Shaiysta returned home after a strenuous day with Maratha warriors, clairvoyant dancers, prophesising pirs, near death and reunions to find Nasim waiting for him.
‘Sire, I must inform you,’ she said. ‘I was almost killed in the Chowk today.’ Courtly formalism suited her well. She was raised to be unfailingly polite.
‘How?’ asked Shayista, surprised their paths hadn’t crossed.
‘Malefactors in orange turbans ambushed my elephant.’
Shayista cringed. The Marathas.
‘If it weren’t for Khajah Ambar, I would be dead,’ said Nasim petulantly. Her eyes pinned him to the wall.
‘What were you doing in the bazaar without the Imperial guards?’ he challenged, feeling uncomfortable. He had jeopardized his household. How had the Marathas traced Kalinoor to him?
‘I had some ... work,’ she said.
Shayista swore he would eradicate the thugs and summoned Dhand to give the command, when Bhopal came running to him.
‘Sire, I must speak to you at once!’ panted the dwarf.
‘What is it, Diwan Bhopal?’ asked Shayista, casting a quick glance at Nasim. Nasim understood, bowed and excused herself.
‘I’m sorry to inform you, Sire,’ said Bhopal. ‘Resistance is coalescing. Last night in their khutba, the ulema asked followers to impose strict vigilance on their morality lest they fall into the dark ocean of temptation. They said girls should not be allowed in the public sphere and foreign attitudes are a threat to Islam. They openly said you are too liberal!’
Shayista shook his head dismayed. A mullah mutiny? After all he had done to promote progress in Bengal, men of the cloth were whining about liberty? They would always find something to criticize. ‘Freedom of thought is fundamental to evolution,’ said Shayista. ‘Summon the ulema.’
‘Sire, I must warn you, the Emperor arrives in less than a month.’ Deep concern was etched on his face.
Shayista frowned. The Emperor was the least of his worries. He thanked Bhopal for his concern then quickly proceeded to the gajashala for space to speculate.
The smell of dung tickled his nose. The stable boys fell to taslims. He asked for the grooming equipment and waved them away. A sturdy elephant cub reached her trunk out to feel him. He patted her and brushed her with a long-handled broom of coconut husk. Grooming required a combination of massage techniques: up and down then circular motions. Shayista enjoyed the moving meditation.
He spared no cost when it came to the upkeep of his beloved pets. He owned 600 elephants and provided them with the best quality food, regular baths and two mahuts each to look after them. Elephants, he found, would stand their ground in battle while even your bravest commanders would desert you. This human cowardice, once he became wise to it, made Shayista deeply unsatisfied with the values of mankind. To his wife he would say, ‘You are as stalwart as an elephant.’ It was a compliment on his part, the sincerest he could give her.
His relationship with Nasim had always been formal and when Ellora and the twins came to his life, Nasim was further estranged. The final blow as she saw it was when Ellora and Miri were killed and she was compelled to raise Pari as her own. To Nasim, Pari was a manifestation of their relationship gone wrong.
To Shayista, Pari was an angel sent to rescue him from solitude. For the first time, Shayista truly experienced fatherhood. He had raised his sons with a sense of duty and an iron fist of discipline while Pari had him wrapped around her little finger. If he wasn’t in the durbar, he was in the nursery narrating stories to her or in the forest teaching her to ride horses, trying to compensate for her lack of mother love.
Shayista dipped a wash cloth in a bucket of soapy oil water and began rubbing the cub down. Of course, she loved water. All elephants did! She tried to upturn the bucket with her trunk but Shayista caught the vessel in time. The cub settled for a stick of sugarcane and swatted at flies with her tail.
It had not been easy to raise Pari. There was Nasim’s palpable envy and also Pari was a sickly child. Most forms of coughs and fevers plagued her. She was asthmatic and allergic to dust, frail and susceptible to injuries, weak and tormented by bouts of dysentery. Though it wasn’t customary for fathers to participate in the nursing of sick children, he was there helping the aseels place cool cloth on her forehead during fevers, coaxing her to drink warm basil and honey water.
Despite the trials of fatherhood, Shayista felt infinitely blessed and grateful for her love. When he moved to the jungles of Bengal, he was a damaged man. Pari was the little girl-shaped miracle that saved him. Her laughter blew apart grey clouds and made space for resplendent sunshine. She inspired him to love again.
‘Baba, look at me,’ Pari called. She was grinning, front teeth missing, cheeks dimpled, crown of jasmines in her hair.
‘Pari, my fairy queen?’ said Shayista. He reached out for her.
Pari laughed with such heart-felt joy, anyone who heard her couldn’t help but experience delight. ‘Catch me if you can, Lal Bagh!’ she said, then dashed off.
He clambered to his feet to follow her, growling like a tiger. ‘Where are you, Pari?’ He called. She ran out of the stable and towards the garden.
‘Catch me if you can, Baba,’ her voice called between giggles.
‘Pari, where are you?’ he called, running after her.
‘Over here, Baba,’ she beckoned.
Shayista paused to catch his breath. ‘Where Pari?’
‘Here Baba,’ came a reply from the menagerie.
The weather was torrid. Sweat trickled down his face and back. He arrived in the garden to find it dry and parched. Leaves and branches had withered. The sun was ten thousand times brighter. Pari stood in its radiance and danced.
Watching her silhouette against the blazing sun hurt Shayista’s eyes. He tried to squint. His eyes watered. Before him, Pari began to shimmer then shrank and shrivelled into a bougainvillea petal that drifted into his palm.
Shayista raised the petal to the sky and implored, ‘Is this all you have left for me, God?’ Lifted from his palm by a breeze, the petal floated off.
‘You have left me nothing,’ sobbed Shayista.
The sound of canons from a neighboring battlement throbbed in his ears, louder by the minute till it was unbearable. A deafening clash of swords, blitz of bullets, anguished soldiers calling his name. ‘Subedar Khan. Subedar Khan?’
Shayista shook his head and blinked. He was standing in a cloud of dust at the edge of the construction site. The chief engineer was kissing the hems of his robe.
‘Subedar Khan, this un-un- unannounced visit?’ he stammered, nervous beads of sweat on his face. He had to shout to be heard above the din: grinding of stones, polishing of marble, carving of mahogany, driving of ox carts loaded with bricks.
Shayista had walked across the garden to Pari’s tomb with the elephant washcloth in his hand. Ever since her death a year ago, strange trances had frequented him. He accepted that the fortress was haunted, and he loved it, because it was haunted by her. Somnambulating inevitably led him to the mouth of her tomb.
‘Carry on,’ said Shayista, much to the engineer’s relief. ‘As you were.’
Workers pushed heavy boulders in bullock-carts. Stone-cutters inscribed glorious names of Allah on white marble from Jaipur. Abd-al-Ahmad Shirazi, son of the master calligrapher who adorned Taj Mahal half a century earlier, supervised. The mausoleum was Nasim’s chief hobby and she was spending a fortune on it, as his father had done for his sister.
Shayista’s life seemed inextricably woven into the karmic cycles of his father. His father killed Khurram to make a king of Khosru, just as his inaction led to Dara’s death and the ascension of Aurangzeb. Kinslayer, Kingmaker. Were sons destined to repeat their fathers' mistakes?
Asaf Khan was a bombastic man, larger than life, his ambitions eclipsed only by his ego. He accomplished dizzying feats of commerce and architecture for the Mughals as vizier to the Emperor and he ruled with cold violence. Shayista never wanted to be like his father but here he was, perpetuating the Empire.
Shayista recalled Pari’s 16th birthday, he had presented her with Kalinoor, placed it on her neck himself. The same evening, he revealed to her the truth about her long lost mother and twin sister. She wept but she understood, wise beyond her years.
Shayista found himself thinking of Saraswati, the most learned woman in Hindustan, who became Pari’s tutor and guide and later also the guardian of the madrasa. Pari loved the madrasa and the girls. They were kindred spirits in many ways since she too was a motherless child.
Then one dreadful day, just as the construction of Lal Bagh fort was complete, a mysterious illness stole Pari’s life. What might have been a time to jubilate instead became the gravest hours of his life: a tragedy from which there could be no recovery.
He thought of the words of the Sufi poet, Hafez,
‘Love is the funeral pyre
where the heart must lay its body.’
Shayista slipped under the shadow of a guava tree and buried his head in his palms. He longed for his daughter to dote on. He felt bitter. God had granted him a precious gift only to snatch her away again. He wished it had been him and not her who had died.
He had worked so hard to build a subha with schools and hospitals and gardens, with roads from Hindustan to China and ports full of ships carrying riches from Europe, with magnificent mosques so people could revel in God’s luminosity. And in return? His best laid plans had been waylaid by Fate. He was left with nothing to cherish.
An itchy doubt spread in Shayista’s mind. Could it have been Kalinoor that caused Pari’s death? Hadn’t she died with the diamond around her neck? Strike three? Suddenly Shayista knew the pir was right: the diamond was cursed!
Kalinoor was meddling with his destiny, destroying all that he cherished. Like a magnet, it drew enemies: Marathas, Englishmen, mullahs, zamindars, all infected with material lust for which they were willing to kill. Bengal was heading towards an apocalypse. But how could he counterpoise the curse? Perhaps the dancing girl would know.