Skip to main content

King’s Dharma



“Treat me as it befits a king.”

   Alexander was amused by the demand from a vanquished king. Porus stood before him as a prisoner but with all the solemnity of a king still playing on his anguished visage. They peered into each other’s eyes. Alexander could easily gauge the depths of Porus’ mind. Real kings understand other real kings. Only those who are slaves at heart will demean real kings.

   Those other kings were not real kings. When he asked them to attend the meeting he had summoned in order to demand their allegiance to him and tokens of that allegiance, they came meekly. They were intimidated by his successes hitherto, the last being Gandhara. They were not kings at heart. They deserved what they got.

   Here was the real king.

   “How do you want to be treated?” Alexander had asked him with much amusement. Standing before him was a king who had refused to attend the meeting he had summoned. “Yes, I will meet you,” he had sent the message, “but as a king would meet another king, in the battlefield.”

   That was a royal answer and Alexander loved it. It would be a treacherous battle, Alexander knew. It was the rainy season and the river Jhelum was flooded. But floods won’t deter Alexander, he said to himself. Alexander had crossed many a flooded river before reaching the Punjab. His soldiers knew their job. They knew not only to kill the enemy but also to cross flooded rivers.

   Porus might have miscalculated, thought Alexander. He must have thought that Alexander the Macedonian would be drowned in the Jhelum along with his warriors. Ah, Porus, you don’t know Alexander. Alexander loves adventure. Alexander is not interested in mere conquests. Alexander is on a quest and questers always find their way.

   Those others who capitulated without a fight didn’t deserve to be kings. They got what they deserved: vassalage. You deserve royalty, Porus, royalty and nothing less.

   Porus, I will discuss this with you soon. What I think is that you are the philosopher-king that our Plato spoke of. Shall I assume that you learnt it from the Dharma of your sacred scriptures? Someone told me about Krishna and his Gita. Do your duty like a warrior. And you did it, Porus.

   I’m performing a duty too, Porus. It is a duty to my soul which is relentlessly hungry. It is not a hunger for power as people often think. It is a hunger for what lies beyond.

   “I’m returning your kingdom to you, Porus,” said Alexander. Porus peered once again into his rival’s eyes.

   “Trust me,” said Alexander. “You want to be treated as it befits a king and I am doing precisely that because you deserve it. What’s more, I’m adding a few more kingdoms to yours as I go on into the beyond.”

   Real kings have no enemies, Alexander mused to himself as he put the crown on Porus’ head. Real kings have only quests. Real kings have their Dharma.

PS. Where did Alexander’s quest take him after this? I wrote another story about that three years ago: And quiet flowed the Beas. What prompted this present story is the way politics is moving in India these days. Any perspicacious reader will understand that, I think.  

  

Comments

  1. Precisely, we don't have real kings these days. They deserve whatever blames they are getting. There is no Dharma, no quest and no idealism in the hearts of the slaves. Good read.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Great story.Alexander inspired the western mind a lot in terms of conquering the world.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. He travelled with some writers too, it seems. Probably he was more than a mere conqueror though most people didn't understand/haven't understood that.

      Delete
  3. Cantador the storyteller. I am moving to refresh myself on the quiet banks of Beas.

    ReplyDelete

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

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...

India in Modi-Trap

That’s like harnessing a telescope to a Vedic chant and expecting the stars to spin closer. Illustration by Gemini AI A friend forwarded a WhatsApp message written by K Sahadevan, Malayalam writer and social activist. The central theme is a concern for science education and research in India. The writer bemoans the fact that in India science is in a prison conjured up by Narendra Modi. The message shocked me. I hadn’t been aware of many things mentioned therein. Modi is making use of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan’s Centre for Study and Research in Indology for his nefarious purposes projected as efforts to “preserve and promote classical Indian knowledge systems [IKS]” which include Sanskrit, Ayurveda, Jyotisha (astrology), literature, philosophy, and ancient sciences and technology. The objective is to integrate science with spirituality and cultural values. That’s like harnessing a telescope to a Vedic chant and expecting the stars to spin closer. The IKS curricula have made umpteen r...

Two Women and Their Frustrations

Illustration by Gemini AI Nora and Millie are two unforgettable women in literature. Both are frustrated with their married life, though Nora’s frustration is a late experience. How they deal with their personal situations is worth a deep study. One redeems herself while the other destroys herself as well as her husband. Nora is the protagonist of Henrik Ibsen’s play, A Doll’s House , and Millie is her counterpart in Terence Rattigan’s play, The Browning Version . [The links take you to the respective text.] Personal frustration leads one to growth into an enlightened selfhood while it embitters the other. Nora’s story is emancipatory and Millie’s is destructive. Nora questions patriarchal oppression and liberates herself from it with equanimity, while Millie is trapped in a meaningless relationship. Since I have summarised these plays in earlier posts, now I’m moving on to a discussion on the enlightening contrasts between these two characters. If you’re interested in the plot ...

Hindutva’s Contradictions

The book I’m reading now is Whose Rama? [in Malayalam] by Sanskrit scholar and professor T S Syamkumar. I had mentioned this book in an earlier post . The basic premise of the book, as I understand from the initial pages, is that Hindutva is a Brahminical ideology that keeps the lower caste people outside its terrain. Non-Aryans are portrayed as monsters in ancient Hindu literature. The Shudras, the lowest caste, and the casteless others, are not even granted the status of humans.  Whose Rama? The August issue of The Caravan carries an article related to the inhuman treatment that the Brahmins of Etawah in Uttar Pradesh meted out to a Yadav “preacher” in the last week of June 2025. “Yadavs are traditionally ranked as a Shudra community,” says the article. They are not supposed to recite the holy texts. Mukut Mani Singh Yadav was reciting verses from the Bhagavad Gita. That was his crime. The Brahmins of the locality got the man’s head tonsured, forced him to rub his nose at t...