A Teardrop on the Cheek of Time: The Story of the Taj Mahal Read Online Free

While Shah Jahan consolidated his position in the south, the emperor attended in Agra ‘royal entertainments’, organized by Nur and her brother, Mumtaz’s father, at which they placed ‘many delicate gems and wonders’ before him. Jahangir was sufficiently recovered from the painful breathing problems that had afflicted him in Kashmir to take a gleeful pleasure in such things. He was also well enough to resume his study of the curiosities of nature, writing of the ‘exceeding strange’ appearance of a zebra and of the arrival at court of a hermaphrodite eunuch from Bengal.
    Far away in the monsoon heat of the Deccan, in June 1621, Mumtaz gave birth to her eighth child, a daughter named Sorayya Bano. This should have been a happy time, but news from the distant imperial court was making Shah Jahan increasingly uneasy. He learned that, shortly before the birth of his new daughter, Shahriyar and Ladli had been married in Agra. A resplendent ‘feast of joy’ had been held in Itimad-ud-daula’s house, during which Jahangir, under Nur’s approving eye, had heaped honours on his youngest son. Even more disturbingly, messengers arrived with the news that Jahangir was again ill – a serious asthma attack had left him gasping for breath. As ‘the violence of the malady increased’ he dosed himself with goat’s and camel’s milk and, when that failed, turned in despair to alcohol, admitting frankly that ‘as I found relief in drinking, contrary to my habit, I resorted to it in the daytime, and by degrees I carried it to excess’. Unsurprisingly, as the weather grew hotter his condition worsened. An anxious Nur took charge and ‘exerted herself to reduce the quantity of my potations and to provide me with suitable and soothing preparations … She gradually reduced the quantity of wine I took, and guarded me against unsuitable food and improper things.’
    The usually inebriated Parvez had rushed to his only slightly less drunken father’s bedside to be commended as a ‘kind and dutiful son’, but Shah Jahan and Mumtaz, so many miles away in the Deccan, could do little but wait anxiously. At the imperial court there was soon further family drama. First, Nur’s mother, Mumtaz’s grandmother, the inventor of fragrant attar of roses, became ill and died. Then, three months later, as Jahangir and the grieving Nur were progressing northwards to the cooler climes that the emperor hoped would improve his health, Itimad-ud-daula, his ‘pillar of government’, also fell sick. The old man had been devastated by the loss of his wife. Jahangir wrote how ‘he cared no longer for himself, but melted away from day to day’. Moved by Nur’s agitation, which ‘I could not bear’, Jahangir kept vigil with her while his elderly courtier slipped in and out of consciousness at ‘the hour of his death agony’. In January 1622, forty-four years after shepherding his family on their dangerous journey from Persia, Itimad-ud-daula died.
    Jahangir regretted the loss of such ‘a wise and perfect Vizier, and a learned and affectionate companion’. Nur mourned not only a beloved father but also her mentor. She would find consolation in planning a white marble tomb to commemorate him in Agra but for the moment was inconsolable. Mumtaz’s reaction to the death of her grandparents is not recorded, but she too must have been saddened as well as apprehensive about how Nur would act without the restraining influence of the head of the family. Itimad-ud-daula had been the only person capable of moderating Nur’s ambitions and of balancing the overall interests of his family. Without him Mumtaz’s future, and that of her husband and children, was less secure.
    A week after the passing of Itimad-ud-daula, news broke of yet another – this time very unexpected – death. A simple entry in the convalescent Jahangir’s diary reads: ‘A letter from Khurram [Shah Jahan] informed me that Khusrau had died of colic.’ He had apparently