Bibi Ka Maqbara

By Lina Krishnan

Ra’bia Durrani, Dilras Banu Begum

Humble mourners throng the verdure

And rain coins on her crypt, chattering

Like Dakkhan birds

 

Stone surrounds marble

The Alamgir would not sanction

Another Taj, like his mother’s

Even for a beloved wife

 

Yet a thousand women lived

When he outlawed sati

 

A few miles away, at Khuldabad

An austere grave with a plain shroud

Owes no royal coffers. The Great Mughal

Stitched namaaz caps, to earn his commoner’s mazaar

 

Enshrined by piety alone

 

Lina Krishnan is a writer and artist in India. Her poems feature in sixteen anthologies of poetry, recent among them the Black Bough Poetry Winter Anthology, UK. She is also a featured poet in three volumes of the annual Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English.