My name is Panipat. Whether Panipat was my hometown or I was born there, I do not know. I do not even know when I was born or to whom. What I do know is that I was sold in the slave market, bought by someone from the palace and raised as one among hundreds of eunuchs. Later on, I was appointed to the service of the palace, where I bore witness to the rise and fall of three great emperors. Now, I am the head of the eunuchs in the palace.
For the palace-dwellers and the retinue – in the eyes of men – I am unwanted flesh, a hijra, a eunuch – both an auspicious and inauspicious creature. For the women in the zenana, I am nature’s betrayal, a drop that should have coagulated into a female but which, instead, fell down as a male from the climactic peak of creation. This is the reason behind their pity and concern for me.
But I am neither. I don’t have any gender. Do I possess the femininity of a male body or the masculinity of a female body? I don’t know. Just as Time has passed through me, I have passed through Time – from Emperor Akbar’s reign till Shah Jahan’s. May Allah forgive me for this vanity but I am above and beyond Time. I am an unsolvable puzzle – just like God. However, people count me as a male. Don’t they worship Allah the Supreme Being with immeasurable grace as a male? Is that why Jahanara addresses me as a male? When others treat me like an inanimate object, worse than they would treat their pets, it is she who treats me like a human being. She is my Begum Sahiba – the most glorious of all princesses.
It is still fresh in my memory – the moment in which I greeted her as “Begum Sahiba” and the radiance the words called forth on her face.
They were locked inside destiny’s prison then: the present emperor was Prince Khurram, who was yet to become Emperor Shah Jahan. Empress Mumtaz Mahal was just Arjumand Banu Begum. They, who should have been emperor and empress were trapped in destiny’s prison – the Nizam Shahi of the Deccan territory. Destiny had a name: Noor Mahal – the light of the palace. Emperor Jahangir’s wife and Shah Jahan’s stepmother. What an irony! To call the darkness of the palace by that name – to call a new moon the full moon. Jahanara never referred to the empress using that name. “Serpent!” she would say, disgustedly. She would pounce on me whenever I hesitantly said, “She can be cruel. But she is your grandmother. Your Abba’s mother. You shouldn’t call her that.”
“My grandmother? She’s just a stepmother to Abba – that’s all. To me, she is a venomous serpent. I hate her.”
Not just I, but the whole world hates her. But no one dares to express their hatred, for everyone is afraid of her, of her powers. She could be Noor Mahal the Empress to them, but to me, she is a venomous serpent that coils around me every night, stings and pours venom into my thoughts and dreams.’
When she said this, Jahanara’s face would turn red as blood. Her eyes would widen. Her plump cheeks would stiffen. In fact, it was her face that resembled the hood of an enraged serpent, then.
I knew the reason for Jahanara’s fury. Three years ago, Empress Noor Mahal had taken her elder brother Dara and her younger brother Aurangzeb to Delhi as hostages. They were children then: Dara was ten and Aurangzeb was seven. It was Noor Mahal’s decree in Jahangir’s name. She had accused her stepson Prince Khurram of plotting a revolt against the emperor, spreading the rumour throughout the empire. But everyone knew that it was not the truth. Even the emperor himself knew it. However, he could not openly defy the empress. Perhaps he was unable to even make sense of it. None but Noor Mahal had access to his mind. She pushed him to such a state, adding a cruelly excessive amount of opium to his drinks, ignoring the warnings of the royal physicians. Emperor Jahangir blindly trusted his wife. She had successfully muddied his mind with her baseless hatred for Shah Jahan. So Emperor Jahangir too began to hate Shah Jahan without any reason. He sent military forces to capture his unruly son and teach him a lesson.
Two conditions were put forth for Shah Jahan to be forgiven for his treason against the empire and the emperor. The first condition was that the Deccan territory, under Prince Khurram at the time, be immediately handed over to the emperor’s royal secretary; and the second condition was that Khurram’s two sons be sent to the Delhi durbar as hostages. The second condition seemed harmless. It was good for the grandchildren to grow up under their grandfather’s care – away from the merciless heat of the Deccan plateau. However, Khurram was able to see through the first condition – Noor Mahal’s covert tricks, her conspiracy to usurp his right to the throne after Jahangir, would insidiously pave a path to the throne for his half-brother Shahryar, Noor Mahal’s own son, who was the emperor’s royal secretary at the time. Khurram had no choice but to give in. And so he did.
Excerpted with permission from Jahanara: A Novel, Sukumaran, translated from the Tamil by Kalaivani Karunakaran, Eka/Westland.
