Heavenly Hirani's School of Laughing Yoga

  His eyes were glistening with tears.

  ‘How many times have you been here, Sanjay?’

  ‘More than some hundreds,’ he said. ‘And for me I am struck by this every time I am here. So, shall we go?’

  He indicated Annie should walk in front of him, and, as she got closer and closer to the arched opening, the blur of silvery white on the other side started to come into focus.

  She stepped through and there it was, just as she had seen it in pictures, only a thousand times more magnificent: a glorious white-domed palace perched at the end of a long lake like a crown, small yews lining the lawn all the way, throwing their reflections into the pale green water to form a necklace at the throat of this astonishing monument.

  The sun was just starting to hit the top of the large central dome, catching the two slender eastern minarets on its way through.

  Annie opened her mouth to say something but the words just weren’t there.

  Instead, she cried.

  It was so beautiful, so perfect, so unbelievably special, and she was there, in the flesh, looking at it, for real. She, Annie Jordan, boring old suburban housewife, was there at the Palace of Love, the Taj Mahal, in Agra. In India!

  Despite everything else that was going on, she felt blessed.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said to Sanjay, embarrassed, as the tears continued to flow. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  Sanjay tried to rein back his delight. ‘Most respected madam, all my favourite peoples cry when they see the Taj Mahal. It is quite magnificent.’

  ‘It is quite magnificent,’ Annie agreed, wiping away tears that were instantly replaced with more, wishing she had believed Maya and brought a handkerchief. ‘But why does it make people cry?’

  ‘I think because this Shah Jahan loves this lady, Mumtaz, so much that he would spend twenty-two years building her a monument so spectacular just for her to rest in peace, madam. It is not a palace for living. It is only a reminder of that great love. And he builds it to last forever. Or one thousand years, which is like forever but shorter.’

  Annie started to follow him down beside the lake, the white marble of the Taj changing colour with every step.

  ‘This is the other best thing about coming at sunrise,’ Sanjay said. ‘When we go into the mausoleum, ma’am, you must not wear your shoes. You must wear shoe covers, like hats for your feet, but if the marble is not too hot, which right now it is not, you can wear just your feet.’

  Annie slipped her sandals off and put them in her bag as they reached the stairs leading up to the parapet in front of the tomb. The marble felt delicious against the hard skin of her feet, warm and smooth. She thought of all the feet that had crossed into the entrance of this magical place in the past four hundred years and again was flooded with gratitude that two of them were hers.

  They stopped just before the entrance into the mausoleum so that Sanjay could show her up close the intricate inlay work. ‘Parchin kari we call it,’ he said. ‘This is where the coloured stones are laid into the marble, like these arabesques here, and these blooms and flowers here. There would have been precious jewels here once, too. Those Persian workmen — like Mumtaz’s peasant father, madam — they could do very wonderful things, and you can imagine how much time this work would take. Agra still has the best carvers in all the world.’

  Up close, the marble was flecked with more grey than Annie could see from a distance. That was what no doubt gave the building such a dreamy appeal. It wasn’t bright white; it was a vague, mysterious, almost-silver.

  She stepped inside where the internal walls of the octagonal space were again decorated with the most beautiful inlay work: this with garnets and lapis lazuli, which glowed when Sanjay shone his torch on them.

  ‘Can you imagine this in the moonlight?’ he asked. ‘Like a lantern. A beautiful, wonderful lantern.’

  In the middle of the mausoleum, marble lattice screens — themselves works of art — shielded two marble caskets.

  ‘There are two of them?’ Annie asked.

  ‘Yes, madam. Shah Jahan is here, too. But these are not the real tombs. Because for Muslims, the body is always below. But this is exactly how you would find them downstairs.’

  ‘They’re so small,’ Annie said.

  ‘Yes, madam. Peoples have got much bigger. We have McDonald’s in Agra, did you see this?’

  ‘No, and I don’t want to,’ Annie answered, still looking through the marble lattice at the tombs.

  ‘Anything else you notice about them, madam?’

  There was, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. One was smaller, near the centre, that was obviously Mumtaz, and closer to one of the screens was a bigger one, Shah Jahan.

  ‘It’s not symmetrical!’

  ‘Most respected madam, all my favourite peoples spot that this is not symmetrical.’

  She felt ridiculously pleased to be one of his favourite peoples. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Remember I tell you that Shah Jahan has fourteen childrens? One of them, a son, he kills the other sons so that he can be the king. He is bad, this one, and because Shah Jahan is not happy with him he throws Shah Jahan in the prison, across the river. Madam, this is very hard for Shah Jahan because he has only one small window and do you know what he can see out of this one small window?’

  ‘Please don’t tell me it’s the Taj Mahal.’

  ‘Most respected madam, I must tell you that it is the Taj Mahal, and Shah Jahan is in his tower for eight years looking out at it, then one day he looks for one last time through this very small window and cries “Muummmtaaaaaz”, and then he is died.’

  ‘Oh, that’s so sad.’

  ‘Yes, madam, and although this son is bad he still honours his father’s wish to be buried with Mumtaz, but because he is not a good person he does not honour the symmetry of the Taj Mahal.’

  ‘So he just threw Shah Jahan’s tomb in, willy-nilly.’

  ‘Yes, madam. Willy-nilly.’

  ‘So what happened to this bad son?’

  ‘He was very unpopular and his death after a long and ruinous reign was celebrated, but India was left the worser for wear.’

  They had emerged back out of the palace now, onto the vast marble expanse between the two minarets that overlooked the Yamuna River.

  ‘Do you see across the river that there is a shape between the trees?’ Sanjay said. ‘A large square and behind it a long stretch of flat empty land? That is where legend states that Shah Jahan planned to build the black Taj, a mirror image of this one.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound like you believe the legend.’

  ‘Most respected madam, I do not. Scholars say Shah Jahan wanted to be buried there, but I do not believe he wanted to be separate from Mumtaz in death as he was in life.’

  ‘No, I don’t believe it either.’

  Sanjay looked over the side of the parapet back across the long reflective lake in the direction of the red gate where they had first entered.

  ‘Madam, you must come with me now. Something very good is happening.’

  Annie slipped her sandals back on and followed him down the stairs to the narrow Taj-end of the lake, where Sanjay indicated that she should sit on a stone bench.

  ‘In all my time I have never seen this seat empty,’ said Sanjay. ‘Most respected madam, please give me your camera for a photograph. This is where we make the famous photo just like Princess Diana. Do you remember this photo? Of Princess Diana?’

  Of course she did, who would not?

  The photo of a sad Princess Diana on her own in front of the Taj Mahal had captured the hearts of the entire world when it flew out on wire services in the early ’nineties and Annie’s heart was no exception. At the time she had just thought it terribly sad that Diana was there alone, but now she realised that the princess would have heard the same story as she had: the tale of a besotted ruler falling madly in love with his wife and dying, crying out her name, after showing the world how much he loved her.

  Princess Diana
would have sat on this bench and known then that Prince Charles might have picked her out of a tricky bazaar but his heart belonged to another Mumtaz. Her heart must have been so broken. No wonder the poor woman looked bereft. No wonder the marriage ended soon after.

  ‘Smile,’ Sanjay insisted, and she tried, but with the smile came a fresh flood of tears.

  Annie had been at home with newborn Daisy when that photo came out, wrapped in the cotton-wool world where her baby was bringing her the most joy she had ever experienced and her husband was crazy about the both of them.

  She could remember seeing that photo of Diana and thinking how lucky she was, how loved, how safe and wanted. And now here she was sitting in the exact same spot.

  ‘I’m sorry, Sanjay,’ she said, weeping again. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  Sanjay put down the camera and came towards her.

  ‘It is I who am sorry,’ he said, putting a hand on her shoulder. ‘Please. I think you do believe in love and the Taj is making you realise this.’

  ‘I don’t know what I am realising!’ Annie said.

  A blonde woman in hippy sandals and harem pants had come down the steps and around the corner and was now agitating to get on the bench so her boyfriend could take a photo, but Sanjay shooed them away.

  ‘Take your time, most respected madam,’ he said to Annie. ‘Take all of your time.’

  His kindness calmed her tears. She took a few moments to regain her composure, then twisted around to look at the Taj behind her in all its glory, hoping to dredge up a little of the gratitude, the blessedness, she had felt earlier. To her surprise it was lurking near the top of whatever else stewed in her, and she was able to grab on to it and keep hold.

  She looked back at the reflective lake, the watery image of the monument wavering in it, just as magnificent moving and wobbly as it was in perfect straight lines.

  And just like that, her own wobbly life seemed to settle and still. She was lonely, true, but unlike poor Princess Diana she was not bereft. Given how blurred and horrible her world had so recently become, she should have been. But she wasn’t. Deep down where the real bits of her operated on their own, regardless of external interruptions, she just wasn’t.

  Her Shah Jahan did not have another Mumtaz; he had just grown so used to the one that he had chosen that he had stopped calling out her name.

  Hugh loved her. She knew that. Sitting on Princess Diana’s sad bench she knew that with all her heart. She was loved. Maybe not wildly or openly, but deeply. So deeply that it wasn’t always obvious, but deeply nonetheless.

  She had said in her letter that being a wife was not enough, meaning that maybe Hugh was not enough, but actually if she knew he loved her, if she could feel it in this place, right now, where that famous sadness lingered, then it was enough. She didn’t need a passenger to be a taxi driver. She was one regardless, just empty — but only until the passenger came back. Situations could change. Hugh could change. She could change. Everything could change.

  The bumper-sticker Indians were right: love was all there was. And she had it, even if it wasn’t displayed the way she wanted it to be.

  In coming here, she might have been truthful and had tried to be gentle, but to be fearless was so much harder. The fearless thing to do was not to run away and leave Hugh behind: it was to face him, head on, and try to resurrect what they had — try to fix it, no matter how difficult and painful that was. Because he did love her. And she loved him. Heavenly had said you only need to be sure about one thing. This was it. They just needed to get the balance back again.

  With all life’s disappointments and complications stripped away in this far-flung most romantic of places, that much was obvious to her now. The one time in her life she’d been brave enough to do something dramatic and impulsive in the belief that she was truly following her heart — she’d found out her heart belonged right where she’d started.

  So what if his headstone read If Annie wanted it, he approved? Why had she thought that such a terrible thing?

  ‘Oh, Sanjay,’ she said, looking up. ‘I’ve got it all so wrong.’

  But then, as in a dream, she saw it was no longer her Michael Jackson-lookalike guide standing in front of her.

  It was Hugh.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  At first she thought she really was dreaming.

  For a start, the Hugh standing in front of her looked wild-eyed and rumpled. His shirt buttons were open at the top, dried sweat patches formed dark lakes under his arms, and he had trainers on, which he would never wear with his suit pants in real life.

  ‘Annie!’ he said, and it was Hugh’s own voice, but not for long, as no sooner had he said her name than he fell to his knees in front of her, hiding his face in his hands, an awful raw, tortured sound erupting from behind his familiar fingers.

  Annie had never seen her husband cry before. Even when the children were born he’d remained his usual solid, silent self. Proud, clearly, and happy, she assumed, but anything more explosive he kept locked up.

  Nothing was locked up now, and his crying was unhinging her more than the general bewilderment of seeing him there in the first place. Her hopelessly buttoned-up, solid, serious Hugh, here, at the Taj Mahal, tormented and weeping, just when she couldn’t have hoped for anything more than to see him?

  She couldn’t believe it was really happening, let alone that she deserved it. ‘Hugh,’ she said, in little more than a whisper.

  ‘Please don’t leave me,’ he said, his hands dropping to his side, his face twisted almost beyond recognition. ‘Please, please, please don’t leave me.’

  This is fearless, she thought. Hugh, coming here, acting like this, when he had spent his whole life trying to be the opposite.

  ‘I love you,’ he wept, gripping her legs, forcing himself to look in her eyes, his own red-rimmed, brimming, dark with pain. ‘I can’t say it enough. I can’t say it ever. But I love you, Annie. Please, please don’t leave me.’

  The woman in the harem pants had appeared again, but was now dragging her boyfriend back away from them, and Sanjay, too, had melted into the shade of a nearby tree.

  I do believe in love, Annie thought. I do believe in love, and this is it. It hurt. Oh, how it hurt. And it was hard, indescribably hard. But she was so sure of it.

  She took Hugh’s hands and pulled him to her, his tears soaking through her thin shirt, his cheek hot on her chest, his broad shoulders shaking beneath her arms.

  ‘I’d rather die than make you unhappy,’ Hugh said, his voice breaking. ‘Although that’s what I’ve done and it makes me sick, but I don’t know how to fix it, Annie. All I know is that if you leave me I’m finished.’

  Who knew anything when it came to love? Other than Shah Jahan — and look at the sticky ending he came to.

  Annie kissed the top of her husband’s head, closing her eyes and squeezing him even tighter. They might be in the middle of something sticky but it wasn’t an ending. It wasn’t the leaving Hugh that had been inevitable, it was the getting it out, how she felt, how he felt. There would be no living with the status quo now. The status quo was gone. Even their marriage was being reincarnated.

  India really was the most extraordinary place.

  ‘Shhh, Hugh, darling, it’s all right,’ she said.

  ‘It’s not,’ he said into her shoulder. ‘You’re the most precious thing in my life and I’ve hurt you by, by just being me. I can’t bear it.’

  She knew then, as her husband shed his stoic outer shell in the unlikely setting of the rising Uttar Pradesh sun, that they really were going to be OK.

  ‘Hugh, honestly, please. Look at me.’ She felt him steel himself, then, slowly, he sat back on his heels and looked at her, his eyes still wild, his hair all over the place.

  She took his handsome, creased, worried face in her hands. ‘I don’t know how to say this, so I’m just going to blurt it out,’ she said. ‘I’m un-leaving you. I made a mistake. I was wrong.’

  She watched as
this sank in, felt the muscles in his face relax beneath her fingers, the tension slide out of his shoulders, the fear retreat, to be replaced by the familiar look of bewilderment in his eyes.

  ‘I meant everything I said, in the letter,’ she said. ‘When I wrote it, I did. But then I came here.’ She nodded at the Taj Mahal behind her. ‘And it suddenly didn’t seem so bad. We’re in trouble, Hugh, but I think we can get out of it.’

  ‘I haven’t done it openly, but I have loved you continuously,’ Hugh said. ‘I have. And I’m so sorry that you couldn’t tell that. I’m no good at delirious, or wild.’

  Annie laughed, a lovely light laughter that bubbled up inside her from the best bits of everything they’d ever shared together. ‘You turned up unannounced at the Taj Mahal and declared your undying devotion,’ Annie said. ‘That’s pretty wild!’

  ‘It is, isn’t it?’ He tried a smile. ‘Maybe I’m not such a lost cause after all.’

  She leaned forward then and kissed him; a deep, long kiss, the sort she could not remember giving him in a long, long time.

  ‘Come on,’ she said, standing and pulling him to his feet. ‘Let’s go and sit in the shade. We need to vacate the sad Diana bench and let the other lovebirds get their shots.’

  ‘This is the sad Diana bench?’

  ‘You know what I’m talking about?’

  ‘Yes, of course, I remember the photo was in all the papers when Daisy was a baby.’ His voice was gluey with tears, but he kept talking. ‘You were upset on her behalf and I never like to see you upset. I’m just no good at saying these things, Annie. It feels …’

  ‘It feels what, Hugh?’

  ‘It feels like being naked, you know, like … like in the dream where your high-school friends turn up and you’ve forgotten to get dressed.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with being vulnerable, Hugh. It’s how people know who you really are.’

  ‘But I’m a husband, Annie, a father. I’m the provider — I don’t want you to see me vulnerable. I want to be strong.’