raja Jai Singh, clutching his useless arm, his face wrought with pain, look at him with . . . admiration.

  “Your Highness.” Ishaq Beg came up behind her and waited.

  “Yes,” she said. “I know. Is everything ready?”

  He inclined his head and let her pass. Jahanara went back to her apartments slowly. Aurangzeb had said that death came even to emperors—as though he thought of himself thus. As though he already was one, even before his father had been buried.

  • • •

  Music drifted through Princess Jahanara’s apartments, sweet and dulcet, a sitar, a pair of castanets, the low throb of a tabla, accompanying a woman’s rich, throaty voice. The princess had hosted a dinner for her victorious brother Aurangzeb on the night of the elephant fight and invited all of her other brothers, their wives, Roshanara, and their father. The dinner cleared, they sat now around the room on silk-upholstered divans, silent and uneasy. The orchestra was behind a screen, with only the singer’s shape lightly visible, backlit by oil diyas. The walls of Jahanara’s apartments had been carved plentifully with square niches, and in each a lone lamp burned, its wick vertical and steady. The floors were carpeted, wall to wall, with thin layers of jute matting overlaid with cotton mattresses and then rugs from Isfahan. Flimsy curtains, seemingly made more of air than of fabric, screened the arches that fronted the Yamuna River. They hung still, their folds quiescent, not even the shadow of a breeze to incite them into movement.

  They had eaten well from a menu of Jahanara’s choice, cooked earlier by the imperial chefs in the kitchen attached to the harem—golden curries of lamb and goat, warm from the fires and still simmering as they were set before them; carrots and cucumbers in salads dressed with lime juice and peanut oil, sprinkled with browned cumin seeds; chicken biryani steamed in an earthenware pot with a string of kneaded dough to seal the lid and keep the rice moist until it came to rest upon their tongues; the best Kashmiri wines from the cool cellars below the fort’s walls spiced with cardamom, star anise, and cloves. For dessert they had a simple wheat-flour halva, cooked in ghee and sugar syrup, clad in raisins and fried cashews. The dancing girls came in when dessert was being served, and after they left, Jahanara signaled to the eunuchs to deposit the gold platters with the makings of paan—betel leaves and nuts, slivers of pure beaten silver, sugar cubes, and cloves to bind the betel leaves into a parcel.

  “Ask them to leave,” Emperor Shah Jahan said.

  And that was enough for all the servants. They bowed and slipped out of the apartments, and then only the Emperor and his children were left. The singer lowered her voice when Jahanara raised her hand. She was part of Jahanara’s personal orchestra, a woman who had been with the princess for five years now, who knew all of her mistress’s various moods and just what song or verse would soothe them.

  “What is it, Bapa?” Jahanara asked gently. They were all agitated and edgy, and it was not from the fright of the afternoon’s elephant fight. Dara had glowered through the meal, eating with a stolid intensity, barely even acknowledging his father’s presence. Nadira sat by his side, placid as ever, calling attention to herself only when she put a hand up to her nose to ward off the aromas from the food or openly sucked on a wedge of dried mango. She was pregnant, she had said, and Jahanara had heard the news with gladness and a little envy. A child would bring them all together, and a male child would be an heir to the Empire. Shuja and his wife were taciturn, as was Aurangzeb, but in his silence was a pride they could not miss. His right cheek flamed from a cut; his back was bruised, and so he wore only a thin cotton kurta; and there was a bandage on his ankle where his leg had been twisted when he was thrown off his horse.

  Only Murad chatted on, reliving the fight with every word, unconscious of the mood of the room. Roshanara, seated by Aurangzeb, carried on a one-sided conversation in an undertone, answered only by grunts. But she did not seem to mind her brother’s rudeness, Jahanara thought; instead a glow of something—triumph perhaps—filled her face.

  Bapa sat with his head bowed. Between dinner and dessert he had called for the zenana’s scribe, an elderly woman, and given her orders that would be transmitted to the imperial court’s writers the next morning. In three days, they would observe Aurangzeb’s fifteenth birthday, and the celebrations were to be grand—if Jahanara could have spoken, she would have said that they would befit a king. He was to be given the same privileges Bapa had as Emperor on the occasion of his birthday—an imperial weighing. Massive gold-beam balance scales, eight feet in height, were to be rolled into the Diwan-i-am, and Aurangzeb would step onto one scale pan, and the other would be weighted down, alternately, with bags of silver rupees, milk, flour, sugar, ghee, dried fruits, silks, and clothing. He would then distribute these items himself to the poor outside, doling out alms as if he were the master of those men gathered with their arms outstretched for their king’s bounty. Bapa would give him a khilat, a robe of honor, studded with jewels, all to be made in the space of three days, with a hundred seamstresses employed in the task of piecing together this precious coat. He would also give him a gold dagger and five thousand rupees in gold mohurs. For Shuja, for his bravery in this incident, there would be another khilat and a dagger.

  Aurangzeb had risen from his seat when the scribe left and kissed his father’s hand. Then, he had resumed eating, his normally somber face splitting into smiles as though he could not help himself.

  “I do not like this dissent among you,” Emperor Shah Jahan said finally. “Dara—”

  “Bapa,” Dara said heatedly, talking for the first time since he had greeted all of them, “Aurangzeb didn’t do anything special. It was reckless of him to risk his life in front of a charging elephant; why does he deserve the weighing on his birthday? You have never given me that privilege.”

  Shah Jahan frowned. “It’s not your place to question my orders, Dara. If Aurangzeb was thoughtless, he was at least brave and courageous, while you turned your horse’s head and escaped. You should be commending him. But I did not begin this conversation to answer to you, only to say this: the four of you are blood brothers, born of the same
father and mother. When you are Emperor . . . if you are Emperor after me, it will be your responsibility to take care of your brothers, to provide them with ranks at court befitting their status. And the rest of you must revere your oldest brother, support him in all of his endeavors. To the Empire—and as we are the Empire—we must represent a united family.”

  “I did as much as Aurangzeb, Bapa,” Shuja muttered.

  “Not quite as much,” Emperor Shah Jahan said, “but enough for you to deserve a khilat. Aurangzeb”—the Emperor turned to face him now—“what I say here applies to you also. Think more of others, son, than of yourself. And show your smugness a little less; such an expression is improper in a royal prince.”

  They all reddened. For two years Bapa had almost neglected them, and they had grown wild in their hearts, so to have him speak with such candor about thoughts they had only harbored in secret made them ashamed. But it was a short-lived shame, for they were more independent now of their father—and their dead mother—than they had been two years ago.

  “Itimad,” Emperor Shah Jahan said in a weary voice. And when his eunuch bowed into the room, he said, “Bring them in.”

  Twenty-five women came into Princess Jahanara’s apartments and lined up against one wall. They were clad in thin muslins, their legs bare and muscled under the sheer gowns of their peshwaz, their eyes outlined in kohl, their hair perfumed and aglitter with a freshly washed shine. In his younger days, when his wife had been pregnant, as she had been so often in their marriage, Mumtaz Mahal had allowed Emperor Shah Jahan to pick a woman from the imperial zenana for the night. Any woman he wanted or was attracted to. And in the morning, she had pensioned off the woman and banished her from the imperial zenana, so that her husband would never again see her or enjoy her charms.

  With his children watching, Emperor Shah Jahan deliberated. He did not leave his seat or even change his position on the divan. The singing had stopped, and for a whole five minutes, the only sounds Jahanara could hear were Dara’s and Shuja’s discontented breaths, Aurangzeb grinding his teeth, Roshan with her legs stretched out in front of her, her toes tapping dully against each other. Then her father pointed. To Jahanara, the choice seemed unclear, and, yet, the others bowed and left the apartments. The Emperor raised himself from the divan and went out. The woman hesitated, then followed her king to his chambers.

  Jahanara put her hands over her face, her skin warm under her fingers. She could no longer recall instances when her father had spent the night, or a part of it, with a woman other than her mother, even though she must have seen this occur often enough. But in the last two years, he had been so completely . . . hers, she thought, a tear escaping to wet her face, that she had forgotten he was a man also. Her brothers and sister departed, mumbling their farewells, their voices subdued. But Princess Jahanara Begam stayed on her divan, sobbing quietly, her heart filled with an ache. When the pain had lessened, she realized what Bapa had done—taught them all a lesson in kingship. It was not in the choosing of a slave to pleasure him for a few hours—that in itself was inconsequential; this was her father’s zenana, and the women not related to him by marriage or by blood were his to use as he pleased. And he could well have done this in his chambers, so that only the morning would bring the news to them, and they would shrug, accept it, and go on.

  But Emperor Shah Jahan had paraded his women in front of his squabbling children, each itching to wear the crown, or to be able to determine who would wear the crown after him, as though he had already lost his life. So he had ordered the women, considered one carefully (although he had decided earlier; this much was clear to Jahanara from the casual pointing), and waited until they knew and realized that he was still, very much, the Emperor. Who was sovereign not just over the lands and the people of Hindustan but over them also. Mama was dead; Bapa had left off mourning for her and exercised his right as the master of his harem.

  Jahanara rose, walked to the outer verandah, and looked at the blurred lights on the other bank of the Yamuna River. It was a close and uncomfortable night, as heated as the day had been, without a trace of wind. Earlier, she had watched Mirza Najabat Khan in the courtyard below, but he had not even deigned to glance up or acknowledge her presence. She had not asked for him to visit her again after that afternoon spent in futile waiting in the zenana gardens. She had not asked whether her letter had gone astray; she knew Ishaq would have deposited it in Najabat Khan’s hands himself.

  She said without turning, “Ishaq, are you there?”

  Her eunuch came forward from the shadows to listen to his mistress, and if he was surprised, his expression betrayed nothing. And so, for the first time, Princess Jahanara Begam took a lover.

  rauza-i-munavvara

  The Luminous Tomb

  And from all parts of the empire, there were assembled great numbers of skilled stonecutters (sangtarash), lapidaries (munabbatkar), and inlayers (parchingar), each one an expert in his art, who commenced work along with other craftsmen.

  —From the Padshah Nama of Abdal-Hamid Lahauri, in W. E. BEGLEY AND Z. A. DESAI, Taj Mahal: The Illumined Tomb

  Agra

  Saturday, July 23, 1633

  16 Muharram A.H. 1043

  As the birds stirred in the trees and the indigo of the sky disintegrated into the coming dawn, two men stood on the sandstone platform of the Great Gate and looked down the gardens to the riverfront terrace.

  Work for the day had not yet begun, and in this moment of peace, the men were motionless and thoughtful. The previous day’s stultifying heat had died in the darkness, and it was coolest now, just before the break of dawn. The air was unsullied, scented with the imperceptible aroma of the budded ketki flowers that some worker had planted around the platform. When the sun rose, the flowers would unfurl themselves in spiky petals, each the size of a man’s arm to his elbow, and send their heady aroma into the scorching air.

  “Will this indeed be a paradise on earth, Mirza Amanat Khan?” the older man asked. He towered five inches above his companion. Ustad Ahmad Lahori had reached his sixty-second year on this earth, and most of those years had been spent in service to the Mughal Emperors of Hindustan.

  Amanat Khan laughed, the lines deepening around his mouth. He was not young himself, fifty-seven, but he was robust, stocky, and a man of means. This showed in the fine thin silk of his qaba; the gleam of diamonds on his expressive hands when he moved them in the dull light; the clean bouquet of sandalwood that curled around him, indicative of a bath; slave girls at his bidding; a palanquin to transport him so he did not have to waste energy in sweat.

  “You are the architect, Ustad Ahmad,” Amanat Khan said, bowing to his companion. “It is your hand that has fashioned this masterpiece, your name that will blaze in the minds of those men who will behold this wonder after we are dead, your—”

  “I beg your pardon, Mirza Amanat,” Ahmad said, “but you must not speak thus of our Emperor’s most precious possession. Our lord is the one who has planned every aspect of this tomb, it is his hand that scurried in glory across my meager sketches, changing lines of the building here, the aspect of the mosque and the assembly hall there. He has consulted extensively with the landscapers and given us his ideas on where to plant the cypresses, the guavas, the oranges, the frangipani, so that each might bloom in one part of the garden to best showcase the Empress’s final resting place. I am merely his servant. And, I beg of you again, please do not call me ‘ustad’; I feel as though that title belongs to someone else. I am merely Ahmad Mim’ar—Ahmad the architect.”

  Amanat Khan looked up at the man he had called a master at his craft. Ahmad Lahori had been born in Lahore, hence his name, and had attached himself at an early age to Mir Abdal Karim, who was currently Superintendent of Buildings under Emperor Shah Jahan. This humble man was a classically trained academic, a thinker, an engineer, an architect, skilled at subjects that Amanat had never been able to fathom deeply when he was younger—astronomy, mathematics, and geometry. Amanat had se
en the completed plans for the Taj Mahal and had marveled at the meticulous detail laid out by Ahmad Lahori, measurements down to an inch on every monument in the complex, thorough notes on the construction of the foundations, the consistency of the mortar that bound the slabs of sandstone and marble together, the panels for the inscriptions, and the dado panels inside and outside the marble tomb. And he denied himself the designation ustad—master—one he so richly deserved.

  “You, Mirza Amanat Khan,” Ahmad Lahori said, “will be better known. I am merely going to create the structure that will house your immense talent. An architect can be nothing in the eyes of Allah compared to the calligrapher who will inscribe phrases in praise of Him.”

  And that was to be Amanat Khan’s duty in the building of the Luminous Tomb. Because he was a calligrapher, because his work was to pick out the suras that would adorn the panels of the tomb, set them in writing in his beautifully formed script, supervise their printing on the marble—black agate inlaid in the white—he was revered more, granted his title of Amanat Khan and a rank of a thousand horses by his Majesty. Amanat Khan had come to India only in 1608, when he was in his early thirties and already established as a calligrapher and a scholar in Shiraz. Both he and his brother Afzal Khan had left their homeland of Persia in search of fortune and economic security in the Mughal Empire, as so many of their fellow men had done in years past. Their rise had been swift, almost astounding to the other amirs at court. Although they had both been well educated and men of letters, Afzal had always been more of a soldier and a warrior than Amanat. He had entered as such in Emperor Jahangir’s service, become a favorite of the Emperor, and dropped a word in Jahangir’s ear about his brother’s genius. As a result, the first monument of any importance Amanat Khan had signed his name on as a calligrapher had been Emperor Akbar’s tomb in Sikandra.