The Taj Conspiracy (34 page)

As he paused, the crowd around him chorused, ‘
Har Har Mahadev! Har Har Mahadev!’

‘Come, sister,’ the first woman said earnestly, ‘come to the Taj Mahal, witness the miracle with your own eyes and offer your prayers to Shiva. Better still, take us with you!’

Abruptly, she grabbed the door handle and started to yank it. Meanwhile, the youth struck the pose of Nataraja, the dancing Shiva with one leg hoisted, arms flung out, jigging his head wildly. Others lurched around crying,
Jai Shiv Shankar! Har Har Mahadev! Jai Bholenath
!

As the various names of Lord Shiva were called in delirious profusion by the crazed devotees, the two occupants in the car sat in stunned silence.

Tutte le strade portano a Roma
. All roads lead to Rome. In this case, Agra, Mehrunisa thought as she scanned the burgeoning sea of traffic for a break. The Sonata car was in the midst of a billowing mass of man and machinery as all humanity, propelled by various modes of motion, jostled to move towards the Taj!

Mehrunisa tried to imagine that kind of crowd milling around the Taj Mahal, and failed. It would amount to packing the Taj’s daily tourist traffic of several days into the Jilaukhana’s forecourt at one moment in time. The sheer pressure of such numbers could cause irretrievable damage to the monument that already suffered from 4,000 to 5,000 pairs of feet tramping over it daily.

Nobody could say where they had come from, or how they had heard the news, but it was as if a gigantic beehive had been ransacked and now the bees, buzzing, restive, feverish were swarming all over. Taj and Shiva were the two words on each tongue as people—barefoot, astride two-wheelers, packed atop jeeps and trucks, hanging out of cars—speculated fervidly.

Hands thumped the car as folks walked past or bent to peer inside. It was a powerful car, it would hold, but Mehrunisa was acutely aware of the curious glances at the capacious car with its two female occupants.

Agra

A
t daybreak, the fog lifted and crowds started to approach the Taj complex. A perplexed police officer stopped them at the barricade and informed them that the Taj Mahal was closed to visitors on Friday. Sullenly, they hung around.

Following that a horde of Naga sadhus—naked, sporting saffron headbands or red and gold scarves, their bodies smeared with ash, trishuls aloft in their hands—appeared at the East gate. Since they had a reputation for being fractious, the policeman on duty decided to inform them politely that the Taj was closed and ignore them thereafter.

However, neither silent treatment nor vigorous communication worked, for the complex kept filling with people. In a couple of hours, the entire forecourt was swarming, saffron headbands bobbing in their midst. SSP Raghav was urgently roused from the cubicle within Darwaza-i-Rauza where he had finally fallen asleep at a desk.

Hitching his crumpled trousers up, he marched bleary-eyed into the crowd and ordered them to scoot. Like some mammoth misshapen creature that had been prodded, the crowd rippled but stayed put. Raghav was sleep-deprived, his neck stiff from the position in which he had dozed, and his head was throbbing from the fruitless exertions of the night. They’d be thrown into jail, he shouted a hoarse warning at the upturned faces. It was futile. The lawless crowd of hangers-on was a mob deserving a heavy hand. He beckoned the constables to charge into them with their batons.

Suddenly, a woman thrust a mike at him. Dazed, Raghav spun around. Behind her a cameraman captured the melee as police thrashed a motley crowd of sadhus, youth and visitors sporting saffron bandanas.

‘Hey!’ Raghav yelled to the cameraman, ‘Stop the filming! Now!’

But the fleeing crowd was between him and the camera crew who were capturing the commotion in the Jilaukhana of the Taj Mahal. The sickening realisation dawned on Raghav that the action was being relayed live to an early morning audience.

‘Jai Bholenath!’
a chant went up.

The crowd was responding to the camera, gesticulating and shouting slogans.

We are here to witness the miracle of Shiva!

Lord Shiva’s shaking trident!

‘Saala, gaandu,’ Raghav thundered as he lunged at the cameraman over the heads of cowering men. ‘I’ll show you the miracle!’

He grabbed him by the neck as two cops nabbed his equipment.

However, unknown to Raghav, the cameramen and his team had accomplished their mission. An anonymous tip about the opportunity to record a sensational event at the Taj Mahal at the dawn of Shivratri had made them hurry there. In turn they had secured a recording coup. Competing channels would scramble for footage soon but they had had a headstart. By the time Raghav got his hands on the camera, five minutes of live footage had been beamed by the sensationalist TV channel. It showed Shiv bhakts braving police violence in front of the Taj Mahal as they awaited a presaged miracle that morning. And it flashed repeatedly photographs that showed close-ups of the flowing calligraphy on Mumtaz’s cenotaph. These were accompanied by a high-pitched voice-over declaiming that the calligraphy indeed stated that the tomb was masnooee, a fraud. In order to verify that particular allegation, the TV channel was locating an expert in Persian calligraphy. Meanwhile, the news reporter exhorted the audience not to go away, to stay tuned, as they continued breaking the sensational news.

Agra

A
s the number of people gathering in the forecourt continued to swell, R.P. Singh sent constables around the complex to investigate the area. Soon enough one returned with the information that, in the dilapidated Haveli Agha Khan on the east side of the Taj Mahal, adjacent to Dassehra Ghat, he had discovered bedding, clothing and food items. It verified Singh’s grim assumption that the mob, despite the appearance of being spontaneous, had been pre-planned.

A troubled R.P. Singh sped into Agra city on motorcycle to assess how effectively his order to seal the city had been executed. Right in Taj Ganj he saw a swarm outside a shop watching breaking-news at the Taj Mahal on the owner’s TV set. The reporter on TV passionately narrated how eager devotees had gathered to witness a Shiva miracle that was to take place at the monument at noon, then cut to a scene of cops lunging at them with batons, the outburst of Shiva slogans from the devout, and the ‘high-handedness’ of the police as SSP Raghav’s threatening face zoomed into the frame, and to the mixed sound of swearing-crunching-ripping, the picture went dead. The gathering gasped, tittered, gesticulated, and planned to head to the monument and check for themselves the situation at the Taj.

R.P. Singh broke into a sweat, his tensed muscles trembling as if he were facing the slashing knives of a gang of Maoists.

Meanwhile, at the left bank of the Yamuna across from the Taj Mahal, Mehrunisa had arrived as per Raghav’s instructions at Mahtab Bagh. There a cop watched over a gnome-like man settled beneath a neem tree with his simian mates. The dozen langurs with black faces and white bodies eyed her curiously and Mehrunisa had a sinking feeling that her plan to protect the Taj was underwhelming, to say the least.

Pamposh, with raised brows, retreated to the car. She had debated with Mehrunisa the considerable risk of approaching the Taj Mahal at such a volatile time, but her normally sensible friend was suddenly impervious to reason.

Mehrunisa, unable to sit, paced the grassy bank, eyes glued to the Taj Mahal across. Force of habit made her touch the kara she wore. Now, as stray shouts drifted across from the Taj Mahal, and policemen scurried like ants across the marble plinth, her eyes surveyed the marble monument as if fierce passion alone would stave off danger....

Agra

H
ow does a sealed city spring leaks? Ancient Agra was a sieve—too many exits and entryways, including a riverine passage. And how was he to contain the excitement of locals without a curfew?

As he rode across the city, an alarmed R.P. Singh saw people huddled in corners, grouped at the milk booth, pausing in their morning walk, shouting across balconies, all excitedly trumpeting the purported miracle. Their faces shining with enthusiasm, these people were oblivious of, or deliberately ignoring, the Muslims gathered in sullen silence as they watched the jubilant proclamations.

It reminded him of the time when Ganpati idols were said to have started to drink milk, driving the entire nation into a collective frenzy as people abandoned offices, police their stations, doctors their clinics, as every Indian scrambled to reach an idol with a canister of milk in tow. The milkman was the only one who worked that day as milk was offered with such frenzy to Ganapati idols in the country that ultimately drains from temples ran milky-white. Except the ‘milk miracle’ was ultimately harmless, providing succour to a nation which liked its gods on-call. But the ‘trident miracle’....

The staccato ringtone of his mobile cut his train of thought. It was the home minister. He’d caught the TV footage, he said. Agra in frenzy over Shiva miracle at the Taj Mahal! What the hell was happening?! Why wasn’t he informed?

‘We’re taken by surprise, Sir,’ R.P. Singh ground his teeth and admitted. ‘But we are on it, Sir—’

The home minister shouted an expletive before starting to mutter under his breath. The man who was reputed to be a cold cucumber amidst the sizzle of Indian politics was beyond furious. ‘What I see on TV is a Kumbh mela! You cannot fire into the crowd, you cannot arrest the thousands gathered, there are TV crews all over—just what is your plan?’ he asked.

The colourful pulsating sea of people swam before Singh’s eyes. Statistically, the minister was way off the mark, but he could be forgiven the exaggeration given the circumstances.

Icily, the home minister informed him that the matter had reached the prime minister. He was on the line.

R.P. Singh veered to the curb, braked, put one foot on the ground and breathed hard. Beads of perspiration that had sprouted earlier were finding their way down his creased forehead into the inner corners of his eyes. Eyes narrowed, he focused his entire being on the moment.

‘Son—’ he heard the prime minister, his soft voice weighed down, ‘you don’t need me to tell you we’re facing a very grave situation...’ a long pause, ‘...you are on the ground and you see it for yourself. I am told that you are one of our finest policemen. And the son of a brave general whose heroism in ‘71 saved our nation.

‘This time the enemy has declared war from within. And he has chosen his target very cleverly—he strikes it, he strikes at our very foundation. Just as the colour white contains all colours within it, this monument of white embodies our innate, ancient pluralism. Save the Taj Mahal, Singh, that monument stands for India.’

Agra

A
nyone would be forgiven for thinking there was a carnival on at the Taj Mahal.

SSP Raghav shook his head in disbelief at the massive crowds jammed into the Jilaukhana by noon. People were craning their necks to see if they could look beyond the imposing red entrance gate. Many had children hoisted on their shoulders. The din around them was a mix of chants, jubilant shouts, speculation, gossip. Vendors weaved through the crowd, selling tea in glasses, roasted peanuts in paper cones, even roasted corn cobs along with seasoning sachets of half-cut lime and chilli powder. In the treetops, lured by the profusion of food, more monkeys were becoming visible. Abruptly, a boy with glasses of a milky concoction in a wire rack surfaced, and he stopped to offer one to a woman.

‘Milk?’ she asked.

The boy, no more than eight years old, flashed a sudden grin. ‘Bhang!’ he supplied. ‘Shivji’s favourite drink. Go on,’ he urged, ‘no charge. Most people have had a glass or more.’

SSP Raghav lunged at the boy’s elbow, rattling the glasses in the process. ‘Why free?’

‘S-saab,’ the boy trembled, ‘my seth, he said to distribute it free. He is a big Shiva devotee.’

‘Where is this seth?’

‘Not here,’ the boy shook his head.

‘How many boys are here like you, distributing bhang?’

He scratched his forehead. ‘Fifteen, maybe twenty.’

‘
Fif
-teen twenty!’ SSP Raghav was apoplectic, his moustache aquiver. ‘Out! Out of my sight! If I see you around I’ll thrash you. And your buddies as well.’

The boy slipped away. As he was about to disappear, he said with a sly look, ‘He is paying us well.’

Raghav beckoned a constable and ordered him to tail the boy and find his accomplices.

Anxiously, he surveyed the crowds. The mood was festive, the people were in eager anticipation, and the crisp winter air had warmed with the explosion of human beings crammed into a small space. Aromas wafted through the air: of cigarette smoke, masala chai, and the Agra delicacy candied pumpkin. People crunched on nutty gachak and salty dalmoth and quipped and waited while monkeys hopped about grabbing spillage. This bacchanal—his mind fleetingly acknowledged the pertinent word—could erupt into a riot any time. All it needed was one trigger.

R.P. Singh watched the action from inside the great gate of the Jilaukhana complex. The milling crowd had, by some remarkable feat of physics, occupied more space than was available around the red sandstone and white marble gate.