by Farzana Moon
Jahangir was consumed by this shadow, as if his eyes could behold Anarkali in each bloom, in every blade of grass, and inside the heart of each valley, scented and glorious. Glory was arrested, even inside the intricate pattern of each leaf, polished by the gold of dusk, he was thinking. He was keenly aware of Nur Jahan beside him too, and humbled by her love and nearness. Anarkali was no other than his beloved Nur Jahan, Jahangir's thoughts were courting the sad beloved in solitary contemplations.
Nur Jahan, my soul and my sadness, her wit and gaiety are abandoning her under the weight of my own illness' prolonged and prolonging. Jahangir's thoughts were murmuring, quiet and unobtrusive. Illness', I have lost my appetite. Asthma has become my bane and torment. I don't even crave for wine anymore? Ah, but the wine of love! Nur Jahan, my beloved—can't endure to be parted from her, not ever? Am I dying? I am not afraid of death, rather welcoming this mantle of surcease. Longing to be with my beloved— His thoughts were coming to a stalemate.
A paradox in themselves!
Paradoxically, he could not think of himself as an entity, apart from Nur Jahan. She would always be with him, as was Anarkali. Both were one, his one and only eternal beloved. They would stay with him in all the living, pulsating cycles of illusions. They would follow him on the path of darkness, in his afterlife, where the lovers were united without the threat of ever being parted. Jahangir's thoughts were comforted, inhaling the scent of mysteries, along with the perfume of life and beauty.
Baghi-Bahar was cradled against one verdant hill, woven in the colors of silk and tapestry in flowers, and serenaded by the fountains and terraces. A profusion of bluebells and narcissi were a filigree of color around the flowerbeds of roses. Down below the tapestry of colors, Dal Lake gleamed and shuddered, its turquoise blue waters a fantastic mixture of gold and emerald. Beyond the voluptuous contours of Dal Lake could be seen fields upon fields of poppy and mustard, all molten-gold and flaming-red. Jahangir's gaze was bouncing down from terrace to terrace, reaching closer to the marble inclines gouged with scallops, where the waterfalls choked and spluttered. He was fascinated by the pink and white almond blossoms, which appeared suspended in air like the mists pure and gossamer. An island of white clouds was sliding over the elegant pavilions from nowhere, and Jahangir held his breath, his gaze rapt and wistful. This white island was bleeding, lacerated by the naked streaks of red-gold from the dusk, and still pouring cottony-haze over the Chenars.
Nur Jahan, appareled in blue and mauve silks, seemed to be a part of this lovely nature. The color of her dress was blending with the half-parted blooms of saffron in the background. The pallor and transparency of her oval features were heightened by the rivers of sadness from within. She seemed oblivious to the hush and beauty all around her. Her gaze was fixed to the domed pavilions over the distant pool, where the blue Kashmiri irises stood admiring their own silken reflections.
Nur Jahan's thoughts were not in Kashmir, wandering aimlessly in some continents remote, where there were no intrigues but peace and harmony. Yet intrigues had become a part of her, she could not slough off their assault or impudence. Her thoughts were returning to Bengal, where Mahabat Khan in league with Prince Shah Jahan sat concocting more evil plots than ever before. Yet again, her thoughts were wooing the valleys of Kashmir. They were getting feverish and restless, following Prince Shahryar who was on his way toward Lahore, fraught with despair and tortures of the damned. Prince Shahryar had suddenly fallen ill, a victim of fox's disease as diagnosed by the physicians. He had lost all his hair, becoming bald within a span of few days. His eyelashes were the first ones to go, then eyebrows and mustache, and finally there was no beard left to shave. The physicians could do nothing to cure him, and had suggested a change of climate from the cold in Kashmir to the warmth in Lahore.
One alien and deformed portrait of Prince Shahryar was emerging in Nur Jahan's head like a throbbing canker. Inside that canker was one marble grave. She dared not look into its white purity, but a pair of eyes was watching her from the shadow of death, they were the beloved eyes of the emperor himself! She was shuddering inwardly, averting her gaze from the octagonal marble pavilions, which alone seemed to be the demons of her sightless ruminations. These demons had been chasing her since she had arrived in Kashmir. Some sort of nameless grief had settled inside her, which could be felt churning and expanding the most, when the emperor suffered the assaults of asthma or feverish delirium. Her heart was literally breaking, each passing hour of the day or night, it seemed. Though, she was forever striving toward hope, gluing those broken pieces together with utmost skill and precision. More so to keep the emperor happy, than to mend her own wounds which could not cease their pain and clamor.
This heliotrope spring with its heart-warming colors had drugged the emperor to repose and silence. He was vaguely aware of his beloved seated close to him, yet his thoughts could witness that they were continents apart. The Pashmina shawl over his legs was warm and comforting, and so was his saffron silk robe, even more comforting in its smooth, luxuriant texture. There was an airy sensation in his limbs and thoughts, as if he could soar high into the clouds, along with the finches and the kingfishers. His purple turban studded with diamonds had some ethereal quality too, matching the violet vistas and the sparkling dusk. The little diamonds in his ears were twinkling to meet the invisible stars, it seemed. His pale, sunken cheeks were borrowing more pallor from his saffron robes, and his eyes were feverish.
The hush, the stark naked lust of the garden, and the vivid, pulsating colors, all were magic and enchantment before Jahangir's eyes, calm and reverent. His aesthetic senses were drinking soma of life from the very cups of this paradise. Loving surcease, and abandoning existence, he was thinking. He could hear the whisper of death close behind him, on the very lips of his shadow. The air itself was holding its breath, releasing a sweet sigh, a gentle murmur, suspended over there somewhere, welcoming the realms divine. He was listening to those sounds, they were getting loud and louder still, rustling through the leaves, and reaching him in a shower of bliss. This blissful, gentle murmuring in the wind was so awesome that even Nur Jahan could not help but be affected by its presence. She was abandoning the journeys in her head, and returning to the valley of awareness. So abrupt was this sense of awareness, that she was jolted out of her oblivion. This pulsating throb of life in nature with all its fecundity could not even catch her exclamation, which escaped her lips involuntarily.
"How life tosses and turns in this bliss of a paradise, if one could hear the silence, Your Majesty." Nur Jahan turned to the emperor, gazing into his eyes.
"The emperor hears only the drums of death, my love." One splinter of a prophecy escaped Jahangir's lips.
"Your Majesty. Now you have touched the hem of the inevitable. You will be surely living with a hag from now on. Didn't I warn you before? One more time, if you mention—" Nur Jahan wrinkled her dainty nose. Trying her best to make the emperor laugh and condoning the bolts of thunder inside her heart.
"In this paradise, love, the emperor can live with any creature, no matter how hideous or loathsome!" Jahangir snatched her hand, kissing it laughingly.
"Then you have no need of me, Your Majesty." Nur Jahan joined him in his mirth. The ominous thunder in her heart was fading and dissolving.
"Need, love!" Jahangir murmured tenderly. "Without you, there is no need, no love, no passion, no life. "You are my need, my soul, the light of my eyes."
"And my own love has no claim on your whimsical moods, Your Majesty. Your moods, which divorce me from your life, if you even but think of death?" Nur Jahan's eyes were flashing challenges.
"Claim, the Light of my Soul? You possess the emperor, body and soul, whatever is left of him." Jahangir smiled. Gleaning sadness' from her eyes, not challenges.
"And yet we seem continents apart, Your Majesty. Sitting in this paradise, so near, so close? What gulfs, Your Majesty, I do not know? I have this feeling, of late—that is, that you are being drawn farther
and farther away from me." Nur Jahan murmured.
"Because you love not the emperor enough, not as much as he does." Jahangir slipped his arm around her waist and pressed her closer. "Like Adam, I am destined to love you till—well, my Eve." His lips met hers in one tender kiss. "You have fed me the apple of knowledge, and I can't help but love you till eternity. No gulfs separate us, my Pearl, none but the drifting clouds in memories.”
"Eve, not Adam, is the true love, Your Majesty, if the sacred texts are to be believed." Nur Jahan murmured. She was choking back her tears, which were forcing their way into her eyes for some indescribable reason.
"The texts contaminated with lies, if the emperor dare say." Jahangir smiled. "Strange, this concoction of tales is coming to my mind. I read those stories when I was a young prince. The stories told by charlatans, pretending to be scholars?"
"Stories of love, in paradise, are they, Your Majesty?" Nur Jahan urged softly. At once the mistress of poise and serenity.
"Of Creation, where Sin and Fall have nothing to do with love." Jahangir ruminated aloud. "Azrail is the angel of death, one historian wrote, though connected with the creation of Adam, having been sent by God to bring various kind of clay from earth for the formation of his body, and having fulfilled the mission in which Gabriel and Michael had previously failed, is not mentioned as sharing his sin or punishment. Satan is the one who was cast out of paradise. He penetrated into paradise not withstanding the vigilance of its porter, by entering the mouth of a serpent that had on one occasion strayed outside. The latter at that time was a quadruped, but being cursed at the fall, was deprived of its feet and condemned to the form of a reptile. The peacock is said to have conducted Eve to the forbidden tree. So the peacock at its expulsion was deprived of its voice."
"I would rather study the flowers of Kashmir, Your Majesty, than the birds of paradise, not to mention the demons and the reptiles." Nur Jahan intoned dreamily. Her senses were being lulled into bliss, partly by Jahangir's tender tones, and partly by the hush and beauty of this garden.
"And what have you studied so far, my love?" Jahangir asked wistfully.
"The swallow-worts, Your Majesty, the flowers of the Asclepcas." Nur Jahan began with an abrupt animation. "The rare varieties, the white ones are rare than the ones tinged with rose and purple. The Hindus lay those flowers upon the idol of Mahadeva as sacred offerings. They have sacred qualities too. An acrid, milky juice is extracted from their wounds through the shrub. That juice is then used for medicinal purposes. It is supposed to cure all kinds of ailments, epilepsy, hysterics, convulsions, offering relief even from pain caused by poisonous bites. Its beauty alone is the panacea for all ills." She concluded passionately.
"For all, my love?" Murmured Jahangir, his look distant and poignant.
That far-off look, which Nur Jahan dreaded the most! That look brimming with soft, tender warmth, meaning, that he was with Anarkali? She shuddered, feeling the presence of her rival inside the very torments of her suffered heart. She was watching him, and discovering something new and strange. Jahangir's eyes had the mysterious gleam of some inner fire, as if some heartrending sorrow inside him was lit to a conflagration. She was holding her breath, as if she had divined the cause of this fire. This fire was the very epitome of the emperor's fear for pain and death, one lone revelation was slithering in her mind.
"If this flower could cure your asthma, Your Majesty, I myself would go searching for it from continent to continent, from the jungles of Sahara to the snowy peaks of Kashmir." Nur Jahan sang prayerlike.
"The emperor was not thinking about—" Jahangir divined her thoughts as soon as he met her gaze. But he was stricken mute by the blue flames of pain and purity in her pleading eyes. They were reaching out to comfort him with their warmth of love and understanding.
"That flower would do no good to Prince Shahryar either, Your Majesty." Nur Jahan too had read the emperor's thoughts. "With all his hair gone, the unfortunate Prince, he thinks he has contracted leprosy. Fleeing like a leper too, or forced to flee by the orders of the physicians? Shamed and disgraced, he confided to me!" She appeared to drain out her own fears, her look still pleading.
"There is no disgrace in being the victim of a violent disease, no matter what the ailment, my Nur." Jahangir began profoundly. "Illness of the soul, that should be the cause for disgrace? The soul, concealing its deformity and corruption from the eyes of all, grows more hideous in its own sight than any naked sight could ever judge or perceive."
"As long as the eyes behold not the cankerous souls, Your Majesty, they strive to cure the flesh only, attaching no disgrace to the soul which is always left to fester everlastingly." Nur Jahan sighed to herself.
"With bodies clean and souls stinking, mankind has learnt to stifle the reek of ignorance which follows them at their heels." Jahangir reminisced aloud, as if looking into the eyes of the past horrors with a sense of detachment. "The animals of this earth, Nur, and the demons expelled from Paradise! And yet what has this to do with our own Paradise?" He smiled, his gaze arresting the colors in this garden. "We have to leave this paradise again, to journey back on the familiar, yet unknown paths? Prince Shahryar, yes, my unfortunate son. We must be with him, he needs our love and support. Soon, tomorrow, much too soon." He looked into her eyes. "Should we say farewell to our children with pearls and gold rings in their noses, before we journey to Lahore?" He got to his feet. The Pashmina shawl fell to his feet in one gentle rustle.
"Their liquid-gold bodies we might carry in our hearts forever, Your Majesty." Nur Jahan sprang to her feet with the alacrity of a young girl.
The fields upon fields of silken blooms were welcoming the royal couple as they strode away to see their gold children. The scented air was drugging their senses to a wild surrender. The blue pool with gold fish was still a few paces away, but Jahangir's feet were coming to a sudden halt by the clusters of pansies bedewed by the waters of the fountains. He was crushing Nur Jahan into one eager embrace, his voice hoarse with desire and yearning.
"On second thought, my pearl, the emperor wishes to roll down on these lawns, and cover you with flowers, along with his kisses." Jahangir's very heart was gathering colors from the clusters of pansies in mauve and vermilion.
"Your Majesty!" Nur Jahan squirmed and giggled in the emperor's arms on the verge of swooning. "The men guarding your palki will be scandalized if they happen to see us—" Her protests were smothered by the shower of kisses from the emperor's lips.
"If the emperor was fit to ride, he would rather go hunting than lovemaking in the open. And as for the intruders, he would break their legs, if they dared straggle into this paradise of ours." He was laughing and murmuring endearments.
The silken pansies with innocent groans were being ravished under the weight of the emperor, and so was the empress. The jewels in flowers were bruised, and the jewels on Nur Jahan's royal person were twinkling with glee.
"Love, tell me, would we come to this paradise again?" Jahangir could feel the impending violence of another asthma attack, but was trying to ward off all fears, mental and physical. His need and urgency for consummation was lifting him to the heights of absurdity and delirium.
"Again and forever, Your Majesty." Nur Jahan could barely murmur amidst the rapture of her passionate swoon.
"Forever and forever." Jahangir kept murmuring, and stabbing deeper and deeper into the lotus of her desire, again and again. The rapier of unsurfeit in him had to be withdrawn by the sudden assault of asthma.
23
In Death United
The hunting grounds in Baramagala were charged with excitement of the royal hunt, as Jahangir sat waiting for the beaters to drive the deer to a close range. The imperial entourage had Journeyed from Kashmir rather somberly, the ailing emperor attended by the empress and the physicians. He was carried on a palki, and was immersed in his own world of peace and oblivion. Eating sparsely and demanding wine only when hurled back into the arms of his feeble and unhealthy c
onsciousness. Reaching close to the picturesque spot of Baramagala, Jahangir had felt a sudden burst of energy due to the little reprieve from his pain and shortness of breath. There and then, he had decided to hunt. He was pressed by his whimsical mood, as if challenging the fates, if not putting his depleted vigor to test and challenge. All his aesthetic senses were alive and throbbing though, and he had promised Nur Jahan an opulent tour of the lovely sites after this great hunt.
This hunting ground was one tortuous terrain of a pleasure-haven, concealed quite seductively at the bottom of a high mountain. The elms and the cedars were a collage of undergrowth, their trunks dipping down into the mouths of the declivities, and their limbs rising above the precipices, as if spurred by the wand of magic and mystery. The emperor in his riding habit of citron and turquoise was leaning slightly over the parapet, built exclusively for his hunting pleasures. His matchlock lay abandoned on the wall, as he adjusted his gun over his shoulders for an unerring aim. The large diamond in his turban, catching a shaft of sunlight, was blazing suddenly. This blaze was lending his pale, emaciated features a subtle flush. But actually this flush was coming from within, his heart had begun to throb with a strange violence he had not ever encountered before.
Nur Jahan, not seated far from the emperor, was hunting down her own wild beasts, in fears and doubts. She was seated under the red canopy with a white parasol, both matching and complimenting her silks and rubies and diamonds. She too had lost much of her color and vivacity, though her health suffered no major setbacks. A luminescent pallor had settled upon her cheeks permanently, and the dark circles under her eyes were witness to the measure of her inner torment and suffering. Right now, most humbly and most earnestly, she was praying for the health of the emperor. Summoning hope and courage as the most devoted of her guardians. She was anticipating the boons of health from her Merciful God, and praying and praying.