Word: mumtaz
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...trouble begins even before you enter the mausoleum that Emperor Shah Jahan built for his second wife, Queen Mumtaz Mahal. The crowds are huge (the site attracts 40% of the tourists who travel to India). And because authorities have banned fossil-fuel vehicles in the area, visitors must rent electric cars or carts drawn by horses or camels to get close to the mausoleum, even as flies swarm around the animals and the dung they scatter across the potholed roads...
...camels. Despite fixed rates, overcharging is the norm. The drivers are rude, the hiring and negotiating shambolic. Flies swarm the animals and the dung they liberally scatter across the potholed roads. When you reach the entrance to the mausoleum that Emperor Shah Jahan built for his second wife, Queen Mumtaz Mahal, hawkers touting miniature Taj Mahals, bottled water and postcards, add to the chaos. You may shake them off, but you won't escape being stung at the ticket counter. Foreigners are expected to pay $20 rather than the 40 fee for Indians. Slouching by the gates, bored-looking policemen...
...That character is Daru, a bank employee in his late 20s who gets smart with a senior client and loses his job. He finds comfort in an affair with his best friend's wife, a homemaker named Mumtaz with a second career as an undercover journalist. We learn early on that our primary narrator (the first person switches frequently among the main characters) has been involved in a botched robbery, and is now on trial for murder. The evidence sounds damning, although we are not told the specifics of the case until much later in the book. The story...
...image of a moth immolating itself on a candle (after being fired, Daru can't pay the power bills), reflects two themes that pervade the book. For one, the moth's attraction to the flame is a kind of self-destructive love, much like Daru's own love for Mumtaz. The second is the theme of smoking, which symbolizes that self-destructive impulse...
...Mahal, Agra (200 ft.), was built by Mogul Emperor Shah Jahan as the tomb of his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal. Dethroned by their son Aurangzeb, Shah Jahan gazed upon the Taj from prison and was later buried beside Mumtaz...