The Taj Conspiracy (4 page)

Straightening up, Singh grabbed the aggrieved man’s palm and deposited something on it. ‘Gift for the party from your Maoist friend!’

The man scrutinised the oblong greenish metallic object in his palm, his eyes widening in panic. ‘G-ggrenade,’ he sputtered, gulped and rapidly emptied his hand.

R.P. Singh snorted, grabbed the grenade and, turning to the shocked man, patted his shirtfront before depositing it in his upper pocket. ‘It’s not live,’ he said with a brief smile. ‘But your Naxal friend meant to roast us alive with it even as he pretended to surrender.’ He motioned for the man to collect the body.

‘Rule number one: never negotiate with terrorists.’

Delhi

M
ehrunisa curled her feet beneath her as she sat cross-legged in a leather armchair, dug her hands under her armpits and wondered when she would stop shivering. It was not
that
cold. Besides, a heater—albeit inefficient— was glowing red in one corner of the room. It reminded her in some ways of her Florence apartment, a frigid en suite she rented in an old stone house on the banks of the Arno.

The city was situated in a draughty valley but in the winter months the cold rolled across in tidal waves. Her job as a tourist guide, which she’d taken up after majoring in Renaissance studies, necessitated a place in central Florence. The short walk to work and the charming views from her room window offset the steep rental she dished out every month. Traversing the cobblestones of Florence, soaking in the giddy-coloured Duomo, feasting on Michelangelo’s David five days a week, Mehrunisa had been happy. It didn’t last long. An urgent summons arrived from Rome: Maadar was dying.

An inoperable brain tumour had left her mother with a three-month lifeline. And Maadar was insistent that she would not submit to any radiation nonsense. ‘I love my hair too much,’ she grinned, her voice faintly brittle. Continuing with the adamancy, she announced that she wanted to spend her remaining days in the town she still called home: Isfahan, Nesf-e-Jahan. At that point in time, Isfahan was not just one half of the world, as the Persian proverb went, it
was
the world.

Mehrunisa sighed and shifted in the chair. Maadar’s sudden desire to visit Isfahan had been difficult to fulfil. In the thirty-odd years since she had left Iran, Maadar had returned only for an occasional visit. In any case, all that was left in Isfahan was Uncle Massoud, cantankerous with age and infirmity that impeded his painting, and the rambling house. But impending death had made Maadar stubborn. An old family friend visiting them from Tehran had agreed to become the official sponsor for the visit. Mehrunisa had accompanied her mother on the trip, her life in limbo: she was journeying to a past that had been lost, with a mother who, in the near future, would also be lost. However, at Immigration, the authorities had refused them entry. Thus had ended Maadar’s last flight to Isfahan, and with it, her life....

It was during that trip that her mother had divulged that Mehrunisa’s father, the suave ex-diplomat businessman, had in fact been an undercover agent. A career spy, he had been captured by the Pakistanis once and tortured—the threat was to behead him and display his head on the Line of Control for the Indian Army to see. But he had managed to escape. How, he had never revealed—the fewer details his family knew, the better. And the scar was thereafter masked by the designer stubble.

The disclosure was prompted by Maadar’s desire to see Mehrunisa shake off the past and find closure. If her little girl who had doted on her father never put his sudden disappearance behind her, how would she get on with her life, find a man, marry and settle down.

Enough
! She shook her head and reached for the lip balm in her bag. Except her hand found her wallet. Withdrawing it, she caressed the picture encased within a plastic sheaf: a couple on a marble bench with the Taj Mahal as the backdrop. Papa had brought Maadar to Agra for their honeymoon, the land of the grandest gesture of love in the world. They were madly in love; enamoured with each other, with life, with art. In fact, art was what brought the two together and was to be an abiding passion thereafter.

Papa had been in Tehran on work and, during a lunch break, had wandered into an art gallery off Laleh Park. The featured artist for the exhibit was painter, sculptor and muralist, Massoud Abgashi, the flyer informed him as he began a tour. He found the paintings intriguing, he always maintained, the abstract work incorporating traditional elements. However, what entranced him was the elegant gallery owner, who approached him as he gazed at a three-dimensional collage of inks, watercolour and porcelain. ‘What do you think?’ she’d asked.

He turned to see a woman dressed in an emerald silk shirt and black pants, her green eyes sparkling with some internal mischief even as she smiled at him politely.

‘It’s mystifying,’ he managed to reply, mystified that he had managed to speak despite feeling tongue-tied.

‘What is?’ Noticing his incomprehension, she elaborated, ‘What is mystifying?’

‘Oh! The porcelain,’ he shrugged.

She burst into laughter before regaining her composure, and responding, ‘Yeah?’ Only her teeth biting her lower lip showed that she was laughing at something.

It was then that Papa decided to brazen it out. ‘Look, why don’t you spill the secret so I can join in the laughter, and then I would like to ask you out for lunch.’

Maadar swore that line had come out at jet speed, though Papa always maintained that, while internally quavering, he had affected calm. Nevertheless, the result of it was a long lunch, a brief courtship and a quick marriage—the prospect of a Sikh-Muslim wedding equally unappetising to both sets of parents. Massoud Abgashi was Maadar’s cousin, an eccentric genius who, when unhappy with his work, hurled pots of paint at it. These canvases Maadar rescued and displayed in her gallery. They amplified the artist’s ‘abstract’ compositions, thereby enhancing his prestige. Uncle Massoud, whom Mehrunisa had not met for several years, was now in retirement while the value of his work continued to skyrocket.

Mehrunisa felt like sobbing, as she often did on such reminiscences; told herself
No
!, and proceeded to shut her eyes tight. With Maadar’s passing, she had decided to come to India to her godfather Professor Kaul, in whose Delhi home she had spent many summer vacations as a child.

It was Maadar who had divulged how the professor, who was neither family nor colleague, had become a close friend of Papa’s. When Harinder Singh Khosa joined Intelligence, he was sent to Professor Kaul for lessons in Persian culture and language. Later, when he became romantically entangled with Maadar, he sought out Kaul to learn the nuances of Persian culture, and a friendship had developed between the two men. When they married, Kaul was the person Maadar conversed with in Farsi, and when Mehrunisa was born, with both their families still sulking at the undesirable marriage, it was inevitable that he’d be their daughter’s godfather. As Papa became increasingly involved in his work, which kept him away from home for extended periods, Mehrunisa started to spend summers with Professor Kaul where her father could zip in and meet her—it was also where her father knew she could get exposure to Indian culture.

Since she’d moved to Delhi, Professor Kaul had taken her under his tutelage, and she’d begun work on her project researching Indo-Persian linkages. It was a conscious effort to connect with her roots, the legacy of a Persian mother and a Punjabi father. Of course, she was still figuring her way in the antipodal environment she had moved to. She bemused her countrymen: half Muslim-half Sikh, decidedly Non-Resident-Indian in her bearing. To Mehrunisa, however, these were all irrefutable parts of her self, a self she was attempting to comprehend. Nevertheless, the answers she was looking for continued to be elusive. She was aware of a persistent sense of disquiet and loss.

Still, her project gave her comfort, as did assisting Kaul uncle with his ongoing work on the Taj Mahal. It hadn’t taken her long to feel at home working on the world-famous monument. The Taj was like her: of mixed parentage—built on Indian soil by a Mughal emperor, its architecture and design reflected its hybrid heritage— Persian, Islamic and Indian; and a monument to loss— built by an emperor in memory of his lost love.

Yes, the Taj Mahal and she were rather congruent.

On that comforting thought, she noticed the grey dawn light of winter outside the window. An hour back, she had woken up from some dreadful rehash of the day’s ordeal and sought the reassurance of her godfather’s presence.

Now she looked in the direction of her saviour, her godfather Professor Kaul, who was snuggled in his thermal blanket. He had insisted he was not sleepy, but a day on the road had taken its toll on him. She was glad to be ensconced in her godfather’s warm house after those hours of interrogation.

It had helped that the professor was one of India’s foremost historians. Upon her call he had contacted his friend, Raj Bhushan, the director-general of ASI, who had personally vouched for Mehrunisa over the phone to the SSP. Professor Kaul had driven down, and upon assurances to SSP Raghav that she would be available for further questioning if the need arose, she was released.

She shuddered at the memory, in need of some sleep herself but preoccupied with the state of her godfather. To all apparent purposes he was healthy and alert but Mehrunisa, who had been living in his home, had witnessed some startling changes in him. He seemed to forget mid-sentence what he was saying; at times, he would fail to recognise the neighbours. Just a fortnight ago, when Mehrunisa had been rifling through his well-stocked study, he had walked in on her and, noticing the book in her hand, had queried, ‘Who is Sharmila?’ Mehrunisa had thought he was joking: Kaul’s harmless rivalry with India’s other eminent historian, Sharmila Thapar, was well documented. She had been about to laugh when she realised he was serious.

An abrupt movement from the bed drew Mehrunisa’s glance. The professor had bolted upright. Eyes alert, he looked around abruptly, seeking something. Sighting Mehrunisa in a corner, he summoned her with an abrupt flick of his right hand. Mehrunisa walked over and sat on the bed’s edge.

In a clear, quiet voice the professor said, ‘I need to tell you something while I am still lucid. Don’t interrupt me—it might break the thread of my thought. In which case, I might descend into the abyss again. First,’ he paused, as if summoning all his strength for what he was about to disclose, ‘I think I am losing my mind...’

With a sinking heart Mehrunisa watched the man who reminded her most of her father. Losing both parents was clearly no insurance against more loss.

Professor Kaul’s hands twitched where they rested atop the wool blanket. He was looking straight ahead. Mehrunisa followed his gaze. On the wall opposite the bed was a triptych frame with three mesmerising pictures of the Taj Mahal. Shot by the famed photographer Raghu Roy, it showed the Taj in various moods: pre-dawn, in the bright sun, on a full-moon night.

‘Tell me again about Toor’s body and all that you discovered with it,’ Kaul urged now, looking Mehrunisa in the eye.

Earlier, on the drive back from Agra, Mehrunisa had disclosed to her godfather what she had seen at the mausoleum that morning. Kaul had met Arun Toor, though he could not claim to have known him well. He travelled to Agra infrequently, and it had been the ASI director-general who assigned the Taj supervisor as the point person for Mehrunisa’s project as a favour to Kaul. The professor was a long-term consultant to the ASI on Mughal-era monuments, and with Raj Bhushan, the acquaintance had developed into friendship. The fact that they were both bachelors in the same city helped; aided, no doubt, by their deep love of Indian history. That they swere a quarter-century apart in age did not seem to have come in the way.

Mehrunisa had the precision of a tour guide and the trained ability to summarise pertinent facts. Once again she recalled for Professor Kaul her discovery of Arun’s body and what she had seen: the third eye drawn on his forehead, the slashed right wrist, the bloody scrawl by his foot that said, ‘Chirag tale andhera’.

When she finished, Kaul’s face was impassive, his jaw slack—a sign he was churning something in his mind. Mehrunisa, who knew better than to interrupt, waited. As she studied her godfather, she thought what an impressive figure he cut despite his seventy years. His steel-grey hair was swept back from a side parting revealing a high, wide forehead, his brows arched upwards from eyes that could be regarded as too big were they not balanced by the rest of the face. The nose, prominent, angular, was what could be called typically Kashmiri—the kind deployed by cartoonists to caricature Indira Gandhi. The mouth, medium-sized and bow-shaped, rested atop a surprisingly firm chin. His skin was unwrinkled, except for the forehead and the laughter lines around the eyes. What a splendidly handsome man, Mehrunisa thought, and wondered why he had never married.

‘Don’t eye me like that—someone might mistake it for love.’

As Professor Kaul’s eyes crinkled, Mehrunisa started to giggle. This was the man she had always known, not the confused person she had witnessed earlier. Relieved, she clasped him in a hug.

‘Chirag tale andhera,’ Professor Kaul said after Mehrunisa had pulled a chair close to the bed. ‘What does it mean to you?’

‘Literally,’ Mehrunisa began, ‘the darkness underneath the lamp. The proverb is used to convey that something is amiss where it should not be.’ She paused and looked at her godfather, who urged her on.

‘So, why would it be scrawled near Arun’s body? What was he trying to say?’

‘Either of two people could have written it: Arun or the murderer,’ she replied. ‘The motive for each would be different, and we can’t determine who wrote it until the forensic report comes in.

‘So let’s focus on the text for now. What is it telling us? There is one chirag, lamp, right where the body was found,’ Kaul said, referring to the British viceroy’s gift.

‘Lord Curzon’s lamp,’ Mehrunisa nodded.

‘And what is literally beneath Curzon’s lamp? The two cenotaphs, which we know are false graves. The actual bodies were buried in a chamber underneath. Are the words referring to that chamber? What are we expected to find there?’