The Taj Conspiracy (11 page)

He had his orders: there was work to be done inside the hidden rooms of the Taj Mahal.

The next morning the idle gossip of tourists floated down below. On the paved sandstone terrace above him, near the base of the two northern riverfront minarets, steps descended to the rooms where Jara was. However, the stairways were closed off with iron railings. It was not unusual to find tourists gawking at the railing, speculating on what lay beneath.

Precisely what a group of tourists was doing at that very moment.

A woman had put her face to the grille covering the blocked staircase as she attempted to peer into the dark. Unable to sleep, Jara had idly wandered beneath the railing. Now he could hear the woman’s laboured breath as she squirmed to see what was below. Above her, others urged her to move on and give them a turn. Initially, Jara had chuckled when he heard their wild speculation on how far the underground tunnel went: to the Agra fort! No no, all the way to Delhi! Guides spiked the debate by adding that the staircase was the means by which Shah Jahan had the architect and workers of the Taj Mahal transferred to dungeons, thus preventing a replication of his magnificent monument.

The truth, though, was more prosaic: the stairway gave access to seven rooms arrayed along the Yamuna. Jara had been told that, at one time, the river could be viewed through the rooms’ generous arches. But now the once airy space was walled up, offering no natural light. That suited him just fine: a creature of the dark, he didn’t care much for the beauty that the visitors gawked at. No. He knew the Taj from inside out, and its bowels, dungeons, and terrace rooms, which were closed to others, were of late his quarters. In the shadows Jara knew he was safe, but he did indulge an errant thought sporadically: what if he were to quietly ascend the steps, and near the railing reveal his face? Would fuel be added to the legend of the Taj’s resident ghost?

Ten years ago, Jara had been driving his boss’ police jeep through the streets of Srinagar when a suicide bomber had rammed his explosives-laden car into the vehicle believing that the director-general of police was the man sitting beside the driver. In fact, the DGP was delayed at home but had sent his jeep ahead with an inspector carrying the files needed for the noon meeting with the chief minister.

Jara remembered a thundering jolt that threw him against the steering wheel, a deafening blast and an instant inferno that engulfed him. By the time he was rescued, flesh from his face had melted. He spent the next year in the Military Hospital. After five rounds of surgeries, his face was reconstructed, in a manner. From salvaged tissue, the surgeons had given him a mouth. He had cavities which functioned for eyes and ears, and twin vents for a nose. His shattered skull was replaced by a plastic dome and his brain had suffered such that parts of it were irreparably damaged. His complexion was limestone-white, rather ghost-white.

That was what children called him, ghost, and ran screaming
bhoot, bhoot
—when they didn’t start shrieking at the sight of him. He so unnerved the people around him that he decided to become less human in his habits. As he shunned daylight, night became his friend. When others slept, Jara was free to walk the roads. However, even the roads at night-time were not free of living creatures: the omnipresent soldiers guarding the nooks and crannies of Srinagar gawked at him or slapped him around, attempting bravado; the dogs yelped when they saw him; the homeless began to mewl. Lonely, frustrated, his brain fighting through fog for days on end, he had been losing himself when someone took him under his wing. With time, Jara learnt how to live in the world with his new face and found a new mission.

He retreated into the dark rooms now; the resident ghost of the Taj Mahal had certain housekeeping chores to do.

Jaipur

P
amposh Pandit was busy with her weekly ritual: cleaning the mahogany model temple in her prayercum-study room. A miniature of a north Indian temple, it was built on a square base with a high wooden ceiling atop which arose a tapering spire. The wood had a smoothness that comes from being tended over the years.

It belonged to Pamposh’s mother—she had brought it with her as part of a young bride’s dowry when she married Omkar Pandit. It had formed an integral part of her mother’s morning ritual as she bathed, draped a fresh sari, gathered flowers from the garden—tucking one behind an ear—and offered them to her God. As she lit the two silver lamps and burnt incense, she would summon her husband and young Pamposh. Omkar Pandit did not much care for invocations to God; his belief was karma, the doing of one’s duty, and everything else would get taken care of. But he also believed in indulging his spouse and good-humouredly ribbed her about her one-on-ones with God as he accepted the prasad and vermilion. For young Pamposh, it was a time to ask God for anything and also to ring the tiny silver bell before she could decamp with a sweet.

Now, once a week, Pamposh cleaned out the temple and the idols it housed: pot-bellied Ganesha, lotus-seated Saraswati, and a framed picture of matted-haired Shiva, a serpent coiled around his neck. It was her way of connecting with something that was lost to her forever. Unlike her mother, Pamposh lit the lamps and the incense stick only once a week; a daily ritual would evoke too many memories.

The temple’s base housed a narrow drawer that her mother had used for storing cotton wicks, a box of matchsticks, aromatic incense. Pamposh only kept an oak ring box in the drawer. Now she took it out with care. Nestled on a red satiny cloth was a single tooth, an adult molar. Her gaze lingered on it before she returned it to the drawer and stepped back to scrutinise the temple. The lamps were aglow, the smell of sandalwood wafted from the incense stick, the gods looked radiant: Yes, her mother would be happy.

Fighting the lump that rose in her on every such occasion, Pamposh settled on the day bed with her favourite book. Every Sunday the tooth took her to the scene of carnage: a concrete road strewn with metal pieces, glass shards, petrol streaks, bloody blotches where a car bomb had vaporised director-general of police Omkar Pandit. He had hunted terrorists in the strife-torn state of Kashmir with mounting success that had resulted in several attempts on his life. Finally, they had succeeded. The only part of himself that Omkar Pandit left behind on that day was a tooth, a single molar. A forensic team recovered it from the site and confirmed it belonged to the DGP. The news so devastated her mother she had to be admitted to the long-term care of specialists of trauma victims.

Pamposh tried not to think of her parents through the week as she attempted a semblance of a normal life. Only on Sundays did she allow the bitterness, which sloshed within her like vitriol, to spill over. Her parents had been good people. And yet, Pamposh thought, their gods had let them down—assorted Hindu deities, her mother, and karma, her father. No wonder then that Pamposh’s favourite book was the world’s oldest written treatise on military strategy:
The Art of War
, written by Sun Tzu in the sixth century BC.

Pamposh clamped her eyes shut, breathed deeply and banished everything from her mind. Opening the volume at the bookmarked page she began her reading as customary with the last verse of the third chapter.

So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will win a hundred times in a hundred battles. If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you win one and lose the next. If you do not know yourself or your enemy, you will always lose.

Pamposh had many demons to conquer.

Agra

I
n front of the Taj Mahal is a large courtyard called the Jilaukhana. In the olden times, visitors to the tomb would dismount from their elephants and horses and assemble here before entering through the great gate. Today tourists to the Taj queue up here, their eyes scouting northwards for a glimpse of the famed wonder, as they wait to be frisked by security men.

Seldom, if ever, does a visitor investigate the area south of Jilaukhana called Taj Ganj, originally an integral part of the Taj Mahal. Once a bazaar teeming with stalls selling precious stones, silks and perfumes, today it is crammed with shops hawking Taj trinkets, cheap reproductions of marble inlay work, ubiquitous Agra sweets, drugs. The formal architecture and grandeur of the Taj Mahal stands in bold relief against the utilitarian squalor of Taj Ganj.

It was in this quarter that Jara, the emissary, had gone forth seeking suitable candidates for his mission. The qualifications were simple: they had to be devout Hindus, male, young, illiterate, in menial jobs, if not jobless. The critical criterion, however, was that they had to have suffered in the recent Hindu-Muslim riots. Taj Ganj was inhabited by both Hindus and Muslims, and six months ago, a Muslim celebration had turned funereal when a truck had rammed into the procession, killing several Muslim men and children. The rumour went that the Hindu police had deliberately permitted the truck to proceed through the narrow alley, already congested by the procession. Riots had ensued. Policemen and Hindu shops were targeted. A curfew was declared and the Taj Mahal remained closed for a week. Hindu-Muslim tensions, however, continued to simmer.

All that the emissary had to do was look for glowing embers. He had located ten eligible candidates for the first session. Each qualified with his own gruesome story. One came from a buffalo stable that had been ravaged—the inferno had consumed the boy’s water buffalos as well as his parents. Another had a brother whose brains were pulped by a hurled brick. Yet another was an aspiring arsonist who had initiated target practice on street strays. He had witnessed his constable father being set ablaze by a mob, the charred carcass later strung from a lamppost.

Taj Ganj was restive. All it needed was a prod.

Delhi

A
flower-seller thrust marigolds in Mehrunisa’s face.

She averted her head and saw a hawker beckoning her to his wares—rosaries and embroidered caps—laid out on a green sheet. She pretended not to notice, retreating into the bubble she had learnt to create during her time spent in India. From within it she could observe everything even as, to a casual observer, she appeared remote, glacial. It worked, granting her the space she needed to function in the teeming milieu of her adopted home.

Mehrunisa crossed her arms as she waited for the boy who had escorted her to emerge. He was carrying the note of introduction that Hajji Nizam Naqshbandi had kindly consented to write. Mehrunisa had found the old artisan’s company delightful. In his quiet dignified manner he had recounted his association with the Taj Mahal over forty years, not once betraying any bitterness despite the obviously shabby manner in which he had been treated by its custodians. She had requested he mention in the letter to his son that she was fluent in both languages used in the script of the Taj Mahal: Arabic and Persian.

Now Mehrunisa glanced in the direction her young guide had disappeared. A medieval-looking archway led to a veranda that fronted the tomb of Amir Khusro. Tucked away in the shade of a five-star hotel, residential bungalows and a looming flyover, Nizamuddin was one of Delhi’s oldest, continuously inhabited areas. It housed the tombs of Nizamuddin Auliya, a Sufi saint, and Amir Khusro, his disciple and one of India’s greatest poets.

The next instant she felt a tug at her elbow. Her escort had surfaced and was pointing a short distance away to where a young man slouched, a faint beard covering his face. ‘Nisar,’ the boy nodded and stuck out his palm. Mehrunisa planted a ten-rupee note in the outstretched hand, steadied her bag and walked forward. She raised her right hand in the traditional Muslim greeting, aadab. Nisar did not respond nor did he make a move to depart. He just stood there, regarding her blankly.

Mehrunisa decided to join him at the mausoleum entrance. She removed her shoes and tied a patterned silk scarf over her head before entering the dargah. Approaching Nisar, she spoke in Urdu, informing him of her meeting with his parents and conveying their blessings. When she mentioned the Taj, Nisar turned and walked away.

Mehrunisa followed as he headed for the filigreed screen surrounding the tomb. Around them milled barefoot men and women, heads bowed, lips moving in silent invocation. A throng of devotees was tying colourful threads to the screen and young children wove through, their high-pitched voices floating above a distant recitation. When she caught up with Nisar, she reeled off her introduction as a student of Mughal art, the time she had spent studying the Taj Mahal, and her particular interest in the tomb itself, taking care to refer to it as
rauza-i-muqqadas
. At the mention of the ‘holy tomb’ Nisar’s eyes flickered nervously.

Mehrunisa decided to take a chance. Who had instructed him to change the calligraphy on the rauza, she asked.

Nisar trembled visibly, but remained quiet. Wheeling around, he hurried into the courtyard where a waterseller, leather bag slung on one shoulder, roamed with drinking water. Rushing up to him, Nisar cupped his shaky hands to drink. Mehrunisa caught up with him and said sotto voce, ‘Speak to me, Nisar. I know about the changes. Between “munauwar” and “masnooee” is a world of difference, and you know that, right? No one has noticed it so far, no one except me.’