Page 275 - E-Magazine 2016-17

AURUNGZEB

T he sun was low in the sky when we
pulled up outside the mosque. The
shops lining the square hung the every-
day needs of domestic India from its
hooks and shelves. Heavy-eyed goats
moved through the thinning crowds, the
village young boys running after them.

The sound of evening gossip filled the
air as we trespassed the ordinary lives
of these men and women in rural Maha-
rashtra.

“Ha, ha, andar ja sakte hai, ladki!”

Ellora caves had left my mother and sister tired from a day in the heat, so my father and I
ventured forth into mosque. The lazy breeze in the large courtyard reassured me, my anxi-
ety of breaking unspoken rules quietening down with the sound of the local village elder-
lies guffawing under a tree, enjoying the last few minutes of daylight. We were pointed to
a metal-and-paper banner, hanging precariously from two smaller minarets.

“That’s what you’re looking for!”

We entered the smaller courtyard, shepherded gently into the white marble enclosure on
our right. The three simple white screens of marble, carved with the ‘jali’ work of the Dec-
can barely accommodated the twelve of us, shoulders pressed against each other and backs
stuck to the stone. Before us, was a mound, covered with a white cloth and held down by
make-shift paper weights of discarded marble. There were a few flowers, withered, and a
cluster of a cluster of twigs, bound by thread at the head of the mound.

‘The tomb of the mogul emperor Aurangzeb Alamgir’

This is all that is left of a man, who ruled an empire at its epoch. It is all that has been
spared by the mutiny against every thirty-one million seconds of each of those four hun-
dred years. Mere skin and fingers of his body mean nothing without the cities he built,
without his name dotted in books and on signboards pointing to streets in a world that
didn’t care to wait.

The mahgrib moans from speakers.

In a mosque tucked away in an unnamed town, lost in the ridges of the Sahyadris, maybe
he knew that there’s an inevitability we fight while the rotting of our bones reduces us to
the sparsity of this his dying wish for anonymity.

The cawing of crows and endless violet dusk in the sky above are the only witnesses of our
feet walking the earth.

We climbed back into the car and drove out, Pune waiting beyond the hills.

SROBONA GHOSH DASTIDAR XII-F