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

Machiavelli the Reverend

Let us go today , you and I, through certain miasmic streets. Nothing will be quite clear along our way because this journey is through some delusions and illusions. You will meet people wearing holy robes and talking about morality and virtues. Some of them will claim to be god’s men and some will make taller claims. Some of them are just amorphous. Invisible. But omnipotent. You can feel their power around you. On you. Oppressing you. Stifling you. Reverend Machiavelli is one such oppressive power. You will meet Franz Kafka somewhere along the way. Joseph K’s ghost will pass by. Remember Joseph K who was arrested one fine morning for a crime that nobody knew anything about? Neither Joseph nor the men who arrest him know why Joseph K is arrested. The power that keeps Joseph K under arrest is invisible. He cannot get answers to his valid questions from the visible agents of that power. He cannot explain himself to that power. Finally, he is taken to a quarry outside the town wher
19 comments
Read more

Levin the good shepherd

AI-generated image The lost sheep and its redeemer form a pet motif in Christianity. Jesus portrayed himself as a good shepherd many times. He said that the good shepherd will leave his 99 sheep in order to bring the lost sheep back to the fold. When he finds the lost sheep, the shepherd is happier about that one sheep than about the 99, Jesus claimed. He was speaking metaphorically. The lost sheep is the sinner in Jesus’ parable. Sin is a departure from the ‘right’ way. Angels raise a toast in heaven whenever a sinner returns to the ‘right’ path [Luke 15:10]. A lot of Catholic priests I know carry some sort of a Redeemer complex in their souls. They love the sinner so much that they cannot rest until they make the angels of God run for their cups of joy. I have also been fortunate to have one such priest-friend whom I shall call Levin in this post. He has befriended me right from the year 1976 when I was a blundering adolescent and he was just one year older than me. He possesse
8 comments
Read more

Kailasnath the Paradox

AI-generated illustration It wasn’t easy to discern whether he was a friend or merely an amused onlooker. He was my colleague at the college, though from another department. When my life had entered a slippery slope because of certain unresolved psychological problems, he didn’t choose to shun me as most others did. However, when he did condescend to join me in the college canteen sipping tea and smoking a cigarette, I wasn’t ever sure whether he was befriending me or mocking me. Kailasnath was a bundle of paradoxes. He appeared to be an alpha male, so self-assured and lord of all that he surveyed. Yet if you cared to observe deeply, you would find too many chinks in his armour. Beneath all those domineering words and gestures lay ample signs of frailty. The tall, elegantly slim and precisely erect stature would draw anyone’s attention quickly. Kailasnath was always attractively dressed though never unduly stylish. Everything about him exuded an air of chic confidence. But the wa
9 comments
Read more

Nakulan the Outcast

Nakulan was one of the many tenants of Hevendrea . A professor in the botany department of the North Eastern Hill University, he was a very lovable person. Some sense of inferiority complex that came from his caste status made him scoff the very idea of his lovability. He lived with his wife and three children in one of Heavendrea’s many cottages. When he wanted to have a drink, he would walk over to my hut. We sipped our whiskies and discussed Shillong’s intriguing politics or something of the sort while my cassette player crooned gently in the background. Nakulan was more than ten years my senior by age. He taught a subject which had never aroused my interest at any stage of my life. It made no difference to me whether a leaf was pinnately compound or palmately compound. You don’t need to know about anther and stigma in order to understand a flower. My friend Levin would have ascribed my lack of interest in Nakulan’s subject to my egomania. I always thought that Nakulan lived
16 comments
Read more

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
37 comments
Read more