Wah, Taj!

Under the pomegranate tree in one corner of the blooming gardens of firdaus, or paradise, sat Shah Jehan, once known as The Great Moghul, whose many works of splendour still lie strewn across one great swathe of the subcontinent. To this day they stand bearing his signature in marble and mortar — forts, palaces, mosques and mausoleums, gargantuan structures that stun the eye and numb the brain.

As usual Shah Jehan had his eye focused only on his pride and joy, the Taj Mahal, which lay like a chand ka thukada, a piece of the moon, amidst the dust and grey sprawl of Agra. By his side, in true ‘Rubayait’ fashion, sat the one true love of his life, Begum Arjumand Banu, better known as Mumtaz Mahal. The lady was eating a pomegranate but the lustre of its flesh could not bear compare with the lustre of her lips. Suddenly, the once-emperor got very excited…..

SHAH JEHAN: Mumtaz, my bulbul, look, look. They’ve finally cleaned up my Taj with multani mitti. There must be someone coming otherwise you think that Archaelogical Survey of India would have bothered? A more lazy bunch, I’ve yet to meet. How they have let that building go to rack and ruin, how they’ve let it yellow...

MUMTAZ: Oh my ameer, my anwar, now cease these vain recriminations. It’s bad for your blood pressure and you know it, my love.

SHAH JEHAN: Blood pressure be damned. If they destroy the Taj, I’m going to personally petition the Almighty to send a thunderbolt and erase that ASI from the face of the earth, mark my words...(He stops abruptly) But look, my begum, there is something happening down there. I see limousines and policemen, some big shot is visiting my Taj, mark my words. I haven’t seen a greater stir there than since the day Bill Clinton came along.

MUMTAZ: Let’s see. Yes, yes, I remember now. I read in the Heavenly Dawn that there is going to be a Pak-India summit.

SHAH JEHAN: What, those idiots are finally getting down to talking, are they? How many wasted years, how many wasted lives, how many useless wars!

MUMTAZ (sharply): Great one you are to talk! How many wars did you fight, my lord? You were so busy in battle that you had little time for me, if I remember right?

SHAH JEHAN (sighing a deep sigh): Quite right, my bulbul, too many, too many. Too many wasted moments. I thought I could make it up by building my Taj, my dilruba. If stones could have spoken, they would have cried out in longing for you and of our lost time together. It took 22 years of work, 20,000 men who laboured through every season, 140,000 cartloads of red sandstone and white marble, brought all the way from Rajputana... Yet, finally, it is only stone. I look back and I think of what that Angrezi poet, Shelley, once wrote about one sultan called Ozymandias: ‘Nothing beside remains. Round the decay/Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare...’

MUMTAZ: Ah, the wisdom of age. Ah the wisdom of the ages!

SHAH JEHAN: That’s what I want to tell those guys down there, my bulbul, I want to tell them, don’t lay more years to rack and ruin. Look at my hands, my Mumtaz. Are they not crimson like the fruit you are eating? I thought they were my enemies. I executed all the male Mughal collaterals in case they threatened my throne. I, the ruthless one, razed villages to the ground and went on a rampage like an elephant in heat, to protect my name. Finally, where did it all end? I began to realise the futility of it all when I was locked up and denied everything, save a glimpse of my Taj through a mirror in my small room.

MUMTAZ (tears flowing down her cheek, she almost whispers to herself): And my pale waif of a son, my Aurangzeb? How was I to know that he’d fulfil his destiny as a mass murderer too?

SHAH JEHAN: If Allah gave me another chance, my precious, I would much prefer to be known as the emperor who lit lamps in the lives of ordinary people, the people who milled around the Agra bazaar or in the shadow of our great Jama Masjid in Shahjehanabad, than to live on as the builder of the Taj Mahal and the killer of whole legions.

MUMTAZ: And I, my love, would have regarded that as a greater tribute to my memory!

SHAH JEHAN: This is what I want to tell those numbskulls down there, those dolts who only know how to make war, not peace. ‘Learn from me,’ I want to tell them, ‘Gaze on the Taj, that monument to death, by all means, but remember it’s in your hands to build the monument to life.’

MUMTAZ (getting all fired up):Yes, and I would like to tell them ... what’s the name of that new movie running in Firdaus Plaza? Yes, I would like to tell them, ‘Love ke liye kuch bhi karega’.

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