Mistress of the Throne (The Mughal intrigues) Read online

  “Did that stop the torturing?”

  “Yes, it did. When Grandfather Jahangir fell sick, Nur Jahan even asked Aurangzeb to lead her in prayer for the Emperor’s life.”

  “Was he happy then?”

  “He was. He would wake up at any time of the night to recite the Koran if requested to do so. He would speak out against any injustice, such as a drunken man beating his wife or a mullah accepting a bribe. His religion, oddly enough, was rooted in a pure desire to further himself spiritually through the Koran.”

  “And you, how did you become spiritually enhanced?”

  “I didn’t,” smiled Dara, “at least not according to Aurangzeb. I read the Koran once, but since he and the mullah always stuck to just their own interpretation of it, I began to learn some other religious literature.”

  “Such as..?”

  “Such as the Gita, the Hindu scripture. One of the zenana girls was a Hindu whose daughter’s name was Gita, and one day I asked what her name meant. She told me it’s the name of a sermon delivered by God to a soldier just before the soldier was about to go to war against his family for the Kingdom of India.”

  “Like Aba!” I said.

  “Yes, but not exactly…” Dara continued telling me the whole story of the Gita, mesmerising me with this tale of chivalry, duty and sacrifice. It wasn’t as if I’d never heard these principles before, but I’d never before been exposed to any non-Islamic scripture. I never thought something non-Muslim could be so interesting, yet many people, including my younger brother Aurangzeb, considered it blasphemy to draw strength from any religious edict other than the Koran.

  It seemed Dara took a special liking to not just the scripture but also the girl who was its namesake. I asked him where she was now, in hopes of making her part of our zenana. Dara looked away at the ground. “She’s dead, Jahanara.”

  I didn’t bring up Gita again to Dara, ever-mindful of the traumatic experience he must’ve endured knowing that his first love was dead. I was slowly learning that Mughal men rarely needed prodding to pour their most heartfelt thoughts out to me. Whether it was Aba, Dara, or sometimes even Aurangzeb, in due time, they would tell me everything. Thus, I decided to put aside all of my worries about my family and simply enjoy the summer in the foothills of the legendary Kashmir valley.

  We were indeed amidst an absolute paradise all summer, swimming in Dal Lake and having our lessons on different picnic grounds that adorned the summer capital of India. Aba and Ami spent a great deal of time together, even though Ami was pregnant all summer. Since their wedding, there had been hardly any time that Ami was not either pregnant or recovering from pregnancy. In their 28-year marriage, she would have 14 different pregnancies, almost half ending in miscarriages.

  Dara increasingly drew close to Manu, who would serve him as a teacher of Hinduism. Through Manu’s stewardship, Dara slowly began to master all the different Hindu texts, including the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Upanishads, and so on. He, along with my other brothers, also began to learn Persian, and he grasped it surprisingly quickly.

  Aurangzeb was unnerved by this unholy alliance between our brother and his Hindu stepmother. He felt Muslims weren’t supposed to learn about other religions, and that a Hindu even being brought into a Muslim household constituted a sacrilegious act. In fact, he continued to feel that much of what was transpiring in Mughal Indian culture was sacrilegious. He spoke out against intermarriage between religions, social liberation for women and the abolition of the jiyza (a tax on non-believers that was detested by Hindus but welcomed by mullahs). Our parents, though troubled by his attitude on these matters, were comforted to know that their son was equally passionate about his opposition to bribery, domestic violence, theft and drug abuse. Aurangzeb had a pure heart, he just needed some appropriate guidance, thought Ami. Ami spent many days with Aurangzeb alone and slowly began to change him, even convincing him to play with all his brothers and sisters and enjoy his youth, not spend all his time praying.

  Raushanara succeeded in winning the love of Aurangzeb. He would take her wherever she wanted to go, and though he continued to talk down to her, no one else was allowed to. Once a servant raised his voice at the young princess; Aurangzeb had the servant lashed ten times and dismissed from his service. Raushanara made sure her brother was always included in her activities, and in turn he never allowed her to leave his sight, either.

  For me, this was indeed paradise on earth. I wanted to capture this moment, seal it in my heart and never let it escape. I had everything, I felt: My father was the emperor; my brothers were reunited; I’d developed a strong friendship with Dara; and I was beginning to make inroads into Aurangzeb’s heart, which was slowly thawing from the trauma of imprisonment. If only nothing changed, life would be absolutely perfect.

  However, winter would arrive in a few months, and this paradise would slowly have to disappear into the depths of the cold, I began to fear. But it would return again, I figured, next summer, and life would be perfect again.

  By February, our entire family was back in Agra. Dara’s mysticism was growing stronger and stronger, and he began to attend Hindu prayer services, pujas, held at Manu’s palace.

  Aba, meanwhile, had begun to construct a special throne for himself. He often complained that the current throne was grossly inadequate for him, and that he needed something that would better reflect his status as ruler of the world.

  Aurangzeb saw this desire as yet another blasphemy. According to him, people weren’t supposed to engage in the sort of self-indulgence our own father and previous monarchs had. He began acting as though in his mind matters were beginning to spiral out of control: the pseudo-conversion of his brother to Hinduism, the vanity of the court, the celebration of non-Muslim idols by Manu in the kingdom.

  “Jahanara, come quick! Something’s wrong!” cried Ami one morning from a small apartment in the zenana.

  I ran to my pregnant mother, fearing her health had deteriorated.

  But she cried, “Manu is vomiting blood! She’s barely lucid and can’t keep anything down.”

  I entered to see a feeble Manu lying on a blood stained bed, her head in my mother’s lap, blood pouring from her mouth like lava from a volcano. It seemed as though I was staring at death itself. “How long has this been going on?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, Jahanara.” Ami wrung her hands. “I just noticed it this morning when I came to see her. Go get the hakim!”

  I instructed the slaves to fetch the court hakim (physician) at once, informing him it was urgent. The hakim came right away and began examining Manu. He couldn’t determine the cause of her symptoms, but asked the servants to place her discharges in buckets and deliver them to him for closer analysis. He also gave her a tonic to drink, which, surprisingly, she didn’t vomit back up.

  Over the next several days, Manu’s condition remained stable, but she continued to move in and out of consciousness. This saddened Aba noticeably, and he remained with Ami at Manu’s bedside. I slept in the same room as Manu and Dara stayed at Manu’s feet, tears drying on Dara’s face and his eyes red from sleepless nights.

  This whole episode just sucked the happiness from our lives as if some ill-wisher had cast an evil spell on our happy home. Ami was clearly in no condition to nurse Manu, but fearing what the rest of the zenana would say about her, Ami put her own health aside and gave Manu absolute attention.

  I also began to wonder if Nur Jahan had cast a spell on our home as an evil ‘gift’ for departing from our lives. Based on the tales I’d heard about her, she wasn’t one to slowly walk into oblivion, and I feared that by sparing her life, my Aba may have left his worst and most powerful enemy a chance to destroy our lives.

  Finally, after a week of supportive treatment, Manu’s fever subsided, and she began to eat full meals. She no longer vomited blood or anything else, and she started to regain her energy. In gratitude Aba ordered prisoners to be released and forgiven and bags of gold coins to be distributed among th
e poor. The hakim was rewarded handsomely, but what he was about to say was worth almost as much as what he’d done to save the imperial wife. He’d learned the cause of Manu’s illness: She’d been poisoned.

  Aba was furious. He thought he’d dismissed, imprisoned or killed every ‘snake’ and traitor in his kingdom and now could rule with peace in his heart that all those who surrounded him wished him well. However, now someone in his kingdom was plotting against him and had tried to assassinate his wife.

  He ran from the zenana without speaking to anyone, while I looked helplessly at Ami in disbelief and heard him shout, as he ran: “I wish to meet my advisors in the Diwan-i-khas—now!” We all stared at each other in bewilderment.

  All the nobles and advisors gathered in the hall, their heads held low, in part to show respect to the monarch, but also to show sadness at the news that foul play had been involved.

  Aba roared, “I wish to know who has dared to invite the wrath of the Emperor of India!”

  The nobles stood patiently, waiting for their monarch to finish his rant.

  “I wish all those who dare question my authority to know that the punishment for attempted murder is just as severe as that for murder itself! I want all of you to scout out through your contacts and spies and find out who was behind this! To start with, I want a full list of everything the queen ate, and who prepared it.”

  The chef for the royal zenana, Hamid Shah, was summoned before the King and brought out in chains by the royal guards. He begged, “Jahanpanah! Forgive me, Lord, but I cannot tell you who made me do this!”

  “You fiend! You tried to kill my family. I’ll have your entire family fed to dogs and have you crushed by an elephant if you don’t tell me who was behind this.”

  “But I cannot, my Lord. If I do, I’ll be killed, but if I don’t, you’ll kill me. Either way I am doomed!”

  The Kind ordered: “Imprison this man’s family! I want this man crushed by an elephant next Tuesday!”

  Animal fights were infamous in the Mughal courts. All sorts of animals – elephants, lions, leopards – were made to fight while huge crowds watched. The execution of criminals by placing them in rings with the fierce animals was a favourite and therefore somewhat rare form. A criminal had to work hard to incur such wrath of the Emperor as to be sentenced to such heinous punishment. By attacking a member of the royal family, Hamid Shah had secured this fate for himself, and ‘Bloody Tuesday’ would be his day of reckoning. Though the shows went on every day, with pauses on Sunday for prayer, Tuesday was a favourite because it was considered the Day of Blood. Fortunately for Hamid, he was sentenced on Wednesday, so he had almost a week left to prove his innocence should he desire to do so.

  Aba retired for the night to his private apartments, not visiting his zenana at all. As a man, it seemed he felt ashamed to know someone had tried to and succeeded in harming his wife, so he refused to face his zenana until he found the perpetrator and brought him to justice in front of Manu.

  I was in my apartment crying; Dara lay by my side. He said, “This whole episode brings back so many memories.”

  “Memories of what?” I asked.

  “Gita.” He paused. “Her symptoms were the same. She and I used to meet in the courtyard every day and spend the entire day together. She’s the reason I became so infatuated with religion. Were it not for her, I would never have learned anything but Islam. She taught me Hinduism, and I began to see how we all share essentially the same religion.”

  “But what does this have to do with Manu?”

  “Gita was fine until I came into her life. Then, suddenly something happened to her. She, like Manu, started vomiting blood one day. She got sicker and sicker.”

  “What did the royal hakims say?”

  “Royal hakims? Jahanara, Gita wasn’t a princess so no royal hakim was going to attend her. She had to settle for what the neighbourhood women gave her for her sickness.”

  “But she was your friend. You could’ve gotten a hakim for her.”

  “No, I was a prisoner,” Dara said. “Nur Jahan would never listen to me, and Grandfather Jahangir was barely lucid in those days. First her and now Manu. Someone is killing people because of me, I just know it.”

  I prepared some khichdi, a bland gruel of rice and lentils, for Manu myself, because Ami feared no one else could be trusted with her meals until the perpetrator had been found. Manu was still too weak to feed herself, so I fed her the khichdi myself.

  As I did I heard behind me the same caustic voice I’d grown to detest: Kandari’s. “See how life can transport a person from one place to an entirely different one! How awful– you were riding atop a massive elephant just a few months ago, and now you’re made to cook and feed the Queen like a servant girl.”

  I slowly turned livid. I tried ignoring her as always, but to no avail.

  She sneered, “Manu, make sure the lentils in the khichdi aren’t too hard, or else you’ll have stomach pains.” Yet another backhanded slap at my cooking. I prayed she’d leave. But she peeked over my shoulder into the bowl and added: “That doesn’t look like khichdi…”

  “Begum Kandari!” I yelled. “This is khichdi! I know because I cooked it, because the Padishah Begum commanded me to. She could’ve commanded you, too, and you would’ve had to do it, because she’s the Padishah Begum and you’re not!”

  Kandari arched backwards in astonishment, but I wasn’t finished. “Maybe she didn’t trust a minor begum like you, so she had me, the Begum Sahiba, cook for Manu. Now, as the Begum Sahiba, I command you to leave Manu’s chambers. Perhaps I will have you make us some ginger tea later! Understand?”

  Kandari began to shake, and tears swelled in her eyes. By now an entire crowd of zenana women had gathered and were murmuring, hands over their mouths. “Hay Allah, listen to this girl! Hay Allah!” But none dared address me directly. One of them then grabbed Kandari’s hand and began to lead her away.

  As the women cleared off, I noticed my mother had been watching and listening to everything in the back, and she now slowly made her way forward. I was too nervous and upset to address her, for I knew she’d be upset with me. I turned my back to her and resumed feeding Manu, as though I hadn’t noticed my mother was there.

  I heard her walking towards me, but didn’t acknowledge her. In my mind I began reciting what I’d say to her if she reprimanded me for speaking rudely to my stepmother: I’d tell her I’d had no choice because the taunts were becoming unbearable; how to some extent Ami herself was responsible for this outburst because she never came to my rescue; how I never coveted this title, but was being abused by everyone in the zenana; and the person responsible for this abuse was Kandari, who was inciting everyone to treat me this way.

  Ami put her hand on my shoulder. I was ready for her. I would tell her this much and more. She slowly lowered her head while I continued to feed Manu, and looking the other way she said quietly, “Well done, my child!”

  We all congregated in the Diwan-i-khas a few days later to witness the sentencing for Manu’s heinous poisoning. Aba had learned from his spies the identity of the culprit who’d instructed Hamid Shah to poison Manu. We were all disillusioned to learn this, but we had to keep our emotions private.

  The women of the zenana were looking from their grilled screens as Dara and Shuja stood next to the throne, with Aurangzeb a short distance away. The nobles all stood in front of the Emperor as Hamid Shah was again brought in.

  Aba shouted sternly, “You have been accused of aiding in the plot to murder Begum Manbhavati! And we now know that the person who instructed you to mix poison in her food was none other than my own son, Prince Aurangzeb.” There was a short pause. Everyone was shocked by this disturbing news.

  No one knew for sure, but the rumour around the zenana was that Aurangzeb was opposed to all the Hindu rituals Manu was bringing into the Mughal household. Fearing that she was polluting the household, he’d tried to kill her

  Aba said, “I cannot excuse what you did,
but I also cannot punish you more harshly than I do my son, because his crime was graver than yours. I therefore nullify your earlier sentence of death and instead banish you from my kingdom. You are not to show yourself in the Mughal dominion ever again. Should you do so, be assured an elephant’s foot will meet your chest!”

  The prisoner began to weep but didn’t beg for a softer sentence. Sensing he’d just narrowly escaped death, he probably took the banishment as a boon.

  “Now, Prince Aurangzeb. Because you are my son I cannot treat you like a criminal; and after so many years of separation from you, I cannot bear the prospect of distancing myself from you anymore. Your fate shouldn’t be decided by this disciple of Allah. For you, another disciple must make this decision.”

  Here is what I gathered from later reports about what happened next:

  Aba escorted Aurangzeb from the Diwan-i-khas to the Pearl Mosque, built in solid white marble, with so very ordinary and unpretentious an entrance that an individual would be hardly prepared for the majestic beauty and unaffected expression of religious fervour that characterised its interior. Rarely could one find any Mughal building whose beauty reached such heights with so little ostentation of jewels, silver or gold, but solely with perfection of proportion and elegant harmony of constructive design. Inside the mosque a mullah was waiting for him.

  Aba thus asked the mullah to evaluate Aurangzeb’s actions based on Islamic doctrines from the Koran: “I will present to you the facts of this episode, and if my son wishes to interrupt me and correct anything I say, he has my permission to do so.”

  Aurangzeb, visibly frightened at everything that was transpiring, patiently listened, unsure of what Aba was up to.