A Journey To Discover Life

Popular Culture: Jodha Bai, as we know her, is the title by which we refer more often to the Rajput wife of Emperor Jalaluddin Mohammad Akbar, the third Emperor of the Mughal (originally Timurid) dynasty who ruled between 1556 and 1605 A.D. She appears in various folklores of the popular "Akbar Birbal stories for Children '' as a queen, and these fictional tales on the wit of Birbal often are in fact our first introduction to both Akbar and Jodha Bai as children. These folktales have been taken up by various animators to be made into series. India's most popular platform of entertainment, besides its cricket, is Bollywood and Hindi cinema. One of the most iconic movies ever made in the industry is "Mughal-e-Azam", which revolves around yet another fictitious tale of Prince Salim, later Jahangir, falling for a dancing girl from his father's harem, Anarkali. There, we see Prithviraj Kapoor in his iconic voice as Akbar, referring to his queen and Salim's...

Ruqaiya Sultana Begum  was born to Babur's second surviving son, Hindal Mirza, and his wife, Sultanam Begum, in 1542 C.E., merely a few months after Hamida Banu gave birth to the heir Jalaluddin Mohammad Akbar. She was well-versed in Persian, Urdu and Arabic and was attracted to poetry and music. Being a proud descendant of the Timurid clan, most of Rukaiya's childhood was spent in Kabul, near the Bagh E Babur, built by Babur himself. From early childhood, she had seen the struggle of her family to regain their lost power in Hind. Miniature of Rukaiya Begum as Empress In 1551 C.E., just after her father died young at a battle for Humayun, leaving her and her mother in the harem of the emperor, it was Hamida Banu who wanted the marriage of Rukaiya to her first cousin, Akbar. Theirs was the first in-house marriage of the Mughals, soon to be followed by many more in the generations to come. At the mere age of nine, she had married the crown prince, and when Humayun won back Lahore...