Shadow Princess (37 page)

One evening, as the sun waned in the skies over Ajmer, Jahanara ordered her palanquin to be made ready for another visit to Khwaja Muinuddin Chisti’s grave at the foothill of Taragarh. It was the month of May, and the heat of the desert had built up to sweltering proportions; even as the sun yanked its last golden rays beyond the horizon, the air broiled. Ishaq Beg accompanied her, and she heard him pant as he ran down the steep ramp that led from the fort to its principal entrance, the Hathian Pol, with its two carved elephants adorning the front. The streets were quiet at this time of day, and, through the sheer curtains of the palanquin, Jahanara saw the quick flames of cooking fires inside the houses, women bent over smoking
chulas,
bareheaded, their brows beaded with sweat. She had grown big now, her belly ballooning in front of her, her toes no longer visible unless she put them up on a cushion, and this she did very little, not wanting to see the swollen skin around her ankles and the sharp green of the veins in her feet. Every movement was an agony, although the four men who carried her palanquin jogged on soft feet, the poles of her conveyance resting on wads of cloth upon their shoulders.

A mile from the
dargah
’s entrance, she stopped the palanquin and got out arduously, using her hands to hoist herself to a standing position, her legs trembling as they bore her weight.

“I will walk,” she said firmly to Ishaq Beg, who opened his mouth to protest and then shut it, recognizing from the rigid way she held herself that she was not going to argue about this. She slipped her
chappals
from her feet, and this time he did demur, but she would not listen. Her grandfather, her great-grandfather, her father—they had all approached Muinuddin Chisti’s tomb on foot, barefoot in homage to the saint, to whom they had gone to pray in times of need and, when their prayers were answered, in times of rejoicing.

Descended from the Prophet Muhammad, Muinuddin Chisti was born in Persia in the twelfth century and spent part of his life in Samarkand and Bukhara in search of spiritual instruction. Although he had not left a book of his teachings, his disciples talked of his having had a vision from the Prophet himself telling him to go to Hindustan, and so he did. Here he found an acceptance of his beliefs, a range of followers from both the Hindu and Muslim faiths, but he refused the patronage of the kings, preferring to remain apolitical. He had finally come to stay at Ajmer, in the very heart of a kingdom whose ruler was Hindu, and here he had remained, buried under a simple slab of local stone. His disciples had spread his teachings, and Nizamuddin Auliya, the saint whose grave Jahanara had visited in Delhi, was also a disciple of his, three generations removed.

When Jahanara began to walk down the bazaar street that led to the first of the gateways to the
dargah,
she noticed that the imperial guards had already warned the people of her presence. The long street was empty, the shops had drapes over their fronts, and behind them, lit by oil
diyas,
she saw the shadowed figures of the shopkeepers and their assistants, motionless and listening to her footsteps as she passed by. She had time to think during that walk, the stones on the path biting into her feet, her heaviness dragging upon her, her breath coming in gasps, the heat closing in.

The Mughal kings had a long history with the Chisti Sufi saints; Emperor Akbar had always revered Muinuddin Chisti, but it was another Sufi saint of the same order—Shaikh Salim Chisti—whom he had considered to have blessed his Empire. For it was to Salim Chisti that Akbar—twenty-six years old and married for more than ten years—had gone in prayer and pilgrimage, begging for an heir to his Empire. Salim Chisti had lived in a cave near the village of Sikri, a few miles from Agra, and he had promised the Emperor three fine sons. When they were born, the first of them had been named after the Sufi saint. That Prince Salim became Jahanara’s grandfather Emperor Jahangir.

The man who had brought Chisti Sufism into Hindustan, however, the man from whom all these disciples were descended and who had rendered help and succor to the Mughal kings when they faced hardships, was Khwaja Muinuddin Chisti at Ajmer. Emperor Humayun had built a dome over his grave; Emperor Akbar had erected a massive gateway to the tomb and a mosque inside its main courtyard. At some point, a Hindu Raja had paved that courtyard with slabs of white marble, chill to the touch even in the peak of summer, shimmering in the light of the sun. Jahanara’s father had built another mosque in the compound, and yet another gateway leading in, and it was this gate that Jahanara now entered, pausing to rest below the portal.

The
dargah
had been cleared of loiterers and worshippers so that she could come here. In front of her were two stone platforms, each with carved steps leading to the top, where mammoth cauldrons had been sunk into the mortar. They were both of brass, aged to blackness, widemouthed and shallow, and used for cooking a sweet concoction of rice, milk, sugarcane juice, raisins, almonds, and pistachios to feed the poor and the pilgrims. The bigger one had been given to the
dargah
by her great-grandfather, the smaller one by Emperor Jahangir—he had knelt at one of the four openings in the steps and lit the first fire that burned under this cauldron himself, and when the fire had begun to take life and the
kichri
had begun to bubble, he had stirred it with his own hands.

She skirted around the cauldrons and went up the steps to the Khwaja’s tomb, halting at the doorway to pray. The Khadims, the caretakers of the tomb, lurked somewhere in the shadows, their faces angled away from her. They did not know who she was, or why she occupied the fortress of Taragarh, but they doubtless guessed that she had some imperial connections, for she had been coming to the grave three times a week in the past few months, and every time they were asked either to leave or to glue their eyes to the ground for fear of looking at her. They were getting tired of her, she thought as she heard their quiet mutterings echoing in the hush of the tomb. In the bazaar, even with everyone kept indoors so that she could walk unmolested by the gazes of the common men, there had been the noise of horses neighing, cows lowing, women chattering, the tinkle of the coppersmiths’ hammers, the rustle of hay, the barks of dogs. Here, there was a complete absence of sound. Even in death, the Muinuddin Chisti brought tranquillity around himself. There was an indefinable aroma in the air, a combination of the attar of roses, the incense of myrrh, of jasmine, of the cool of the marble, of the heat of a desert baked over many centuries.

Jahanara leaned against one of the walls in silence until her feet ached, and then she left the tomb and walked around it. A yellow moon floated in the sky, its light so thin that she had to watch the
diyas
flickering around the tomb to find her way. The marble was smooth under her feet, its mortar lines barely felt. She joyfully placed a hand over her belly as the child kicked hard against her pelvis. He had been quiet all day, and Jahanara had remembered the women of the
zenana
saying that a child’s moving inside meant good health, so she had come here, forcing her tired limbs to take her down the bazaar streets and into the saint’s tomb to pray for her child.

And now her son was telling her that he was all right, that he had been, perhaps, asleep, lazy, slothful, unmindful of his mother’s concern. She patted her belly again, and he knocked against that spot. She stopped, paling in the feeble light of the newly risen moon. For a gush of something warm had flooded between her legs.

The Luminous Tomb

Of all the tombs at Agra, that of the wife of Shahjahan is the most splendid. He purposely made it near the Tasimacan. . . . The Tasimacan is a large bazaar, consisting of six large courts all surrounded with porticoes, under which are chambers for the use of merchants, and an enormous quantity of cottons is sold there. The tomb of this Begam, or sultan queen, is at the east end of the town by the side of the river.

—
WILLIAM CROOKE
(ed.)
AND V. BALL
(trans.),
Travels in India by Jean-Baptiste Tavernier

Agra

Wednesday, May 2, 1635

14 Zi’l-Qa’da
A.H.
1044

A
nd this will be the Taj Ganj?” At the sound of a large crash, Roshanara ducked involuntarily, and the eunuchs guarding her gathered in a tight circle, their arms stretched out. The man standing behind her ran toward the wooden pathway, held up on stilts, which had just collapsed, raising a thin fog of dust. Men shouted; hands disappeared into the rubble as workers were raised out of it, dusted off. The man scuttled around the periphery of the accident and then came running back to stand behind the princess again.

“I beg pardon, your Highness,” Ustad Ahmad Lahori said. “A minor incident; no one is hurt. The men will have the planks up again in no time at all.” When he realized that she was not listening, he went on, “His Majesty had decided that this will be called the Taj Ganj or the Taj Makan. The bazaar streets will be here, along with the four caravanserais. This part of the
rauza
’s complex will be as large as the gardens of the tomb.” He stopped and waited for her response. It was a long time in coming, and Lahori dared a quick look at her back. Why was she here? Why the interest now, so many years into the tomb’s making? Other royals, even the Begam Sahib, had come by often, wandering through the dirt, picking their way between the workers and the foremen, curious about this monument their father was constructing for their mother. It was Lahori’s job, as architect, to accompany them when they came, and he resented even that little time taken away from his true work. But it had been pleasant, and at times beneficial, for a few days after Princess Jahanara’s visit, his wives had been invited to spend a week within the walls of the imperial
zenana,
and they had returned happy, flushed by the honor shown to them. But this princess, the Emperor’s second daughter, had never yet shown any curiosity about the Luminous Tomb and had come here before only for the
‘urs
ceremonies.

“Splendid,” Roshanara said eventually. “You have done well, Ustad Lahori.” She waved in a vague dismissal.

Lahori bowed and backed away slowly. Of course it was splendid, he thought, and he didn’t need this girl, this woman, to tell him so. Why
was
she here? Simply bored? The Emperor was himself in the Deccan, the Begam Sahib in Ajmer, it was said, and Princess Roshanara had chosen to remain here at Agra.

Roshanara took a deep breath and coughed, the red sandstone dust clogging her nostrils. Her eyes watered, her skin was coated with the dust, and she was hot even under the shade of the white umbrellas held up by her attendants. Around her there was the sound of metal on stone, the thick mixing of mortar, the subdued murmurs of the men and women working on the site. When she left, they would talk and shout, she knew—all this quiet was in deference to her being here.

The Taj Ganj, she thought, looking at the walls being erected. In most tombs, the Jilaukhana also contained the
sarai
area—a place of rest for the pilgrims, the travelers, the curious, and the tourists. But Bapa had specified that there would be a third area altogether for this purpose, and the Jilaukhana, the forecourt, would house only another bazaar and quarters for the Khadims, the tomb attendants. This, the Ganj, was south of the Jilaukhana, accessed through the southern gateway of the forecourt.

It was a simple square, a compound wall enclosing its four sides. Within, there were two streets, one north-south, the other east-west, and these two streets, which sliced the Taj Ganj into its own
charbagh
shape with four quadrants, were the main access roads within the walls. Every quadrant was then further closed off with high walls, and the square courtyards formed inside had verandahs on all four sides and rooms beyond—a hundred and thirty-six rooms per quadrant. The
sarais
were self-contained units, each with its outhouses, kitchens,
hammams,
storerooms, and guards.

At the point where the two streets met in the center of the Taj Ganj, the corners of the four
sarai
walls would have chamfered edges, cut out enough to accommodate a gateway in each corner that would lead into the
sarai
and be shut at night to keep out thieves and bandits. Along the entire outer walls of the
sarais,
fronting the streets, were a series of verandahs with little rooms beyond, and here was the marketplace of the Taj Ganj. The bazaars, when they came into being, would be lushly stocked with every item of trade available in the Empire, no matter how distant its origin or how dear its price.

Standing at the center of the Taj Ganj, Roshanara imagined what the bazaars would be like in a few years—a sight she would never see, for if she visited the bazaar, it would be under guard, the shops closed, the streets emptied.

There would be jewelers who worked in delicate pearls and gold, their wares lustrous in the morning sun, their shops surrounded by veiled women who would watch them with eyes filled with lust and envy. Copper and brass workers hammering away on cups, water vessels, spoons, and plates. Grocers laying out their produce in rows, fresh from the earth, harvested as the sun lifted its sizzling head over the horizon. Betel nut sellers hanging the heart-shaped leaves from jute strings around their stalls, enveloped in a jungle of shiny green. Cloth merchants swinging their fabrics from one end to another—shimmering silks the color of sunsets, chiffons flimsier than summer clouds, gleaming cottons in blues and grays. Flower merchants in corners, surrounded by freshly picked peonies, roses, marigolds, lilies, jasmine, and jacaranda, still heavy with dew, saturating the air with their fragrance.

Everywhere in the Taj Ganj, this new city for repose and trade, would be the sounds of bustle and life. Jugglers and buffoons cavorting in the streets, a throng of women—some veiled, some not—their eyes brilliant with kohl, their skin browned by heat and grime, their arms strong from working in their houses. And behind them, down the southern gateway into the Jilaukhana, through the Great Gate, would lie the hushed tomb, with its luxuriant gardens, its fountains, its pearl dome, and the smooth-flowing Yamuna River beyond.