But the buffer of the centuries enables her to see Aurangzeb as, simply, an old man who looked back over a long life with no satisfaction and much shame; and therefore to see him as someone worthy of her sympathy—someone in whose very shoes she could imagine herself. And this imaginative participation across the gap of years, of religion, of sex, settles her restless mind because it enables her to see her own situation with a clarity that’s all the more powerful because it was unlooked-for.
