Guards at the Taj

Humayun and Babur are best friends, and guards in Hindustani ruler Shah Jahan’s Imperial Army. They bicker, reminisce about jungle escapades, and have the dubious privilege of standing guard over the Taj Mahal, Shah Jahan’s epic tribute to his dead wife, the night before it is revealed to the world as the most potent and powerful personification of beauty. Humayun, sternly loyal second generation civil servant, is content to follow orders, even when the Emperor, determined that no object more beautiful than the Taj Mahal should ever be built again, has the guards carry out a horrifying task. But sensitive Babur, an imaginative inventor, can only come to terms with the destruction of beauty if he exacts his own powerful vengeance. Rajiv Joseph’s enthralling drama Guards at the Taj explores beauty and power, autocracy and resistance, and conflicting loyalties. It features a heartbreakingly funny and relatable friendship tested, and broken, by extreme and brutal circumstances.