The Feast of Roses (41 page)

T
his year the monsoons came to Agra in their season. Turquoise clouds turned indigo, indigo deepened into a plum purple, etched with the brilliant silver of the sun behind them. The heat dwindled, and the sky was no longer a burned white glaze at midday. The Yamuna slowed and waited. Deliciously cool breezes swirled through the city, lifting silk
ghagaras
with their fingers, caressing heat-worn faces, raising spirits, and bringing smiles.

The city was decked out in its best finery. The streets had been swept with palm-leaf brooms, and the cobbled stones shone with washing. Houses were newly whitewashed, the blight and smell of the plague ostracized, rooms, courtyards, and gardens fumigated. The bazaars of Agra thronged with well and healthy people. There were no more furtive looks to see whether the man shivering nearby carried the dreaded plague, no fleeing at the sight of red and angry boils on an arm or a leg oozing pus, no rushing through the bazaar with noses and mouths hidden in the long folds of turbans. The plague had departed. Agra could live again. And the city had more reason to live—after five long years away, Emperor Jahangir was returning to the capital of the empire.

On the afternoon of the royal procession into Agra, the monsoon clouds opened their arms and let fall their burden of rain. It was a warm, soothing rain. Faces were raised to the sky above, mouths opened to let the water come in. It was a benign rain, one that would bring life to the city and the fields around it. It was a welcomed rain, one that would wash away memories of the plague, of the terrible deaths when entire families had been extinguished, with no one even left to perform the rituals of the cremations. Emperor Jahangir had commanded the rains to Agra. He thought it fit to return, so the monsoons came to receive him.

The streets were jammed with people along the route of the procession, soldiers standing shoulder to shoulder to keep them from stumbling under the path of the imperial elephants and horses. When the imperial elephant turned the corner into the main street of Agra, the people yelled.

“
Padshah Salamat!
” All hail the King!

Eager hands threw jasmine and marigold flowers in front of the elephant and showered rose petals from upstairs balconies. Jahangir and Mehrunnisa sat on a gold-and-silver-plated
howdah
atop the elephant. As it lumbered over the cobbled street, its huge feet crushing the flowers, they dipped into embroidered bags and flung masses of silver rupees into the crowds.

Mehrunnisa laughed at the crowds, laughed with them, suddenly so happy to be back at Agra. Her veil clung to the lines of her face, she was as wet from the showers as the people below, drops of water drenched the silk of her
choli
and her
ghagara,
but she did not care. The men shouted praises of her too. They welcomed her back with as much love as they did the Emperor. It was good to be home, and Agra was home.

When they entered the palaces, nothing had changed. In the gardens a few trees had sickened and died and so had been cut down. In the
zenana
apartments, divans and carpets had been burned after the plague. But nothing much else had changed. The marble floors shone mirrorlike with polishing. The heavily pleasant smell of musk perfumed the hallways and apartments. The carpets, newly woven in Agra workshops, gleamed in a myriad of colors. The once deserted gardens and corridors echoed with voices filled with delight as the women who had stayed back ran out to welcome Jahangir and Mehrunnisa. They met as many of the
zenana
women as they could, paid their respects to the elders, and went to their rooms. There, Mehrunnisa started planning for Ladli’s wedding.

•  •  •

The usual formalities of a wedding were skipped over for Ladli. Normally, marriages began with a call to the marriage broker. These were women usually of many years, their faces cracked with wrinkles, gray, thinning hair showing patches of brown skull, teeth yellowed from chewing tobacco and
paan
leaves. Marriage brokering was a prosperous business;
everyone
got married at some time or another, so the women were in much demand. Almost from the announcement of a new birth, they would visit the homes in their neighborhoods, watching over the children with the fussing of a maternal hen.
How was he doing in his studies with the
mulla?
Or had she learned her embroidery well, were the stitches like seed pearls?
If not, a scolding was bestowed upon the tyrant.
Do you not want to marry well?
So when the time came, when the parents looked around for a prospective bride for their sons, they would approach the marriage broker.

Mehrunnisa had a long time to think about Ladli’s marriage after Prince Khurram left for the Deccan. He sent news every now and then of minor victories. Pockets of land were conquered, Ambar Malik’s men were captured or driven away, and the imperial army rested before beginning a fresh onslaught. Months had passed since Khurram was gone, and Mehrunnisa watched Ladli grow still and quiet. Now she knew. And suddenly the years seemed to grow on her. Ladli no longer ran flitting through the corridors, her laugh no longer burst upon Mehrunnisa’s consciousness while she prepared
farmans,
and there was a dullness in her eyes.

It was then, as Mehrunnisa wrestled with Roe’s demands for the treaty and Ladli’s sudden loss of interest in everything, that Emperor Jahangir fell ill again. It was much like the last time. His asthma came upon him, and Mehrunnisa spent hours by his bedside, wishing that she could somehow breathe for him, listening to his lungs tiredly inflating and deflating. She read when he wanted to hear the sound of her voice, she slept sitting on the floor, leaning against his divan, his hand near her head. He only had to touch her or move and she would awaken. Ladli came to be with Jahangir too, through those long and by now familiar hours of nursing. She did not say anything about Khurram, but when news came of him, or from him, she left the room.

So Mehrunnisa stood between a beloved husband and a beloved daughter, holding the weight of the empire in her hands. She was the one who went to the
jharoka
each morning, there were no
darbars
at either the
Diwani-am
or the
Diwan-i-khas;
all the empire’s business took place in the courtyard below her
jharoka
balcony. She moved tiredly through the days. Jahangir recovered soon, much sooner than she expected, but his breathing still troubled him greatly. He gave her a gift when he was well.

The Emperor allowed her to mint coins in her name. It was an immense privilege; all through Mughal rule in India, no woman had had her likeness or name on the currency of the empire. Now Mehrunnisa did. She had a set of coins minted in the imperial workshops in gold and silver with the twelve signs of the zodiac upon them on one side, and on the other, written in Persian, were the words “by the order of the King Jahangir, the gold got a hundred ostentations added to it, by getting impressed on it the name of Nur Jahan, the Queen.” The minting of coins gave her a solid place within the empire’s structure. Mehrunnisa was now a sovereign too. She sat at the
jharoka;
she had coins with her imprint upon them; she was Emperor in all but name.

And this was literally so. There were three badges of sovereignty in Mughal India—the ability to sign on
farmans,
the imprinting of coins with a name or likeness, and the
khutba.
Mehrunnisa had the first two. The third was the calling out of the Emperor’s name in the vast and flung-out Mughal lands, where many would live and die with just his name upon their hearts—no sight of him, no other news, really, of him. The
khutba
said this:
All hail Jahangir Padshah, Light of the Faith, Conqueror of the World, Lord Most Mighty.
Every Friday before the midday prayers, the muezzins in every mosque around the empire sang out Emperor Jahangir’s name. Yet, as the last soft echo of their tuneful voices faded, another, unborn voice whispered Mehrunnisa’s name.

The empire began to see that Jahangir and she were one entity. Gone were speculations on why or how Mehrunnisa had found her place in the Emperor’s heart—she was there, to him as important as his life. He did not care about any filthy insinuations upon his manhood or virility in allowing a woman to run what had essentially been a man’s business. He was man enough not to care about it. Jahangir could trust no one but Mehrunnisa, and he let his courtiers, his nobles, his commanders know of this.

As Mehrunnisa saw her own power grow, she watched Ladli waste away, a wraith who haunted her mother’s apartments, always at hand, rarely speaking. She lost flesh from her bones, her eyes stood huge in her face. Ladli still smiled though, and each time she did, it broke Mehrunnisa’s heart. And it hardened her toward Khurram, for he had toyed with Ladli, almost deliberately.

A few days before leaving on their long journey back to Agra from Mandu, Mehrunnisa went to Ladli’s apartments. She found her painting by the light from the windows. Ladli was seated on the floor, her feet wedged under a divan, the easel propped on her raised knees. Clay saucers of paint were arrayed around her on the stone floor. Some red pigment had spilled from a saucer, and gleamed like blood on the slabs. Ladli looked up, her face flushed from the heat, tendrils of hair escaping from her plait.

Mehrunnisa sat down next to her daughter. “What are you painting,
beta
?”

“The view from this window.” Ladli pointed with her brush. Her fingers were smeared with greens and blues. Mehrunnisa saw the outline of mango trees, the thick and dark green of their leaves, and an owl seated stoically on a lower branch. She kissed the side of Ladli’s forehead.

“You have some time, Mama?” Ladli turned to her expectantly.

“Only a little,
beta.
And then I have to go.”

Ladli dipped her brush into a pot of water, shook it vigorously, and pinched the wet bristles to clean the green paint. Then she squeezed the tip to a pinpoint and dipped it lightly into the streak of red on the floor. The owl’s eyes glowed.

“This is a night color,” Mehrunnisa said, looking over her daughter’s shoulder. “An owl’s eyes are brown and yellow in the daylight.”

Ladli smiled. “It is all perspective, is it not? To me an owl, either in the light or the darkness, has these glowing eyes. The
mullas
tell me it cannot see when the sun is out—I am giving it vision.” She turned to her mother, her gaze serious. “Which one is it going to be, Mama? Parviz or Shahryar?”

Mehrunnisa put her arm around her daughter’s thin waist and leaned her head on Ladli’s shoulder. She was growing old too. Perhaps not in years yet, but the constant battling to keep the empire on an even keel was fatiguing her. Ladli had become a young woman away from Mehrunnisa. Where had she got this gentle understanding? It had always been there, even before the whole Khurram episode. Only then, it had been hidden under her playfulness and a lively spirit that was now already weighted with sadness. Ladli was asking which of the royal princes she would marry. Somehow she had heard about Khusrau’s refusal. Her face buried in the cool skin of her daughter’s shoulder, Mehrunnisa prayed that she had not heard of Khurram’s.

“Shahryar,” she said finally. “Parviz is a weakling,
beta.
”

A little rumble of laughter rose in Ladli’s chest. “The choice is rather sparse, is it not, Mama? Parviz may be a weakling, but Shahryar is called
nashudani.
A good-for-nothing.” She stroked her mother’s face and pulled her closer into her. “Has he . . . said yes?” Only in that question was there a brief stumbling over the words. Ladli held herself rigid.

“Yes.” Mehrunnisa did not say that Shahryar always said yes. He had few opinions of his own, and what they were, no one knew, for the prince took care not to voice them. What an unsatisfactory alliance this was going to be. But what other choice was left for her now? It had to be Parviz or Shahryar. Parviz was a drunkard, and this was all Mehrunnisa knew of him, for she had not seen him in too many years. At least Shahryar grew up around the court . . . his absurdities were understood—he was the lesser evil.

“When is the wedding to be?”

“When we return to Agra,” Mehrunnisa said. She put her other arm around Ladli, who turned to her. And so sitting side by side, their arms around each other, Mehrunnisa and Ladli rested for a few long moments.

Over Ladli’s shoulder, Mehrunnisa saw the maroon leather-bound book embossed with gold leaf writing. She picked it up from the carpet. Firdausi’s poems. Little flecks of gold dust smeared on her fingers.

“You like Firdausi, Ladli?” she asked.

Ladli smiled gently, without reproach. “I always have, Mama.” She held her hand out for the book.

“But you did not like poetry once,
beta,
” Mehrunnisa said.

“Once.” Ladli inclined her head. “A long time ago.” She set her brush down on the edge of a saucer of paint. “Can I have it back, Mama?”

“Yes, of course.” Mehrunnisa held the spine of the book in the palm of her hand and extended it to Ladli. The gold-tipped pages fell open to somewhere in the middle, and Mehrunnisa saw why. Pressed against the page was a dried flower. It slid into Mehrunnisa’s hand, and she held it up to the light by its stem. It was a rosebud, at the cusp of unfurling, frozen now forever thus, its petals still with their exquisite form but washed of all color.