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. Arpita DashDecember 20, 2014 at 8:42 PM

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

    ReplyDelete
  2. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 21, 2014 at 7:44 AM

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

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownDecember 21, 2014 at 3:10 PM

    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. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 22, 2014 at 9:41 AM

      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. Destination InfinityDecember 21, 2014 at 6:42 PM

    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. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 22, 2014 at 9:42 AM

      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. AnonymousDecember 22, 2014 at 10:30 AM

    In the end nothing remains!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anand MaraladDecember 23, 2014 at 9:23 PM

    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. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 24, 2014 at 7:30 AM

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

      Delete
    2. Anand MaraladDecember 26, 2014 at 12:49 PM

      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 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...
14 comments
Read more

Koorumala Viewpoint

  Koorumala is at once reticent and coquettish. It is an emerging tourist spot in the Ernakulam district of Kerala. At an altitude of 169 metres from MSL, the viewpoint is about 40 km from Kochi. The final stretch of the road, about 2 km, is very narrow. It passes through lush green forest-looking topography. The drive itself is exhilarating. And finally you arrive at a 'Pay & Park' signboard on a rocky terrain. The land belongs to the CSI St Peter's Church. You park your vehicle there and walk up a concrete path which leads to a tiled walkway which in turn will take you the viewpoint. Below are some pictures of the place.  From the parking lot to the viewpoint The tiled walkway A selfie from near the view tower  A view from the tower Another view The tower and the rest mandap at the back Koorumala viewpoint is a recent addition to Kerala's tourist map. It's a 'cool' place for people of nearby areas to spend some leisure in splendid isolation from the hu...
30 comments
Read more