Delhi (29 page)

When I told my mother about the meeting she shared both my joy and my apprehension. ‘I have heard a lot of things about this Begum Sahiba. She comes from a poor family and was given away to Nawab Rais when she was barely sixteen and he over fifty and the father of many children through his first begum. They say that her second son is not her husband’s but is of that poet fellow Parwana she had taken on as an
ustad
for some time. Nawab Rais is getting old and is often away in Delhi.’ After a pause she added; ‘
Beta
, you are old enough now to get married. I will look for a nice girl for you.’ Although I was only fifteen years old, I understood what disturbed her mind. She thought it would be a good idea if she called on Begum Sahiba to thank her and at the same time seek her advice about a suitable wife for me.

Begum Sahiba was very gracious to my mother. She gave her a silk dress and flattered her for having a son who would soon become the brightest star in the firmament. When my mother broached the subject of finding a wife for me, she replied without a pause; ‘Leave it to me. I have just the right girl for him. Would you like to see her?’ My mother protested; ‘Begum Sahiba, if you approve of her what is there for us to see or say? May your choice be blessed!’

The next day Begum Sahiba teasingly told me that she had found a wife for me. ‘She is not a houri; only a simple-minded girl, chaste as white marble. With a wife like her not a breath of scandal will ever pass your home. Her parents are not rich but we will look after the marriage expenses and provide her with a suitable dowry. You will not regret my choice.’

The father of the girl the Begum Sahiba had chosen for me was a distant relation of the begum and was employed as a caretaker in one of the Nawab’s orchards. It was only after I had married this girl, Saleema, that the Begum Sahiba’s designs became clear to me. My wife was indeed no houri: she was as thin as a bamboo rod, I could grasp her waist between my hands. Her breasts were hardly perceptible. Her front teeth stuck out even when her mouth was shut; when she spoke you could see her gums as well. She had no choice except to be chaste as white marble; but her being my wife tempted me to take the path of infidelity.

Begum Sahiba was a designing, masterful woman who had her way in everything. In old Nawab Rais she had the husband she wanted; with the singing rhymester who passed for a poet, she had a part-time lover she wanted. Her taste for poetry was determined by the applause a poet received and not its real worth. Since Meer Taqi’s star was in the ascendant, she was determined to be his patron and his mistress. She found Taqi a wife he could ignore.

I will not divulge the name of the Begum Sahiba. Of all the crimes listed in the Holy
shariat
, the worst is to betray a woman who has willingly given herself to you. I will only reveal the name I gave her because of her fair, round face, Qamarunnissa–like the full moon. She was flattered by the comparison. She had a thousand years of womanhood in her: she knew how to seduce; having seduced, how to give the man of her choice the illusion that no one else in the world mattered to her. She as willingly surrendered her soul as she surrendered her body to her lovers. For the time she was my mistress she made me feel as if I was the only God she knew and every sentence I wrote was like a
sura
of the
Quran
. She became at once my mother, mistress, nurse and companion. She could not bear to be parted from me for a moment, unable to tolerate my having any other friends save those she approved of. She swore eternal fidelity to me in this life and for lives to come. I often felt handcuffed and shackled by her and wanted to break loose; at the same time I felt the long silken tresses with which she bound me were plaited by God to fulfil man’s eternal quest for his beloved. When she discarded me like a pair of worn-out slippers, and turned her attention to yet another rhymester whose only qualification was that after I left for Delhi he became the favourite butterfly in the
mehfils
of Agra, I was shattered. This woman made me and destroyed me. That in brief is the life story of Meer Taqi Meer, the poet and the lover.

*

I have already narrated how I came to be invited to Nawab Rais’s
haveli
and was appointed tutor to his sons. Begum Sahiba was always present during the lessons. While I taught the boys, her eyes rested on me. After the lessons were over, she insisted on my reciting whatever I had written the previous night. She praised every line and when I recited the
qita
she would exclaim
Subhan Allah
! then take the paper on which I had written the verse out of my hands and press it against her bosom. She would give me her own compositions. They were poor poetry but quite clearly addressed to me. I praised them, made suggestions on how to improve the rhyme and metre and at times took the paper from her hand and pressed it against my forehead. She gave me my midday meal. When I returned home in the evening, I would find she had sent
biryani
and other delicacies for the family. Thus she made me feel the most important man in the Mughal empire. Later in the night when I took my skin-and-bone wife to bed I would fantasize about the Begum’s broad hips heaving upwards to receive me.

Once Begum Sahiba made up her mind to get something she spun a web of intrigue that ensnared everyone concerned. She was the master puppeteer with all the strings in her fingers; they the puppets to act out her commands. From our exchange of verses she had assured herself that I was a willing victim. She then turned her wiles on her husband. She persuaded him that for his own future he should visit Delhi and find out what truth there was in the rumours that the Persian Nadir Shah was planning to invade India. At the same time she asked him to persuade Nawab Samsamuddaulah, the royal paymaster, who was the most powerful man in Delhi, to present me to the emperor. Who would suspect this strategy: if she desired me why would she want to send me away from Agra? Her husband not only agreed to both her proposals but also pressed me to stay in his
haveli
while he was away so that there was a reliable man to look after his household and his sons’ education was not interrupted.

Soon after Nawab Rais left for Delhi with his retinue of horsemen the living arrangements in the
haveli
were reorganized. The boys were shifted to their father’s bedchamber and their room was given to me. Between the two rooms was Begum Sahiba’s own retiring-room.

She did not believe in wasting precious moments which she knew would not last long. Her duplicity was as astounding as her audacity. In the morning she bade a tearful farewell to her old husband; in the afternoon she busied herself with having the hair shaved off her legs, armpits and privates and her body massaged with perfumed oil. I discovered all this an hour after the evening repast when the children were asleep and the servants had retired to their quarters. She came to me as if she was coming to the bed of her husband awaiting her. Like people long married we did not waste time exchanging words of love. (In any case words that lovers exchange before they engage in love-making had been exchanged in the poems that we had passed to each other and in the dialogue our eyes had carried on since the first day they had met). Without bothering to blow out the lamp, she shed her clothes, stripped mine off my body and put her arms around me. We drank honey out of each other’s mouths till we could drink no more. She pushed me quietly on the bed and spread herself over me. Her thighs were moist as dew on a rose-bud on a summer morning. She pressed her face into mine till my teeth hurt. After a while she began to moan, and with a shudder that shook her entire frame, collapsed drenched in sweat. Such ecstasy I had never known; nor can I put it into words.

When she tried to get up I held her down by her buttocks and did not let her move. She was of riper years and richer experience; I was younger and had more lust. She gave me a smile of approval and as a gesture of subservience turned over to let me play the master. I bit her all over her face and neck and bosom and with my tongue ravished her ears. This time she climaxed many times before I spent myself. We rested for half-an-hour and resumed the game of love. So it went on throughout the night. I do not know when it ended or when she slipped out of my room to retire to her chamber. When I woke my eyelids seemed as if they had been stuck together with glue. Instead of feeling tired I felt more refreshed. Instead of feeling guilty of having betrayed her husband’s trust or having been unfaithful to my wife, I felt that Allah had blessed this union of minds and bodies; it was not profane but divine love.

I went down to the courtyard and found Begum Sahiba seated on a
moorha
with two maidservants massaging her feet. The floor was littered with the Nawab’s pouter pigeons billing and cooing. As I made my
adaab
she smiled and said: ‘I trust our poet-friend had a restful night,’ and ordered one of her maids to serve me breakfast. She read out a letter her husband had sent her from Sikandra where he had camped for the night and informed me that she had sent a tray of dry fruit to my wife.

She planned our lives as it suited her. The money she gave me to teach her sons was more than my wife and mother had ever seen. ‘Aren’t my sons also your sons?’ she asked my wife. ‘You will be putting us in an eternal debt of gratitude if you allow your husband to teach them. What am I offering in return except a pittance barely enough to chew
betel-
leaf!’ Through money and gifts she kept my wife and mother happy. To her husband she wrote that she had prevailed upon me not to take on any other work except teaching the children.

With me she was very truthful. She lied to the rest of the world but never to me. She told me of her marriage to Rais Mian who had already had children of his own. All he needed was someone to look after him and his affairs. This she did and left him with plenty of time to exercise his horses and train his pigeons. Once every few months, when roused by drink, he had sex with her. To restore his self-esteem she pretended to be worn out by his passionate love-making. She even confessed her liaison with Parwana and what trouble she had had to abort the foetus she had conceived from him. There was nothing left unsaid between us. Such was the intimacy she created that I felt guilty when I approached my wife. The Begum Sahiba persuaded me that while it was necessary for our relationship for her to keep up a pretence of loving her husband there was no need for me to consort with my wife. And because the poor thing was too modest to make demands on me she did not protest. She believed that all my energies were consumed in writing poetry and teaching.

I spent many blissful days in the Begum’s company. It was in her tightly-clad, firm body that I learnt the true meaning of life. We spent long hours fulfilling the yearnings of our hearts and bodies hoping thereby that our hunger for each other would be forever satiated. But that was not to be: each time we were left to ourselves it seemed like the first time. We would pass our nights lying naked in each other’s arms, but no sooner came the dawn, than, like a newly-wedded bride, she would coyly cover her face. I was overcome with the desire to find out the mystery that lay behind her veil. The more I saw of her the more my passion for her body grew. Her beauty shone like a pearl in limpid water. Whenever the moonlight of her radiance spread, real moonlight appeared no better than a spider’s web:

A simmering fire burns our hearts away;

We sink and my heart in depth of agony lies;

As with the dawn the taper of the lamp

Laps up the last drops of oil and dies.

I became indifferent to the world, my mother, my wife and child. My relatives set their faces against me for neglecting my family; but what greater joy than to be tormented for the sake of love!

Nawab Rais returned from Delhi after a month. By then I had come to assume that he meant nothing to her and she would contrive to send him away on some other mission. I was taken aback by the show of affection she put up to welcome him and the formality with which she addressed me in his presence. She dressed herself in her best silks, darkened her eyes with
kohl
, reddened her lips with
missi
and showed great eagerness to be left alone with him. No sooner had we partaken of the midday meal than she announced, ‘After his arduous journey Nawab Sahib needs to rest.’ She followed her old man into their private apartment. I was left alone, holding my pen.

I could not sort out the confusion in my mind. After the intimacies we had enjoyed it seemed scarcely possible that either of us could bear anyone else’s touch. I could not understand the shameless wantonness she displayed in wanting to be with her husband. Even more upsetting to me was her appearance after she came out of her room late in the afternoon: her hair was dishevelled and
kohl
was spattered on her cheeks. It was as if she wanted everyone to know what she had been up to. While I sulked she made solicitous enquiries about my comfort. In the presence of her husband she told me that she had sent a note to my wife that I had been detained in the
haveli
on important business. ‘My husband will tell you of what transpired between him and Nawab Samsamuddaulah,’ she said. Her husband said: ‘Yes, I have to return to Delhi as soon as I can as there are rumours afloat of a Persian invasion. If they are true we have to gird our swords to our loins; if they are not true I will be back home within the month. Meanwhile you will stay here and look after the ladies.’ The Begum Sahiba pleaded: ‘Please! Please! I swear by the hair on your head if you do not accede to our entreaties, we will never speak to you again.’ Though I was very angry I was left with little choice and agreed to stay. That evening a large number of Agra citizens came to call on Nawab Rais to enquire about his health and get news of Delhi. He was very discreet in his replies and quickly changed the subject: ‘Don’t bother about what they say in Delhi; you must stay to share our dry bread and
dal
and listen to Taqi Sahib. If you have not heard Meer Sahib’s
kalaam
you have heard nothing.’