Revisiting Mughal mysteries

The Muzaffar Jang mysteries — the novels and the stories — have become a diverting little detective series for the mystery aficionado. While I like all three titles in Madhulika Liddle’s medieval mystery series, my favourite remains the first: The Englishman’s Cameo. Revisiting it recently, I found myself drawn to its coziness once again: the way it doesn’t weigh you down with heavily researched historical details of medieval Mughal India, or plunges you into the intricacies of court life.

The little details are convincing — just so much and no more; not bogging us down with complexity and sweep. This isn’t just about me liking my mysteries this way, but is important in its own way for mystery fiction in India: to offer a traditional mystery that observes the conventions of the genre with a companionable detective and an unusual setting.

Sprawling and dense thrillers like Sacred Games and Shantaram just won’t cut it. The genre asks for something light, cleanly and crisply written, that “you take to bed with you, puzzle a while over and fall into peaceful slumber”. And The Englishman’s Cameo fits the bill, a modestly entertaining period mystery and a satisfying whodunit. “You know what they say, that Muzaffar Jang has more love for his books and his birds than he does for what really matters: the jewels, the fine clothes, the high-stepping Arabian horses, the beautiful slave girls, the catamites, I’m an outcast, Aapa.”  Muzaffar Jang is an aristocrat bachelor in Shahjahanabad (Emperor Shah Jahan’s Dilli, circa 1656) with a taste for books, asking the right questions, and ‘the new fangled brew — Allah, so bitter — called coffee that they sell in those qahwa khanas of Chandni Chowk’.
With a modest but comfortable income, he has refused to indulge in the usual pursuits of other high ranking omrahs (noblemen), patronising poets, minstrels, artisans or courtesans. When, on a hot day in 1066 of the Hijri calendar, Shahjanhanabad’s most ravishing courtesan is found murdered (with a poisoned paan). Jang, the young, maverick omrah detective, begins to investigate.

What unravels with the mystery is an intimate picture of life in Emperor Shahjanhan’s Dilli that resembles a delicate Mughal miniature. Liddle’s Muzaffar Jang is a likeable hero, and she surrounds him with several sympathetic characters: Zeenat Begum, his dependable and wise sister, Farid Khan, the Kotwal of Shahjahanabad, the old boatman Salim, and the romantic Akram, besotted by the ‘pale, delicate’ courtesan Gulnar. 

Liddle writes about the daily-goings on within the little circle of Mughal aristocrats, officers, courtesans, dancing girls and musicians with familiarity and easy style, as though she were a contemporary. Her hero, Muzaffar, like the other omrahs of his time, often visits the Qila Mubarak, home of the imperial court. Jang notes that there is little extravagant celebration at the court these days owing to the  “Maa’badaulat’s extravagant tastes — the building of the Taj Mahal in Agra, the construction of the fort in Dilli, the exquisite jewels, the silk carpets… the Emperor, after a lifetime of uncontrolled indulgence in opium and women, was ailing. His favourite son, the scholarly heir apparent, Dara Shukoh, was more interested in mysticism than politics…”

“But the Emperor, though his star may be in the descendant, stuck to tradition as far as he could. According to the usual practice, he had appeared at dawn under the gilded copper dome of the Mussamman Burj and shown himself to his subjects… Muzaffar had waited patiently while Maa’badaulat made his slow way back through his private apartments, the Khan Mahal, and on towards the Diwan-e-Aam, the hall of public audience. Behind him, the crowd of courtiers and attendants had begun to disperse, some of them moving off towards the Bazaar-e-Muzaqqaf or the Diwan-e-Aam, others heading back to their own havelis or to posts within the fort. When the gardens adjacent to the Hayat Baksh Bagh had looked relatively deserted, Muzaffar had made his way there”.

The whodunit element is quietly and finely done, clearing up the mystery nicely. Its accomplishment is its modest canvas, and not exoticising this rich, intriguing period but writing about it matter of factly. The familiar details from this period are gently and unselfconsciously evoked: tendrils of Persian calligraphy, cool sherbets, the red sandstone haveli, Sufi music, and the muezzin’s call from the minaret of the Jama Masjid.