Skip to main content

Aurangzeb too dies


“I came alone and I go as a stranger.  I don’t know who I am, nor what I have been doing.”

Azam listened.  He knew his father, Aurangzeb the Great, was blabbering on his deathbed.  Everybody blabbers on the deathbed.  Everybody blabbers in old age.

“I conquered.  I defeated.  For what?” Aurangzeb continued holding on to Azam’s hand.  Azam was the legal heir.  But in a family with six official wives and their sons.  Forget the daughters, they are born to be wives and son-bearers.  Sons fight.  Sons make the rules.  Sons conquer and rule.

My father is dying, realised Azam.  All my siblings will fight for the throne. 

Fighting is all that they had learnt. Is there nothing more than fighting that life can offer?  Aurangzeb asked himself lying on his deathbed.

Too late to learn lessons.  It’s only when you lie down helplessly, unable to fight, unable to put on the armour, you realise the futility of all. 

How many temples did I demolish?  How many people did I kill?  All for the sake of conquering some land.  And what did I gain?

I ruled.  I ruled almost the whole of what can be called India.  What did I gain?

I’m sick and dying. 

You must die, thought Azam.  I should get the power.  You die and I become the next emperor. 

No, my son.  The larger the empire, the more the enemies.  Keep your ambitions low.  The crown, the country, and the glory.  They mean nothing. 

You are dying, old man.  Die.  Die in peace. 

The Empire is dying, my son.

I’m the Empire, responded Azam.  People are fools.  Any fool with ambition and heartlessness can be a ruler.  And I am not a fool.  At least I know how to kill.  At least how to conquer the gods of the others.

Nobody knew better how to conquer the gods of others than Aurangzeb.  He knew it was his time to die.  


Comments

  1. Nice post....beautifully penned....

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks, Arpita. The opening dialogue is quoted from Stanley Wolpert,, Indologist.

    ReplyDelete
  3. May be this is exactly how he felt.. may be this is exactly how everybody feels at the end. All our lives we go through struggle, fights, defeats, victories and at this age, I have asked myself many a times "why am I doing all this? So that I can live? So that I have a purpose to live?" Ultimately what is the real purpose of life? Does fame and money and power makes our life successful?? If we live a normal peaceful life and before death we might feel we have not achieved anything. and if we live a successful life, which of course comes with a price tag, we might never be able to forget our sins. So, is there a peaceful death for anyone???

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It must be how he felt, Shruthi. In fact, the opening dialogue is supposed to have been spoken by Aurangzeb himself, according to Stanley Wolpert.

      Most people forget that human life is a brief affair. They amass power, wealth and other things as if they would live a whole eternity!

      Delete
  4. I think he just did what he was supposed to. People don't have much control over their actions, contrary to what they believe.

    Destination Infinity

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. No, I think we have control and we should cultivate it, if we don't have it already. Otherwise what were we given the rational faculty for?

      Delete
  5. In the end nothing remains!

    ReplyDelete
  6. This narration would have suited Jahangir or Shah Jahan well than Aurangzeb. History does not show any traces of Aurangzeb reconsidering his motives or giving a second thought on his actions which would have resurfaced in his mind at the deathbed. He was no “great” like his great grandfather Akbar. Instead he damaged the foundations laid by Akbar. His achievement was managing to remain a king at the expense of vast resources he inherited.

    None of the Mughal emperors were wired to keep their ambitions low. And Aurangzeb for sure. He had faced death more than all other Mughal princes put together so deathbed would not have altered his thoughts. He would have blabbered for sure but for more power and crushing the enemies. If he was born again, I believe he would have done the same thing he had done in his previous life.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Some of our current leaders are behaving not very unlike Aurangzeb. That's why I wrote this.

      Delete
    2. Yes, very much. But the religions are reversed. One thing to note is, both Aurangzeb and today's leader represents the society which chose them.

      Military leaders in the Mughal forces backed Aurangzeb against Dara Shikoh as they felt their religion was sidelined and neglected. And they saw a hero in Aurangzeb. In today's times it appears Hindu' voters felt neglected and they chose a leader who they thought is the savior.

      Since leaders are product of the times, what we are seeing is replay of the history. One can guess where it leads without much effort.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Ugly Duckling

Source: Acting Company A. A. Milne’s one-act play, The Ugly Duckling , acquired a classical status because of the hearty humour used to present a profound theme. The King and the Queen are worried because their daughter Camilla is too ugly to get a suitor. In spite of all the devious strategies employed by the King and his Chancellor, the princess remained unmarried. Camilla was blessed with a unique beauty by her two godmothers but no one could see any beauty in her physical appearance. She has an exquisitely beautiful character. What use is character? The King asks. The play is an answer to that question. Character plays the most crucial role in our moral science books and traditional rhetoric, religious scriptures and homilies. When it comes to practical life, we look for other things such as wealth, social rank, physical looks, and so on. As the King says in this play, “If a girl is beautiful, it is easy to assume that she has, tucked away inside her, an equally beauti

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

Face of the Faceless

“When you choose to fight for truth and justice, you will have to face serious threats.” Sister Rani Maria, the protagonist of the movie, is counselled by her mother in a letter. Face of the Faceless is a movie that shows how serious those threats are. This movie is a biopic. It shows us the life of a Catholic nun who dedicated her life to serve some Adivasis of Madhya Pradesh [MP] and ended up as a martyr. If it were not a real story, this movie would have been an absolute flop. Since it is the real story of not only a nun but also the impoverished and terribly exploited Adivasis in a particular village of MP, it keeps you engrossed. It is a sad movie, right from the beginning to the end. It is a story of the good versus evil, the powerless versus the powerful, the heroic versus the villainous, the divine versus the diabolic. Having said that, I must hasten to add one conspicuous fact: the movie does not ever present Christianity or its religious practices as the only right way

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart

All the light we cannot see

Book Review Title: All the light we cannot see Author: Anthony Doerr Publisher: Fourth Estate, London, 2014 Pages: 531 What we call light is just a tiny fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum. Most part of the electromagnetic spectrum remains beyond ordinary human perception. Such is human life too: so many of its shades remain beyond our ordinary perception and understanding. Anthony Doerr’s novel, All the light we cannot see , unravels for us some of the mysterious shades of human life. Marie-Laure LeBlanc leaves Paris with her father Daniel who is entrusted with the task of carrying a rare diamond, Sea of Flames , to safe custody when the second world war breaks out. The National Museum of Natural History, Paris, has made three counterfeit diamonds of the Sea of Flames. Four men are assigned the task of carrying each of these diamonds to four different destinations. None of them knows whether they are carrying the original diamond or the counterfeit. Marie-Laure a