Shadow Princess (51 page)

1. Feast on an Indian meal, either meeting at a restaurant or having each member bring a different dish. Enhance the atmosphere by eating apples, sipping chai tea (“fragrant with cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg”), and savoring chicken biryani like the characters do in the book. Check out
www.recipesindian.com
.

2. Visit
www.InduSundaresan.com
to find out more about the author and her other books in the “Taj Mahal Trilogy,” read the back story behind
Shadow Princess,
and view a family tree outlining the major players in the novels.

The Luminous Tomb in the Taj Mahal is constructed from white marble. What is the significance of the color white in Indian culture? What about red and green, the signature colors of Jahanara and Roshanara?

White is actually the color of mourning in most of India for both Hindus and Muslims. Red is the color of weddings, clothing, decorations, and jewelry, so also now a lot of green.

As for the Taj Mahal (the mausoleum itself), it’s almost entirely constructed from striated white marble. I think Emperor Shah Jahan was inspired by the tomb (Itimad-Ud-Daulah’s tomb) that still stands today across the River Yamuna from the Taj. This was the mausoleum Mehrunnisa constructed for her father circa 1628 when she was still Empress, and it’s the first important example of an all-white marble tomb in the reign of the Mughals. All other tombs until then—Emperor Akbar’s tomb in Sikandra; Emperor Humayun’s tomb in Delhi—were made largely of the red sandstone found plentifully in quarries near Agra and Fatehpur Sikri. White marble was mostly used for inlay.

The novel includes fascinating passages about the creation of the Taj Mahal. What can you tell us about your visits to the Taj Mahal? What was it about the majestic monument that made the greatest impression on you?

There’s that moment when I step into the cavernous hallway of the Great Gate, the main entrance to the tomb, and step out onto the platform that leads into the gardens of the Taj, that is always magical. Here, in moving from the darkness to the light, I’m confronted with this “traditional” view of the Taj—the long reflecting pool along the pathway, the square pool that halves this long pool, the red sandstone platform that houses the white marble mausoleum in the center.

When I visit the Taj Mahal, I roam the entire complex—the two red sandstone buildings, the mosque to the left (west), and the assembly hall to the right (east) that flank the marble mausoleum; the Great Gate itself, which people often pass through quickly, eager for their first sight of the Taj; the pavilions that mark the four corners of the complex, even the space in front of the riverfront terrace where Mumtaz Mahal is said to have been buried briefly until the terrace and the subterranean rooms under the mausoleum were completed.

I’ve been to the river’s bank and seen the back of the Taj (the same view you see on the
Shadow Princess
cover); I’ve roamed through the Jilaukhana, the forecourt to the tomb, which is where a visitor can buy tickets and enter through before getting to the Great Gate.

In researching every structure in the Taj’s mammoth complex, I’ve become familiar with each of these buildings; I know their history, their purpose, their original intent.

You once said in an interview that Indian people have been hearing stories about the great noblewomen of the Mughal Empire all their lives. How have Western readers reacted to your novels
The Twentieth Wife
and
The Feast of Roses
? For those who have yet to read
Shadow Princess
, what would you like to tell them about Jahanara?

From people who are unfamiliar with India’s history, especially the Mughal period, I hear stories of how they welcome this glimpse into a world that’s unfamiliar to them, and more important, how they can relate to a woman who lived in seventeenth-century India. Readers admire Mehrunnisa’s ambition, even her cunning, and her capacity for loving and being caring—feelings and thoughts that are contemporary, I think, to any generation. She was a woman hidden behind a veil, who had enormous power and exercised that power to the best of her abilities.

Jahanara, in
Shadow Princess,
inherits a similar power, but unlike Mehrunnisa she doesn’t have to fight for it. And yet, there are plenty of obstacles in her way. Beloved as she is of her father, immensely rich from inheriting her mother’s income, she still has to fight to put her brother Dara on the throne, and engage in a rivalry with her sister.

The interesting thing about Mehrunnisa and Jahanara is that they were both powerful women—one (in a more traditional role) in her husband Emperor Jahangir’s harem, the other (more unconventionally) in her father’s harem. They both had the devotion of the male principal, but even after writing these three novels of the trilogy I still wonder—was the wife more beloved than the daughter? Or the other way around?

You mention in the Afterword that you came across references to Jahanara while doing research for a previous novel. What was it about the princess that captured your interest? Did you know immediately that she would be the focus of one of your novels?

The initial mentions of Jahanara and Roshanara came when I was reading (for
The Twentieth Wife
and
The Feast of Roses
) Niccolao Manucci’s travelogue. (For those of you interested, the full reference is in the bibliography in
Shadow Princess
.)

This is what I remember reading: Jahanara was a mere seventeen when her mother died, and she became powerful almost immediately after Mumtaz’s death; she was never allowed to marry; she and Roshanara smuggled men into the harem for their pleasure; and they both dabbled in politics and supported different brothers as their father’s successors.

There was enough, in these little bits of information, to intrigue me and I knew then that they would be part of a future novel; it hadn’t taken shape in my mind fully, that would only come later, after I had finished
The Splendor of Silence
and
In the Convent of Little Flowers
. At the time, I read, stored away the information, and went on to write something else.

June 1817

T
he midday sun leaned over to place its fiery kiss upon the Shalimar Gardens in Lahore, four and a half miles east of the fort and walled city. The blazing light wavered into a haze around the almond, guava, and mango trees, and except under the trees where it could not penetrate, all shadows leached into the blistering ground.

The Shalimar Gardens—the Abode of Pleasure—was a name taken by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan from the gardens his father had built in the valley of Kashmir. In the late 1630s, the Ravi River in Lahore flooded its banks. Angry waters swamped and carved out new geographical features, shifting vast quantities of mud from one place to another, leaving acclivities and declivities where none had existed before. One such slope in the land was born after this flood. So it was here Emperor Shah Jahan ordered the garden to be built in three terraces that descended from the south to the north.

At high noon on this day of June 1817, two young men tarried in the central platform of the pool in the middle terrace.

They were both bareheaded, their chests bare also. Each wore only a
kispet
—long, tight shorts of buffalo hide leather, which covered them from their waists down, the ends rucked up over their knees to facilitate ease of movement. The upper halves of their bodies, and their legs and feet, glistened with sesame oil, pungent and aromatic in the sear of the sun. Earlier in the morning—according to the rules of the game—they had smoothed the oil on each other. It was the first and last gesture of amity and goodwill.

For their referee, they had corralled an old gardener lounging in the deep shade of the nearby tamarind tree, a hand-rolled
beedi
wrapped in his fist, smoke coiling out from between his fingers.

“Him?” Ibrahim Khan had asked, thick eyebrows elevated in disbelief.

His sovereign had shrugged, lifting massive, muscled shoulders. “As good as anyone else, Ibrahim. We know the rules ourselves. The only other man around is Zaman, and he’s useless, as you know. Should I have to call upon one of the flowers in my
zenana
instead?”

Ibrahim grinned. “With respect, your Majesty, the women of your harem will only support you. And they’re likely to squeal or curse in horror when I defeat you. Calling on them is not conducive to an even playing field.”

A small smile flitted across Shah Shuja’s face. And when it did, it lightened his features, brought a sparkle to his gray eyes, erased the embedded lines of worry on his forehead. Made him, so Ibrahim thought, more like the deeply powerful man he had known all of his life.

A tiny spear of ache stabbed Ibrahim’s heart. They were far removed from what they had once been. Shuja had been born of a king—Shah Timur Durrani—whose father had established the Afghan Empire in the name of the Durrani dynasty. Timur had had many sons, of many wives, as was the established custom of the time. There was no law of
primogeniture—the eldest son did not automatically inherit the throne. Nor was he gifted with quiescent brothers willing to live out their lives as governors of districts or provinces. At Timur’s death, the throne had changed hands four times, one son or the other claiming it for his own for a brief while, driven from it when another had amassed enough of a threatening army. And so Shuja had lost his kingdom to his half brother Shah Mahmud.

Shah Shuja put a hand on Ibrahim’s shoulder. “First, you will not defeat me. How is that even possible?” When the younger man opened his mouth to protest, he stilled the words with a wave. “It’s true. I might be a little older, Ibrahim, and that only means I’ve been wrestling longer than you have. And second, my wives dote upon you. Although”—and he grinned again, a wicked gleam in his eye—“you
will
not win, they will minister to your injuries with enough of a fuss to make you happy.”

Ibrahim bowed his head. “We’ll see, your Majesty.”

Every now and then, Shuja and Ibrahim indulged themselves in the games and play of their childhood. There was so little else for them to do at Lahore in the Shalimar Gardens, a place where they had spent the last three years as “guests” of the wily Maharajah Ranjit Singh. This wrestling match was one such, conjured up late the night before, when the last cup of wine had been drunk, when the moon had skated downward into the dark sky, when the
nautch
girls had slunk away, and they had both been lying on their divans, twitchy with pent-up energy. What to do on the morrow? How to spend their time? Each day was like the others, the same views, the same fountains, the same watch upon the sun and the moon—to mark interminable time—gliding over that limited arc of sky above the gardens.

The gardener had still been there last night, ensconced in a hollow in the trunk of the tamarind when they had both sprung up, vigorous, shouting for him to come to them.