Boisterous cab drivers, chewing betel, buzzed around the queue at the pre-paid taxi counter of Agra Cantonment Railway Station, detailing the attractions of Agra to tourists. Shipra strutted across the station facade, halting the crawling taxis with her outstretched hand, before joining her father in the queue. Her poise and ease generated the impression of a native used to honking scooters and howling taxi drivers. In such moments, eight years of her life in the U.S. seemed to dissipate away like a dream.

She wore black leggings and a full-sleeved saffron kurta printed with cursive Sanskrit verses. A black, woolen shawl draped over her shoulders, for it was March—a time of receding winter and rising summer. Depending on the weather and her mood, she felt either chilly or warm, or both.

After haggling for the tip above the government’s prepaid rate, Shipra settled on a Dzire, freshly washed by a boy who was no older than Shipra’s four-year-old son, Ishan. Their taxi driver, Bashir, pressed a five-rupee coin in the palm of the shirtless, barefoot boy, who pranced with his empty bucket to a handpump, next to a chai stall, where drivers sipped morning chai.

Shipra asked Bashir, “Can he lift the bucket by himself?”

“He spills a lot of water.” Bashir spat betel juice in the mud, wiped his crimson spittle with his sleeve, and opened the Dzire door with a grin.

Inside the taxi, a plastic laminated forest-green plaque engraved with “Allah” in Arabic dangled from the rearview mirror. Papa sat next to Bashir. Shipra, Mummy, and Ishaan were in the back. With each pothole and road crack, Ishaan rolled from Shipra to his grandmother, giggling, as if he were on a rollercoaster. Soon after they started, Bashir had to brake suddenly. He shouted at a single file of cows ambling across the road, “Move fast, you dumb animals.”

“I guess the cows don’t know about the zebra crossing.” Papa laughed.

“These morons don’t know anything. I bet they can’t even hear.” Bashir honked impatiently.

Shipra and Mummy exchanged disapproving glances and shook their heads in unison. No one condemned cows in India; no one, except for the lowest caste Hindus and Muslims, both of whom didn’t hesitate even to eat the sacred animal.

When they were on the highway, Bashir played loud Bollywood remixes from his phone that made Mummy wince. Papa, who had forgotten his hearing aid at home, closed his eyes in blissful silence. Mummy whispered, “See, how they damage beautiful old songs.”

Bashir said, “Auntie, they restored old songs. They gave them a new life. See, uncle is enjoying the music.”

Mummy said, “You should focus on your driving.”

Shipra met Bashir’s twinkling gaze in the rearview mirror. After some thought, she yelled over the blaring music, “Bashir, are you from Agra?”

Bashir said he grew up in a nearby village, where he still lived with his wife and three young children. After his day shift, he returned the taxi to its owner and then rode his motorcycle home at midnight.

Ishaan was counting the cows they met on the road. After counting to eight, he lost interest and announced his hunger.

Mummy said, “Why didn’t you finish your toast on the train? I told you we’ll not stop before lunch.”

 “I’m hungry.” Ishaan pouted.

They stopped at a roadside chai stall under a banyan tree. Mummy instructed the teenage cook to wash his hands before preparing chai. On seeing the cook scoop mud from the dirt ground and rub it on his palms as soap, Shipra hurried to hand him paper soap.

The cook had just washed his hands with mud and water. He said to Shipra, “Don’t need it.”

She sighed and walked back to the plastic chairs, where a giggling Ishaan bounced in Papa’s lap. Nearby, leaning on an electric pole and sipping chai, Bashir flirted with a teenage girl, who squatted in the dirt, washing teacups in a bucket of water.

Shipra called out to Bashir. “How far?”

“Forty-five minutes to Fatehpur Sikri.” He winked at the girl, who smiled coyly. When he touched the girl’s cheek, embarrassed, Shipra turned away. Was the girl older than she appeared? Didn’t he have a wife in the village?

Ishaan dipped glucose biscuits in Mummy’s chai, and when they softened, he swallowed them. The chai was too sweet, but it had the perfect caramel shade that Shipra’s husband, Vivek, liked if he had to drink chai. Although having been brought up in the U.S., he preferred unsweetened, black coffee. She fished out her iPhone from her handbag and texted Vivek: “En route to Fatehpur Sikri.” She imagined Vivek in their two-story house in Edison, watching an action movie in the living room or reading a nephrology journal on the dining table, his phone lying in their bedroom, jerking with her incoming message. She usually sent half a dozen messages before Vivek found the time to read any.

Ishaan looked at her phone. “I want to talk to Daddy.”

Shipra smiled. “Later. Daddy is busy.”

***

Back in the car, Mummy read aloud the Agra attractions from her phone: “Fatehpur Sikri, Emperor Akbar’s imperial complex. The tomb of Salim Chishti, where tying black threads at the stone latticework is said to grant wishes. Agra Fort, where the tyrant Aurangzeb imprisoned his father. And, of course, the Taj Mahal.”

Bashir said, “There is nothing to see in the Agra Fort.”

“We want to see it. Shah Jahan was kept hostage in there by his son.” Mummy, who was a retired Hindi professor, turned to Shipra. “You know, when imprisoned, Shah Jahan used to watch the moonlit Taj Mahal reflected on the Yamuna River from the terrace of the fort and recite Urdu love poems he had written for his dead wife?”

Bashir turned the music down. “That’s what happens when you go crazy. You recite love poems. Aurangzeb did the right thing.”

Shipra asked, “Are you implying Shah Jahan was mad? The man who built the Taj Mahal?”

“Of course. Who wastes royal treasure on worthless things?”

“Worthless?”

“Who spends a fortune in building his wife’s tomb, especially when she is one of many?”

Shipra wondered what school Bashir had attended, if he did attend one. Aurangzeb was a dictator who imposed Sharia law, mercilessly converted Hindus, destroyed their temples, and imprisoned his father. The golden era of Mughal art, architecture, and literature ended when Aurangzeb, an extremist and expansionist, rose to power in the mid-seventeenth century.

“We are his descendants,” Bashir said.

“Whose?” Shipra asked.

“Emperor Aurangzeb’s. We have his royal blood in our veins.” Bashir put a betel leaf loaded with slaked lime into his mouth and wiped the bloody juice off his fingers with a rag.

Shipra glared at the back of Bashir’s head as it swayed to the Bollywood song. Why was he enjoying music, she thought. Didn’t Aurangzeb ban music as it was un-Islamic? She said, “You love music, don’t you?”

Bashir smiled in the rearview mirror. “I have hundreds of CDs with the latest hits. My friend burns them for me.”

Shipra returned his smile in the same mirror.

Mummy sighed, put on her reading glasses, and continued reading on her phone. Ishaan tried pronouncing Aurangzeb, which in his American accent sounded orange-babe. Shipra watched the world pass outside her window: a bullock cart loaded with hay, a street mongrel dozing near a thatched hut, a milkman driving a motorcycle with aluminum barrels hanging from handles and rear fender, a man brushing his teeth with a neem twig in his yard, hens painted Persian blue displayed outside a shop to sell as exotic fowl.

Papa just woke from a nap and said to Bashir, “Make sure you stop at a petha shop. We want to buy Agra’s special petha.”

Shipra remembered the spongy white pumpkin candies. Growing up, whenever she traveled with her parents on trains heading south from Delhi, during the ten-minute halt at Agra Cantonment Railway Station, the petha hawkers, rolling their carts on the station platform, pushed colorful cardboard boxes of half-kilo pethas through the grilled windows.

“Don’t worry, Uncle. I’ll get you the best petha in Agra, on our way back to the station in the evening.”

“We want to buy petha,” Papa said. “Do you know what I am talking about? The small white cubes.”

 Bashir nodded.

“Make sure you stop at a sweet shop. We want to buy Agra’s famous petha.” Papa repeated, stressing each word.”

“Okay, Sir, I will,” Bashir shouted.

He looked at Shipra in the rearview mirror and chuckled. “Looks like Uncle has a hearing problem.”

The “Allah” plaque swung freely.

***

Eight years ago, during Shipra’s first semester at Indiana University, on weekend nights, Indian graduate students in Computer Science and Informatics would take turns hosting parties and staying up all night in someone’s apartment. After they had feasted on buy-one-get-one-free Papa John’s pizza and taken tequila shots, they danced to Bollywood numbers. It was during one of these parties that Shipra noticed Qamar—her senior, as he sat on a stool, checking his guitar strings, clearly the most sober member among them. Shipra asked a girl sitting next to her, “He doesn’t drink?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I think he is Muslim,” the girl whispered.

“Is he from Pakistan?” Everyone in the room turned to her, including Qamar. Shipra realized she had been so drunk that she had screamed. She straightened herself and faced Qamar in the dim disco light. Looking at her, he frowned and said, “I am from India, the same country you are from.”

When she apologized, he burst out laughing. And his laughter soared and spread like balloons around her.

Later, on his guitar, Qamar played the title song of the movie: Kal Ho Na Ho. A song about eternal love: embrace the present as it may not exist tomorrow.

***

On the way to Fatehpur Sikri, Shipra asked Bashir, “Do you have the title song of Kal Ho Na Ho?”

“I only listen to the latest numbers.”

“It’s from the early 2000s.”

“That’s too old.”

At Fatehpur Sikri, Bashir stayed at the taxi stand. Shipra and her parents hired a private guide, another betel chewer. He was a short and eager man, holding a wrist bag. Inside the imperial complex, he took them to the island stage in the center of Anup Talaon, a defunct pond, and asked them to close their eyes. Unable to understand the instructions, Papa and Ishaan kept theirs open. Ishaan hit Papa and ran behind the pillars in the courtyard. Papa acted lost, calling out for him. This made the child giggle and swing from a pillar. The guide ignored them and said to Shipra and Mummy, “If you close your eyes and concentrate, you can hear Akbar’s legendary court singer Tansen’s echo from five centuries ago.”

Across from Anup Talaon was Panch Mahal, a five-story palace tapering like a pyramid and open on all sides. During the evenings, the royal family enjoyed the melodies rising from Anup Talaon. Shipra felt she could see the billowing silk curtains of the topmost floor and the queens from five centuries ago as they lounged in their gold-laced dresses, their necks and earlobes chafed crimson from the weight of rubies and emeralds that they must carry.

Below a scrap wall on the east, Shipra saw a drain—the remnant of a once reverberating moat—that now emptied into a gray and dirty Yamuna brimming with industrial waste. Seeing mosquitoes buzzing over the drain, Shipra realized she had forgotten to take mefloquine and hadn't given it to Ishaan, despite Vivek’s instructions. She wouldn’t mention mosquitoes when messaging Vivek about her expedition. But what if she told him about the mosquitoes and the makeshift mud soap? Would he chastise her for taking Ishan to India? Probably not, she thought sadly. To do that, he would have to read her words, register their meaning, and respond to them. She texted: “The Fort of Fatehpur Sikri is stunning.”

Inside the Jodha Palace, the guide pointed to the carvings that shimmered in red sandstone. The Hindu motifs of swans, elephants, parrots, and lotuses must have sparkled in the precious Persian gems before they were stripped and smuggled to adorn the crowns of British royalty. The guide, slightly more refined than Bashir, spat betel juice not in his sleeve but in a trash can. He said, “Akbar built the largest palace for his Hindu wife, Jodha Bai, because she gave him his heir.”

At Akbar’s palace, Papa and Ishaan were tired. They sat down cross-legged in the courtyard, munching on a bag of popcorn. Mummy and Shipra followed the guide to a one-room palace next to Emperor Akbar’s palace.

The way the guide popped in betel leaves with areca nuts, he probably had dozens of betel paraphernalia in his slim pant pockets and wrist bag. Bashir wouldn’t have been able to compete with him.

“Five centuries back,” the guide said, “this room sparkled with a million gemstones. It belonged to Akbar’s first wife, Miriam. He built it next to his palace because she was Muslim.”

Shipra wondered if the guide had attended the same school as Bashir, where twisted history was taught. You didn’t have to be a history buff to know that Akbar the Great had abolished the Islamic laws imposed on Hindus by his predecessors. He held theological debates in his court and also started a new religion, Din-i-Ilahi, to synthesize elements of Hinduism and Islam, incorporating aspects of Christianity, Zoroastrianism, and Jainism. He dreamed of unifying his kingdom into one faith. Of his three hundred queens, his favorite was the gorgeous Hindu princess, Jodha Bai, whom Akbar gave the Muslim name Miriam after she gave birth to Jahangir. No wonder he built for her, not only the largest Hindu palace but also a cozy, luminous palace next to his own.

Mughals loved to document their history, employing the best Persian writers. Perhaps they believed this would immortalize them and seal their history. But, unbeknownst to them, another version of their history had been created: the one in which Jodha and Miriam were split into two separate queens, belonging to different faiths, the version in which Aurangzeb was an ideal ruler and his father, the visionary behind the Taj Mahal, was a fool. So, what was the true version? If she visited Agra next time, would she encounter yet another history? She knew Vivek, who had not studied Indian history, didn’t care about any version. Perhaps none of this mattered to him.

What would be Qamar’s version? She would never know, not after what happened the day before he left for an internship in Baltimore.

***

That evening, Shipra and Qamar had coffee at the campus food court.

The five months she had been with him, holding hands, whispering poetry in his ear, melting in his embrace, and experiencing his warmth within her, had vanished quickly. Here she was apologizing to a curly-haired Computer Science master's student who strung his guitar, and now, five months later, she felt she had moved into his body and become inseparable. Could a person slip into another and become one with them?

At the food court, she reached for Qamar’s hand and squeezed it. He frowned, and although he didn’t pull back, the way he looked at her made her quickly release him. “Is everything okay, Qamar?” That day, for the first time in five months, she felt she was back at the party when she had met Qamar for the first time—when he was a stranger to her and she had embarrassed herself.

Qamar looked around and, after some hesitation, said, “Shipra, my parents are finalizing my marriage. The wedding will be next year.”

As if she had been brutally kicked awake from a blissful sleep, her joyous dreams struggling to survive, she did not know what she should do. Sit there and listen to Qamar or run away from there. But run to where? To the Main Library, where they often kissed in the parking lot, to the department office where their picture of laughing together from the spring fling party still hung on the bulletin board, or to her apartment, where his dirty shorts, lying beneath her clothes in her laundry basket, awaited washing.

Qamar talked for a bit longer, but most of it went over Shipra’s head. Suddenly, the food court had become too loud and oppressive. Behind her, someone dropped a tray carrying a raspberry shake. A girl almost slipped on the spilled shake. Someone rushed with a “wet” signboard and a mop. In all this commotion, Shipra heard only a few words that she would string together later when she walked back alone to her apartment. Sorry, lead-on, really liked, no future, lots of differences, family pressure, just friends, Dad’s friend’s daughter, Pakistani girl, wedding invitation, must come, please, don’t cry.

A year after her graduation, Shipra’s parents, who didn’t know about Qamar, arranged her marriage with Vivek—a nephrology fellow born and brought up in New Jersey. Vivek’s father, a psychiatrist in Queens, was her uncle’s friend. Shipra and Vivek not only had a thirty-point horoscope match, caste and sub-caste match, but, as Mummy reminded Shipra, their hobbies matched as well—“You both enjoy watching movies and traveling.”

Now, Shipra had a stable life. Vivek was busy, often working late evenings and covering calls on weekends, not surprising for a budding nephrologist in the saturated East Coast medical market. Shipra had quit her IT job to take care of Ishaan. The demands of motherhood should have kept her mind occupied, erased her loneliness, and filled her silence. She still hoped this would happen one day.

Vivek was not a demanding husband and didn’t question her. She could buy random dresses at Macy’s without checking their tags.

Mummy often said, “It’s a blessing to have a stable life, a laid-back husband, a life devoid of problems.”

Shipra often felt she sat on a boat in the middle of an ocean, and all she saw around her was water—incessant, merciless water. No waves or whales in sight to rock the boat. No shore either. The boat would keep sailing eternally.

***

At the Fort of Fatehpur Sikri, the guide told them about the board game of Pachisi, a game marked by a cross of red and white boxes etched on the floor of the courtyard. Papa and Ishaan, trailing popcorn behind them, had joined the tour. Mummy laughed, reading a funny forward on her phone. The guide said, “Akbar used slave-girls in colorful dresses as game pieces. The girl who traversed the entire board and reached the center first won the honor to sleep with the emperor that night.”

The sun blazed above their heads.

Shipra dumped her shawl in her handbag and said, “My head hurts. It’s getting too hot. I want to go outside and drink something cold.”

Mummy looked at Shipra. “You go. We’ll bring Ishaan.”

Shipra trudged back to the main gate. Outside, by the side of the road, on a tarp, street vendors sold hairbands, dolls, and plastic animals. She went to a small shop backing the fort wall. Columns of chip bags, sachets of tobacco, and cigarette packets hung from its tin roof. She asked for a Coke. Then she took out her phone and messaged Vivek: “It’s hot and stuffy now, as if the weather is unable to make up its mind if it wants winter or summer.” She was pleased with her message and found the personification of weather interesting, even if Vivek would skim over it.

She thought about the Pachisi game. She saw a file of girls with bowed heads in bright dresses entering the courtyard; each was shoved into a box, either red or white. The emperor rolled the dice. A number was announced. Girls moved, their silver anklets and glass bangles jingling. Then she saw herself—one of the sixteen slaves. Gliding from box to box—each time the dice were rolled.

A stoic ten-year-old boy appeared from inside the shop and handed her a glass bottle of Coke. She took a gulp and felt a comforting tingling in her throat. Her kurta clung to her body as if she had perspired glue.

Then she heard whistling. She turned back. Four boys in their twenties surrounded her, making lewd gestures. One winked. Another made kissing sounds. The third held out his phone. She thought he was taking a selfie, but upon realizing he was capturing her, she was enraged. She walked up to them. “You want me to call the police?”

The boy holding the camera grinned. She raised an arm to slap him, but he caught it and twisted it. She cried for help. Another boy grabbed her handbag. Some tourists ran toward her. One of the boys unfolded a knife from his jeans pocket and flashed it. The tourists retreated. She lost her grip and dropped the Coke bottle, the glass bottle exploding at her feet. The game of Pachisi was over. She had finished first. She had arrived at the center box. Had she won?

Mummy, Papa, and Ishaan were deep inside the fort. Vivek was at the opposite end of the globe, perhaps reading about replacing electrolytes in kidney failure. And Qamar? She hadn’t spoken to him since that last day in the food court. She closed her eyes and felt her tears blending with a stream of sweat on her neck.

Suddenly, the boy who had been holding her let her go. Surprised, she opened her eyes. Bashir stood in front of her, holding her handbag. The four boys were leaving on their motorcycles. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and uttered, “Bashir.”

They walked back to the taxi. Shipra slipped into the back seat. Bashir switched on the AC. The green plaque from the rearview mirror began to flutter and then oscillate with the AC fan. Bashir told her those boys were college students who worked for a leading political party. They were hot-blooded and carried their egos on their heads like a rooster’s comb. When Bashir saw the altercation from the taxi stand, he rushed to the shop. On seeing him, they cooled down. Bashir was a local, a familiar face in tourist spots, and these hoodlums often loitered outside the fort. Neither party wished for a fight with the other.

He turned back to face Shipra. “Where are the three musketeers?”

“Should come out soon. I’ve a headache, so I left early.”

“Headache, already? This is the first stop, Madam. We’ll go to Salim Chishti, Agra Fort, and then the Taj Mahal. People come from very far, like America, to see the Taj.”

That morning, Shipra had woken up at four for the train, and now at noon, exhaustion gripped her.

Bashir opened the glove compartment. The smell of slaked lime made her dizzy. He said, “Don’t you want to see the Taj Mahal?”

Agra was synonymous with the Taj Mahal. Her early morning text to Vivek from the train read: “Going to see the Taj Mahal.” Though when she was little, the sound of Agra made her crave petha. For Mummy, Agra was Shah Jahan’s poetic muse, springing from the Agra Fort.

Bashir shrugged. “For some reason, people find the Taj Mahal special.”

Shipra wondered what made people find Taj Mahal special. Because of its perfectly symmetrical marble columns, etched with the verses of the Quran, or because it was the symbol of eternal love? A painstakingly erected tomb, rising from the blood and sweat of thousands of fine craftsmen, to honor the death of Mumtaz Mahal, who died during the delivery of her fourteenth child. One version of history claimed that when the Taj Mahal was completed, Shah Jahan ordered the hands of his master masons to be chopped off, so its beauty could never be replicated. And of course—Shipra closed her eyes—it had remained unparalleled.

The cool air blowing and a melody playing in the car made Shipra drowsy. She leaned back, closed her eyes, and began to slip into a dream.

What happened next was perhaps a dream. Perhaps not. Shipra saw herself tearing away from the musty seat, stripping off her suffocating kurta soaked in sweat, floating to the front seat next to Bashir, and grabbing the green plaque. She would hold it so tight that it stopped swinging.