Romance in the Tombs

The tombs of Mumtaz and Shah Jahan inside the Taj

“Mumtaz, my beloved, my heartthrob,” Shahjahan was in his usual romantic mood. “My most noble, magnificent, majestic, unique…” he went on until Mumtaz put her finger on his lips.

“You silly,” she chided him mockingly, “they are the 99 names of Allah the Great. Even the burning passion of your romance…” She paused a moment to think whether it was burning passion of romance or romance of burning passion. Then she continued without correcting herself anyway, “… does not permit such blasphemy.”

“Hahaha,” Shahjahan laughed merrily and said, “Four centuries. We have waited here in this cenotaph for four centuries hoping that Allah would take us from here to Jannatul Firdaus and nothing happened…”

“Except that you crept from your tomb into mine,” Mumtaz laughed.

“And we created our Firdaus here in our tombs. What greater blasphemy could we commit?”

“We pour out our feelings, ya Allah; You only hear the words.” Mumtaz became poetic.

“I wonder whether He hears anything at all,” Shahjahan sighed.

There was silence for quite a while. “We might soon lose this Firdaus,” Shahjahan said remembering how Aurangzeb, his son, was magnanimous enough to bury him near his beloved though that was not in the original plan of the Taj Mahal. Mumtaz was given the central place with no provision for another tomb in the same chamber. But Aurangzeb, the same man who had incarcerated Shahjahan for eight years for the sake of kingship, had him buried next to Mumtaz. “Aurangzeb had a heart, after all,” Shahjahan thought loud.

“Present day rulers are not a fraction as generous,” Mumtaz said. “Back-stabbers are rulers and criminals are yogis because the walls and doors are silent.” Poetry came to Mumtaz quite naturally. After all, she was of a great Persian ancestry.

“They fly on gossamer wings whose warp and woof are the bones picked from the graves of dead heroes.” Poetry is contagious and Shahjahan caught it from his beloved. “They will excavate us too from our tombs sooner than later and call us traitors and marauders.”

“But we shall wade into the river of love, my darling,” sang Mumtaz, “and find the depths that will save us, while the surface will drown them in ripples of hate.”

“Indeed love endures when everything else shall be burnt away. Power and glory will bite the dust one day.”

“There is no god but love. This is our Firdaus, my lord and my god.”

“And my goddess, my love.”