Part 1 : The Twentieth Wife

The Twentieth Wife By Indu Sundaresan

The novel 'The Twentieth Wife' is one of the books from The Taj Mahal trilogy. We are going to summarize all three Novels in different blogs. The second book of Taj Mahal trilogy is ‘The feast of Roses' and the third is ‘Shadow princess. The Novels of The Taj Mahal trilogy is perfectly enjoyable as all three Novels help to explore historical background. It can make you sit for a longer period of time with no boredom while reading them.

The Twentieth Wife is the story of a girl Mehrunissa, who goes through a lot of difficulties and emerges as the most controversial Queen later known as Nur Jahan of the Mughal empire. Indu Sundaresan with her first novel gives a well-narrated tale of desire, sacrifice and politics set against 16th Ann 17th century India.

The story commences with the winter season in 1577 where Ghias Beg, a Nobel Persian man was travelling to the east towards the Mughal Court of Emperor Akbar. Ghias was not alone but he had a pregnant wife and their children with him to accompany and take care of. On their way to Mughal Court of Emperor Akbar, his wife gave birth to a baby girl at Qandahar. Ghias named his fourth child Mehrunnisa which means ‘ The sun of women. The story centres the rise of Mehrunnisa as a beautiful, intelligent, independent, courageous and strong woman who embarked her presence on each page of Mughal history.

Mehrunnisa was one of the loveliest child among her so many siblings. Eventually, little Mehrunnisa falls in love with the son of Mughal Emperor Salim who was also an heir to Akbar’s throne. Salim later becomes Emperor Jahangir and shares his life with Mehrunnisa at the end of the novel. Throughout the novel, Salim and Mehrunnisa are prisoners of fate for they couldn’t unite easily. Mehrunnisa was married to a soldier Ali Quli who was much older to her. Their marriage turned out to be a sad story due to miscarriages of Mehrunnisa. Besides, the love story of Salim and Mehrunnisa there is jealous planning and plotting of Salim’s wife Jagat Gossini to overpower the male dominance and her desire to become a powerful empress.

Indu Sundaresan gives ample evidence of Mehrunnisa being an intelligent woman and a mother too. Like her all fictional Novels, her characters are fairly described and her narration takes readers to the historical background and chronological chart of Mughal empire. As the story of Mehrunnisa unfolds in the book, the readers are exposed to deadliest conspiracies going on in the Mughal empire. Salim ( Jahangir) who was the eldest son tries to kill his father to grab the throne but later he realizes his folly and apologies to his father. However, Jahangir was no more a reliable man for the entire empire.

As a consequence Khusrau, The eldest son of Jahangir was promoted as an emperor but Jahangir tried to kill his son and ended up blinding him. Mehrunnisa’s first husband Ali Quli also supported Khusrau and ends up getting killed by Jahangir's men. Mehrunnisa who was now a window travels back to the imperial harem as Ruqayya's lady in waiting with her daughter.

Jagat Gossini is also an excellent politician who true to kill Mehrunnisa with the help of some confidential men in the empire. But Mehrunnisa overcomes all the obstacles as her Name was “sun of women” and became the empress with an eye for all court affairs for the next 15 years. She was named as Nur Jahan ( light of the world) after her marriage with Jahangir at the age of 34. Jahangir who already had married for nineteen times for political alliances married wholeheartedly Nur Jahan Twentieth time.