The Taj Mahal is a marble monument of love—Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan built it in memory of his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal. It is a prime tourist spot where couples go to pose against its not-so-pristine beauty. Along with the several romantic stories associated with the Taj, there is a gory legend too.

It is believed that when the Taj was built, after sixteen years of labour, with the finest artisans working with the best material money could buy, the Emperor ordered the hands of all 20000 men who worked on it to be chopped off, so that nothing of such beauty could ever be built again. This soul-shattering task for given to two lowly guards, who had no choice but to obey the order.

Based on this myth, Rajiv Joseph wrote the award-winning play, Guards At The Taj. Danish Husain directed a new production of the play, under the Aadyam banner, with Joy Fernandes and Vrajesh Hirjee as the two titular characters. It is the day before the monument is to be unveiled to the world, Humayum and Babar, standing guard, are not allowed to even take a peak at it.

The two are friends, but have totally different temperaments; Humayun is stern and a compulsive follower of orders, Babar is chatty and frisky, dreaming of palanquins in the air and getting harem duty so that he can ogle women.

The task is too awful to contemplate but they cut 40000 hands and cauterize the stumps (on the stage is a barrel of realistic-looking hands. Humayan looks upon it as a job well done, while Babar things it is the death of beauty.

Men like Humayun, have, over the years wrought untold misery on innocents, in their misguided quest for obedience and order, while the Babar’s of the world are invariably punished for passively participating in the horrors because they are too weak to protest; their rebellion is merely verbal, perhaps the equivalent of today’s signers of petitions on social media. The interpretation of this act is left to the audience's imagination, and it is so easily linked
to what is going on in the world today, with egotistical rulers and subservient masses quick to be provoked to violence. As more incidents of such meaningless violence are reported on a regular basis, the play automatically resonated with today’s audiences. There is also the under-emphasized business about the exploitation of the working classes, whether by power-drunk monarchs or feudal lords.

Danish Husain used two sides of the blackbox space at central Mumbai’s current hub G5A, while audiences were seated on the remaining two sides and in the centre. The ones in the middle had to get up and turn their chairs when a scene shifted to the other side. It is as if he were challenging the audience not to remain uninvolved in what happens around them.

If the audience is not shaken into numbness, it’s because they know incident is not true; if it were, Guards At The Taj would have been impossibly traumatic to watch.