The Taj Conspiracy (6 page)

Mehrunisa disliked the policeman’s tone that pitched her simultaneously as Arun’s accomplice and adversary. She shrugged, her mouth a straight line. ‘Does that mean you’ve ruled out the possibility that it could be the murderer’s doing?’

‘The murderer was a violent man who beat the supervisor black and blue. He doesn’t strike me as the type who’d hang around sketching clues for us.’

‘But why wouldn’t Arun write the murderer’s name, if he had a chance?’

‘Maybe he didn’t know his real name. How many people do you know who are called Aurangzeb? Maybe a terrorist was on a recce of the monument, maybe the recce went wrong...’ he muttered. ‘So, what do the clues mean?’

‘They mean as much to me as they do to you.’

‘The eye on the forehead implies a calamity, because—?’ Raghav paused with a questioning look at Mehrunisa.

‘Because the eye sketched on the forehead was open. Shiva’s third eye is usually closed; its opening means destruction, a calamity.’

‘Okay,’ Raghav said. ‘The slashed wrist?’

‘I keep returning to it,’ Mehrunisa said thoughtfully, ‘and what is significant is that Arun chose the
right
hand. Why? The right hand is regarded as the pure hand, the hand used to eat, to make a religious offerings, etcetera. Maybe, then, cutting off the right hand, notionally, would be a desecration? A desecration of something considered pure?’

The SSP had been listening with narrowed eyes. ‘So the clue is implying that something will desecrate the Taj Mahal?’

As they entered the mausoleum, the two constables took guard outside. Lord Curzon’s lamp cast its yellow light over the cenotaphs. SSP Raghav flashed his torch at the lamp and said, ‘That, I guess, is the chirag.’ His loud voice echoed in the vaulted dome, compounded by the still air that had lain undisturbed overnight. He was referring to the proverb Arun, presumably, had scrawled on the floor: Chirag tale andhera.

Now the SSP swivelled the torchlight towards the cenotaphs: ‘
That,
we can assume, is the darkness beneath the lamp.’

‘If you take it literally,’ Mehrunisa said.

SSP Raghav narrowed his eyes. ‘Meaning?’

‘Well, the proverb is generally understood to mean that something is awry where it should not be.’

Abruptly, the SSP barked, ‘How much Indian blood is in you?’

‘Half,’ Mehrunisa said. ‘My father is Indian.’

‘Mother?’

‘Persian.’

The SSP regarded her darkly as he pondered this revelation.

‘What do you think is awry with the Taj Mahal?’ He pointed his torch at the cenotaphs. When Mehrunisa looked puzzled, he added, ‘If the supervisor hinted something was wrong, he was obviously alluding to this place, right? So, what is out of place here?’

‘How would I know?’ Mehrunisa shrugged her shoulders in helplessness. Yet, even as she said that something struck her: the SSP’s usage of ‘out of place here’. The one thing that was out of place was the second cenotaph, Shah Jahan’s. At the end of his reign, the emperor was imprisoned by his son Aurangzeb and placed under house arrest in Agra Fort where he spent the rest of his life contemplating the Taj Mahal from a window. On his death, Aurangzeb—out of pity, remorse, or piety— ultimately united Shah Jahan with his beloved Mumtaz by placing his tomb adjacent to his wife’s. However, that charitable act forever spoiled the mausoleum’s famed symmetry.

Mehrunisa opened the low gate and let herself into the octagonal chamber. The SSP followed, handing her his torch, the weak light of a winter day proving insufficient.

Mehrunisa first shone the torch on Shah Jahan’s cenotaph, to the west of Mumtaz’s. Bigger than his wife’s, it reflected the same elements: a larger casket on an elevated base decorated with splendid lapidary and handsome calligraphy. Her eyes skimmed over the cenotaph, the sheer beauty of it once again entrancing her. On the casket’s lid was a sculpture of a small pen box, a traditional Mughal funerary icon for a man’s casket. On Mumtaz’s cenotaph a writing tablet was similarly sculpted, the traditional icon for a woman.

As a teenager, in the summer months of tutorship under Professor Kaul, Mehrunisa had burnished her knowledge of the Taj Mahal. It had started off as plain curiosity. However, her evident enthusiasm for the task and organised approach had prompted Kaul to take her on as an assistant as he had embarked on an ambitious project: the first full documentation of the Taj Mahal. The result was his authoritative work titled,
The Taj
.

‘Well?’ the SSP prodded.

‘Nothing here.’

‘Perhaps the other one?’ SSP Raghav indicated Mumtaz’s cenotaph.

‘The one out of symmetry is Shah Jahan’s.’

‘So you say,’ he acknowledged, ‘but in popular wisdom, it is the
man
who gets the central place. Here, rather unconventionally, it is the woman. Since we are examining the asymmetry of things, we should look at the other one too.’

Mehrunisa shrugged—the SSP was spouting folk wisdom, so it was no use pointing out to him that the tomb owed its existence to the memory of a
woman
—and turned her attention to Mumtaz’s cenotaph, placed at the chamber’s centre.

On a rectangular marble base, about 1.5 metres by 2.5 metres, was the oblong marble casket. Once again, the base and casket were inlaid as though embroidered with golden, silver and multicoloured metal threads of zardosi, an ancient Persian art form successfully transplanted to India. With a sigh Mehrunisa thought of her current project on Indo-Persian linkages. Her godfather was hopeful she would be able to create a book out of it; Mehrunisa’s goal though was more personal. Arun had been so helpful with the project—now, he was dead and she was embroiled in the investigation of his murder....

She returned to her examination. The base was decorated with registers of interlacing hanging flowers, the top and sides inscribed with Quranic verses. The common theme of the verses, Mehrunisa knew from her earlier study, was to comfort the soul of Mumtaz with the prospect of paradise. The programme began at the north (head) end. At the south (foot) end, in the lowest element of the plinth was the epitaph:
The illumined grave of Arjumand Banu Begum, entitled Mumtaz Mahal, who died in the year 1040 (AD 1631)
. Satisfied, Mehrunisa returned the torch to the SSP when something niggled at her. Surely not! She grabbed the torch back.

The geometric floor patterns and the floral screen motifs threw shadows on the cenotaphs. Mehrunisa’s gaze cut through those as she scrutinised the lettering in the epitaph. She was fluent in both the languages used: the Quranic verses in Arabic and the epitaph in Persian, the official language of the Mughal Empire. Besides, the flowing lines of the calligraphy had become all too familiar to her over past visits.

Something was horribly wrong...

SSP Raghav heard Mehrunisa’s slight gasp. ‘What is it?’ he asked urgently. ‘What do you see?’

Mehrunisa raised her left hand, a request for silence, and continued to peer at the marble. A minute back when she had read the inscription on the south side she had failed to notice the change. She shut her eyes, blinked several times, then focused on the inscription, even as memory raced ahead: The illumined grave of Arjumand Banu Begum, entitled Mumtaz Mahal, who died in the year 1040.

Except, that was what it
should
say...

She knew the script by heart. Mumtaz’s epitaph was styled in naskh—as opposed to the sulus script used for Shah Jahan’s epitaph. Naskh was a simpler script than sulus, which was regarded as the mother of the cursive styles of writing. It was the predominant calligraphic style for epigraphs in the seventeenth century. The Quranic verses, however, on the top and sides of the cenotaph were written in sulus.

She bent closer, willing the discrepancy to vanish. No. Crouching a half-foot from the cenotaph she fingered the calligraphy, something she strictly abstained from usually, and shone the torch on her finger. It was white dust.

‘What!’ the SSP growled. ‘What is so fascinating?’

Mehrunisa heard the curt rebuke but her mind was in turbulence. There
was
no mistake. Glancing at him she said slowly. ‘The epitaph, it has been ... altered.’

‘Altered? You mean tampered with? In what way?’

Mehrunisa’s tongue peeped out to touch her upper lip as she collected her thoughts. ‘The inscription here,’ she pointed at the area of scrutiny, ‘says,
Marqad Masnooee Arjumand Banu Begum Mukhatib bah Mumtaz Mahal Tanifiyat ferr sanh 1040 Hijri
.’

‘Wait a minute,’ said the SSP thrusting his right hand forward. ‘You mean to say you can read all this?’ His hand swivelled in circles over the cenotaphs. ‘I have been told there are parts in Arabic and parts in Farsi, Persian that is.’ He scrutinised her, his left eyebrow quizzically aloft.

It was a question she was used to; people were surprised that she could speak Arabic and Persian. To their minds, the two were probably as different as Swahili and French—the answer, therefore, confounded them further. ‘I do—read and speak both languages,’ she said in a firm-gentle voice. ‘Anyway, the Persian script uses all the letters of the Arabic script, plus four.’

The SSP looked stunned. ‘You mean, mostly, the scripts are the same?’

Mehrunisa nodded.

He shook his head in wonder. ‘Okay. So, you said, something-something Banu Begum ... so what about it?’

Mehrunisa took a deep breath. This would take some explaining. ‘It should say
Marqad Munavvar Arjumand Banu Begum Mukhatib bah Mumtaz Mahal Tanifiyat ferr sanh 1040 Hijri
.’

‘
Should
say?’ SSP Raghav blinked hard. ‘Didn’t you say the same thing both times?’

Mehrunisa shook her head and motioned him to examine the south-end epitaph on Mumtaz’s cenotaph. Pointing to a particular word she said, ‘
Masnooee
. Persian for counterfeit. Fabricated. False.’

‘What is counterfeit?’

‘The epitaph should read, “The illumined grave of Arjumand Banu Begum, entitled Mumtaz Mahal, who died in the year 1040”. Except now it reads, “The counterfeit grave of Arjumand Banu Begum, entitled Mumtaz Mahal, who died in the year 1040”. In Persian, “marqad munavvar” is the illumined grave—that has been switched to “marqad masnooee”, the counterfeit grave. Now you see?’

SSP Raghav clucked in exasperation. ‘But this
is
a false grave. The actual one, for both Mumtaz and Shah Jahan, is in the lower tomb chamber. That is a well-known fact. And until some years back, tourists could descend and view it for themselves.’ He regarded her now. ‘So what’s the big deal?’

Mehrunisa tried to stay calm. Perhaps she was mistaken. Perhaps it was all a figment of her imagination. She cast a downward glance at the epitaph. In the aureole of the torchlight, the alteration seemed to glare at her.

‘Sure, the upper cenotaphs are false graves, as widely known. But the epitaph has never stated that it is a
counterfeit
grave. It calls it the
illumined
grave. This entire mausoleum,’ Mehrunisa’s gesture took in its sweep the cenotaphs, the screen, the vaulted dome, ‘is built to commemorate the death of Mumtaz Mahal. Calling it “masnooee” is akin to blasphemy.’

‘But this ... this ...’ the SSP pointed to the epitaph, ‘was written three hundred and fifty years back. How can it be different now? Surely, you are mistaken!’

‘No. The word “munavvar” has been switched to “masnooee”. It is minute—it takes little to change it from one word to the other. But ...’

The SSP looked unimpressed. ‘Look, perhaps we should call in a Taj attendant and enquire discreetly. There has to be an error—’

‘No,’ Mehrunisa held up her hands, ‘please, listen. This could be sensitive. Let me examine the rest of the cenotaph.’ Loath to connect the two, yet desperate to underline the criticality of the situation, she said, ‘Just four days back, the supervisor was found murdered here, right at this spot.’

SSP Raghav gave her a long, hard look. ‘Chirag tale andhera.’

Mehrunisa bit her lip. ‘I don’t know. But what I have stumbled upon needs closer examination.’

The SSP exhaled his fury. Clearly this thing, whatever it was, was not going away. ‘Go on,’ he said, rolling back his shoulders. ‘Read ahead.’

Mehrunisa returned to scrutinising the calligraphy on the tomb as SSP Raghav watched. She had circled around the tomb and was now at the head, the north end. Hunched over, she read the invocation:
He is the everlasting. He is sufficient
. Following that was a line from the Quran—
God is He, besides whom there is no God. He knoweth
what is concealed and what is manifest
. He is merciful and compassionate
.

At the same moment her heart snowballed into her chest. She stared at it, for there, in front of her eyes, unmistakably, specific words in the passage had been made bold.

‘What do you see now?’ SSP Raghav asked anxiously.

Mehrunisa pointed to the part of the Quranic verse that had been highlighted, and stood in bold relief from the rest. She rubbed a finger against it and examined the blackish hue on her skin. ‘Several coats of black paint over the original calligraphy, which is done with jasper.’

SSP Raghav’s brows took flight above bulging eyes. ‘Nonsense! An entire mausoleum built in memory of Mumtaz Mahal, and now her own tomb questions where she lies buried!’

On Mehrunisa’s urging he peered hard at the calligraphy. He had to admit: it was beautiful, but incomprehensible. He shrugged, uncomfortable with looking ignorant and out of control. ‘So, this tampering— you are
absolutely
certain?’

Mehrunisa nodded as she dug out a digital camera from her bag. ‘There is one man whose judgement I trust more than mine. I’ll take some photographs to share with him.’

‘Your uncle, the historian?’

Mehrunisa nodded and as she began clicking pictures, the SSP contemplated aloud, ‘Why would someone do this? What was the motive behind these changes? Was it mischief? Blasphemous as it is to us, perhaps it is somebody’s idea of a joke. A stupid one, yes, but a joke.’ He looked at her for assent.

Mehrunisa pursed her lips. ‘First a murder and now these changes to three-hundred-year-old calligraphy ... no,’ she shook her head, ‘I think it’s more than that.’