Sumona Banerjee

Beautiful, astute and charming. Rich, powerful and ruthless in the quest to get what one's heart and one's mind seek. Marriage made in heaven and therefore smooth sailing guaranteed? Just read the debut novel by Indu Sundaresan, The Twentieth Wife, focusing on the romance between Prince Salim aka Emperor Jahangir Mehrunissa aka Nur Jahan, his Empress and virtually the last wife he ever went for. Mehrunissa, Sun among Women, rightly named, is a daughter of Persian refugees,Ghias Beg and Asmat Begum. Though of good stock, they are forced to first flee from their motherland to India along with their older children and later abandon Mehrunissa or Nisa,as they are too impoverished to feed her. Fate however decrees that she is saved and brought back not just to her family but also to the Imperial Court where she catches the attention of the Padshah Begum, Ruqayya, the chief queen of Emperor Akbar. As a reader of the twenty-first century, one finds hard to believe that an eight year old girl, no matter how lovely, intelligent and her father's pet, should know that she is destined to be someday married to the charming, thoughtful heir-in-waiting, Salim. What one delights in, is the lushness of the descriptions of Sundaresan, be they of the zenana, the climate, the dress fashions, the court intrigues or the countryside. Thus, Nisa and with her, the reader grows in knowledge of life lived in the sixteenth century, in one of the most prominent and powerful empires. Life isn't kind to Nisa as she finds herself married to a loutish warrior, Ali Quli, who has no interest, no respect forget any love for a wife who struggles to provide him with a male child despite numerous miscarriages. Yes, she does manage to meet Prince Salim and later Emperor Jahangir on and off through machinations of her own and others, kindling a love so passionate and profound that it finds fruition only decades after being ignited. One finds oneself mesmerized by not just the beauty of Nisa but also the complex ways in which people act against one's own blood, blinded by love, ambition, hatred and greed. One wonders how normal and acceptable it was for people to be so scheming, so cruel and so biased as to act in ways reprehensible to modern sensibility. The first of the Taj Trilogy, The Twentieth Wife, ends with one clamouring for more even as character development at times, leaves much to be desired. Same goes for credibility as to the worthiness of just about everybody who seemingly got their due. All in all, a rich romantic historical fiction, blending fact and fiction, to make an arresting tale of a woman, who sought to go beyond the social mores, and achieved a unique position for herself.