Escape from Harem

by Tanushree Podder

  ‘Tell me about the new capital,’ Zeenat insisted. ‘The emperor has gone quite crazy. I don’t see why he should think of shifting the capital now. Agra was good enough for his father and grandfather.’

  ‘He says that the streets are too narrow for the grand processions. The emperor has also been complaining about the oppressive heat of Agra. He wants to build a capital with broad avenues and magnificent buildings. The Mir Imarat has been told that the new city should be a unique one, with beautiful palaces, gardens, and impressive shopping arcades. I feel it is his love for making new buildings that is at the root of his decision.’

  ‘Let him make buildings here. Let him construct more Taj Mahals,’ grumbled Zeenat.

  ‘I guess he has enough money to indulge in his fancies like the Peacock Throne, the Taj Mahal, and the new capital.’

  ‘Of what use are these soulless structures when there is no peace in his heart,’ Zeenat sighed. ‘With the sons at each other’s throats and his philandering with a different woman each night, would he find happiness in mere buildings?’

  ‘I guess not,’ admitted her son. ‘But he is satisfying his passion for superb structures.’

  ‘That isn’t the only passion he is satisfying. I have heard that he has been taking aphrodisiacs to enhance his virility.’

  ‘Yes, there are rumours about that, too. Apart from Akbarabadi Mahal and Fatehpuri Mahal, there are hundreds of young women and dancing girls who are placed at his beck and call.’

  ‘Isn’t he supposed to be devoted to the two concubines – Akbarabadi Mahal and Fatehpuri Mahal?’

  ‘The emperor is no longer devoted to any woman. That chapter of his life was over with the death of Mumtaz Mahal. Now, he seeks a new woman every evening.’

  ‘The devil has got him,’ concluded Zeenat. ‘Why else would a man as straight as him resort to such debauchery?’

  Nafisa had joined the two of them. Now, she added her own bit of information.

  ‘Like father, like daughter. I have heard that Roshanara has numerous young men to amuse her. They are smuggled into her apartment at the dead of the night and after a whole night of orgy they are sent back in the early hours of the morning.’

  ‘Who told you all this?’ asked her husband, incredulously.

  ‘Ulfat, our neighbour’s daughter works for Roshanara. She told me.’

  ‘Is she bent upon losing her life? If word goes around that she has been spreading stories about the princess, she will be executed immediately,’ Zeenat was aghast at the cheek of the girl. ‘Nafisa, you must warn her not to talk about the happenings within the harem. She is young and rash; she doesn’t understand the implications.’

  ‘I will tell her to mind her tongue, Ammi,’ promised Nafisa.

  ‘Let them do whatever they want. But I want you to come with me to see the Taj Mahal tomorrow,’ Abdul said with finality.

  As usual, Zeenat had the last word. ‘We shall see,’ she retorted.

  Thirty-six

  They picked their way gingerly through the maze of narrow gullies, littered with garbage. The tiny shanties with their crumbling roofs were a sad affirmation of the poverty that lived within them. From within the dark womb of one hovel came the sound of a hoarse and grating bout of coughing. Several children clad in tattered clothes, their noses running, ran behind them, begging for money.

  Zeenat pressed her scented handkerchief to the nose to block the stench of the open drains that were overflowing with muck. So this is where the poor people who constructed the most amazing structure in the world lived, she thought sadly. Though she was expecting it, the squalor shocked her.

  ‘It had been your idea to walk through this,’ grumbled Abdul, waving the beggars away with a stick. ‘Why did you have to do this to yourself?’

  He knew how moved she felt at the sight of poverty and misery.

  ‘I had to see it. Satiunnisa had told me that I must go through Mumtazabad if I visit Taj Mahal. She wanted me to experience the ugly side; face the squalor and grief before I experienced the ecstasy. Perhaps she wanted me to see the irony of an emperor’s obsession. While he has spent crores of rupees on his obsession, the people who have given shape to his dream live in abject poverty.’

  ‘After you walk through the slums and your eyes behold the mausoleum, it is like emerging from the depth of hell, with the promise of paradise before you. The effect of the contrast is beyond description,’ Satiunnisa had told her.

  ‘You seem to hate the emperor.’ The thought came suddenly to her son.

  ‘Yes, I hate him for all that he is doing. I hate his selfishness. This is not what Mumtaz Mahal had wanted. She was a kind-hearted woman. She would never have imagined that he could squander the wealth of the great Mughal Empire on a mausoleum for her while these people living just a distance from the edifice should live this way. Imagine the kind of life these people could live if the money was given to them.’

  ‘But that would not make him the greatest lover of all times, would it?’ replied her son, sardonically.

  All around them stood tiny huts, their outer walls splattered with cow dung cakes. This was the only fuel the labourers had. They would use the dung cakes to light up their primitive stoves for the two meals they cooked for themselves. The luckier ones could afford three meals, but there were also those who survived on just one meal a day. The frugal meal of dry rotis, and some jaggery or onions, and a green chilly, was all they could afford; hardly a fitting sustenance for hard labour.

  Early in the morning, eyes stinging with the smoke, the women squatted before their stoves to bake the thick rotis, which would be tied in a strip of cloth along with the accompaniment, to be carried to the work-site. The evening fare would be equally simple. On some days, if they were lucky, they would have a curry to go with the rotis. Exhausted after the day’s work, the undernourished women had neither the energy nor the resources to cook anything better. In addition, there were chores like fetching water from the river, an occasional washing of clothes and feeding the children. Worn out by repeated childbearing and the back-breaking labour at the site, they lived from moment to moment, their lives a dreary reality.

  As Zeenat passed their huts, the women stared at her with resentment. She was a symbol of the class that exploited them.

  Ahead, a few stalls selling sweets and snacks stood in the open alongside the drain. Millions of flies seemed to have descended from all over the universe to crowd around the dirty shanties. The sun’s rays did not penetrate the insides of these hovels that housed large families. Mosquitoes droned around them in broad daylight.

  Zeenat pulled out her purse and emptied its contents. Taking the fistful of coins in her palms she scattered them amongst the trail of children following them. They fell upon the coins like a swarm of bees – jostling and hitting each other.

  ‘Let us get out of here quickly,’ Abdul propelled her. ‘Soon they will be all around you, clamouring for more.’

  They rushed past the multitude of vacant faces, bawling infants, surprised women and nonchalant men. At the periphery of the slum stood a few brick houses where the skilled artisans lived. Zeenat paused for a few moments trying to catch her breath.

  ‘Don’t drag me like this. My feet can’t walk as fast as they once could,’ she panted.

  ‘I won’t,’ promised Abdul smiling at her. ‘We are out of the slum, now. Raise your eyes and look across, Ammi,’ he whispered.

  She did. It suddenly loomed before her like an apparition of ethereal beauty. She clutched her heart, which was beating erratically. ‘Ah,’ the word came unbidden to her trembling lips.

  The dying rays of the sun lit up the most beautiful vision she had ever seen in her life. Peering at it through her rheumy eyes, she stared at the domes that seemed to rise up to the skies, like luminescent pearls against blue satin. Reflected in the gently lapping water of the Yamuna, the mausoleum looked like a mirage. There was something unrealistic about the structure. Zeenat’s eyes clouded with tears at the beau
ty of it. It seemed to float on the river, radiating a pale incandescence, enveloping everything in its warm embrace. A fitting place for Mumtaz’s soul to rest, thought Zeenat. Shahjahan has constructed a miracle.

  Abdul is right; I couldn’t have died without seeing this wonder. How would I have faced Mumtaz in the other realm? What would I have replied had she asked me about the mausoleum?

  Her tears had created a veil of haze around the Taj Mahal. The minarets seemed to loom and touch the sky with exultation. The garden around it was the very garden of paradise, with rows of cypress trees intermingling with those of fruits and flowers. The fountains played a harmonious symphony to the gentle murmur of the water flowing into the limpid pools that reflected the pristine glory of the mausoleum.

  ‘It is more beautiful in moonlight,’ whispered Abdul, bringing her back to earth. ‘On full moon nights it sparkles like a jewel, the semi-precious stones inlaid into the white marble on the main mausoleum, glinting in the glow of the moon.’

  ‘This must be what jannat looks like.’

  ‘Yes it is,’ he said. ‘The marble changes colour with the light. In the morning, the entire structure looks like a soft pink lotus in bloom; it is clothed in a milky white glow during the evenings, and becomes a warm glowing golden when the moon shines over it. These changes, people say, depict the different moods of a woman.’

  ‘The moods of an empress,’ murmured Zeenat. ‘The moods the emperor knew so well.’

  Life will not be the same now that I have seen Taj Mahal, she sighed. It was the end of an era – an era of sublime love that had beaten in the hearts of Arjumand and Khurram. Shahjahan was now a different person. He was a stranger she didn’t know – transformed from the devoted lover to a man obsessed with structures and women.

  Epilogue

  In circa 1648, Shahjahan shifted his capital to the newly-built city of Shahjahanabad. It was a city more magnificent than Agra, carefully designed in every detail. The Red Fort, with splendid halls for public and private darbars, a complex of palaces surrounded by well laid out gardens for the emperor and the royal family, luxurious baths, fountains and running streams of water, was made to suit the whims of a fastidious architect.

  The Nahar é Bahisht, a canal that flowed through the fort, along with lovely channels and cascades, and a multitude of fountains, was a marvel of design – a feat achieved by the Persian architect, Ali Mardan Khan.

  In a glorious procession, the emperor along with Dara, his eldest son, entered the new fort and the city reverberated with grand celebrations for an entire week. Abdul accompanied the imperial army and was allotted a mansion in the city. For Zeenat it was a period of luxurious living. Like most people, she was fascinated with Shahjahanabad. The city smelt of lime and mortar from the new buildings that were sprouting everywhere. Rejuvenation seemed to have touched everything in sight, leaving freshness as an aftermath.

  For most people, Shahjahanabad remained a novelty, to be visited and enjoyed. But Agra remained the place they loved; so with Zeenat. She could not settle down at the new capital, her heart yearned for Agra.

  Shahjahan returned to Agra in 1657, after an illness, never to return to his new capital again. The subsequent years were fraught with hostility amongst his sons. The Mughal Empire was torn apart in the battles between the sons of Shahjahan. The years were equally tumultuous for Zeenat and her family as Abdul was called upon to fight the rebellious princes. She returned to their old home along with her daughter-in-law and the grandchildren.

  Aurangzeb, the wily prince, instigated the other princes against Dara, and driven by a common jealousy, they combined forces to take on the heir to the throne. The ailing Shahjahan could do little to alleviate the bitter battles. Despite having the imperial army under his command, Dara proved to be a failure in the wars that ensued. Driven by intense thirst, Shahjahan capitulated to his son, Aurangzeb, after all water sources to the fort had been turned off. The recalcitrant son imprisoned his own father in the Agra Fort.

  A helpless Shahjahan suffered the news of his beloved Dara’s defeats. The prince fled from one state to the other, hounded by the combined forces of his brothers till he was captured and pitilessly executed at Shahjahanbad by the orders of Aurangzeb. Jealousy prompted Roshanara to instigate her brother into executing Dara. Her hatred for both Jahanara and Dara never waned.

  That was not the end of bloodbath. Aurangzeb, subsequently killed the other brothers, Murad and Shah Shuja, to occupy the coveted Mughal throne. Mughal history had not seen such a devious man as Aurangzeb.

  Old and broken, Shahjahan spent the next seven and a half years of his life as a captive in the fort of Agra, staring wistfully at the mausoleum across the wide span of the river Yamuna, his heart aching with the memory of his beloved Mumtaz. His beloved daughter, Jahanara, refused to abandon her father and opted to stay with him within the confines of the fort. She continued to act as the intermediary between the ailing Shahjahan and Aurangzeb. The respect Aurangzeb had for her did not wane with his coronation.

  The old order had changed. Many faithful servants of Shahjahan found it difficult to serve the new master. Zeenat and Abdul were among them. Disillusioned with the fratricides and wars, Zeenat gradually distanced herself from the royal family. Abdul resigned from his military services after Aurangzeb imprisoned Shahjahan. The family moved away from Agra to Ajmer, where he sought employment in a minor noble’s army.

  Zeenat lived to a ripe old age, revelling in the company of her grandchildren who numbered no less than nine. In the last years of her life, Zeenat devoted herself to a spiritual life at the dargah of the great Sufi saint Salim Chisti.

  Aurangzeb proved to be a bigoted ruler and reversed much of the liberal rules set by his great-great-grandfather, Akbar. After Shahjahan’s death in 1666, Jahanara was once again entrusted with the responsibility of heading Aurangzeb’s harem. She continued to spend her time in constructing gardens and mosques. Her charitable disposition and piety brought her immense popularity from the commoners as well as the royal family. She arranged marriages, looked after the daughters of her slain brothers. Roshanara continued to envy her elder sister, but could never replace her in the hearts of people.

  The glorious era of Mughals came to an end with the end of Shahjahan’s reign. Aurangzeb banned music and dancing in the empire. The free flow of wine and merriment came to an end. The fine muslin dresses worn by the harem women were banned. The lavish life enjoyed by Shahjahan was never witnessed in the palaces again. With Aurangzeb came an end to many other things like the construction of splendid structures, gorgeous canopies, and luxurious lifestyle. Grandeur and splendour went out of fashion. In its place came religious bigotry and extreme austerity. With the death of Shahjahan began the irreversible decline of the Mughal Empire.

  Acknowledgments

  I am indebted to each and everyone involved in the process of bringing out this book. To my editor, Neelam Narula, for her infinite patience. To my family for putting up with a moody writer and being there for me whenever I walked the ramp of doubts. To my friends and readers for believing in me.