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...

Are You Sane?

Illustration by Gemini AI A few months back, a clinical psychiatrist asked me whether anyone in my family ever suffered from insanity. “All of us are insane to some degree,” I wanted to tell her. But I didn’t because there was another family member with me. We had taken a youngster of the family for counselling. I had forgotten the above episode until something happened the other day which led me to write last post . The incident that prompted me to write that post brought down an elder of my family from the pedestal on which I had placed him simply because he is a very devout religious person who prays a lot and moves about in the society like the gentlest soul that ever lived in these not-so-gentle terrains. I also think that the severe flu which descended on me that night was partly a product of my disillusionment. The realisation that one’s religion and devotion that guided one for seven decades hadn’t touched one’s heart even a little bit was a rude shock to me. What does re...

Joys of Onam and a reflection

Suppose that the whole universe were to be saved and made perfect and happy forever on just one condition: one single soul must suffer, alone, eternally. Would this be acceptable? Philosopher William James asked that in his 1891 book, The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life . Please think about it once again and answer the question for yourself. You, as well as others, are going to live a life without a tinge of sorrow. Joyful existence. Life in Paradise. The only condition is that one person will take up all the sorrows of the universe on him-/herself and suffer – alone, eternally. What do you say? James’s answer is a firm no . “Not even a god would be justified in setting up such a scheme,” James asserted, knowing too well how the Bible justified a positive answer to his question. “It is expedient that one man should die for the people, so that the nation can be saved” [John 11:50]. Jesus was that one man in the Biblical vision of redemption. I was reading a Malayalam period...

Loving God and Hating People

Illustration by Gemini AI There are too many people, including in my extended family. who love God so much that other people have no place in their hearts. God fills their hearts. They go to church or other similar places every day and meet their God. I guess they do. But they return home from the place of worship only to pour out the venom in their hearts on those around them. When I’m vexed by such ‘religious’ people I consult Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov in which there are some characters who are acutely vexed by spiritual questions. Let me leave Ivan Karamazov to himself, as he has been discussed too much already. In Book II, Chapter 4 [ A lady of Little Faith ], a troubled woman comes to Father Zosima, the wise monk, and confesses her spiritual struggle. “I long to love God,” she says. She knows that she cannot love God without loving her fellow human beings, or at least doing some service to them. The truth is, she says, “I cannot bear people. The closer they ...