Life has its own ways of surprising you. The surprises that it brings are sometimes pleasant, other times, not. But surprised, you always are. My marriage came as a surprise to me and so did ‘she’. Our trip to Mandu came out of the blue too. Sunil Bhai told me about the place in passing and I thought, “Why not?” A late honeymoon trip. A one day trip can hardly be called a honeymoon, but one has to make the most of what he has, right?

Mandu was a forgotten city. Forgotten by time and remembered by posterity. There is something poignant in seeing a ruin. It tells us that there were people there. The echoes of their laughter, the heat of their tears and the perspiration of their desires have found solace there. I thought it would be fitting to go to a place where one of the saddest love stories had ever taken place because there is fun in contradictions. This is what romanticism is like. The boundary between laughter and tears becomes a thin one; both always seep through the curtain, turning everything into a shade of grey and sweetly wet. We first visited theRoopmati’sPavillion. It was built by the Muslim ruler Baz Bahadur for his lady love Roopmati, the singer, the beauty. Baz was her first love and the second, the ‘Narmada river’. Legend has it that she would even refuse food without her customary Narmada Darshan. So the King decided to convert one of his sentry outposts into a viewing platform. A structure was made out of sandstone and this is now the Roopmati’s pavilion.

Into another World

My Roopmati climbed the stairs and the wind caught her tresses and hurled them to me. I could almost see the princess’s dupatta catching the first rays of the sun reflected from the Narmada and I understood that there is nothing called as death. Well, there is the physical death, our body stops breathing and it starts getting smelly and all (it even happens to live humans too sometimes!), but our ideas, dreams and desires take another forms and live on and on.

The west end of the platform gives you the view of the Baz Bahadur palace, the King’s abode. We walked hand in hand to the palace and as we reached there, a gypsy started playing his flute. It was a transcending experience as the acoustic system of the palace reverberated the sound in ways that you thought was never possible.

In front of the palace, is The RewaKund, a reservoir which is believed to be replenished by the Narmada herself. Rani Roopmati could not see the Narmada on winter days and this ‘Kund’ was made by Baz Bahadur as an alternative. (The official view is that the RewaKund is basically for the water supply of The Pavillion and the Palace, but our guide was a romantic too.)

My better half looked at me like “Would you do anything like this if I demanded” and I looked at everything except her face and studied extensively about the roof of the palace and made a remarkable discovery too, “Birds can shit on history!!”

Mandu Shiv Mandir

The next stop was the Mandu Shiv Mandir. If you are talking of “contradictions” then you can’t keep this special little place out of it. Here sits Shiva in the midst of a completely Muslim setting and he feels very content too. Tarangas, Khiljis, Mughals, Rajputs and Marathas have fought, killed and died for this hill-fort and all the stones here are steeped in blood. This place was once a Muslim inn, but the Marathas took it over and turned it into a Shiva shrine. As Gods don’t have much of the ‘communal blood’, Shiva seemed very pleasant here too. After seeing the Jami Masjid (fashioned after the mosque of Damascus) and Thehoshang’s tomb near it (the Taj Mahal is purported to be modelled after this) we entered the Jahaz Mahal. This wonderful architectural marvel had a story of another kind of love. The love of ‘just one night’. The maker of this beautiful structure was Ghiyathud Din and he was a playboy, to use a modern word. He used to fill this structure, which is situated between 2 man-made lakes, with women and have his fun! At the time of rain, the 2 lakes would overflow and the water would touch the walls and it would feel like a ship, that’s why the name The Ship palace (Jahaz means vehicle). My wife looked at me while the guide explained this and I set my face at “AyyoPaavam” mode and I thought I passed! The Roopmati’s living quarters was adjacent to the Jahaz Mahal and it looked ‘stripped’. “This was a multi-storied structure sahib, but an earthquake floored it,”the guide explained. The place looked like a lost love and that’s what exactly happened to the couple. When Adham Khan attacked Mandu at the behest of Akbar, Baz Bahadur went into exile to amass more manpower and Adham khan besieged mandu. Adham thought Mandu was the most precious jewel in his kitty until he saw Roopmati. It is said that it was an evening and Roopmati was crying. The redness of her eyes matched the horizon’s and Adham Khan was instantly mesmerised. He asked her hand in marriage and she gave up her life rather than surrendering. The wind caught up with us again and we sat on the stairs which used to lead to the next floor, now there was nothing there. I could see the Hindola Mahal in front of us where Roopmati used to entertain and sing for her love. Love, what a word, what a feeling, I caught my wife’s hand and she smiled again, but this time a sad one, though.

Lanmarked in our Hearts

Mandu is going to stay etched in our minds for some time to come. That’s the thing about past. It reminds us that we will also be ‘past’! There is an undeniable beauty in remembering it, in spelling out the names that are long forgotten, in reliving an experience that’s already done with. It’s like living again and again.

Words and Photographs by Arjun M K

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