Hamza: Her Sworn Enemy

Mahnoor is a second-year history student. She is sharp-tongued, fiercely independent, and unafraid to speak her mind.

Her latest coursework is on the lives of powerful figures who contributed to India's growth.

That's when she discovers him.

An emperor unlike any other who was undefeated in war, feared by rulers, praised by history, but still infamous for his cruelty.

The deeper she reads about him, the more her hatred for him grows because it was very evident the textbooks tried to balance his brilliance by sugercoating his brutality, but to her, his name is soaked in blood.

One afternoon, sitting in the library, she seethes to her friend,

"Still. If one of those women had rebelled, her name would be in this book today. I'm angry that none tried to do so."

"I wish I was there. I really do."

"I would have said things everyone was scared to utter to his face. He wasn't feared because he was powerful, he was feared because people feared for their lives. And that is not power."

"He won't be remembered because he was great, but because he did things no one could ever forget."

That night, on a rain-soaked street in Mumbai, her car nearly hits an old woman crossing the road.

When she gets down to confront her, the woman curses her.

"So, you wish you were there?
You think you could speak, rebel, and change history with your voice?
Then go.
Let's see how your voice will be heard in a palace where a woman's opinion holds no importance.
Your freedom will crumble because rebellion there means death.
Your name will rot with theirs and be forgotten and only then you will understand they too were not stupid.
Go. I'll love to see how you make history remember you."

The world spins and she finds herself in 1574, inside the emperor's harem, the very one she hated with every fiber of her being.

She knows how his story ends. But this time, she's inside it.

Will she become another silenced voice in his dark legacy or the one woman who dares to rewrite history?