How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
It gave me scant surprise to see that since my escape from the Red Fort I'd shed what little fat I carried. Yet I disliked how my skin was starting to age. It didn't appear as ripe as before and seemed loser on my bones. I had seen thirty-six years, after all, and I knew that a woman's beauty was considered a fleeting thing. Perhaps mine was already gone. (19.91)
Man, Jahanara is really tough on herself. She's not the first woman to consider time an enemy that must be fought (just take a look at any of the Real Housewives to see what that looks like), but thirty-six is hardly ancient. (Okay, it was more ancient way back then, but these days, it's nothing.)
This self-consciousness doesn't come out of nowhere, though: the idea that a woman's beauty is fleeting and seated in youth has been a cultural constant for hundreds of years.
Quote #8
A part of me rejoiced at finding them alive and bartering for their freedom, whereas another part lamented our inevitable separation. How could I endure another five years in their absence? "What do you think?" I asked Nizam, knowing that he had missed nothing.
"I think that time is fleeting. Far better to have them in a few years than not at all." (20.79)
The whole "time flies" thing must be a conspiracy constructed by the olds, because um, hello, high school can feel like it lasts forever…and that was only four years. Five years must be an eternity.
Quote #9
I'd last seen my friend and my brother many years previous and my eyes widened in shock. Ladli appeared little different: even if her hips and belly had thickened, age hadn't tempered her beauty.
[…]
Aurangzeb, meanwhile, looked as if time had sucked the vigor from him. He was much thinner than I remembered. His face was deeply lined, though not with wrinkles of laughter but of vexation. His beard was gray and his hair had receded. (23.21)
Some people think that over time you start to look like your inner nature. Like, compare Mrs. Claus with the Wicked Witch. They're both old women, but one is inherently good-natured and kind, so she gets little laugh wrinkles by her eyes and a furrowed brow from worrying about loved ones—and the result is adorable.
The Wicked Witch is, well, wicked…and she looks like it, too. Her wrinkles come from scowling too much—and possibly from avoiding water.
Moving on, we think this is the case with Ladli and Aurangzeb. He looks terrible because he feels terrible. Age is just allowing that terribleness to physically manifest.