Air drifted through my nostrils, filling my hollow chest. Before my eyes opened, my mind awakened, cautiously whispering:

Allah… what more could You possibly have left to show me?

When I finally looked, I found myself standing beneath a canopy of strange trees. I felt joggers run through me, literally passing through my ribs as if I were made of nothing but light and longing.

I was a ghost in the gardens named after the dynasty that birthed me, loved me, and then broke me.

As I walked further a fragrance drifted toward me. A fragrance I couldn’t have mistaken even in death.

It was attar-e-gulab, rosewater. His scent. A bittersweet reminder of the life I lived 450 years ago.

I was barely sixteen and as spirited as monsoon winds, as restless as a rosebud before bloom. My family was noble but not powerful; my beauty was whispered about, but my mind was quietly sharper than expected of a woman.

My parents lived in constant hope of rising higher. Their ambitions glimmered brighter than the jewels they owned. But fate unfolds in its own mysterious ways.

When word spread that Sultan Sikandar Lodhi would visit our home, the servants scrubbed marble until their hands bled. My father rehearsed every bow until his back cracked. He wished to present my elder sister, Zainab—obedient, composed, as a perfect offering.

I was meant to stay inside my room, out of sight, but fate took another route.

That morning, I stood in the courtyard grinding roses, cardamom, and sandalwood to prepare itrh. My grandmother always said fragrances carry more than scent—they carry memory. 

I wore a rose-scented oil I had crafted myself that day. It was delicate yet precarious—like the feeling when you fall in love.

Right then, the Sultan entered the courtyard unannounced. He took a few steps forward and stopped suddenly. He looked around, searching for the reason that halted him. The breeze carried my scent toward him before my name could, and he shot a glance in my direction.

Startled, I dropped my pestle. It clattered loudly on the marble floor.

His eyes drifted to my face. Then to my hands. Then back to my face.

He asked “Who prepared this itrh?”

“My eldest—” My mother began to say.

But I, foolishly and fearlessly, interrupted and said “No, I did.”

By nightfall, he requested my hand. By dawn, I was his third wife.
By dusk, he had forgotten why he chose me in the first place.

In the harem, my rank gave me freedom wrapped in near invisibility. I wandered the palace gardens, made itrh, and waited for my Sultan to call for me.

But in my stolen hours, I did the forbidden.

I wrote poetry in the moonlight.
Not a few scraps—
but thousands of verses, blooming like roses in a locked chest.

Women were meant to be in purdah—
veiled in presence, veiled in thought, veiled in voice.
Their only purpose: to birth heirs and give glory to men.

But a woman with her own mind?
Unthinkable privately.
Unconceivable publicly.

Yet I believed—naively, foolishly—that words could give me a life of my own.
That was my first mistake.

I wanted to leave a mark.
Not as a wife.
Not as a shadow.
But as a poet.

So I disguised myself as a man.

Dressed in coarse cotton kurta and dhoti, with kohl shadowing my jawline, I became:

Gurmukhi — the rose-faced poet.

In the bustling lanes of Delhi, I met a respected publisher. I recited a few verses, my heart trembling inside a stranger’s voice:

Love is like the hands of the maker
Who bruises roses to birth a scent
A scent which lingers on her beloved,
Wishing it was her instead.

When I finished, he stared at me as though beholding a revelation.

“That was extraordinary,” he whispered.
“Bring me the entire collection. I will publish them.”

I had stepped into daylight and survived.

But roses exposed to the sun wither quickly.

When I returned to the palace that evening, lamps flickered strangely. Eunuchs avoided my gaze. The corridors held their breath.

He was waiting for me.

Sikandar Lodhi stood in my chambers, surrounded by the scattered pages of my life— all 9,000 verses torn from their hiding places beneath my rose-scented shawls.

“I had my men follow you,” he said quietly.
“I know everything.”

His voice was calm—too calm. Just like the calm before a storm.

“You defied your place, your status, and your Sultan.”

I tried to speak, but he raised a hand.

“You forget: a woman’s voice belongs behind curtains. Not in markets. Not in books.”

My throat burned.

He stepped closer, holding one of my poems between his fingers.

“You have shamed me. I cannot have a wife who believes herself equal to men.”
“Leave,” he said.
“Walk out by your own feet, or be dragged out.”

The choice was a dagger.
But I held it with dignity.

“I will walk.” I said, and so I did.

I was escorted through the palace before dawn.
Stripped of jewels.
Stripped of privilege.
Stripped of worth.

I lived where the outcastes lived, on the outskirts of the city. I survived on scraps, slept under neem trees, traded wildflower perfumes for food.

They say grief is a slow poison. But hunger is a faster one.

When I died,
no one buried me.
No one mourned me.
No one remembered me.

Months after my death, it was announced:

The Sultan had published a new collection of poetry.

Revolutionary.
Beautiful.
Signed under the name—
Gurmukhi.

He had taken my verses—
my only proof of being—
and crowned himself with them.

History remembered him and erased me completely.
Until now.

Standing again in Lodhi Gardens, watching the world spin without me, I realize something:

He may have stolen my words,
but he never owned the breath that created them.

I close my eyes and whisper the final poem of Gurmukhi—the one he could never find, the one he could never claim:

Let them paint over my story,
let them bury my petals deep.
A rose remembers its fragrance
even after it withers and wilts.

I claim the mouth that shaped my words,
the hands that inked my grief.
I claim the fire they feared,
the breath they tried to cease.

A name stolen can still be reclaimed.
A voice silenced can still be heard.
I bloom for myself—
not for history,
not for men,
not for memory.

Call me what I was born to be—
not wife, not exile, not tragedy—
Call me Gurmukhi.
Call me the rose that spoke.