Her Highness Nasim Banu, the Subedar’s wife, held the incriminating dupatta a careful distance from her rosewater-bathed body as she stormed across the menagerie to the zenana, silk ghagra clinging to her hips, eunuch following close behind. She was already plagued by pernicious worries: Shayista never once visited the mosque on the west side of the fort and drank himself to oblivion regularly, Emperor Aurangzeb was due to arrive within a few weeks, she was aging fast, and now this ... this dupatta?
Shayista was a considerate husband though he had no passionate attachment to her. Still, insecurity was an emotion she had not experienced, not since the death of his slutty mistress, the Hindu princess who died in the attack of 1664. Apart from that one unfortunate indiscretion, Shayista was not an amorous philanderer.
Most Mughal lords had harems full of courtesans but not Shayista. Their zenana housed only qualified kenchens, professional singers and nautch dancers. Shayista never consorted with them. His only obsession was his Imperial Duty for which he would willingly sacrifice his arms and legs.
Nasim did not care so much for the Emperor. She found him guileful and scheming, not a true supporter of his uncle Shayista. The problem with fanatics was that they got fixated on other people’s purity. Who asked him to be the meddlesome vigilante of human imperfections? Religion was a private affair.
Still, he was the Emperor so he had to be kept satisfied. Shayista’s epicurean habits offended him and it was up to her to keep the peace. She arranged Pari’s marriage to the Emperor’s son to bring their families closer together but alas the plan went horribly awry.
Prince Azam turned out to be an intolerable imbecile, disrespectful and profligate. To make matters worse, Pari died. It wouldn’t have been all in vain if Shayista had managed to secure decent positions for their lazy sons but instead he had become preoccupied with the so-called ‘Enemies of the Empire’ and was verging on the brink of paranoia. This was clouding his judgement.
That morning, Nasim was appalled to discover just how badly his obsession had distorted his decision-making ability when she found the dupatta under the bed. It was made of fine white muslin with roses embroidered in golden thread. Never had she seen anything so exquisite.
At first, she assumed black magic. Genghis Khan was a necromancer. He conducted regular animal sacrifices and ate herbs to sire 8000 sons. Babar saved Humayan’s life, circling his sickbed to lure away Death, sacrificing himself so his son would live. Djinn could be hired for all sorts of misdeeds. Dark pacts with Death and the Devil were known to all. Any amateur conjurer could command a spirit to drop a dupatta under her bed with a spell wrapped within it.
On further examination however the cloth seemed less an act of occult assault and more an act of seduction. It occurred to Nasim that her faithless husband had not only abandoned God but also his lawfully wedded wife. This made her furious rather than sad. She suspected it must have been one of the brazen dancing girls and proceeded directly to the zenana to find the slut who dared threaten her position in the Empire and in bed.
She dismissed her eunuch and entered the zenana. Rays of sun streamed in through latticed walls casting stars upon the ground. Nasim had commissioned this pattern herself from the renowned Ustad Ahmad Lahauri who had built Taj Mahal.
Not only was Ustad Lahauri talented with brick and mortar but also he was strikingly handsome despite his age. Still she hadn’t flirted with him not even with an accidental slip of her veil because she valued the vows of marriage. Shayista it appeared was less meticulous with his lust. Of course, princes were permitted to be promiscuous but that didn’t mean she had to sit idle and allow it.
Emperor Jahangir had proposed her marriage to Shayista 39 years ago. Shayista was forced to accept it just as he had accepted his position as a political leader of the Empire though that too he had never wanted. He believed his Imperial Duty was ordained by God so he relented. He married her with the same resignation.
She was fifteen years old then and fair as the moon. He was older and climbing the ranks at a dizzying speed. Just how much older, she would never know, for his family never kept record of his birth. After their marriage, she kept aging, as one does. Shayista distressingly did not. He remained a chiselled young man, despite his heavy drinking, while she started looking more like his mother than wife. This troubled her because her position in society was entirely and precariously dependent on her relationship with him.
Nasim had already relinquished youth and good looks. She could not bear to surrender power and wealth too. She had seen Nur Jahan displace Jahangir’s first 19 wives and Shayista’s coquettish sister, Arjumand Mumtaz, memorialized for eternity in the Taj while Shah Jahan’s first wife lay forgotten forever. She was desperate not to suffer the same fate.
Nasim passed through the latticed corridor into a room full of kenchens. Their feathery cholis left little to the imagination. She considered ordering Amir Dhand to have them all flogged but drastic measures would draw Shayista’s attention. She was not one for domestic conflict. No, she must be cunning.
The dancing girls were huddled together pleating ribbons in one another’s hair. She envied their sorority. She had no close friends. She suspected everyone was out to cheat or con her. In the centre of the nauseating nautch circle was heavy-set Didi Ma, reclined on a silk cushion. A lithe young beauty massaged coconut oil into her thinning hair.
Didi Ma produced a smile as insincere as a whore’s orgasm. ‘To what can we attribute this gracious visit, your Highness?’ She lumbered to her feat like a cow that had toppled over, waddled to Nasim’s side and bowed in taslim.
‘Salaam. How lovely it is to see you,’ Nasim said. ‘I have come to inquire about the nautch girls. Are they well?’
‘Your most graciousness,’ said the instructor, her tone suitably subservient. ‘Your generous patronage keeps us in the peak of summer throughout the year.’
Nasim frowned.
Didi Ma bowed even deeper.
Nasim scanned the girls. The singers, comely faces, buxom buttocks, thighs like overripe squash, were dressed in silk, not muslin. The dancers sat on the far side of the room, applying henna to their hands and feet, wearing gaudy coloured chiffon. No one was wearing a virgin white muslin choli that matched the incriminating dupatta. She needed another clue.
Perhaps if she saw Shayista watching a performance, she would know from his face which of the dancers he fancied. She decided to test her theory. ‘Didi Ma, on the eve of the full moon, the dancers will perform the Dance of Seven Veils.’
‘Next week?’ Didi Ma wrung her hands. ‘Your Excellency, allow us more time to prepare?’
‘You will have to manage,’ said Nasim curtly. She liked to make the lazy cow squirm. With that, she excused herself from the zenana.
Shayista was so concerned with running the Empire that he barely gave a thought to the future of his family. He had five living sons to look out for but all he worried about were the enemies. She would not be his victim. Didn’t she deserve some security in her evening years? With Shayista gambling fast and loose with their fortune, she felt nervous to say the least.
They had almost lost it all last time Shayista failed the Emperor, twenty years ago. Luckily the Emperor was lenient and only reassigned him to the backwaters of Bengal. It could have been worse. They were able to recover. She had turned Lal Bagh fort into a symbol of Mughal taste, while he had turned Bengal into the richest province in the Empire. Now, if Shayista kept up with his shenanigans, they might really lose it all, the treasury, the fort, the province, everything.
She had to trap the harlot and silence her so the subha’s prestige, and her own, remained intact. The Emperor was scheduled to arrive in time for the Nauraz and she wanted everything to be perfect.