Skip to main content

The King orders his tomb

Short Story
The King was acutely aware of the smallness of his stature.  In fact he was the smallest man among all his adult citizens.  Even the queen stood half a foot taller.  He sought to solve the problem by making his crown as tall as possible so that the crest of the golden crown would stand above the heads of his citizens if at all he would ever come into contact with them.   
A king cannot live without ever coming into some contact with some people.  Every such contact made the King feel small.  He tried to masquerade the smallness with self-flattery.  “I am very popular among the citizens, aren’t I?” he would ask his ministers.  Or, “How was the cultural show I arranged last evening?”  “Isn’t my new robe designed by Christian Lacroix a marvel?”  Ministers are people who have mastered the art of diplomacy and self-flattery invariably loves to call a spade a clade.  Nevertheless there is an awareness that lies deep beneath the surfaces of flattery and diplomacy which wiggles and wriggles occasionally and even painfully.
Prompted by some such squiggly wiggle King decided to change his Prime Minister.  He would only have a man shorter than him in height as the PM.  The King’s wish is an order.  The courtiers soon found out a man shorter than the King.  He was a dwarf.
Standing beside the dwarf the King felt himself very tall.  The feeling of tallness became excitement when the King realised that his new PM was more intelligent than the one who was superannuated prematurely. 
“Who built the Taj Mahal?” asked the new PM.
“Shah Jahan, of course,” answered the King condescendingly.
“Wrong, Your Majesty.  20,000 labourers, many brought in from Iran and Central Asia built the monument.  Shah Jahan merely sat with one wife or the other and drank vintage wine and ate Mugalai chicken.”  Dwarf laughed merrily.  “That is the art of management, Your Majesty.  You sit down and relish the riches lavished on you by the Almighty and make others work.”
The King looked down with stupefaction at the man who was half a metre in height.  Is intelligence quotient inversely proportional to physical height, he wondered.
“I want to keep the mouths of all intellectuals and critics shut for ever,” said the King as if he was suddenly inspired.  “Give me an idea that works.”
“Make them the 20,000 labourers who will build a monument for you, Your Majesty.  They will have no time for talking and you will earn the fame of their work.  History belongs to those who enslave others.”
Thus the King ordered his own tomb.

Note: The story was partly inspired by Robert Browning’s poem The Bishop Orders His Tomb.
Labels:

Comments

  1. jahidJuly 19, 2013 at 5:08 PM

    Nice story Sir, very correct "History belongs to those who enslave others." Even though there's lot of transparency now a days but the situation is pretty similar!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 19, 2013 at 7:08 PM

      Much has indeed changed from the days of the kings. Yet much remains the same!

      Delete
  2. Brendan DabhiJuly 19, 2013 at 6:05 PM

    What a message!
    To the victor go the spoils and the victor writes the history -
    All rolled into one!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 19, 2013 at 7:09 PM

      I'm writing from a certain personal experience, Brendan. So it's as much the history of mankind as my personal one!

      Delete
  3. Easwar ArumugamJuly 19, 2013 at 6:13 PM

    The king is a dwarfish both physically and mentally.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 19, 2013 at 7:10 PM

      Very few kings have managed to rise above such dwarfishness.

      Delete
  4. AnonymousJuly 19, 2013 at 6:24 PM

    Wow What a Great Read..And the message conveyed through this post is very much appreciated.. :-)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 19, 2013 at 7:10 PM

      Thank you. I'm indeed glad you appreciate my writing so much.

      Delete
  5. Richa SinghJuly 19, 2013 at 10:15 PM

    Hi Tomchi. Because of barely visiting indi I am arriving here after a long time. The story depicts one of the harshest truth about corporate slaves. I agree we often forget that the work we are doing will in no way benefit us. We are only walking talking for someoneelse... what a wonderful way of retelling history :D

    Richa

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 20, 2013 at 9:54 AM

      It's always nice to get a comment from you, Richa. You always get the connections clear, connection between the apparent history in my stories and the present situation, connections that I only make subtly. Thanks.

      Delete
  6. AditiJuly 20, 2013 at 2:02 AM

    History remains significant to date!! Great read.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Ankur AnandJuly 20, 2013 at 2:57 AM

    great .. liked it ..

    ReplyDelete
  8. ghosh.surabhi@gmail.comJuly 20, 2013 at 3:31 PM

    loved it :)

    ReplyDelete
  9. MalinyJuly 20, 2013 at 4:32 PM

    Reminds me of the many enlightening fables that have outlived times. Your stories belong to that genre and i love the way you manage to arrive at the message using the right amount of words, never too long, never too short. This was a wonderful work :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 20, 2013 at 4:35 PM

      Glad you like my stories and find them enlightening. Thanks for the appreciation.

      Delete
  10. wingsJuly 20, 2013 at 4:48 PM

    Sir, hats off to you! Precisely expressed sarcasm. Howsoever the king manages to engage his employees, if he is not fair, he must be digging his own pit.

    ReplyDelete
  11. AnonymousJuly 21, 2013 at 2:20 AM

    be the king .. the dwarf PM or the labourer .. is what I am not able to decide .. Of what I understand, Sir, you write such .. perceptions vary .. for each reader .. :)
    BTW,The issue with our nation is that the Dwarf PMs have become the kings too :)

    ReplyDelete
  12. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 21, 2013 at 8:25 AM

    Jack, I'm sorry if I confuse you at times. Blogging is also a kind of diary writing for me, a public diary of sorts, in which I let out my personal problems in a creative way. This story is one such writing.

    ReplyDelete
  13. GurujiJuly 21, 2013 at 11:47 AM

    Excellent. Never thought from the angle that kings were in fact digging their own graves by building marvelous monuments :-)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 21, 2013 at 11:51 AM

      Not all kings dig their own graves, Santhosh. Visionless ones do :)

      A few years ago, I wrote a story about some Mughal kings and princes including Shah Jahan. That's as historical as a story can be. In case you're interested here's the link:
      http://matheikal.wordpress.com/2010/05/29/the-saga-of-a-warrior/

      Delete
  14. AnonymousJuly 22, 2013 at 9:42 AM

    reading this intelligent piece of art i feel the en-slavers be enslaved once to realize how tall do they stand in the pit dug for them by they themselves!
    angellina

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 22, 2013 at 10:16 AM

      Though such turns have occurred in history they are exceptions. Once you reach certain heights of power, you keep rising! That's the normal rule.

      Delete
  15. mandakolathurJuly 24, 2013 at 7:36 AM

    Adam Smith starts his economic analysis on the value of money, and here is the interesting thing in the context of this post - the most important value is that of the labor in producing any thing, be it a palace or a mausoleum! The mausoleum cannot be transferred to or traded for anything else, but labor can be. So, the way I see it, the king has lost the game at the coin toss!

    RE

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 24, 2013 at 9:40 AM

      Yeah, so the labourers have the choice, the king doesn't. Though I had not thought in terms of Adam Smith, I knew that the King was digging his own grave.

      Delete
  16. mandakolathurJuly 24, 2013 at 7:46 AM

    "what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it"

    "Labour was the first price, the original purchase-money that was paid for all things."

    RE, courtesy Adam Smith in "Wealth of nations"

    ReplyDelete
  17. UnknownJuly 30, 2013 at 3:55 PM

    I loved this sentence "History belongs to those who enslave others." How true!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 30, 2013 at 6:05 PM

      I loved the patience with which you read half a dozen of my posts one after the other :)

      Delete
    2. UnknownJuly 31, 2013 at 10:15 AM

      I usually do that :) Unfortunately I am enslaved by the corporate world and hence can't read daily. Whenever I find time, I read all the pending posts in my list in one go. :D Some bloggers have named me a monsoon reader :P

      Delete
    3. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 31, 2013 at 10:50 PM

      I loved these monsoon showers. Thanks.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
44 comments
Read more

Remedios the Beauty and Innocence

  Remedios the Beauty is a character in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude . Like most members of her family, she too belongs to solitude. But unlike others, she is very innocent too. Physically she is the most beautiful woman ever seen in Macondo, the place where the story of her family unfolds. Is that beauty a reflection of her innocence? Well, Marquez doesn’t suggest that explicitly. But there is an implication to that effect. Innocence does make people look charming. What else is the charm of children? Remedios’s beauty is dangerous, however. She is warned by her great grandmother, who is losing her eyesight, not to appear before men. The girl’s beauty coupled with her innocence will have disastrous effects on men. But Remedios is unaware of “her irreparable fate as a disturbing woman.” She is too innocent to know such things though she is an adult physically. Every time she appears before outsiders she causes a panic of exasperation. To make...
4 comments
Read more

The Death of Truth and a lot more

Susmesh Chandroth in his kitchen “Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought,” Poet Shelley told us long ago. I was reading an interview with a prominent Malayalam writer, Susmesh Chandroth, this morning when Shelley returned to my memory. Chandroth says he left Kerala because the state had too much of affluence which is not conducive for the production of good art and literature. He chose to live in Kolkata where there is the agony of existence and hence also its ecstasies. He’s right about Kerala’s affluence. The state has eradicated poverty except in some small tribal pockets. Today almost every family in Kerala has at least one person working abroad and sending dollars home making the state’s economy far better than that of most of its counterparts. You will find palatial houses in Kerala with hardly anyone living in them. People who live in some distant foreign land get mansions constructed back home though they may never intend to come and live here. There are ...
10 comments
Read more

The Covenant of Water

Book Review Title: The Covenant of Water Author: Abraham Verghese Publisher: Grove Press UK, 2023 Pages: 724 “What defines a family isn’t blood but the secrets they share.” This massive book explores the intricacies of human relationships with a plot that spans almost a century. The story begins in 1900 with 12-year-old Mariamma being wedded to a 40-year-old widower in whose family runs a curse: death by drowning. The story ends in 1977 with another Mariamma, the granddaughter of Mariamma the First who becomes Big Ammachi [grandmother]. A lot of things happen in the 700+ pages of the novel which has everything that one may expect from a popular novel: suspense, mystery, love, passion, power, vulnerability, and also some social and religious issues. The only setback, if it can be called that at all, is that too many people die in this novel. But then, when death by drowning is a curse in the family, we have to be prepared for many a burial. The Kerala of the pre-Independ...
10 comments
Read more

Butterfly from Sambhal

“Weren’t you a worm till the other day?” The plant asks the butterfly. “That’s ancient history,” the butterfly answers. “Why don’t you look at the present reality which is much more beautiful?” “How can I forget that past?” The plant insists. “You ate almost all my leaves. Had not my constant gardener discovered your ravage in time and removed you from my frail limbs, I would have been dead long before you emerged from your contemplation with beautiful wings.” “I’m sorry, my dear Nandiarvattam ji. Did I have a choice? The only purpose of the existence of caterpillars is to eat leaves. Eat and eat. Until we get into the cocoon and wait for our wings to unfold. A new reality to unfold. It's a relentless hunger that creates butterflies.” “Your new reality is my painful old history. I still remember how I trembled foreseeing my death. Death by a worm!” “I wish I could heal you with my kisses.” “You’re doing that, thank you. But…” “I know. It hurts, the history thing. I’...
10 comments
Read more