Alex Carrigan reviews MONUMENT by Manahil Bandukwala
Alex Carrigan (he/him) is an editor, poet, and critic from Virginia. His debut poetry chapbook, May All Our Pain Be Champagne: A Collection of Real Housewives Twitter Poetry (Alien Buddha Press, 2022), was longlisted for Perennial Press' 2022 Chapbook Awards. He has had fiction, poetry, and literary reviews published in Quail Bell Magazine, Lambda Literary Review, Empty Mirror, Gertrude Press, Quarterly West, Sage Cigarettes (Best of the Net Nominee, 2023), Stories About Penises'(Guts Publishing, 2019), Closet Cases: Queers on What We Wear (Et Alia Press, 2020), and more. He is also the co-editor of Please Welcome to the Stage...: A Drag Literary Anthology with House of Lobsters Literary. For more, @carriganak and visit https://carriganak.wordpress.com/.
MONUMENT
In her debut poetry collection MONUMENT, Manahil Bandukwala assembles a series of poems that seek to dive deep into the crypt that houses the essence of Mumtaz Mahal. The 17th-century Indian empress consort to Shah Jahan was entombed inside the Taj Mahal, erected decades after her death by her grieving husband while their children engaged in war with one another. Bandukwala chooses to focus on these historical figures in their purest form, choosing to address Mumtaz and the Shah by their original names Arjumand and Khurram, respectively. Doing so presents an emotional and philosophical examination of the woman whose tomb is known worldwide, but whose own personal history gets lost in the shine off the white marble.
Bandukwala’s collection is structured into multiple sections, each focusing on some different aspect of Arjumand before and after she became the Shah’s wife. Bandukwala opens the collection with a brief timeline of Arjumand’s life by focusing on years, writing lines like “At nineteen she married Prince Khurram. / At nineteen she was not her husband’s first wife.” She later goes into the events following Arjumand’s death in childbirth with “When she would have been fifty-five there were so many ways / she could have lived.”
Following this is the first full section, entitled “Braid,” a repeated image throughout the collection regarding Arjumand’s beauty and how everything is weaved together. This section sees poems that weave Arjumand’s youth with spaces she inhabited throughout her life, such as the Shalimar Gardens in Lahore. It’s also here where Bandukwala begins to speculate on the private life of Arjumand, such as in “Ask,” where she writes, If I could ask, before Khurram—
before a single cell grew inside you and grew
fourteen times over, each one siphoning strength away—
did you write by the riverside
garden in Agra, filling bookshelves with journals, the last one sunken into
Burhanpur soil?... This continues into the next section, “Love Letters,” a series of poems dated by the year Bandukwala imagines Arjumand writing letters to Khurram regarding the events occurring at the time, such as conflict with family members and the troubles of the plebians. These poems start romantic, but also look at the inherent struggles and complications that come from extreme power. In “1628,” she writes, You wanted to shape me
into empire, build me an empire. The sound of empire alluring, but empire smelled like charred bodies when you burned out people who would not bend down to kiss your knees. Successive sections of the collection similarly speculate on the nature of Arjumand and her relationship to Khurram, as well as how their relationship branched out following her death. The section “Threads” looks at Arjumand’s influence, but also through how her story and legacy can be traced through other sources like the character Padme Amidala from the Star Wars prequels or in Animal Crossing. The latter, “Restart,” includes lines like, …Hours and hours later my mausoleum went up right in the middle of my island. No one could enter. Meanwhile, the apple trees withered. Meanwhile, the carnations wilted. Streams abundant with fish. Fields teeming with bell crickets. The world did not wait
for me. … Then there’s “Offspring,” a section of poems dedicated to the five children of Arjumand and Khurram who lived to adulthood. The histories of these historical figures are also speculated upon, as they were divided by war and alliances that pitted them against one another. The poem “Dara Shikoh,” about their son who was beheaded by his brother Aurangzeb in war, speaks of their innocent time together, with lines like “You guided / his hand along ink, each zer and zabar / hummed music in his ear” before revealing the unfortunate fate of her son, long after she had died. “War / is stronger than art, and no poetry / outlives a sword,” she writes. This is followed by “Unravel,” a long poem about the fates of all five of their children. “Your children were witness / to the grandest expressions of love, / the immortalization of memory,” Bandukwala writes, before revealing more of their fates that appeared to be traced back to the loss of their mother and the years of grief Khurram spent afterwards. “And how does the spirit free / itself. If you are still here / witnessing your body / encased, / what would you need / to untether?” The final sections are Bandukwala attempting to find the final link between herself and Arjumand. The “Last Words” section takes what were allegedly Arjumand’s final words and reprints them in several erasure poems. The collection concludes with “Plait,” where Bandukwala writes poems named after herself and Arjumand. These poems speak about the translations of their names and how they relate to their characters. With “Manahil,” which translates to “spring water,” Bandukwala writes, I narrate what lingers in the sweet fountain morph into a river pool in a ditch,
take up my new residence by the marble tomb. … But it’s in the final poem, “Mumtaz,” where Bandukwala closes the collection by focusing on how the imperial name “Mumtaz Mahal,” while it means “exhalted one of the palace,” holds less meaning than “Arjumand Banu.” She concludes with, So many nights you sit alone writing for constellations in hand-sewn notebooks clumsily painted with elephants and daughters and domes.
Those nights you shed the nickname, Mumtaz Mahal exalted one of the palace,
and become Arjumand again. MONUMENT is a ritual designed to truly exalt and preserve the spirit of an important figure in Indian history. Bandukwala ruminates on the simple and the grandiose as she examines different facets of Mumtaz Mahal’s life, reminding the reader that every empress was once an Arjumand, and that even a life of white marble and pearls can have grief and loneliness in the same jewelry box. It’s a collection of reverence and love, never forgetting to ask and pray for one’s peace long after they are gone.
Following this is the first full section, entitled “Braid,” a repeated image throughout the collection regarding Arjumand’s beauty and how everything is weaved together. This section sees poems that weave Arjumand’s youth with spaces she inhabited throughout her life, such as the Shalimar Gardens in Lahore. It’s also here where Bandukwala begins to speculate on the private life of Arjumand, such as in “Ask,” where she writes, If I could ask, before Khurram—
before a single cell grew inside you and grew
fourteen times over, each one siphoning strength away—
did you write by the riverside
garden in Agra, filling bookshelves with journals, the last one sunken into
Burhanpur soil?... This continues into the next section, “Love Letters,” a series of poems dated by the year Bandukwala imagines Arjumand writing letters to Khurram regarding the events occurring at the time, such as conflict with family members and the troubles of the plebians. These poems start romantic, but also look at the inherent struggles and complications that come from extreme power. In “1628,” she writes, You wanted to shape me
into empire, build me an empire. The sound of empire alluring, but empire smelled like charred bodies when you burned out people who would not bend down to kiss your knees. Successive sections of the collection similarly speculate on the nature of Arjumand and her relationship to Khurram, as well as how their relationship branched out following her death. The section “Threads” looks at Arjumand’s influence, but also through how her story and legacy can be traced through other sources like the character Padme Amidala from the Star Wars prequels or in Animal Crossing. The latter, “Restart,” includes lines like, …Hours and hours later my mausoleum went up right in the middle of my island. No one could enter. Meanwhile, the apple trees withered. Meanwhile, the carnations wilted. Streams abundant with fish. Fields teeming with bell crickets. The world did not wait
for me. … Then there’s “Offspring,” a section of poems dedicated to the five children of Arjumand and Khurram who lived to adulthood. The histories of these historical figures are also speculated upon, as they were divided by war and alliances that pitted them against one another. The poem “Dara Shikoh,” about their son who was beheaded by his brother Aurangzeb in war, speaks of their innocent time together, with lines like “You guided / his hand along ink, each zer and zabar / hummed music in his ear” before revealing the unfortunate fate of her son, long after she had died. “War / is stronger than art, and no poetry / outlives a sword,” she writes. This is followed by “Unravel,” a long poem about the fates of all five of their children. “Your children were witness / to the grandest expressions of love, / the immortalization of memory,” Bandukwala writes, before revealing more of their fates that appeared to be traced back to the loss of their mother and the years of grief Khurram spent afterwards. “And how does the spirit free / itself. If you are still here / witnessing your body / encased, / what would you need / to untether?” The final sections are Bandukwala attempting to find the final link between herself and Arjumand. The “Last Words” section takes what were allegedly Arjumand’s final words and reprints them in several erasure poems. The collection concludes with “Plait,” where Bandukwala writes poems named after herself and Arjumand. These poems speak about the translations of their names and how they relate to their characters. With “Manahil,” which translates to “spring water,” Bandukwala writes, I narrate what lingers in the sweet fountain morph into a river pool in a ditch,
take up my new residence by the marble tomb. … But it’s in the final poem, “Mumtaz,” where Bandukwala closes the collection by focusing on how the imperial name “Mumtaz Mahal,” while it means “exhalted one of the palace,” holds less meaning than “Arjumand Banu.” She concludes with, So many nights you sit alone writing for constellations in hand-sewn notebooks clumsily painted with elephants and daughters and domes.
Those nights you shed the nickname, Mumtaz Mahal exalted one of the palace,
and become Arjumand again. MONUMENT is a ritual designed to truly exalt and preserve the spirit of an important figure in Indian history. Bandukwala ruminates on the simple and the grandiose as she examines different facets of Mumtaz Mahal’s life, reminding the reader that every empress was once an Arjumand, and that even a life of white marble and pearls can have grief and loneliness in the same jewelry box. It’s a collection of reverence and love, never forgetting to ask and pray for one’s peace long after they are gone.
