Diksha Sundriyal
In Netflix’s ‘Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar,’ romance brews between two people whose love is doomed from the beginning. Alamzeb is the daughter of the courtesan, Mallikajaan, who is the most influential person in Heeramandi. She is raised with only one thing in mind: that one day, she, too, will become a courtesan and take over from her mother. On the other hand is Tajdar, born into nobility and destined to take over from his father and further the title and reputation of his family. As impossible as the love between them seems, it somehow manages to subvert everyone’s expectations, and even those who had stood against them in the beginning start to root for them. But what does fate have in store for them? SPOILERS AHEAD
Alam and Taj’s Love Meets an Unfulfilled End
There had been many women from Heeramandi, courtesans who had fallen in love with the men who visited the place looking for entertainment and distraction. For almost all of them, the love ended in tragedy, but it was mostly because the man, once bored or called by his family’s responsibilities, dropped the courtesan and moved on. Every woman before Alamzeb in Heeramandi knew this bitter truth, and the latest example in front of her was Lajjo, who died by suicide after she was left by the man she loved.
So, when Alam falls in love with Tajdaar, she is warned of a similar fate. She is told, time and again, that this will only lead to heartbreak, and she will eventually have to resign to life as a courtesan, a fate that she was born into. But then, Taj turns out to be different from other men. To begin with, he doesn’t meet Alam at Heeramandi as a courtesan, but under very different circumstances. He falls in love with her, not knowing who she is, and even when he discovers she is Mallikjaan’s daughter, his initial hesitation eventually subsides, and he is ready to marry Alam, something that hasn’t happened in the history of Heeramandi before.
Twice, Alam and Taj come close to getting married, and both times, fate intervenes. The first time, it happens at Taj’s family home. While his family and Alam prepare for the wedding and he is away from the house, British forces raid the house after getting a tip about Taj’s involvement with the freedom fighters. Incriminating evidence is found, but instead of him, Alam is arrested, and to save himself, Alam lets her take the blame for it all.
At first, it seems that this would be the end of their romance, that now there is no way they will reconcile from this betrayal. But then, Alam turns out to be pregnant, and the discovery of this fact spurs Taj to, once again, do what should have been done a long time ago. This time, the circumstances are a bit different, and he needs to convince Mallikajaan that he really is ready to marry her daughter this time and won’t betray her under any circumstances. He even convinces his grandmother to accompany him, and after a lot of back and forth, the wedding day is eventually decided.
This time, it really looked like they would get married, but Taj’s father is not ready to be disgraced by his son’s wedding to a courtesan’s daughter. When his warnings fall on deaf ears, he takes a drastic step. He rats out his son to the British, hoping that they would only keep him in prison for a few days, enough for him to come to his senses or for Alam to lose faith in him completely. And then, they would let Taj go and things would be back to normal. But he underestimates the British.
Once in prison, Taj is treated like every other revolutionary, brutally tortured. Cartwright takes the torture to such an extent that he ends up killing Taj, something a horrified Fareedan witnesses. When Taj doesn’t show up, Alam and everyone else in Heeramandi believes that he has stepped back on his decision, but later, Fareedan shows up with the tragic news. This puts an end to Alam and Taj’s romance, which ends tragically, just as predicted by Mallikajaan in the beginning, even though it takes a very different route.
Read More: Where and When Does Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar Take Place?
