ZELALDINUS

On a camel?s back hill beyond
Agra stands a Redstone citadel altogether different from the white marble Taj
Mahal. Fatehpur Sikri is the capital Akbar built to honour the saint who
foretold the birth of his first son. In the inner court of the king?s palace
is a broad stone terrace with a chequered pattern that resembles a game
board. Here, accounts say, Akbar played a kind of chess using human pieces
from his harem of three hundred. Costumed in various guises, his women would
have presented lively masques upon this stage.Zelaldinus mounts such a
pageant, glittering and fantastical, where past and present, nobles and
commoners, history and fiction rub shoulders. Its variety of verse and prose
forms evoke the carnival spirit of a masque. Underlying the depiction of a
rich and varied court life at Sikri are reflections on kingship, a meditation
on fathers and sons and a plot within a plot that tells a crackling story of
love across the Pakistan border?while through it all strides the nimble ghost
of Akbar himself. Jalaluddin (Zelaldinus) Akbar.