‘I have gone through the report you submitted,’ Pradhan glanced at the computer on his desk, paused as he settled back into his red chair, ‘and have forwarded it to the CM’s office. They want to order a probe to investigate whether you acted rashly.’
R.P. Singh listened intently as he sat relaxed, one leg resting atop a knee.
‘Meanwhile, they want you sent on leave.’ The commissioner moved his tongue against one cheek. ‘However, that would be a waste of time, right?’
‘Sir,’ R.P. Singh responded with respect.
‘Instead you’ll spend the next six months with the CBI in Delhi, Special Branch.’ Pradhan watched him with reproach before lowering his voice. ‘I am parking you there Singh, keep your head below the radar for once,’ he hissed.
‘Sir,’ R.P. Singh said.
One of the three phones on the desk rang. The commissioner eyed it briefly before picking it up. The tone of his voice informed Singh that he was speaking to a senior journalist. Singh groaned inwardly—only a political scandal or a battle between the Bollywood Khans would energise the media away from this Maoist death. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad to get away from it all for some time. Delhi would be a pleasant diversion. The metro was buzzing with fresh drinking holes, the alcohol available was world-class, and women were no problem.... That facet of his life was entirely lost to him since he had been posted to the badlands of Bastar. A day lounging in the air-conditioned hum of a high-end bar was the polar opposite of lurking in dense vegetation on the trail of a Maoist with reptiles and bison for company.
He was seeing happy visions of Delhi when the commissioner replaced the phone, swore and looked up. He mimicked a high-pitched voice as he said, ‘Naxal movement is growing because it is people’s struggle transformed into a power struggle—would you agree, Sir?’
R.P. Singh pursed his mouth to prevent the laughter from bubbling out.
Pradhan blew air and shook his head vigorously. Turning his attention to Singh he continued sotto voce, ‘Six months of paid holiday, Singh. Relax in Delhi and cool that head of yours before you are back.’ Raising his voice, he said, ‘You’ll pick up some strategic skills with the CBI which will come handy when you return. Remember the battle with the Maoists will not be won overnight.’
R.P. Singh nodded quietly. A break from gaandu Maoists wouldn’t be bad. Besides, he had a license to chill!
Agra
M
ehrunisa drove to Agra from Delhi in pursuit of the only lead she had. Despite the misgivings of the SSP and the ASI director-general, she was intent on identifying the artisan who had altered the calligraphy on Mumtaz’s tomb. She would start by meeting the two families in Agra claiming direct descent from the artists who had worked on the mausoleum in the seventeenth century. The finesse of the alteration suggested someone hailing from either clan, and Professor Kaul had supplied the names of the two patriarchs: Hafeez Gul and Hajji Nizam Naqshbandi.
At the entrance to the narrow lane in which was located one address, she parked her car. Marble stores and craft shops, many of which had adjacent open courtyards that served as workshops, flanked the alley. Mehrunisa could see inlay-workers squatting on low wooden slats, barefoot, their heads bent in concentration, cutting hardstones with bow saws, the technique unchanged since Mughal times. Extreme skill was needed to saw stones such as agate, jasper and heliotrope into tiny crescents, circles, ovals and other delicate shapes. A lapidary sat fitting the minute pieces into a tabletop, arranging them in place before fixing them with glue, to create the desired pattern. The work took its toll on the eyes of craftsmen, who usually quit after twenty-odd years to avoid going blind.
She came to a halt outside a nondescript house whose nameplate said Hajji Nizam Naqshbandi. The door was open. Stepping over the threshold she saw a woman hanging clothes on a line. ‘Salaam-e-lekum,’ Mehrunisa called out.
‘Walekum as salaam,’ said the woman as she dried her hands on her cotton dupatta and came forward, her face questioning.
Mehrunisa recollected the information Professor Kaul had provided on this artist. Apparently Hajji had overseen the replacement of damaged or deteriorating pieces in the Taj all his life, supervising the men who worked under his keen eyes. A follower of the Naqshbandi Sufis, an ancient order of Islam, he had kept up the traditional involvement of the mystic Sufi brotherhoods in his art.
Mehrunisa introduced herself to the woman and explained that she wished to meet Hajji Nizam Naqshbandi. She was doing a project, she added, on the Taj Mahal, and needed to speak with the man who had worked on the monument for forty years.
The woman scrutinised Mehrunisa, taking in the straight black hair, the grey-green eyes, the fair complexion. ‘You are Persian,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ Mehrunisa said, taken aback at the certainty in the woman’s voice. ‘I’m half-Persian—my mother’s side. How did you know?’
The woman snorted. ‘My husband has spent a lifetime carving Persian beauties. High forehead, large eyes, sharp nose, prominent chin. You have a strong face. Your parents couldn’t have named you anything else.’ She pointed to a chair opposite a string bed. ‘Sit down. I’ll make some tea.’
‘There’s no need,’ Mehrunisa protested.
‘Then how will we talk? Hajji saab has gone to see the doctor—he’ll be a while.’
‘Oh! Is he unwell?’
The woman walked to a room located in a corner of the central courtyard. It had a chimney and a narrow window through which a steel object glinted. Probably the kitchen, Mehrunisa thought.
‘He’s as unwell,’ the woman’s voice floated out, ‘as any man who has lost a son.’
The family was bereaved and she was intruding on them! What should she do? She looked around, noticing the stone-paved patio, tufts of grass springing through the crevices, paint peeling from the walls, the clean but sparse quarters— Mehrunisa could see that the chief artisan of the Taj Mahal was a poor man indeed. The woman reappeared with two cups of tea and a plate of spicy potato puffs on a tray. She deposited it on a wooden table beside the bed, handed Mehrunisa her cup and lowered herself slowly on the bed. Poor knees, she indicated with a wry smile.
‘I am so sorry,’ Mehrunisa murmured. ‘I had no idea, otherwise I would not have intruded.’
The woman waved her apologies away. ‘No, no. Not the way you think,’ she sighed, ‘thanks to Allah! Only, our son seems to have lost his mind.’ She mopped her brow with one end of her dupatta. ‘So many times I told my husband, don’t train him to be a karigar, don’t. Hajji saab has devoted his entire life to the monument’s upkeep, and what does he get in return? After forty years of service, he is still employed on daily wages by the Indian government! A skilled artisan treated like a common labourer. But Hajji saab loves his work.’ Her eyes filled with pain, her mouth crushed with sadness as she sat, hands folded in her lap.
The shrill horn of a vehicle sounded in the distance, piercing the stillness. Mehrunisa noticed the woman’s well-worn clothes, the dupatta that had thinned from many washes, the sagging bed on which she sat. It was not a house that had ever seen prosperity.
‘My boy,’ the woman sniffled, ‘Nisar, he has a lovely voice. He sings often with a local qawwali troupe, Khusro’s songs especially...’ As her voice trailed off, her eyes returned to the table. Urging Mehrunisa to drink her tea she offered her the puffs, adding ‘home-made’ to reassure her. She sipped her tea and over the teacup enquired, ‘You are familiar with Khusro?’
Mehrunisa nodded. It was impossible to live in India and be untouched by the legendary poet. His compositions—in Hindi, Persian, a mix of Persian and Hindi—continued to be equally popular with folk singers, pop stars and Bollywood. Credited as the founder of Hindustani classical music and qawwali, he was born of a Turkish father and an Indian mother.
The woman shook her head. ‘You should hear my Nisar sing to understand why I was keen for him to develop that into a profession. But no, he had grown up watching his father chisel and sand and coax stone to beauty. So he followed in his steps. And there too, he showed his skill. What a fine craftsman he was turning out to be! The Taj supervisor himself complimented his work.’
At the mention of Arun Toor, Mehrunisa felt a stab of pain. ‘So, did he get to do any special work at the Taj?’
‘He would go daily with his father. Then Hajji saab fell ill and had to be hospitalised for two weeks. We are poor people—how could we afford the cost? Fortunately Nisar landed a prestigious project at the Taj. The next day he returned with one thousand rupees that he had made on the special commission.’ The woman flicked her palms open in bewilderment. ‘But within days of that he became morose, stopped working, started muttering under his breath ... Hajji saab recovered and returned home, but my boy, he took to his bed.’
Mehrunisa’s pulse was racing but she attempted to speak normally. ‘How long ago was this?’
The woman grimaced. ‘Less than a month ago.’
‘And now—where is he?’
‘Hajji saab left him with relatives in Nizamuddin in Delhi. They live close to the dargah. He thought a chance to spend time in the saint’s calming shade might work. Daily the mausoleum resounds to Sufi hymns—surely the saint’s blessings will come upon my son and distract him from this wretched work of an artisan! Even in his delirium,’ she bunched her dupatta in one fist and buried her mouth in it, ‘he muttered
rauza-i-munauwara, rauza i-munauwara
, over and over.’
Mehrunisa placed a hand on the woman’s shoulder to comfort her. The mother’s agony was written all over her face. Though her voice had been muffled through the thin cotton of her dupatta, Mehrunisa had heard correctly. She was onto something now, she knew. She had to find the son in Nizamuddin and talk to him. The woman may not have understood, but Mehrunisa had got the import of her son’s feverish muttering.
Rauza-i-munauwara.
The illumined tomb.
Agra
S
SP Raghav was in his office when his mobile rang.
Mehrunisa Khosa, the screen flashed.
‘SSP Raghav,’ he said in his arrogant voice.
The woman sounded excited as she informed him that she might have tracked down the artist who had altered the calligraphy.
‘You are in Agra!’ Raghav could not hide his surprise. He had given the woman a hard time and here she was in the city, calling him of her own volition when any other person in such a situation would give him a wide berth.
‘Where else would I meet the artisan?’ she said gaily as she detailed her encounter.
Raghav listened even as his mind rejected the theory that Mehrunisa was trying to prove. The woman believed it sufficiently to have come traipsing down, but he was convinced that the tampering—if indeed there was any; after all, the woman could be mistaken—was a harmless prank. Who would make a change that in the first place none would notice and in the second, upon noticing, would fail to comprehend? Agra, indeed the entire country, was not exactly brimming with people literate in Arabic or Persian—nor were these first languages for the thousands of visitors to the Taj.
Instead, he had been focusing on the mysterious Aurangzeb. Was he an Islamic jihadi? But no one had taken credit for the murder, something a terrorist group would have done. Or was it premature—perhaps there was more to come? Did the calligraphy tampering link up with some bigger plan, as Mehrunisa alleged?
He had assigned a constable to go through the files and books in the supervisor’s office for any mention of an Aurangzeb, the person Toor was supposed to have met the evening he died. But the constable had not come up with anything.
Arun Toor—or the murderer—had scribbled ‘chirag tale andhera’ before dying as a warning, or as a clue. Raghav believed he had meant the basement rooms and had those searched for explosive devices but found nothing thus far. The rooms continued to be under surveillance. On his advice, his boss had stepped up security at the Taj Mahal: there was an additional team in the Yellow/outer zone, tourists were being frisked more thoroughly, and the Red/inner zone protected by the CISF was put on high alert.
A constable walked in with the latest cup in his daily tea-a-thon. Raghav questioned him with raised brows as he rotated his index finger atop the teacup in a stirring motion. The constable waved both palms in panic as he mouthed ‘no sugar’. Satisfied, Raghav nodded him away.
Meanwhile, Mehrunisa was going on about the chief artisan’s son; she would try and locate him in Delhi, she told the SSP. And then there was a long pause.
The inviting aroma of tea wafted up. SSP Raghav grunted as he collected his thoughts. Privately he thought it was a dud, but it would be good to keep the woman within reach—after all, he didn’t have any concrete leads on which to proceed.
‘Sure, do that,’ he humoured her. ‘When you do track this Nisar down, keep me posted.’ On that he switched the phone off and sipped his tea.
These artists, he smirked, so woolly-headed. In their world, terrorists wielded chisels and not guns!
Agra
T
he Taj Mahal stands on a white marble platform atop a red sandstone terrace, surrounded by four octagonal minarets, flanked on the left by a mosque, and on the right by an identical assembly hall. Behind it flows the Yamuna, and in front stretch the Mughal gardens. Since the land slopes down towards the river, the sandstone base rises four feet above the garden on the riverside; a fact indiscernible when the monument is approached from the gardens. The two minarets to the north have stairs that lead down to exits at the riverside. Since the towers are no longer open, visitors are unaware of the two doors that can be used from the riverside to enter the Taj. These lead to stairs and rooms inside the towers, and from there to the upper level, granting access to the mausoleum.
Tonight, moonlight glistened off the rippling Yamuna and shone on bare muscled arms that cut through it with noiseless strokes. All around lay quiet. Jara emerged from the water like a sea creature: thin loincloth plastered to his posterior, droplets cascading down his bare skin, muscles flashing with every tread forward. Hunched over, he ascended the slope towards the monument’s rear and made for the door to the right, which would lead him into the northwest tower. From the folds of his loincloth, he extricated a heavy iron key.