Pulling the body out of the bed, I look yearningly at the snugly sheets inviting me inside its folds. Outside, even though it was little past the hour when dawn begins to sneak its way across the horizon but the sky had already donned the character of a high noon leaving it no place to hide. Wind, hot and dusty, bellowed mercilessly withering the resolve of even the highly motivated morning walkers from lubricating their joints or expanding their lungs.
I felt sucked up. The thought of sizzling throughout the day far off from the AC’s reach on a leisurely Sunday when my wife and our boisterous daughters were away vacationing on their summer holidays leaving me alone at home to enjoy the silence broiled me from inside. I felt the heat roasting my sheath crisp brown enter the skin and then making way for the entrails turning it soft; cooked.
“Bad Sun-day.” I mumbled.
It was May end. May 25th to be precise. A period of the year when thermometers display searing degrees and temperatures breaching last years numbers establish new records.
Headlines in newspapers scream death. Those on TV, the highfalutin anchors trying to grab eyeballs and the shrinking advertising revenue, transform themselves into messengers of doom and paint a horrible end explaining it through clumsy graphics mimicking the sun’s nuclear fusion.
“Until we take urgent steps…” They cry menacingly, their voice hoarse with simulated anger.
“Extreme close-up.” That’s what the Producer of the show I believe screams to the person at the front of the camera. “I want the whites of the eyes popping inside the lens and exploding out from the TV screens at homes.”
“Anger… anger…!” He froths into the one way microphone and through the ears into the anchor’s innards.
“Until we prevent global warning…,” the burped TV Jockey inhales deeply and puffing out his chest—the producer’s cry has filled him with vigour—explodes, “be prepared to be vaporized.” He pauses, his torso still taut, swollen. The whites of his eyes stare menacingly. Total silence. Minds on the tenterhooks. Nature looking for a way out. Unnerving. Unnerved. Unsure.
“Turning uncles-aunties,” he resumes, “rich-poor, pious-debauch, you-I, in fact all of humanity into fossilized remains,” a microsecond pause, “some as oil, some as coal and some still as good-for-nothing oaf, millions-billions of years later.”
“Good show.” They clap.
“Good script.” I pat my back.
Nature heaves a sigh of relief and resumes its natural pace.
Next day, another programme, new issue. Facts replaced by drama. Complex issues reduced to smart one liners. Yet another studio-based show. Low cost. Low quality. That audience love. Past quickly relegated to the dustbin. Future thrown out of mind.
“437 years ago 6 days from now could Kandahar be this hot?” Pondering I open the main gate and step out when a warm gusty air smothers the thought even before it had begun to germinate.
Nur Jahan – Itimad-ud-Daulah Tomb, Agra – Long drive after a long time
Making a quick entry into the car it was only after I had started the engine, switched on the AC and directed the blower’s vent towards my face that I feel relief. A quick change of gear and a tap on the accelerator I was soon on the highway.
I had planned this drive for quite some time. In fact, I had wanted to test myself and know whether I had the gumption to undertake long solo ventures. With more than a lakh km on the motorcycle and close to a lakh in the car, I could claim to be a veteran at wheels. But the fact that I had covered most of the distance as daily office commutes smacked my thoughts and turned figures into merely glorified statistics.
On occasions when I had munched miles in excess of thousand kilometres it was with the family by my side. Driving all alone over longer distances, I understood, required entirely a different ball. Bringing face to face with innermost feelings and all alone escaping the mind becomes nearly impossible and can turn the drive, if you don’t have a Sufi inclination, into a torture.
Being conscious of my limitations I had been diligent with the search of my destination finally zeroing on Agra thereby ensuring that I was not venturing into an unfamiliar route.
The city was not far enough to be daunting, and with a fair share of my drive on the Yamuna Expressway that looks the same everywhere; presents a similar vista in whichever direction you might turn your head towards; insipid tea in any one of the 6 restaurants next to the robot-like toll plazas both ways that’s equally depressing; monotonous uniformity, and heck even the loo smells the bloody standardized odour of a uniform procurement policy, I would be in the familiar territory.
Masking banality in the garb of modernization and with no one in the car to talk to it had all the ingredients of a hackneyed drive. It would confront me with myself and my thoughts, which together may even try to sledge the mind with loneliness. A distance of about 600 km, up and down, it was to be my baby-step towards driving solo over longer distances.
Reaching outskirts of Delhi does not take much time. Traffic is minimal. Roads which are usually chockablock appear unbelievably broad and calm. The serenity is broken only occasionally by hurrying Call Centre cabs ferrying weary executives with their GPS precision in front of their LED monitors depositing them for the day to grapple with a voice or a graph or a code and a state of mind that has exchanged life for ennui and money.
Nur Jahan – Itimad-ud-Daulah Tomb, Agra – Past burdened by present
“How was life 437 years ago?”
Such questions as the mind transfixed sifts through sands of time utterly hooked by its absoluteness and its indifference, have always fascinated me.
“Was it boring?” Innocuously a tail adds to it.
Agreed that looking at the past burdened by the baggage of the present is a foolish quest and the answer, after discarding elements we don’t like and picking up those that we prefer, is invariably prejudiced.
Curiosity leads me to key in Kandahar and its temperature in the month of May. Google Baba marks it at least 10 degrees cooler than Delhi. Another search, this time from Google Earth, throws a bleak landscape. The satellite imagery shows a behemoth of barren cold mountains ready to devour the moss like settlement that clings for life for all its salt’s worth to the Arghandab River. At 1010 m above the sea level, comparing Kandahar to Delhi, it was closer to sun and its rays were far more pricking and toasting. The thought that immediately filled the mind left me shuddered
A man or a woman can bear all the pain if they have time on their side. As for she—the one who had not yet slithered out from her mother’s womb, uttered her first cry and sucked in the life’s breath, unconcerned about past, present, future, life and death—the portents did not augur well.
Nur Jahan – Itimad-ud-Daulah Tomb, Agra – Heart beyond control
At the most I must have barely covered 20-30 km when the novelty started to peel off. Solitude like a ten-headed snake threatened to raise its hood and finish me off with one swoop. I played Yesudas’ classic, Dheere dheere subah hui, jaag uthi zindagi…, a magical rendition of dawn; the morning sun peeping from the sky overcoming the night’s laziness and filling life with hope. But the picturesque lyrics and music hardly has any effect on me. I shut the music system up and by the time I was on the last leg of Noida-Greater Noida Expressway before it joined the uneventful road that would take me to Agra, I had begun to miss conversations with my wife and our daughters’ jabber.
Stretching my left hand I switch on the radio, AIR’s FM Gold, wishing to lose myself in the RJ’s mindless babble, seeking a semblance of company and solace in the chatter. The song that rises out from the speakers is one of my favourites. Written by Yogesh and sung by Mukesh under the direction of Salil Chowdhry from the film Rajnigandha, its lead actor the simpleton Amol Palekar.
Kai baar yun bhi dekha hai
Ye jo man ki seema rekha hai
Man todne lagta hai…
Anjaani pyaas ke peeche
Anjaani aas ke peeche
Man daudne lagta hai…
Janoo na… janoo na…
Uljhan ye janoo na…
Suljhaun kaise kuch samajh na paaun…
Kisko meet banaun
Kiski preet bhulaun
No sooner it ends I play it from the pen drive. I play it again and press the repeat button when it gets over. I soon find myself singing along with it. My voice sounds hoarse. I don’t like my intonations. Go wrong with lyrics. Get irritated when my breath can’t keep up the pace with the singer. But it has uplifted my mood. And by the time I pull over, about 40 minutes later at the Refreshment Centre after paying toll including the one for the return journey at Jewar Toll Plaza, the first one of the total three on the Yamuna Expressway, I am in high spirits.
Standing under the awning, a cup of tea in hand, a group of recreational riders on their superbikes—whining throttles and boom boom hinds—stop to join their ranks. One red Harley Davidson, its gleaning chrome blinding the eyes, gets most eyeballs. Cameras click, selfies taken and one, the most shiny-eyed amongst them perches on its seat and asks his wife for a quick picture as he poses majestically baring his uncouth side.
A young man, the owner, a few paces away from me shakes his head perhaps taking deep breath as he inhales deeply the cigarette smoke to soothe his burn, trying to reminisce the blogs, I reckon he must have gone through, on the perils of exclusivity, of being a cynosure and the shit it throws while his young pillion, a bewildered boy barely 10-11 fitted with elbow guards stood wide-eyed by his side. From the poser to the owner and owner to the poser, my head flits, registering their contrasting expressions and speculating 437 years ago what travelling long distances entailed.
Nur Jahan – Itimad-ud-Daulah Tomb, Agra – Inviting India
From Persia (modern Iran) to India was a long journey fraught with risks even if you were a King. Views from Google Earth had shown a foreboding terrain.
Bare. Brown. Barren.
Treacherous mountains that would thwart your every attempt until you were so down and out that it was better to risk everything than to stay where you belonged.
In contrast, India was heavenly. Watered by a group of five rivers that closeted to form Sindhu or Indus (now in Pakistan) it was a tantalizing frontier. The Indo-Gangetic Plains, further on was even more promising. The stories of its untold wealth and unseen prosperities excited the imaginations of kings, conquerors, nobility, rookies, fortune seekers, mendicants and penitents, and they came in hordes like rats following the Pied Piper.
So when 437 years ago a shattered noble, his two sons, a daughter and a pregnant wife left their home to seek refuse in the country they were merely following a trend. Fleeing from their wretchedness in Persia immediately after the melting snow had cleared the passes and collecting their meager possessions they set out on an arduous journey hoping to make something of their life in the sub-continent.
Nur Jahan – Itimad-ud-Daulah Tomb, Agra – Looming desolation
Cranking the engine I get the wheels moving. I was in high spirits and the dullness of the vista on both sides of the road hardly made any impact. But the mind had registered every sight and as I sit down to key in, it poured its feelings and showed me a landscape strangled by the skyscrapers’ roots gasping for breath. Not far away, west of the road, a river, the revered Yamuna, resembling a nallah (drain), its banks having bowed out to thoughtless urbanization, slithers waywardly—a sudden U-turn, a sharp bend, forming giant loops—creating a large basin.
A spiritual leader
Plans an unparalleled religious event
That is declared illegal.
Nation’s honour is at stake
As lakhs including country’s topmost dignitaries are expected to participate.
Exasperated
The Green Court grants the permission
And fixes a penalty.
Organizers agree to pay the fine
A whopping sum running in crores.
The bed is rendered flat.
Tears are shed
But is not enough
To water
The revered River.
While the honour of her sister the venerated River Ganga is a matter of country’s prestige, her’s is sacrificed at the national alter, and as politics seeks newer ammo, both of them journey thirsty and sinned and naked crying for water.
Rivers don’t wear clothes. They reflect the persona we assign them.
The grim story extends miles and miles in every direction. Seared by the sun, the pillaged flat vista stretch all the way towards east where it meets the Ganga—India’s traditional bread basket, the Indo-Gangetic Plains—sustaining life right from the Vedic age 4000 years ago as well as bearing the scourge for its inhabitants, caught in the mighty arms of ambitious greedy rulers. Taxed heavily for much part of the History—today even such an utterance is a political anathema—though we have undone the past but remain clueless about the future. And yet the prosperity that has seeped into this land, of late, has been much on account of real estate development turning farm hands into daily wage labourers.
“When we grow up we will become farmers and use scientific methods in fields.” I am reminded of our school. That was our rote answer—foolish amongst us even believed in it—to our teacher’s question on “what you want to do when you grow up?” Those were the days of intense idealism. Socialistic veneer in films had made way for the angry young man and the childhood idealism flickered before the childhood it was robbed of its innocence. Yes, science and technology have definitely increased the yields, and even though almost half of India’s workforce engages in farming and related activities and has brought down the absolute numbers, but the farmers’ condition has a long way to go to come at par with the middle class income.
Nur Jahan – Itimad-ud-Daulah Tomb, Agra – One hell of a day
Much as I would have liked to write about Iran in general and Tehran—the town from where Mirza Ghiyas Beg commenced his journey—of 1577 but my reading fails me and instead of toting knowledge gained from www, where it is often difficult to sift story from history, I would leave this enterprise for some other opportune time.
Nevertheless the circumstances must have been compelling. Even the mightiest emperors do not leave their homes for an unknown uncertain future abroad and until the reward from the enterprise overwhelms the odds. Or maybe, as in few exceptional cases—I can recall only one name, that is, Alexander—the journey, the risk, abject subjects, the kings, the governors laying prostate at their feet turned them on.
Misfortune followed him
Nay it had become his shadow
Sneaking to pounce upon him
To finish him
And at the same time
Providing him with the opportunities to prove his mettle
See what he made of the circumstances
Almost midway into the journey Mirza Ghiyas was robbed. Left with just two mules to continue their onward journey, the five of the family had reached Kandahar when they heard that cry—the deep resonating wail for life as it beggared its first breath.
Under the grimness of the circumstances it is difficult not to be unaffected by it. Nor is it easy to resist the temptation to turn her struggles into a romantic tale. But life is different. It is not a 2-hour feature film or a 30-second ad or a self-help book. It is indifferent. A struggle to keep itself aloft while waiting for tides to change.
Not much is known about her early life. Or shall we put it this way—I have not scoured much on the subject to write “not much is known about her early life.”
The story goes that a passing merchant took pity upon her father and found for him a place in the imperial service under Emperor Akbar (capital Agra) as Diwan (Treasurer) of Kabul (Afghanistan). As the newborn girl had signaled the smile of fortune upon him, he called her Mehr-un-Nissa or Sun among Women and gave her the best education that was possible. She in turn made most of the opportunities, learned Arabic and Persian languages and took keen interests in arts and literature and turned herself late in her life into a builder—second perhaps only to Shahjahan—and a poet.
Nur Jahan – Itimad-ud-Daulah Tomb, Agra – Left turn and U-turn
Leaving the Yamuna Expressway and the illusion of a free spirit, albeit on the payment of a hefty toll I turn left and after driving for a kilometer or two on NH2 (renamed again as NH19) roughly coterminous with the old imperial highway towards Kolkata, maneuver another U-turn and threw myself in the churn of the obnoxious traffic.
Adjustment from the road where you could drive almost with your eyes shut to another that demanded your total commitment takes time and constant working, if not of clutch and gear, then of brake and accelerator and steering wheel. Shops with Panchi Petha hoardings selling the city’s eponymous petha (a sweet in sugary syrup made out of white gourd) have sprouted mushroom like on both sides of the road. Vehicles flow merrily, each component of the piece moving at its own pace. To the observer not in sync with the small-town psyche things may appear chaotic but that’s scratching the surface and just when I thought that I had made a sense of the randomness it was time for another left turn and another road.
Straight ahead lies the River Yamuna and across it the city of Agra. A left turn after crossing the bridge will take you through the crumbling heart of the old city to the Agra Fort (Emperor’s residence and court) and the Taj Mahal.
Not far from where I leave the old imperial highway, on the right side on Yamuna’s eastern bank is Ram Bagh. Here Babur’s body was temporarily interred before being taken for the final rest in Kabul. Though India had provided him with the Empire and a home, he did not take to liking it and cursed its heat and dust, found its inhabitants ugly and pined for water melons back home.
Nur Jahan – Itimad-ud-Daulah Tomb, Agra – In for a surprise
Turning left I was in for a surprise. What was once a dust laden path had undergone a makeover and bedecked with blue gantries hogged all the width bulldozing its way right up to crumpled buildings. It’s little over 8, 3 hours yet to go before the lumbering edifices would wake up from their slumber and open for business.
The road takes a broad swoop and is joined by another road running parallel with the river, as it turns left leaving a wide tapering space on its right which is flanked by a tottering boundary wall constructed with two-inch broad antique Lahori bricks, not in vogue anymore. Wilting under its own weight the wall adjoins a gutter and overlooks a blank earth shaded by the trees looming up on its other side and leaves a hold just enough to park half a dozen cars or so, sufficient for the bare trickle of vehicles that the sepulcher sees all through the day.
I was visiting this place after a long time—may be 6 years, or even more—and had expected to confront lots of changes. But as the proverbial saying goes “India never ceases to amaze you,” I was being optimistic. Except for the new Outer Ring Road on the eastern bank of the River Yamuna designed to take the tourists coming from Delhi via Yamuna Expressway straight to the Taj Mahal, it appeared as if time had seized to move.
Steering the car to the lip of the drain, I step out and am astonished to find no attendant running towards me clutching a parking slip. A surge of pleasure rises in my heart and it makes me glad to find that at least one place not given to rampant “moneyism” in the garb of improving facilities.
Surely this monument is no crowd puller. No trinket sellers, no jostling queues, no overbearing security, no metal detectors, no locker for the safe keep of mobile phones. Even the entry fee is half of the Taj Mahal. Standing alone with no pretentions it is easy to drive past the Tomb, which is 99% times the case, thrill-seekers blissfully unaware chanting Taj Taj Taj.
Though a contemporary—the construction of one (Taj) commencing a few years after the other (Itmad) had been completed and equally appealing—the contrast is striking. Unlike the Taj Mahal, where the click-hungry selfie-obsessed jostling-for-the-view crowd rob the emperor, the erstwhile “Lord of the World” and the empress for whom he had raised “her abode after death” described wistfully by the Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore as “teardrop on the cheek,” of solitude and peace for their mortal remains. At Itimad-ud-Daulah, and I often heave a sigh, what relieves me the most is that the dead get their space. And perhaps even respect.
Nur Jahan – Itimad-ud-Daulah Tomb, Agra – Gohar Shad by Robert Byron
Almost midway as I was writing this article quite coincidently I had also picked up Robert Byron’s “The Road to Oxiana,” the book that, it’s said, had established the tone of modern travel writing. Reading the account of his journey through Persia and Afghanistan I felt a tiff as I went through what I quote next.
“I feel some curiosity about Gohar Shad, not on account of her piety in endowing religious foundations, but as a woman of artistic instinct. Either she had that instinct or she knew how to employ people who had it. This shows character. And besides this, she was rich. Taste, character, and riches mean power, and powerful women, apart from being charmers, are not common in Mohammedan history.”
The similarities were heady. Could her times have remembered the exploits of Gohar Shad, born 199 years before her? Could she have inspired her? Could she have picked on her? My limitations are obvious and the inability to extol her in the manner done by Byron—I wish he had also written about her—glaring but one moment please, I think I am hurrying into the story.
At the age of 17 she was married—though, knowing her, I would have preferred “she married” but that would not have been in tune with the mores of the time when a woman blossomed into her own after attached as Mrs. to someone else (that is, if at all she had the opportunity and the wherewithal)—to Sher Afghan. Here bazaar gossips and cursory anecdotes take over history and churned into novels and films stand in place of facts.
Jahangir, it is said, saw her and fell in love with her—as it usually the case with all the love stories—at the first sight. Later he had her husband murdered and after waiting patiently for her consent—which took some years—married her, conferred upon her the title of Nur Mahal (Light of the World) and lived happily ever after.
She was 34, his 20th and the last wife when she ended her duties as Lady-in-Waiting to Ruqaiya Sultana Begam, Jahangir’s mother in the imperial harem and went on not only to become his constant companion but also India’s Empress confining herself not to the harem and purdah (literally curtain behind which the royal ladies watched the court proceedings) but also involved her in the affairs of the state.
She was a feisty woman, mother of Shahjahan (foster mother actually, to whom she had married Arjamand Banu Begam, her brother’s daughter, the future Mumtaz Mahal), a master of intrigue who loved her father, doted upon her husband (who apart from her was also addicted to opium) and zealously promoted her agenda.
Nur Jahan – Itimad-ud-Daulah Tomb, Agra – Red, green and blue
Emerging from the tree’s branch-line after purchasing the entry ticket I catch a glimpse of the monument in between the leaves. It looked fabulous and even though I wasn’t looking at it for the first time, I was enraptured.
Red. Green. Blue.
Red of the glistening sandstone gateway. The green of the deftly manicured fore-lawn. And the blue of the cloud speckled sky. The three primary colours, unaffected by the sun’s harsh gaze glowed, its bluish tinge soothing the boisterous ruddy walls, spraying the coveted serenity upon the world.
However, when compared to the Taj Mahal’s outer walls it was nowhere close. No awe. No larger than life proportions. No tilt-up of the heads. But add it the radiant light seeking glory for itself by reflecting off its wall, the marble inlay work breaking the monotony and clinging to the surface like adorable jewellery pieces, matched eloquently by the cupolas balancing romance with vigour, the impact is completely different. The two-storied entrance at the centre of the wall accompanied in proportionate manner by dainty merlons and the decorative dandy crenellations enriched the otherwise plain edifice.
On the whole it was it presented a dull sort of picture, thoroughly bare, totally functional. The builders seemed to have been miserly with their attention, and would not have attracted a second look had it not been for the glance from the above. Though the rains were still a month away, the wall looked washed and exuded the dawn’s allure which drew you inwards. It would have been altogether a difference narrative had it been the afternoon.
Taking the phone out of my pocket the screen comes to life. Close to 9. It shows. Not long after the sun inching its way overhead would turn the sky pale and rob the edifice of its shadow. I had 1 hour at the most and may be another 30 minutes or so before the retreating light would leave the dead in their stately repose turning their barely illuminated chambers dark and difficult to photograph.
I pull the camera from the bag and taking a few warm-up clicks walk past a young man sketching the charcoal drawing of the gateway on his large sheet. Reaching underneath the sprawling frame, past the locked steep stairs climbing to the upper storey on my left, I hand over the entry ticket to the guard. Nonchalantly he slits it at the centre ensuring that no one can use it the second time. Overhead unmindful of the time’s passage unruffled by the occasional flapping of the wings by the excited pigeons sits an insipid cantilevered balcony. At the first floor the parallel rims of the gateway converge inwards and meet at the exact centre to form a cusped arch. It’s cool and dark and hollow.
Getting the ticket back and a few hasty steps later I cross the threshold and enter another world. Lo. Behold. Absolute tranquility. No thoughts. Just my camera, the passing time and I. The contrast between the barren dust-choked skies that had accompanied me all the way right from the National Capital Region (NCR) of Delhi to the radiant blue of Agra, one of the highly polluted cities in its own right, amazes me. A mackerel sky, providing a halo to the mausoleum break away from the deep azure that coloured all around and frittered overhead.
“What is a building but motley of builder’s whims and fancies?”
If the Taj Mahal is the epitome of Mughal architecture, Itimad-ud-Daulah Tomb, constructed a handful of years before, was its nebulous expression.
Nur Jahan – Itimad-ud-Daulah Tomb, Agra – Rise and the fall
Marriage to Jahangir saw her stars zoom into ascendency. In fact, many contend, as Jahangir dissipated his life in opium and paintings—he had emerged as a great patron and many master miniaturists, especially after the consolidation of the Empire, flocked to the Mughal Court, which from his father Akbar’s time has emerged as a hub in the whole of Muslim world—Nur Jahan’s power rose.
Sitting with the Emperor she took part in the affairs of the state, sat on Jharokha Darshan (public view), went on hunting with him, struck coins in her name, rescued Jahangir when he was captured by the enemies, ensured her father’s appointment as the Wazir (Prime Minister of the realm), elevated her brother as the Grand Wazir (Minister), married Ladli Begam (daughter from her first husband) to Shahryar (Jahangir’s second son), married her niece, the future Mumtaz Mahal, Arjamand Banu Begam (daughter of her brother) to Shahjahan and perhaps gleefully entertained the idea that she had every chessboard pieces in the right place and under her control, eventually, turning the situation to the point of no return.
To cut the story short, Nur Jahan right from the outset had backed Shahryar, with whom she had married her daughter from her first marriage. At the same time Shahjahan, who had found her ways not to his liking and had developed an aversion for her, suspected that she had kept him, on one pretext or another, away from his father. As a result, when Jahangir commanded him to garrison the northern frontier he, thinking that it was Nur Jahan’s maneuver to keep him away from the capital, disobeyed his father, the Emperor.
When the betrayal took place the husband and wife, the Emperor and the Empress, were at Rajouri, returning from Kashmir, where the cold hills had worsened Jahangir’s asthma, to the warmer Lahore.
“What!”
She must have exclaimed
Taken aback
Surprised
Steadying her wobbling knees
By the side of Jahangir’s not yet cold body
A regal face
Impassive
Thinking over her next move
To turn the tide in her favour
Nur Jahan – Itimad-ud-Daulah Tomb, Agra – The company of dead
Instead of walking on the pathway flanking the dry runnels leading straight to the main edifice I take sharp left turn and saunter along the walls for the all-round long shot view.
Sitting unconscious of its beauty on top of the two-tiered red sandstone platform, the double-storey squat square marble mausoleum topped up with a chajja (eaves) and curvilinear dome, feels, unlike the Taj Mahal that attempts to stake its claim to the heaven, rooted to the earth. The arched gateways leading you inside to be with the dead also radiate walkways that move outwards and end abruptly at the centre of the four outer walls dividing the earth into four equally proportioned well-manicured lawns (the garden of the yore), designed on the patterns of the heavenly Islamic Charbagh.
Two of the four gateways at the north and south have been put up as mere showpieces just for the sake of synergy while the one bang opposite the main entrance takes you into a fairly large red sandstone pavilion overlooking the meandering River whose waters once stroked the base of the edifice some 20-25 feet below. Four double-storey domed watchtowers at each of the four corners provide an excellent top-angle view of the entire mausoleum.
Walking along I see young girls and boys—one of them at the top on the roof that can be accessed only after permission from the higher ups—with large drawing books sketching details of the mausoleum from every angle and perspective, both distant as well as close ups.
“What is it that you all are making, if I may ask?”
Unable to withhold my curiosity I speak to her. I am at the last of the outer gateways almost at the end of my circumambulation. Apart from two of us I don’t see anyone near.
My query turns her squeamish. Obviously, like most of the girls she is unused to take a stranger’s question ascribing layers of meaning to a simple inquiry, which often, as her sixth sense would tell her, is not wrong. Seeing her lean away from me and the fear that I may be badgering her I don’t press again and from the steps of the ornamental northern gateway where she was sitting I move inside the dusty arcade where my attention is held by an exquisite jaali work on the outer wall and move deeper into its dark stark belly to take its picture.
May be from the back of her head she had watched me. Finding me engrossed in my own thing perhaps gave her the confidence.
“Surely I couldn’t be one of those road-Romeo types and meant every word of my question. Possibly it was a simple query. Nothing more.” And hundreds of other things keeping her neurons busy; arguing, thinking, fighting, reasoning, trying to reach a conclusion.
Whatever went inside her head I do not know but one thing is certain that she had assured herself that I was a gentleman.
‘It’s a college project.’ Turning around she informs me.
‘Art College?’
She nods her head in affirmative but is unable to unstiffen herself. It was obvious that she was forcing herself to speak. I say thank you and resume my circumambulation. Reaching the pergola towards right of the main gateway, which is also the best preserved and easily accessible, I lope up its high steps, position the edifice at the centre of its two pillars and take a few photos when a guard asks me to get down.
“Not permitted,” he says but is unable to back up his statement with any signage. I don’t argue and follow his instructions.
Familiarity of the place takes me from one vantage point to another, from one embellishment to the other, from one chamber to the next, from one grave to the other until I stand at the low slung doorway at the central vault.
Two graves, one in the company of the other lying together for almost 500 years with relatives or may be friends or people close to them in the octagonal rooms underneath the towers at each corner of their tomb. Which one is whose I am not sure. Legs in the southwardly direction. Head towards north. Face turned right towards Mecca. A husband and his wife. A wife and her husband. The husband perhaps in the centre. His wife by his side.
A peace that befits the dead hangs in the air. Words spoken, if at all, are hushed. No rowdy crowds. No uncouth words. No lovelorn couples. Like the fact of life, the tomb of a husband and a wife is an uninspiring place. It can soothe nerves but cannot stir passion.
Nur Jahan – Itimad-ud-Daulah Tomb, Agra – Fight before surrender
Confined to her tent
She was allowed to meet no one
Cut off from every contact
Eyes never leaving her out of sight
And who was this man
None other than her elder brother Asaf Khan
Whom she had promoted
As the realm’s Grand Wazir
Whispering words in his favour in the ears
Of her husband
The Emperor
Jahangir
Whose daughter, it is said, she had married
To her foster son
Prince Khurram
The Shahjahan
Bringing her the chance
That turned her from Arjumand Banu Begam
To Mumtaz ‘Taj’ Mahal
Subsequent to her detention, Asaf Khan had secretly sent a despatch to Shahjahan, who was then camping in Deccan, informing him about his father’s death and asking him to repair at once to Agra, the imperial capital, to stake his claim to the throne.
In spite of all his precautions, Nur Jahan, fearing worst, was able to send a message to Shahryar pinning her hopes on him. Unfortunately her daughter’s husband and her foster son, suffering from Fox-Fordyce Disease (taken from Nur Jahan by Ellison Banks Findly), which affects the apocrine glands (specialized sweat glands) and causes intense itching that had robbed him of his hairs, whiskers, eyebrows and eyelashes imparting him a pale ghostly appearance, turned out to be a nincompoop. Though he ended up proclaiming himself as the Emperor at Lahore but abjectly surrendered to Shahjahan, who first had his eyes gouged and later had him strangulated along with the third claimant to the throne, Dawar Baksh or Bulaqi apart from sons of Jahangir’s brother Daniyal taking the total number of those killed for throne to five.
Crowning himself as the Emperor, Shahjahan was content just to cold shoulder Nurjahan. Though he didn’t exactly exile her or held her in captivity but he divested her of powers, fixed a pension of Rs. 2 lakh and allowing her to retain her wealth, shipped her off to Lahore, where she lived not far from her husband’s tomb and unlike the other grieving widows who turn senile, religious or spiritual or all three, Nur Jahan did not idle away her life. She was a feisty woman. Living with her widowed daughter, Ladli Begam (wife of Shahryar) she utilized the restrictions as opportunity to leave new imprints. She was down. She was 51. She wanted more.
Nur Jahan – Itimad-ud-Daulah Tomb, Agra – Life when there should be none
Coming out I stop at the discovery I had made during my first visit to Itimad-ud-Daullah Tomb some 10-12 years ago. It was an innocuous figure. A duck, which should not have been there, as the handle of a decanter. I was pretty surprised but considering this to be an exception I sauntered along. Another portico on the western side opposite to the one with the duck, I find another set of figures. This time fish. Hidden not in some far-to-see corner or hastily drawn by an overzealous artist but in full view at par with my eyes.
‘Islam,’ we have been taught, ‘forbids the depiction of life-forms.’
A fact. “Yes.” But sacrosanct? “No.”
I take their pictures. Facts are sacred. While History a factor of time.
Though not ornamented riotously, Itimad-ud-Daulah Tomb could still be overwhelming for people who prefer minimalism. No surface is left bare. The colours on the outer walls are mostly earthy ochre, black for borders and blood red and dark green in the inner chamber. Inlaid semi-precious stones, geometric patterns, flagons, lots of flora, a few fauna, filigree work, jaali and zari turn staid marble slate into ornate poetic compositions.
Red floral patterns embedded in the floor of the central chamber impart the cold stone the lure of a carpet. The scattering light sneaking its way into the space barely illuminated the stucco walls covered with paintings of trees, flowers, leaves and stems along with filigrees, jaalis and alcoves impart the tomb a hushed up air. Interiors are barely illuminated and using camera’s flash I take as few pictures as I can do with so as not to disturb the dead. As the momentary burst lights up the chamber it reveals a picture of unparalleled dalliance.
With only one entrance from the baradari (porch) at the south darkness is the natural corollary. The roof above consists of the replica of two graves. Surrounded by four marble walls with trellis-like pattern and covered by a square dome it imparts a skyline to the mausoleum looked after by the four minarets jutting out of the main edifice rising not high in the sky.
As in case of the Taj Mahal, Itimad-ud-Daullah Tomb is not entirely about the yearnings of a heart. Perhaps it wasn’t an ode or a poetry that Nurjahan and her architects had aspired for. What they came up was a prose. A glimpse of life in which heart has a place but wasn’t everything.
Nur Jahan – Itimad-ud-Daulah Tomb, Agra – Don’t grieve for me
As a writer it is not easy to skirt the snare of a grieving end.
“Why?” I ask myself.
Reasons, excepts for the most obvious ones are difficult to come by.
Still as I persist with my query the electrical impulses sparkling in the cerebrum reminds me of Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last namesake Mughal Emperor. Imprisoned after the failure of the 1857 revolt in which the rebels had forced leadership upon him and before his exile and death and burial in Myanmar was prodded to undertake a humiliating ritual of saluting every Tom, Dick and Harry and their Memsahibs standing on his week knees, bending his back and his eyes fixed upon the cell’s earth.
“Kitna hai badnaseeb Zafar,” he wrote, “Dafn ke liye do gaz zameen bhi na mili, kuu-e-yaar mein” (Zafar how unlucky you are, that after death you could not get even two-yard land in your motherland).
Or, for that matter take Shahjahan. Dethroned and confined to an apartment in Agra fort by his son, Auranzeb, he spent his time, as stories and tourist guides paint a weepy picture, watching the Taj Mahal situated at the bend of River Yamuna that made it appear as if it were on its opposite bank, recalling the times gone by, his youthful imprudences, wondering about life and grieving that the Almighty did not bestow him with time and his overzealous son with a purse to complete his own contrasting black marble mausoleum opposite to the Taj Mahal on the other side of the river.
Shorn of power Nurjahan turned towards poetry and architecture and spent the last lap of her life, a period of more than 15 years, supervising the completion of her father’s, her brother’s and her own tombs. Strangely, even though it conflicts with the prevalent notion, she did not construct her husband’s mausoleum, which the historians contend was done by Shahjahan.
Her pension along with her personal wealth left intact, she, by all contemporary standards, was a wealthy widow. It is difficult to say whether she had turned recluse. Staying with her daughter not far from the grave of her shauhar (husband) she passed away, in total contrast to the day she was born, in the cool winters of 1645. She was 68.
Buried not far from her husband and her brother at Shahdara in Lahore (Pakistan) her tomb unlike her feisty personality is a simple single-storied red sandstone structure. Next to her is the grave of Ladli Begam, her daughter from her first marriage and the widow of pale and ghostly Shahryar who suffered from Fox-Fordyce Disease and was killed by Shahjahan. She had continued to accompany her mother almost all her life and did so after her death in 1677.
Someone who was fashionable and dabbled in poetry writing under the pseudonym Makhfi she had composed her own epitaph. Her headstone is simple and goes like this;
On the grave of this poor stranger, let there be neither lamp nor rose.
Let neither butterfly’s wing burn nor nightingale sing.
Photos: Anand Jha