Of Reign & Romance
“Move out of the way!” She heard her voice
tremble as she ran frantically down the winding road. The child sat in the
middle of the narrow mountain road, playing with his pebbles.
“Move!” Her voice didn’t seem to reach him
as the rhythmic sound of approaching hooves increased. She ran towards the
child as he looked up at her worried face, clueless.
In the nick of time, she had managed to save
her little boy. She held him tightly in her arms in relief.
“Shah Ammi!” The voice resonated from afar.
“Ammi! Ammi.”
The urgency of the voice made the mountains
fade away into the darkness, then the unwinding roads plunged into it, and finally, the boy she held in her protective arms was no longer there. She tried to hold
on to anything she found around her, the trees, the boy’s hand, the sound of
hooves, and even the mountains before her eyes in vain as everything faded into
darkness. She jerked awake as her son tapped on her shoulder. She opened her
eyes at the sight of him, a little relieved, but the faces of the others in the
room made her heart sink.
“He is not responding, Padshah Begum.” The
eunuch had hardly finished the sentence as she pushed the crowd aside and ran
as fast as she could, barefoot, towards his Khwab Ghar. Her son followed, worried. It just couldn’t be. Not this soon. Not now.
Dawn broke into the darkness that day.
1608,
somewhere in Bengal.
“You
know what you have to do, just do the right thing.”
His words resonated in her ears as the wind
howled. She held her child close to her bosom as the horse sped through the
forests towards Agra. The cold blade of the sword brushed against her skin,
warm from the scorching summer sun, and her heart pounded in her chest against
her sleeping child’s breath. She checked the forehead for any signs of fever.
Relieved, she stared ahead at the clearing from where smoke rose up to the sky.
The horse stopped at the side of the clearing. She needed to be careful. The line
between foes and friends was blurred now. She needed to be sure. The blood on
her muslin angrakha had still not dried. His
blood. She tied the horse to a tree away from sight and sighed as the child
fluttered her eyes. The sound of careful footsteps behind her on the dried
leaves alarmed her as she turned, ready to attack.
“Asaf Bhaijaan!” The relief in her voice
reflected in her face as she sat down on the forest floor on her knees, her
tired body surrendering to her sobs, as the child in her arms wailed.
The man standing in front of her was quick
to pick up the crying child in his arms and stare at the sister he always
loved and pampered, silently.
“We don’t have much time, Mehr. We need to
move.” He gave her his hand.
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Last updated: February 4, 2026.
