An Ongoing Affair

Beginning slowly, like the troubled courtship of the prince Shah Jehan and Arjumand Banu (later Mumtaz-i-Mahal), the novel gathers sweep and pace as it tells the story of their grand passion against a backdrop of court intrigue, succession struggles and bloody fratricide that Shah Jehan and later Aurangzeb indulged in. The cunning control of Mehrunissa (Noor Jehan) over an indolent Jehangir, Shah Jehan’s battles to gain the throne and Aurangzeb’s implacable cruelty are rich grist for a novelist’s mill. Murari fashions it well, skilfully weaving fact and fiction, steering the narrative back and forth in time. Though the alternating voices that tell the tale are not sufficiently distinguishable from each other, the reader is swept along easily by the inevitability of the historical denouement that must come, and by the classic love story that never ends.