The Taj Conspiracy (24 page)

At his name, Raj Bhushan looked up from opening a bottle of Benedictine. He pursed his mouth before answering, ‘As I mentioned to your colleague, the Taj has always had detractors. This is nothing new.’

Pamposh swivelled on her stool and excitedly asked R.P. Singh to divulge the new controversy.

When he had finished telling her about the pamphlet, she chuckled delightedly. ‘I have always found Taj Mahal tittle-tattle rather fascinating. A story with all the right ingredients: sex, religion, royalty, greed and gossip!’

‘Tittle-tattle?’ R.P. Singh considered the phrase before lifting his shoulders, ‘I’ll have to confess my ignorance.’

‘Enlightenment time,’ Pamposh beamed. ‘If you are the CBI officer in charge of the Taj investigation, you have to be aware of all the stories attached to the monument.’

She glanced at Raj Bhushan and Mehrunisa and started before either could consent. ‘I don’t think Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal in memory of Mumtaz. How could he when on the death of Mumtaz he began an affair with his seventeen-year-old daughter.’

She turned to look at Mehrunisa. ‘What you say doesn’t need my endorsement,’ Mehrunisa said.

‘Oh come, Mehroo! For the sake of fun?’ Pamposh pleaded merrily, before swivelling her bar stool in the direction of Singh again. ‘Francois Bernier, a French physician and chronicler in mid-seventeenth century India, was a discerning reporter. Not only does he mention incest, but goes on to claim that some courtiers justified it saying that “it would have been unjust to deny the king the privilege of gathering fruit from the tree he had himself planted”.’

‘Which daughter of his was this?’ R.P. Singh asked.

‘Jahanara,’ Pamposh supplied. ‘Apparently, she was as beautiful as her mother Mumtaz, and,’ she winked, ‘younger. On the death of her mother, she took the responsibility of caring for her father. Shah Jahan, in turn, bestowed on her half of Mumtaz’s property, and only the remainder on his six other children. Even the royal seal, which was in the custody of Mumtaz, was entrusted to her.’

‘Wow!’ Singh said. ‘Some affection. I’m familiar with another story. That after Mumtaz’s death Shah Jahan did not appear in public for one full week. When he did eventually emerge, his beard and moustache had turned completely white and his eyes were weakened from constant weeping.’

‘Yes,’ Raj Bhushan nodded, ‘it is another in a legion of stories that surround the Taj Mahal.’

‘Like the story that he chopped off the hands of all the artisans who worked on the Taj Mahal so it could never be replicated,’ Pamposh laughed.

‘B&B, anyone?’ Raj Bhushan held up a snifter in which brandy was afloat amber Benedictine. Finding no takers, he walked to the fireplace. ‘If I may add, the stories of Shah Jahan’s dalliances come from Manucci and Bernier. These cannot entirely be taken at face value. They both arrived at the Mughal court towards the end of Shah Jahan’s reign, and had no direct access to information about what went on in the palace.’

‘No smoke without fire,’ Pamposh shrugged again. ‘At the very least they establish that there was gossip in court circles on these matters.’

‘Aria fritta!’ Mehrunisa said dismissively. ‘The court chroniclers do not mention any such thing.’

Pamposh laughed. ‘Come, come Mehroo, don’t scold us in Italian! The silence of the chroniclers, all loyal officers, proves nothing. In any case, they were too busy singing hymns praising the great Mughal! And on that note,’ Pamposh said, extending her left arm as if to emphasise her point, ‘if Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal, how come no records exist that give details of its construction? No direct information about its architects? And really, if the Mughals were the grand builders of their age, why is there no written proof of their architectural theory?’

Pamposh’s speech was slurred. R.P. Singh wondered if she’d had too much to drink—after all, she was guzzling whiskey straight.

‘Go on,’ Pamposh urged Mehrunisa, ‘tell me. Indians are excellent record-keepers. Ancient Sanskrit texts such as the shilpa shastras and vastu shastras still exist and provide to this day the Hindu canon of art and architectural theory.’ Pamposh drew her hand in a wide arc, the whiskey sloshing in the glass held in that hand. ‘Hmm? Director ASI, Mr Raj Bhushan—perhaps you would care to enlighten us?’

Raj Bhushan took a sip of his B&B, rested the glass on the side table, crossed his leg and looked directly at Pamposh. ‘You are espousing a form of history which is gaining currency among a new breed of historians. Founded on the premise
what if,
it is counterfactual history.
What if
we were to believe the Taj Mahal was not actually built by Shah Jahan?
What if
the Mughals were not the great builders they are made out to be? Mind you, they claim they are doing this out of scholarly interest. History, after all, is written by the victors. Counterfactual history can, for instance, examine it from the vanquished man’s perspective.’

Raising one palm in the direction of his hostess, he courteously enquired, ‘Are you of the counterfactual history school, Ms Pandit?’

‘Pshaw!’ With a wave of her hand, Pamposh trashed the idea. ‘I have no truck with history or historians. But I grew up in the overwhelming shadow of one,’ she rolled her eyes, ‘Professor Vishwanath Kaul, and he is such an obsessive Mughal lover that I think it is my rebellious right to refuse to be co-opted into his fan club.

‘Besides,’ Pamposh shrugged, her face taking on a melancholy look, ‘as an Indian, you are never allowed to forget your history. It is not an option.’ She cast her eyes around the room, resting them on Mehrunisa, Raj Bhushan and R.P. Singh in turn.

‘Are you Hindu? Are you Muslim? Are you the descendant of Babur who took our land from us and made us slaves in our own country? Or are you a Hindu raja who presides over a Muslim people? Or sore with India, sore with Pakistan, you cannot decide which way to swing your Himalayan kingdom?’

Although Pamposh’s last question referred to the king of Kashmir’s vacillation during the partition of India, what showed on her face and her tremulous lips was the concomitant loss of home, parents and homeland she had suffered at a young age.

She tossed the remaining whiskey down and clucked loudly, ‘Nope! Forgetting is not an option. We carry our histories in our blood and are ever willing to spill it.’

She rose and lurched. ‘Refills, anyone?’

R.P. Singh gallantly offered to fetch her drink. ‘For the intellectual enlightenment of one ignorant policeman, I say let’s proceed with the debate.’

‘Mehrunisa,’ Raj Bhushan said, ‘would you like to provide a spirited defence, like your uncle would have?’

Mehrunisa was neither an experienced Mughal scholar, nor did she have the proficiency of her godfather. But she
had
assisted him while he wrote
The Taj
. Recollecting what he’d written, she said, ‘The Mughals had no written architectural theory. But the fact that no texts exist does not mean that architectural theory was absent from Mughal thinking. The monuments and formal gardens built by Shah Jahan and other Mughal emperors that survive to this day are living expressions of their architectural theory. In their case, we can derive the theories from their forms.’

Pamposh was not one to let go easily.

‘Have you heard of P.N. Oak? He has founded an Institute for Rewriting Indian History, and has published an enormous body of writing to show how exaggerated the claims of Mughal Emperor-builders are.’

‘Well,’ Raj Bhushan cleared his throat as he warmed his hands by the fire, ‘he also claims that all historic structures in India, and even abroad, that are currently ascribed to Muslim sultans—including tombs, gardens, canals, forts, townships, castles, bridges—are actually pre-Muslim constructions.’ He gave an elaborate smile. ‘Surely, you will agree one would need to take a barrel of salt to digest such information.’

Pamposh rolled her eyes, ‘There has to be a reason behind such rumours, you know.’

‘The rumours,’ Mehrunisa shrugged her shoulders, ‘are as old as the Taj. There are Western theories that the Taj Mahal was built by a European architect. Then there are guides’ tales about the Second or Black Taj; the story that Shah Jahan killed the architect and the workers upon the building’s completion so they would not build another like it...’

She glanced at her audience. ‘One visit to the Taj can yield an assortment of exotic tales that have been spun around it by guides looking for gullible tourists. Quite a few of which can be found in a classic compilation of folk motifs across cultures. King kills architect after completion of great building—versions of this motif are reported from various parts of Europe. In a Muslim context, the legend appears earlier with regard to the Sassanian castle of Khwarnaq, which was considered one of the thirty wonders of the world in the early Arabic Middle Ages.’

Pamposh stifled a yawn, which Mehrunisa noticed, her eyes glittering. R.P. Singh did not miss that. Clearly, to Mehrunisa, the Taj Mahal was not just a beautiful monument. Her parents were dead; her godfather, the man who had devoted his life to the Taj Mahal, was critically ill; upon her return to India she had immersed herself in researching the Taj.... As he mulled over it, the answer became clear to him. What was to Pamposh and others a Mughal monument to spar over was, to Mehrunisa, a reflection of her own mixed heritage, and the repository of her godfather’s lifelong devotion. It was something precious, something worth defending—and saving.

Pamposh slid off the high bar stool, tottering slightly. ‘Methinks I am a wee drunk,’ she chortled. ‘More, anyone?’

R.P. Singh rose for a refill. ‘I find this fascinating,’ he smiled at Pamposh, ‘a history lesson on the Taj Mahal!’ He uncapped the Johnnie Walker, showing no sign that he was carefully studying their responses.

SSP Raghav had asked him why he was making the trip from Agra to Jaipur to see Mehrunisa—it could have easily waited till she returned. Feeling a little self-conscious, for reasons he was unwilling to examine, he’d told the inspector that he wanted a chance to talk to Raj Bhushan outside his office. Happily, the conversation was actually giving him something to think about.

‘The subject matter, you mean?’ Raj Bhushan laughed. ‘The greatest erection of the great builder—surely one needs no other indication of his lascivious nature!’

Mehrunisa looked at him in amazement. It was obvious to Singh she had never heard the director speak in this manner before. Had the drink gone to his head as well? What he had said was a common joke, a crude description of the Taj Mahal. However, coming from the invariably suave and dapper Raj Bhushan, it seemed entirely inappropriate. He made a mental note to cross-check it with Mehrunisa.

At that moment, Pamposh cleared her throat, a bit too enthusiastically, as R.P. Singh looked on, his brows raised, his mouth bearing the faintest hint of derision. Raj Bhushan flushed, a look of consternation passed across his face. He sat upright as if mentally pulling himself up, adjusted his spectacles, and raising his right hand in a gesture of apology said, ‘Sorry, ladies, for the inelegance.’

Mehrunisa remained silent, and sipped her drink. The fireplace crackled and she could not help thinking how convivial the setting would appear to a casual observer.

Pamposh flashed her generous smile at R.P. Singh, her eyes twinkling. ‘Perhaps you should read the memoirs of Manucci and Bernier. Both maintain that Shah Jahan had adulterous liaisons with married women—usually wives of his noblemen.’ Her cheeks were flushed, her hair tousled, her wide eyes glinting, and as she bit her lower lip, Pamposh looked sexy and sozzled.

Catching Mehrunisa’s eye, Pamposh turned to her. ‘Perhaps it is your Persian heritage that is unhappy with this line of thinking but,’ she scowled, ‘no one can deny that the emperor was a libertine.’

‘Well,’ R.P. Singh settled into his chair, ‘at least there is consensus that the emperor was a man of love!’

‘Surrounded by too many women to grieve over one dead wife. That should be proof enough that the great romance between Shah Jahan and his beloved Mumtaz was just an eye-wash by his court chroniclers. One that was swallowed wholesale by the British! And,’ she threw a challenging toss at the ASI director-general, ‘subsequent historians!’

‘Whatever the truth of the particular stories,’ Raj Bhushan, his hands in a steeple in front of him, spoke as if he were concluding the debate, ‘one thing seems to be clear: after Mumtaz, Shah Jahan became promiscuous. But that never hindered a man from carrying on with the rest of his life. Maybe the story of the romance is a myth, but that does not disprove that he built the Taj Mahal.’

Mehrunisa looked at Raj Bhushan with some surprise: he’d spoken in the manner of a responsible director-general of the ASI, quite removed from his defiant posturing in the car ride earlier in the day.

After that the discussion petered out. Pamposh excused herself to oversee dinner arrangements after extending an invitation to R.P. Singh, and Mehrunisa switched on the music system and the twang of sitar filled the room.

R.P. Singh gazed into the whiskey and swore softly to himself. Damn these intellectuals! They had awakened him to the gamut of possibilities in the Taj Mahal equals Shiva temple claim, Raj Bhushan suavely straddling both sides of the argument. If not for Mehrunisa’s erudite rebuttals, he’d have believed that yes, indeed, the monument could be Hindu.

But there lay the crux of the problem: Mehrunisa was erudite and rational; the public was gullible and emotional.

Agra

A
t the Taj Ganj police station SSP Raghav worked his luxuriant moustache as he brooded over the curious discovery of the python. His legs on the table, he was sunk into his chair.

‘Anything the matter, Sir?’ a constable enquired solicitously, depositing a cup of tea on the table.

Lost in thought, Raghav ignored him.

His distress was compounded by the forensics lab in Delhi, bogged down in bureaucracy. It had indicated that a DNA test on the corpse parts discovered in the python’s belly would take at least a week—the forensics officer in the DNA profiling lab was on annual leave.