The Taj Conspiracy

by Someshwar, Manreet Sodhi

  On finishing his rapid-fire narration, Professor Kaul gulped lungfuls of air. After which he slumped in the chair, and all Mehrunisa wanted to do was to hug him. She made to lean forward, draping an arm around his back when he bolted upright.

  His eyes were round with fear as he clutched her wrist and whispered hoarsely. ‘Tell her, tell Mehrunisa when you find her, to watch out. Watch out for Aurangzeb!’

  An enervated Professor Kaul, totally spent after his narration, was back in his room. While Mangat Ram watched over him, a pale Mehrunisa had returned to the patio.

  R.P. Singh’s eyes narrowed. ‘Aurangzeb again. For a historical figure to suddenly go contemporary would require a reason.’ He hunched forward and looked at her meaningfully.

  Mehrunisa nodded thoughtfully. ‘Aurangzeb is clearly not a militant—the urgency, the intimacy, with which Kaul uncle mentioned his name makes me believe he knows his true identity...’

  ‘So why doesn’t he disclose it?’

  ‘Because he is unable to,’ Mehrunisa suggested. She disclosed that the professor was diagnosed with a syndrome that had robbed him of a large chunk of his memory.

  ‘But he is clearly afraid,’ R.P. Singh patted his bald pate, his mouth pursed in contemplation. ‘The professor is afraid for you.’

  Mehrunisa lifted her shoulders in a helpless shrug.

  Was he mistaken, or were her eyes green? Singh wondered. Mentally shaking himself, he said, ‘This story that your uncle narrated—is there a relevance?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Mehrunisa said in a shaky voice. ‘He has always been an ardent storyteller. All my knowledge of Indian mythology comes from the stories he has told me. My father had little interest in them. This particular one that he narrated, I’ve heard before.’

  ‘Are patients with this syndrome known to recall their lost memory?’

  ‘Yes, the doctor mentioned that Kaul uncle could recollect fragments of his past which he would vocalise without any apparent context.’

  ‘See,’ R.P. Singh sat up excitedly, jabbing the air in between them with an index finger. ‘I’m wondering if some stimuli triggered the professor’s recall of that story, and the warning about Aurangzeb.’

  ‘You think the two are related?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  Mehrunisa sat there trying to figure what the story of the lac palace had to do with Aurangzeb. When R.P. Singh requested her to recount it for him, she did so slowly, all the while looking for a link.

  ‘A fascinating story,’ Singh said. ‘Old rivalry, a plan to kill, ingenious escape.... What do you think is the most critical element in the story?’

  ‘The escape?’

  R.P. Singh’s right index finger probed the air as if attempting to locate something before it came to a halt. ‘Masking the escape. That, to my mind, is the crux of this matter.’

  Delhi

  T

  he man at the centre of the Taj conspiracy was the murdered and corpse-gone-missing Arun Toor. R.P. Singh had a sketchy idea of the man from the file SSP Raghav had developed on him. It contained some photographs, a record of his work experience, educational certificates, testimonials of people who worked with him and had known him. His house had been searched, twice; his colleagues and acquaintances questioned—a couple of constables had travelled to Benares and Etawah to interview Toor’s relatives; another constable was working through the list of contractors who carried out regular repair and maintenance work at Taj Mahal, and yet—nothing. Nothing had turned up which shed light on why somebody would want to murder Arun Toor, bachelor, history major, and Taj supervisor. What he needed therefore, was a better sense of the man, his personality, his friends and enemies. Since Mehrunisa had spent time working with him, and they’d been friendly, he decided to talk to her about Toor. ‘Why don’t you tell me more about the Taj supervisor?’ he asked. ‘This all began with Arun Toor, and I know nothing about him.’

  Mehrunisa nodded but suggested they continue the discussion over some food, and R.P. Singh, having left Agra before breakfast, readily accepted. He was enjoying the company of this woman—she struck him as vulnerable yet resolute, engaging and erudite. As Mehrunisa led the way and he followed, his eyes on her shapely rear, he reminded himself not to get carried away. The Bastar badlands was to be blamed for his sensory deficit—back in the civilised world, his male hormones were in overdrive, he thought, grinning to himself.

  The housekeeper brought in a fresh pot of tea, scrambled eggs and a rack of toast. Mehrunisa indicated that he help himself.

  As he buttered a toast thickly, Mehrunisa started talking.

  When Mehrunisa first met Arun Toor they had got talking like old friends. That was surprising, considering how unlike they were, in both demeanour and upbringing: she was elegant and composed, he was unkempt and gregarious; she had a cosmopolitan upbringing in the Middle East and Europe, he had grown up in the ancient Indian city of Varanasi. What they had in common was a love of Michelangelo, though they were to discover that only later.

  One evening, after Mehrunisa had been frequenting the Taj Mahal for over a month, Arun had suggested dinner. He knew a place that served authentic Unani, Persian, food. The legend went that the chef’s ancestor had travelled with the Persian ambassador in the entourage sent by the Shah of Persia to Aurangzeb in honour of his accession to the Mughal throne. The chef ’s ancestors had served in the royal kitchens, and now that royalty was dead, the family survived on the patronage of Agra’s citizenry. Only, Arun added, giving her a once-over, you may find the place short on ambience.

  ‘If the food is good, I’ve been known to trade atmosphere for it,’ Mehrunisa smiled.

  The eatery was a tiny ill-lit place in Taj Ganj where they sat on creaking wooden benches opposite each other as steaming berry pulao and abgusht was deposited on the table. The food, Mehrunisa discovered, was surprisingly good and authentic—the specialty, pomegranate soup, superlative. They savoured lamb morsels against the background drone of evening traffic and swapped stories. When Mehrunisa finished recounting her student days in Florence and her pursuit of Renaissance art, Arun Toor surprised her by concluding, ‘And your favourite artist, no doubt, is Michelangelo.’

  ‘How did you guess?’

  ‘You strike me as a person I like to call “classic”—the things that attract them are of enduring excellence. Look at you. Your clothes, your speech, the manner in which you conduct yourself,’ he said, stretching an imaginary thread between his fingertips, ‘elegant, authoritative, but also,’ he winked, ‘typical. Which means, your favourite artist has to be either of the three acknowledged Renaissance greats: Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo or Raphael.’

  Arun Toor chewed noisily on a green chilli, as above them moths fluttered around a light bulb dangling from a nearby bamboo pole. ‘You mentioned your love for Florence, so it would be logical to deduce the artist would be Florentine. That rules out Raphael. Of the two Florentines, I would bet on Michelangelo.’

  Mehrunisa pulled out a wet wipe from her bag and wiped her hands. Arun raised his eyebrows in mock surprise and with his chin indicated the corner basin. Smiling, Mehrunisa shook her head and asked, ‘Why Michelangelo? Leonardo is acknowledged as the complete Renaissance man, and if, as you claim, my taste tends to the classic, surely I’d veer to him?’

  Arun nodded, ‘Well said. I would say you had picked a hole in my deduction, except,’ he held up his right index finger, stained yellow from the turmeric in the paste, ‘Michelangelo was the one with a tortured soul.’

  Mehrunisa sat still.

  ‘And I would say,’ Arun continued happily munching his food, ‘that Mehrunisa Khosa shares an empathy with that tortured soul.’

  ‘Why would you say that?’

  ‘Your project, Mehrunisa—Indo-Persian linkages—it is a search, isn’t it? A search for answers—to yourself, perhaps?’

  ‘And you, my friend, have all the answers?’

  ‘I have offended you. Well, if it helps, let me divulge that
my favourite artist is also Michelangelo!’

  Arun guffawed at her obvious astonishment. ‘The other one. Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. You are wondering where and how I got to study Caravaggio? A poor brown boy from the boondocks!’ Arun’s smile had gone static on his face.

  Taken aback at the unexpected venom in his voice, Mehrunisa almost flinched.

  The next instant Arun snorted, before pointing his index finger at her and grinning cheekily, ‘Got you!’

  Growing up in Varanasi, the cultural capital of India, Arun divulged, he had encountered many young backpackers who came to the holy city by the Ganga to discover Hindu spirituality. Somewhere their enthusiasm had infected him and he had resolved to one day travel to a place about which he had little knowledge and immense curiosity—Italy, the fount of Renaissance.

  ‘Mark Twain said Varanasi was older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together! But a true appreciation of home comes when you have travelled far. I wanted to see if my wanderings in that other land of such immense culture would build my appreciation for the art of India. After all, I was infatuated enough to want to pursue a career in it. It seemed like a good test—this exploration of another world and its artistic palate.’

  Arun described how he had spent a summer backpacking his way through Italy, studying the sculpture and art in its various museums, working in restaurants to earn money whenever he ran out of it, sleeping on benches in public parks. When he returned he considered himself an amateur on Western art and architecture—at least he could tell a Romanesque church from Gothic, he finished, grinning.

  ‘So that’s where you discovered Caravaggio?’

  ‘Yes!’ Arun said, his eyes bright. ‘His paintings were so monstrously vivid. I would be standing in the Uffizi in Florence, in front of a Caravaggio, and there, on the wall, I could imagine a scene out of one of Varanasi’s little lanes being played out on the canvas. In his paintings I saw people with grubby soles. I knew those feet—they were the feet of people who spend their days and nights barefoot. And those half-shadows in which he painted his characters, their faces simultaneously conveying one emotion and masking another. The brilliant interplay of bright with dark—chiaroscuro, as they call the technique—it mesmerised me. I, for one, had never seen anything like that before. That made him unique to me. On my return I scoured the Banaras Hindu University library for literature on Caravaggio, his paintings, his life, anything and everything.’

  It was Mehrunisa’s turn to smile. ‘It fits. Your propensity for Caravaggio.’

  ‘Why? Should I be peeved at your value judgement?’

  Mehrunisa waved her hand in dismissal. ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘Yes. A guy with a scruffy beard, grubby hands, and loud laughter would best appreciate the unpretentious, manic genius of Caravaggio. Not to mention the can-blow-smoke-through-the-nostrils bit...’ Arun laughed, throwing his head back, snorting. It drew interested, amused glances from the other tables.

  ‘Caravaggio lived a rough-tough life and his paintings are full of the grime, ordinariness and lust of life. Why,’ Arun guffawed, ‘even his Cupid had dirty toenails! The beggars, the prostitutes, the menacing shadows—what a relief from the piety and soft tones of Botticelli, or—pardon me—the musculature of Michelangelo who put muscles even on women! The Delphic sibyl—you recall? Face of an angel, and the biceps of a giant!’

  It was a sticky night, the air ponderous with the impending monsoon. Mehrunisa and Arun remained quiet for some time, immersed in the quiet companionship that comes from sharing. A mosquito came droning in front of Arun’s face. He clapped it between his palms; the spell was broken. With a snap of his fingers, Arun ordered paan.

  Mehrunisa had seen its orange juice spat merrily in the streets and declined the offer. Grinning mischievously, she rested her chin on her palm. ‘Some art historians say that Caravaggio’s art is, ultimately, a murderer’s confession. You must know he murdered a young man and spent his life thereafter running from the law.’

  Arun smiled, a smile that got lost in his beard, but lit up his eyes and rounded his cheeks. ‘He was a rough and ready guy—a street brawler, a gang member, a murderer.... You have studied his paintings so you would know what gave that luminosity to the brilliant white he used in his paintings.’

  ‘White lead paint,’ Mehrunisa replied quietly.

  ‘And?’

  ‘It is highly toxic.’

  Arun’s response was a shrug as he lit up a cigarette. ‘When did genius ever play by the rules? His mantra: transgress.’

  ‘It’s interesting that you use the word transgress. I thought you’d say innovate.’

  Arun Toor burst into one of his guffawing laughs, nodding his head in some secret merriment. ‘That is the difference between you and me, Mehrunisa. The difference, let’s say,’ his voice went flat, ‘between privilege and penury, between ideal and real. The genius in the underprivileged world does not innovate; he transgresses. Remember that!’

  Mehrunisa acknowledged this with a lift of her brows. ‘You do seem to have a strong empathy with Caravaggio. There are art historians who believe that it is his guilt, the burden of his oppressed soul, which lends his canvas such feverish intensity. Applying the deductive reasoning you demonstrated, what could be the cause for your empathy with Caravaggio the murderer?’

  Arun went still. In a deadpan voice, he asked, ‘Are you calling me a murderer, Mehrunisa?’

  He leaned forward and whispered, ‘Perhaps I do have murder on my mind.’ Next he gave a slow, half wink, following it with a languid smirk as smoke curled out of his nostrils.

  The paan juice that stained his lips a reddish-orange should have made him look ridiculous. Instead, with the deepening night sky in the distance, the iron rod used for plucking roti from the clay oven glinting against the brick wall behind, and the faint light casting Arun’s face in shadow, his coloured mouth made him look faintly ghoulish. The scene, Mehrunisa realised, could be straight out of a Caravaggio painting!

  When R.P. Singh left Professor Kaul’s house after spending three hours being updated by Mehrunisa, his head was a little fuzzy. It had been an entirely pleasurable time—ambience, female company, food—yet what he had gleaned from the meeting had confounded him.

  The Arun Toor that emerged from the anecdotes that she had recounted was a man of contradictions: a sloppy dresser yet fastidious arranger of files; a man who frequently changed the style of his beard but never of his clothes; a Benares boy who was in awe of an Italian painter; a history scholar who headed the drama club in college; a practical man who was nevertheless obsessed with the number three; devoted to the monument yet aware of his Jat heritage that had once ransacked the Taj.

  He was not sure if he had heard about one man or two....

  Delhi

  M

  ehrunisa was studying an upside-down Ardhnarishwar as she sat opposite Raj Bhushan. The ASI director-general was on the phone. He had called her that morning to share some news. Since he was occupied, Mehrunisa studied the two-that-are-one-form of Shiva for which he had earlier exhibited great enthusiasm, and wondered if there was a woman in the director’s life, a Shakti to complete his Shiva.

  ‘Yes.’ Raj Bhushan grinned as he rubbed his hands. ‘It is good of you to come at such short notice, but I thought it might interest you.’ He paused. ‘Would you care for a trip to Jaipur?’

  ‘Jaipur?’ Mehrunisa asked. ‘Why?’

  ‘For the Jaipur map. In the Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II Museum in the Jaipur palace is a large cloth map. In 1722, the Mughal emperor Muhammad Shah appointed Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh as the governor of Agra. At that time, the Maharaja was planning a new city at Jaipur and, for comparative study, he instructed that a map be prepared of the Mughal empire’s old capital and its prominent buildings. The result,’ Raj Bhushan said as he rested his elbows on the armchair, ‘is an image of Agra much as it had been under Shah Jahan.’

>   ‘Oh!’ Mehrunisa leaned forward in excitement. ‘You mean the map shows the Taj Mahal?’

  The ASI director-general’s face broke into its peculiar broad smile, his mouth forming a humungous ‘U’ even as the teeth stayed hidden from view. ‘Not just the Taj Mahal, but the entire riverfront scheme planned by Shah Jahan—of which many gardens, buildings and tombs are lost or have fallen into ruin.’

  He opened the right-side drawer of his desk and brought out a case of mints. Flipping the lid open, he tilted the case towards his guest—who declined with a shake of her head—and popped a fresh mint into his mouth.

  Amazing! Mehrunisa thought. This map would be further proof that the Taj Mahal was integral to an elaborate plan by Shah Jahan and not an isolated structure that could have been usurped.

  Raj Bhushan smiled as he arranged the papers on his table and stacked them neatly to one side. ‘I was correct in my estimation! Finally, something that cheers you! As a matter of fact, I have been in talks with the Jaipur royals to buy the map for the ASI.’

  A bearer walked in with tea, and the director-general instructed him to deposit the tray near the corner sofa. ‘Shall we,’ he said, indicating the sofa to Mehrunisa.

  Once they were reseated, Raj Bhushan began serving tea as he talked. ‘It was Akbar who started to develop Agra as a riverfront city. However, it was during Shah Jahan’s reign that the garden with buildings on a riverfront terrace, like the Taj Mahal, became the norm. The Jaipur map shows the chahar baghs as a characteristic of Mughal Agra’s urban landscape: a square garden divided into four quarters by paved walkways and canals can be seen in many buildings. One popular example, considered the design predecessor of the Taj Mahal, is Itmad-ud-Daula’s tomb, constructed by Nur Jehan for her beloved father.’ Raj Bhushan handed her an elegant bone china teacup.