Krishna
A grandmother takes two grandchildren – Gulbadan and Rurayya in a boat with her confidant and guardian Nizam. Alone, she reveals the secret to them that she had kept waiting for them to grow up to an age where they can keep a secret. The emperor Alamgir, who was known as Aurangazeb earlier, will kill them if he can. The grandma is in fact the emperor’s sister and the two children have royal blood in them. 
She reminisces about her beautiful mother, the powerful emperor Shah Jahan and her troublesome brother (still a boy at the time of these recollections) Aurangazeb.
Before we go on, this is history in the style that makes history accessible to laymen without having to go through detailed history books which may be dry. But the facts are all there. They are not as deeply researched as any of Pauline Gedge’s works (For example The Hippopotamus Marsh ) or as panoramic as Michener’s books (for instance, Alaska ).
But it does provide key events in the life of Shah Jahan and Aurangazeb. It describes the other sons of Shah Jahan and how Aurangazeb seized the throne – in rather vivid detail.
I do not know if the character of Jahanara is true and suspect that the love story between her and the architect who built the Taj Mahal is embellished but for all that, the story is interesting, and keeps your interest all the way through. On with the rest of the story now.
The emperor is kind and fair and is totally in love with his wife, the mother of little Jahanara.
Jahanara is married off for political reasons to a fat, boorish man who hurts her sexually and insults her at other times. Aurangazeb in the meanwhile cultivates people and soldiers while the eldest son, Dara, simply is immersed in arts. The other brothers, Raza and Murad, are very young.
Aurangazeb goes to war and is valiant. Jahanara’s mother dies in childbirth – I knew this but I did not know that it was far away during a campaign in a tent. The emperor seems to give up every pretense of ruling. Aurangazeb handles military affairs. When a young Persian architect Ustad Isa is commissioned to build a marble memorial to the queen by the emperor, Jahanara is asked to work with him and seems to be attracted to him.
She realizes that he is also in love with her, and in fact, imagined the monument he is building, christened Taj Mahal by the emperor, in Jahanara’s reflection. But their love is doomed due to her and his status and the importance of the monument to the empire.
When Jahanara saves a boy captured from Deccan by war being run down and killed by an elephant ridden by Aurangazeb, Jahanara earns his enmity and due to his growing power, is afraid for herself. She gets Ladli to tell Aurangazeb that she, Jahanara, had stolen her husband’s ring. When Aurangazeb hears of it, he speaks to her husband Khondamir and has Jahanara whipped. She is temporarily safe from danger from the increasingly powerful brother Aurangazeb.
The father, the emperor comes to see the monument, he is impressed with the progress Isa has made.
When they go to another city, the emperor gives them space to find love. The love should be always hidden or else Isa’s life is not worth anything.
Meanwhile Ladli, who is a spy in Aurangazeb’s palace, gaining his trust by giving her body to him, warns Jahanara that he is planning an assassination of Dara, the crown prince. Jahanara mildly poisons Data’s food thus preventing him from walking into the trap and Aurangazeb had to go alone.
The Taj Mahal is being built with breathtaking beauty. Meanwhile, after conning Khondamir with bull’s testicles as an effective way to have a baby, Jahanara has Isa’s baby and they find a way to be together through a secret passage from the queen’s chamber to a private house, which Isa buys. This has been made possible by the Emperor’s connivance.
Meanwhile Aurangazeb is busy riling up and tormenting Hindus who are a majority in the kingdom, much to the disgust of both the emperor and Dara.
Aurangazeb marching to repel Persian attack with two of the younger brothers of his, his coming back to overcome and imprison Dara, the crown prince, his assuming the grand title of Alamgir, imprisoning Jahanara and leaving her with two hungry cheetahs in a cell, all are told well.
The death of Dara and his young son for the treason of considering Hindus equal to Muslims is told in vivid and tense detail.
The escape from the prison to go to Deccan, the meeting of the Sultan of Bijapur who had imprisoned Isa and Arjumand and having them build a mask, the intervention of Shivaji who admired the guts of Jahanara and gave a week’s holiday near the sea for the three of them – the trio had never seen a sea – are all told well, as is the decision of Jahanara to go back and see her father disguised as an old noble.
She is instantly recognized and imprisoned. Khondamir comes and brutally rapes her from behind right in front of the sleeping emperor. In humiliation, she only lives so that she may see Isa again. However, when Aurangazeb tries to torture her into revealing her secret, she cleverly frames Khondamir and has him killed. In order for her to regret her betrayal of ‘her lover’, Aurangazeb keeps her alive.
The neglect in which Shah Jahan was kept before Jahanara nurses him back to health is very touching. So is Ladli, who decides to leave Aurangazeb and whom Jahanara sends to Deccan with Nizam. She has by now learned that Shivaji inflicted a crushing defeat on Aurangazeb but the Sultan of Bijapur was killed in the battle.
The rest of the story moves to a predictable conclusion. This may not be real history – but it has enough of it in its story – and may focus on Jahanara and her love with some invented characters like Ladli but all in all, it is a very satisfying read and is very well written.
I enjoyed this book thoroughly and hope you will too.
8/10
= = Krishna