The Taj Conspiracy

by Someshwar, Manreet Sodhi

  The SSP looked stunned. ‘You mean, mostly, the scripts are the same?’

  Mehrunisa nodded.

  He shook his head in wonder. ‘Okay. So, you said, something-something Banu Begum ... so what about it?’

  Mehrunisa took a deep breath. This would take some explaining. ‘It should say Marqad Munavvar Arjumand Banu Begum Mukhatib bah Mumtaz Mahal Tanifiyat ferr sanh 1040 Hijri.’

  ‘Should say?’ SSP Raghav blinked hard. ‘Didn’t you say the same thing both times?’

  Mehrunisa shook her head and motioned him to examine the south-end epitaph on Mumtaz’s cenotaph. Pointing to a particular word she said, ‘Masnooee. Persian for counterfeit. Fabricated. False.’

  ‘What is counterfeit?’

  ‘The epitaph should read, “The illumined grave of Arjumand Banu Begum, entitled Mumtaz Mahal, who died in the year 1040”. Except now it reads, “The counterfeit grave of Arjumand Banu Begum, entitled Mumtaz Mahal, who died in the year 1040”. In Persian, “marqad munavvar” is the illumined grave—that has been switched to “marqad masnooee”, the counterfeit grave. Now you see?’

  SSP Raghav clucked in exasperation. ‘But this is a false grave. The actual one, for both Mumtaz and Shah Jahan, is in the lower tomb chamber. That is a well-known fact. And until some years back, tourists could descend and view it for themselves.’ He regarded her now. ‘So what’s the big deal?’

  Mehrunisa tried to stay calm. Perhaps she was mistaken. Perhaps it was all a figment of her imagination. She cast a downward glance at the epitaph. In the aureole of the torchlight, the alteration seemed to glare at her.

  ‘Sure, the upper cenotaphs are false graves, as widely known. But the epitaph has never stated that it is a counterfeit grave. It calls it the illumined grave. This entire mausoleum,’ Mehrunisa’s gesture took in its sweep the cenotaphs, the screen, the vaulted dome, ‘is built to commemorate the death of Mumtaz Mahal. Calling it “masnooee” is akin to blasphemy.’

  ‘But this ... this ...’ the SSP pointed to the epitaph, ‘was written three hundred and fifty years back. How can it be different now? Surely, you are mistaken!’

  ‘No. The word “munavvar” has been switched to “masnooee”. It is minute—it takes little to change it from one word to the other. But ...’

  The SSP looked unimpressed. ‘Look, perhaps we should call in a Taj attendant and enquire discreetly. There has to be an error—’

  ‘No,’ Mehrunisa held up her hands, ‘please, listen. This could be sensitive. Let me examine the rest of the cenotaph.’ Loath to connect the two, yet desperate to underline the criticality of the situation, she said, ‘Just four days back, the supervisor was found murdered here, right at this spot.’

  SSP Raghav gave her a long, hard look. ‘Chirag tale andhera.’

  Mehrunisa bit her lip. ‘I don’t know. But what I have stumbled upon needs closer examination.’

  The SSP exhaled his fury. Clearly this thing, whatever it was, was not going away. ‘Go on,’ he said, rolling back his shoulders. ‘Read ahead.’

  Mehrunisa returned to scrutinising the calligraphy on the tomb as SSP Raghav watched. She had circled around the tomb and was now at the head, the north end. Hunched over, she read the invocation: He is the everlasting. He is sufficient. Following that was a line from the Quran—God is He, besides whom there is no God. He knoweth what is concealed and what is manifest. He is merciful and compassionate.

  At the same moment her heart snowballed into her chest. She stared at it, for there, in front of her eyes, unmistakably, specific words in the passage had been made bold.

  ‘What do you see now?’ SSP Raghav asked anxiously.

  Mehrunisa pointed to the part of the Quranic verse that had been highlighted, and stood in bold relief from the rest. She rubbed a finger against it and examined the blackish hue on her skin. ‘Several coats of black paint over the original calligraphy, which is done with jasper.’

  SSP Raghav’s brows took flight above bulging eyes. ‘Nonsense! An entire mausoleum built in memory of Mumtaz Mahal, and now her own tomb questions where she lies buried!’

  On Mehrunisa’s urging he peered hard at the calligraphy. He had to admit: it was beautiful, but incomprehensible. He shrugged, uncomfortable with looking ignorant and out of control. ‘So, this tampering— you are absolutely certain?’

  Mehrunisa nodded as she dug out a digital camera from her bag. ‘There is one man whose judgement I trust more than mine. I’ll take some photographs to share with him.’

  ‘Your uncle, the historian?’

  Mehrunisa nodded and as she began clicking pictures, the SSP contemplated aloud, ‘Why would someone do this? What was the motive behind these changes? Was it mischief? Blasphemous as it is to us, perhaps it is somebody’s idea of a joke. A stupid one, yes, but a joke.’ He looked at her for assent.

  Mehrunisa pursed her lips. ‘First a murder and now these changes to three-hundred-year-old calligraphy ... no,’ she shook her head, ‘I think it’s more than that.’

  Pakistan-occupied Kashmir

  ‘A

  ll this newfound brotherhood and camaraderie— where is it going to take us?’

  The young mujahid knew better than to answer. In the first place, it was not a question: the Commander liked to air his views aloud. In the second, Jameel Jalaluddin was not a man to be interrupted.

  His remarkable eyebrows were a thick curve that dipped over the bridge of his high nose but rose to continue unbroken over the other eye. It gave the impression of two scythes sitting next to each other, their curving blades scrutinising everything in view. His eyes were small and round like prayer beads. The upper lip shaven, his chin was shrouded in a rough beard.

  ‘Are we going to forget our Kashmiri brothers? Turn our back on a struggle of five decades because the president of Pakistan wants to warm his chair till he dies? What about the new initiatives?’

  He glanced at the sheet of paper in his hands and read aloud. ‘An agreement has been reached by India and Pakistan to start a bus service across the ceasefire line in Kashmir. To put life back into a flagging peace process and give Kashmiris a chance to have a say in their future.’ The nostrils of his distinctly Pashtun nose flared to impressive size until his firm mouth opened to spit, ‘Betraying the blood of the Kashmiri mujahideen!’

  The link between jihadi ideology and the Pakistan army was old. In 1948, Pakistan was stinging from India’s refusal to hand over Kashmir, and people were angry. But the angriest were the conservative Pashtun tribesmen in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province, hundreds of kilometres away. They held tribal jirgas and for hours the elders sat, sipped tea, and debated. They waited for the Kashmiris to revolt, and when that didn’t happen, they scrambled together a volunteer army in the pioneering use of mujahideen to liberate Kashmir.

  Jalaluddin strode down the narrow room, hands clasped behind. To calm his mind he focused on the mission that his ex-general in the ISI had assigned him. He smirked as he pictured a marble monument in his mind, bustling with kafirs, and then exploding the next instant, showering dust, skin and bloodied limbs. He turned to the young mujahid and spat out, ‘First the Hindus demolish Babri Masjid. Then they give us the carnage of Godhra. Now a “bus of peace”. In turn we’ll present these Hindus with something they will never forget. Something so huge it will shake their complacent dal-eating selves! And ridicule them in the eyes of the entire world.’

  Diary

  I

  killed my father the day I turned six.

  It was after he had gifted me my brand-new Hero bicycle, its shiny red colour heralding what was to unfold. He was unaware, of course, and had chosen the particular colour after consulting me. ‘Apple-red,’ he had smilingly endorsed, ‘for the apple of my eye.’ But apples have worms in them, sometimes. An apple is also a dangerous fruit: don’t Christians and Jews believe that one bite condemned mankind to death? Anyway, apple-red it was and I picked the colour because it is the colour of blood— though, I have to admit, the
varied symbolism of ‘apple’ that I learnt as I grew struck me as particularly appropriate.

  The bicycle was brought home and I rode it in the veranda, then the lawn, to the proud applause of my parents, and the guarded enthusiasm of the gardener, the cook, and my ayah—frequent victims of my childish pranks. Ayah, though, was privy to some of my ‘oddities’—a term my father used to describe some of my behaviour.

  Like the fact that I still suckled at my mother’s breast, despite father’s explicit command to discontinue the practice.

  But I liked to nestle against my mother’s softness, her long black hair veiling my face, the red bindi aglow on her smooth, fair forehead. She liked it too, the times when I nibbled a nipple and she winced, making as if to smack me, instead arching her back as I strengthened my suckling. It was what I had seen father do to her. On hot, sultry afternoons, when father returned for his siesta and my mother and he retired to their cool bedroom, I pretended to sleep in my room. After Ayah left, I would sneak into the rambling garden outside the windows of my parents’ room. The windows would be shuttered but one slat was broken—enough for a peephole. I did not like what my father did to my mother, but my mother seemed to enjoy it. I studied that look on her face and strove for it when I suckled at her breast.

  But returning to the birthday present.

  After I had ridden my bicycle and eaten the celebratory dish of halwa-poori, my father retired for his customary evening bath. It was the middle of February, a wintry dusk had brought darkness and cold in its wake. My father liked his bath water steaming hot—tepid was for the weaklings, he scoffed—and would always check the water by dipping a hand into the bucket. To heat the water we relied on electrical heating rods, a bathroom geyser being a rarity in those days. The rod was immersed in a bucket of water, and guaranteed to have water boiling within a half hour.

  So my father went inside for his bath, trailed by the cook. In a standard ritual, my father bunched up his pyjamas, took off his slippers and stepped into the bathroom where the large bucket sat spewing vapour into the air. Cook unplugged the cord from the bedroom wall outlet and waited for father to dip his hand in the bucket. Post which, satisfied with the water’s temperature, he would flick his fingers in dismissal.

  That day, however, he grunted in disapproval; the cook trembled his way to the bucket, checked for himself and re-plugged the immersion rod. Despite the steam, the water was not at the required temperature because a jug of cold water had been added surreptitiously.

  My father changed out of his clothes, sat bare-chested on the bed, his temperature rising as he waited for the water to boil. Cook stood in forlorn guard at the doorway, willing the water to heat up quickly. When my mother summoned him from the kitchen—the curry paste was burning, how had he forgotten to add water?—my father harrumphed, sent the cook on his way and marched to the bathroom, unplugging the rod on his way in. As he shut the door behind him, he failed to notice his son, who had been watching from the veranda, sneaking in on his rubber-soled Bata slippers. My father’s hand was in the bucket when current leapt at his fingertips from the water, then went rocketing through his body.

  A horrible scream summoned everyone to the bathroom. The wooden door, secured from inside, took a while to be forced open. When it was, inside lay father, stone-cold, a trickle of red oozing out of one nostril.

  Hands were raised in puzzled query—the immersion rod lay limp in the bucket, its cord safely unplugged from the bedroom outlet.

  Delhi

  M

  ehrunisa sighted Professor Kaul in his favourite winter spot beneath the mango tree in the manicured garden. But it was nearly dusk and chilly and the professor should be indoors. As she crossed the lawn, a troubled Mangat Ram hurried towards her from the patio. ‘Sahib is unwell,’ he said nodding toward Professor Kaul. ‘He’s been sitting there since lunch. Not lifted a finger to drink or eat. I served him his lunch at one, then four o’clock tea—all untouched. When I asked, Sahib, is something wrong, he gawked at me, then, then ...’ Mangat Ram’s voice went tremulous, ‘he said to me, who are you?’ The housekeeper clasped his mouth with his right hand.

  Mehrunisa did not know what to make of this revelation. Perhaps Professor Kaul was just pulling his leg? He was known to occasionally joke with the housekeeper: if I needed a wife, I would have married, right? But Mangat Ram took it in his stride. In the years he had been in Kaul’s service, he had developed the temperament of a phlegmatic spouse, ignoring Kaul when needed, otherwise steadfastly delivering good food and keeping house. But then she saw the professor hunched in his chair, the darkness creeping around him, and his words floated into her head: I think I am losing my mind.

  Now, as the housekeeper watched her, Mehrunisa grimaced, and said, ‘Let’s take a look.’

  Kaul did not react to her approach. He sat like a Buddha, but with his legs extended, pondering space.

  ‘Uncle,’ she murmured, ‘Kaul uncle.’ Mangat Ram, his hands clutching the edges of his sleeveless brown wool jacket, stood behind her. When the professor stayed impassive, Mehrunisa delved into her bag and pulled out her digital camera. She was scrolling through the images when Mangat Ram leaned forward. Looking at the photographs, he asked glumly, faint remonstration in his voice, ‘You visited the Taj Mahal, bitiya?’

  Mehrunisa knew what he was implying: hadn’t last time been trouble enough? She did not grudge him that, having known him as long as the professor. Besides, it was Mangat Ram who had initiated her into flying kites and playing marbles during the long days of summer. She flashed a reassuring smile.

  Meanwhile, Professor Kaul’s head had jerked in their direction. His eyes were fixed on them in a blank stare. Then he cried out in agony and reached for his legs resting atop a jute stool. Mangat Ram rushed forward, clucking. ‘Sitting in meditation like some sage atop a mountain—haven’t moved your legs for hours now. No wonder they have gone stiff.’ With a brisk movement of his palms, he set about bringing the circulation back into the professor’s limbs.

  The professor’s eyes had yielded their former glaze to a frantic ferret as they spun about. ‘Kaul uncle?’ Mehrunisa queried again.

  ‘Mehr?’ he said, and looked about him as if searching for the source of the voice.

  Mehr: it was his term of endearment for her, one he used to calm her when she was upset as a child. One he still used, but infrequently. Right now, it was he who sounded distressed, child-like. She lowered herself to the ground, placed a hand on his shoulder and said softly, ‘I am here, Uncle.’

  Professor Kaul looked down; when his gaze fell on Mehrunisa, his eyes lit up. He pulled himself upright and promptly withdrew his legs from Mangat Ram’s ministrations, remonstrating, ‘Stop fussing over me like an old hen!’

  A perplexed Mangat Ram backed off, questioning the air with his hands. ‘My stomach feels like a cave, get me some food!’ the professor said, then turning to Mehrunisa, he lowered his voice and quizzed, ‘Did that policeman call you for questioning again?’

  Over tea, Mehrunisa recounted the events of her trip to Agra: the police station, followed by the Taj Mahal, and the perplexing discovery she had made there. An attentive Professor Kaul was all ears. It seemed improbable that just a while ago he had misplaced his mind.

  ‘So, what do you think?’ she asked apprehensively. ‘Mischief or malice?’

  Professor Kaul shook his head. ‘The difference in the script of the two words is marginal, except to a trained eye. Yours is, but most would miss it. Why would an attention-seeking prankster or a deviant artisan go to such lengths for so little? For something a casual observer would never grasp even if he stared at it for eternity...’

  Professor Kaul interlaced his fingers and continued, ‘From what you have narrated, and from your photographs, the alteration appears to be artfully executed. In fact, only a master craftsman, an expert karigar, would be able to accomplish those changes with such finesse. But who is this artisan? And why did he do it?’

  ‘You think
his identity is critical?’

  Professor Kaul’s thumbs circled each other as he thought. ‘Yes. You see, most karigars are Muslim—it is a family art that has been handed down through generations. There are some families in Agra who claim descent from the original craftsmen who worked on the Taj. So, why would a Muslim agree to tamper with a verse from the Quran?’

  ‘Well, strictly speaking, he has not tampered with a Quranic verse, only the epitaph.’

  ‘Sure,’ Kaul nodded. ‘Except, remember that the Taj Mahal is esteemed as the foremost symbol of Islamic art, and is particularly renowned for its paradisiacal vision of heaven on earth. The fact that the monument is decorated with Quranic verses adds to the monument’s piety. The artisan therefore knew what he was doing, unless he couldn’t read the script.’

  ‘Unlikely—if he could change “munavvar” to “masnooee”, he could read the verse.’

  Above them, birds were hastening homewards in a darkening sky. A bus horn sounded through the dusk.

  ‘When could he have got access to the tomb chamber?’ Mehrunisa wondered aloud. ‘And how much time would it take to make those changes?’

  ‘A couple of hours.’

  ‘That’s a narrow window. Late night, when the Taj is closed—somebody who could access—’

  ‘The artisan was not alone.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘The average artisan is schooled in what is a family tradition and isn’t well-educated. The import of the changes, however, suggests an erudite mind. The change is minor, but the significance of the change is immense. Masnooee is an intriguing choice of word. It conveys a lot. Forged. Made in imitation of something else with intent to deceive.... Deceive. Therefore the questions arise: deceive whom, and why?’

  With an index finger he tapped the Persian text. ‘The original epitaph conveys: Here lies Arjumand Banu in her illumined grave. The changed calligraphy says: This is a counterfeit grave. The import? You, the visitor, have been deceived. So, the question arises: if not Arjumand Banu, then who is lying here? And if she does not lie in this grave, then this mausoleum was not built for her. If it was not built for her, then the story behind the Taj Mahal is false.’