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The Nomad Learns Morality
Short Stories
Tomichan Matheikal
To
Radha Soami Satsang Beas
EspeciallyDr Pranita Gopal
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OnlineGatha – The Endless Tale
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PUBLISHER NOTE
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INDEX
S. No- Content Pages
1- Ahalya 7
2- Sarayu’s Sorrow 10
3- Snakes and Ladders 13
4-
The Autumn of the Patriarch15
5- The Original Sin 20
6- Children of Lust 23
7- The First Christmas 27
8- War and Love 30
9- Barrel Life 33
10-
And Quiet Flowed the Beas36
11- Worship 39
12- Scholar, Politician and Priest 42
13- Life’s Journey 45
14- Galileo’s Truth 48
15- Caliph of Two Worlds 51
16-
The Saga of a Warrior54
17- Aurangzeb too Dies 62
18- Under the Peepal 64
19- Maya 67
20- Destiny 71
21- The Devil has a Religion 74
22-
A Ghost and a Secret78
23- Mayank Passes 82
24- Michael and the Witch 85
25- Sacrifice 89
26- Coma 93
27- The Lights Below the Darkness 100
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28- Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star 110
29-
The Nomad Learns Morality121
30- BMW 127
31- Pearls and ... Bullies 130
32- Anna, I Miss You 134
33- The Queen of Spades 138
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Ahalya
“I knew you would come to deliver me from my
stony existence,” Ahalya said touching Rama’s feet.
“I’m just a means,” Rama said with an
understanding smile. “Deliverance is one’s own
choice, not given by somebody else.” “But your touch sent grace flowing through my
being. I could feel it. I felt the stone within me
melting away. The lightness of my being now
brings me bliss untold.”
Ahalya was living in a granite cave ever since the
intercourse she had had with Indra, the lord ofSvargaloka. Gods can transform your life in either
way, she realised. Here is a god who liberated her
from the monolith that weighed down her
consciousness, a monolith that was put there in her
consciousness by another god.
She had become a monolith after Indra visited
her that day when her husband, Sage Gautama, old
man with wrinkled skin and matted hair, had gone
to fetch the materials required for his religious
oblations. Indra looked like Gautama; he had
disguised himself as Gautama. Gautama without
wrinkles. Gautama whose hair was more scented
than matted. Gautama whose eyes exuded the
inviting intoxication of lust.
Ahalya felt her youth moistening and longing for
intoxication. She succumbed to the temptation
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pretending that the man who was doing it was
indeed her husband.When the disguised Indra left having satiated his
lust, the real Gautama stood before Ahalya whose
body was still recovering from the tremors it had
experienced.
“I thought it was you,” she said sheepishly to her
husband.Rage flared in Gautama’s eyes. No mother
mistakes her offspring whatever disguise they may
come wearing. No woman mistakes any disguise
for her husband. Disguises are our conscious
choices, thundered Gautama. I curse you for this.
“Curses are our conscious choices, so is grace,”
said Rama. Every error is an invitation to see our
reality better, to realise where our consciousness is
and where it can be. When we refuse to reach out
to the potential of our consciousness, a curse befalls
us.
Yes, I refused to reach out, reflected Ahalya.
Reach out to the deepest core of my being. I even
failed to stand up to my conscience. I deluded
myself totally.
All curses are self-delusions, she thought Rama
was saying. Every deliverance is a perception andan acceptance of truth. One’s own truth. Truth
cannot be anyone else’s.
Rama was walking away. In his consciousness
was arising a flame, a flame that would test the truth
of another woman in a few years to come, the
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woman most beloved to him, the woman most
chaste... the woman whom he would have toconsign to a fire test for the sake of delusions.
Endless human delusions.
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Sarayu’s Sorrow
He sat down on the bank of the Sarayu with
a heavy heart. The palace of Ayodhya stood
silhouetted against the setting sun. He could hear a
cry rising beyond the scarlet horizon like the
subdued rumble of a reluctant thunder.He wanted her, to be with him till the end of
his life, to be his life’s ultimate meaning. But she
had refused to undergo yet another fire test.
“How many fire tests will be required before
my husband can trust my fidelity?” There was fire
in her eyes as she asked that question. But it was asubdued fire. Like the fire inside a volcano.
“It’s not I who suspect your fidelity,” he
explained. “You know the people of Ayodhya.
They think any woman who has spent even a single
night in the abode of another man is sullied. And
you know how many nights you spent in the abodeof a rakshas.”
He was torn between conflicting desires.
He wanted her, body and soul. His subjects loved
him, no doubt. Some of them even adored him.
Such love is impersonal, however. There is nothing
like the love of one’s beloved. Had Ravana indeed
not touched her? Can a rakshas be so good at heart?
Are the people making unnecessary allegations and
demands? Hadn’t she already proved her innocence
by jumping into the fire that Lakshmana had ignited
at her insistence?
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People don’t like to see others living in love, he
thought. They like strife and dissidence. Theexcitements of love are too dreary for the rank and
file. They want war when they are bored with the
mundane affairs.
And I? What do I want? He asked himself.
Whose love do I value more? My beloved’s love
that is as pure as the snow in the Himalayas or thelove of my people that melts away when the sun
shines?
He found it difficult to make a choice.
Commitment makes certain inhuman demands,
he thought. You have to give up something if you
want to gain something. Which shall I give up? DoI dare? Do I dare to listen to my soul?
The sky grew darker than usual. The clouds
came rolling like black rakshasas. They began to
rumble. Like a tiger that was waking up from its
slumber. Lightning flashed. One after the other.
They set the sky on fire. They roared. The roar was
far from being subdued. It terrified him. It terrified
the earth. And the earth split into two. He felt the
tremor beneath his feet.
The night passed giving him tremulous
nightmares.Valmiki visited him the next morning. Bhumi
has received his daughter back, he said. Your sons
are with me. They should be growing up in the
palace. What sin have they committed? Or do you
wish to bestow on them your guilt?
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From his palace he could see the Sarayu flowing.
Her waters were sullied because of the previousnight’s rain.
What can I bestow on anyone? He asked
himself. Except guilt, maybe.
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Snakes and Ladders
When Rama and Lakshmana sat down to play
snakes and ladders, Manthara told them, “For every
ladder you climb, remember there’s a snake waiting
to swallow you.”
Some snakes will swallow you even before youclimb any ladder, Rama realised years later. If you
are a potential climber, snakes are more eager to
swallow you because they know swallowing is
difficult once you have actually climbed.
My ladders were removed even before I reached
them, thought Rama. First Kaikeyi, then Ravana,and then the very people of Ayodhya, they all took
away the ladder just as I approached it. I took
revenge on Ravana, but did I regain my Sita? So
what use was it all? I ascended the throne of
Ayodhya. For what? To see Sita walk into the
flames?You lacked the courage to stand up to people,
said Lakshmana. You were more concerned with
your image, the facade of the Maryada Purushottam.
Lakshmana was chagrined when his role model and
hero consigned his wife, the most chaste woman, to
the flames in the name of agni pariksha just to gainthe applause from the gallery. You never protested
though you knew deep in your heart that your
ladders were being pulled away unjustly.
Unnecessarily, in fact.
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What would I have achieved by protesting?
Rama countered. Kingship? Do you think I wasmore interested in kingship than in the happiness of
Kaikeyi Ma?
But your passive acceptance of Kaikeyi’s
demand killed our father. When you proffered joy
to Kaikeyi you brought deep sorrow to many others
in the family.Both snakes and ladders are essential, brother, to
complete the game.
Granted that. Lakshmana was thinking. But why
do the deserving people encounter more snakes than
ladders? He was watching helplessly and
remorsefully Sita Devi being swallowed by theearth.
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The Autumn of the Patriarch
Draupadi’s question struck his heart like a
poisoned arrow. “Do you really believe that you are
a selfless person?”
Bhishma, the Patriarch of two kingdoms, the
most venerated of all the Kauravas and thePandavas, stood speechless before a woman’s
question. Women played more role in his life than
he would have ever wished. In spite of his
renowned vow that he would never let a woman
enter into his life, women forced their way into his
life.It all started with a woman. She was the
daughter of a fisherman-chieftain. Rather, adopted
daughter. In reality, she belonged to the celestial
realms. She had the gracefulness of a mermaid and
the fragrance of musk. No wonder Bhishma’s
father fell madly in love with her. It was that madlove which made a terrible demand on Bhishma.
He vowed that he would never marry, that he
would never have any offspring. A great sacrifice.
A noble sacrifice that made his reputation as the
selfless patriarch of the kingdom. That sacrifice was
the demand made, indirectly though, by Satyavati’sfather who wanted his grandchildren to inherit the
kingdom. Otherwise what would be his daughter’s
position in the palace? He loved his daughter as
much as he loved himself.
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That daughter, the same Satyavati, would later
tempt Bhishma. When her son died leaving hisyoung wives childless, Satyavati asked Bhishma to
produce offspring through Ambika and Ambalika.
It took more than the strength of his vow to
overcome the temptation laid before him. Ambika
and Ambalika were two of the most charming
women he had ever seen. It was he who won them by defeating all other kings during her
swayamvara. It was he who made them the wives
of his step-brother. He had converted the
swayamvara into a raid, in fact. He could do that
because he was Bhishma the Selfless One.
Satyavati, don’t you realise that I a man, a man offlesh and blood? He wanted to ask her. No, he
didn’t ask. He was Bhishma, the Great. Great men
are not supposed to have the desires of ordinary
people. Bhishma had conquered all such desires.
Bhishma was not an ordinary man.
But Draupadi’s question remained stuck in hisheart like a poisoned arrow. She had not asked it
with rancour. It came from her helplessness and
dignity. Was there pity too? Did she pity him?
Pity his life whose greatness was built up on
illusions conjured up in the name of dharma?
What had he done to Amba, for instance? Ambawas the sister of Ambika and Ambalika. He,
Bhishma, had carried her off too to become the wife
of his step-brother. He mercilessly ignored her
pleas. She had told him that she was in love with
Salva, the king of Saubha. Salva had fought
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valiantly too for her. But what did he, Bhishma,
do? There was no place for love in his world ofconquests. The selfless patriarch who knew not the
meaning of love. Draupadi’s arrow quivered in
Bhishma’s heart. What is the meaning of
selflessness devoid of love?
Amba’s husband didn’t want as a wife a woman
whose heart was with another man. He let her go tothe owner of her heart. But the self-respect of kings
is much more demanding than their love for
women. “You have been polluted by another man’s
touch,” declared Salva. “You cannot be my wife.”
She pleaded with him. No man had touched her,
she avowed solemnly and passionately through tearsthat flowed down her sweet cheeks. Tears on such
cheeks would have melted any ordinary man. But
kings are not ordinary men. Amba was driven out
of the Saubha palace.
She returned to the Kuru palace. “No, don’t ever
dream of being my wife,” said the Kuru king. Herefused to accept the counsel of Bhishma too in this
regard.
“You marry me then,” Amba turned to Bhishma
with a firmness that could have come only from
desperation.
“Who, me?” Bhishma was shocked. How dared
she? Didn’t she know who he was? Bhishma the
Great. Bhishma the Great cannot marry.
But the beautiful woman had shot an arrow into
the tranquillity of his heart. He had to order her out
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of his sight once and for all before the ripple in his
heart would become a turbulence. Are you reallyselfless? Draupadi’s question wiggled in his heart.
“Why don’t you at least see the adharma of what
is happening here?” Draupadi demanded throwing a
contemptuous glance at Yudhishtira. “Which son of
a king would wager his wife? Which man can
wager his wife having lost himself first?” “Whom did you lose first, yourself or me?” She
turned to her husband who had lost the game of
dice.
Yudhishtira sat sullenly. Draupadi looked her
other four husbands. They diverted their gaze from
her.
What is a woman? Draupadi asked herself. A
commodity for men to buy and sell as they please?
This man, the great patriarch, the selfless one,
hadn’t he done the same with other women too?
“Dharma is too subtle, my dear,” declaredBhishma, “I am unable to resolve your question in
the proper way.”
“Truth is simple,” returned Draupadi. “But
dharma is subtle.”
Bhishma could not reply. Rajneeti has its own
dharma. She could not understand that. Can sheunderstand the silence of all her husbands, brave
warriors as they are? The first loyalty is to the
king. Their king had lost himself. He had lost them
too. He had lost her too. That is the dharma of
rajneeti. If Yudhishtira answered her question, if he
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said, “Yes, I lost myself before I lost you,” a serious
question would arise: “Does a woman cease to bethe wife when her husband loses ownership over
himself?”
No, my dear Draupadi, Bhishma heard him
muttering to himself. No. You are raising a
question that is not easy to resolve. Are you a
queen first and then a wife? Or are you a wife firstof all? What is a wife’s dharma?
Dharma. The patriarch had no answers. Which
is greater: dharma or love? Well, he had renounced
love, hadn’t he? At any rate, what has love got to
do with a kshatriya?
The patriarch could not find words to speak evenwhen Duhshasana started pulling out Draupadi’s
sari. He was contemplating dharma and rajneeti.
One day he would have to make a great sacrifice
for the sake of the same dharma. He would
sacrifice himself. Somewhere far away, Amba was
re-creating herself in the fire of never-dying
vengeance.
Women, thought Bhishma the patriarch, Bhishma
the Great. Women make dharma mysterious.
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The Original Sin
“The question is how qualitative you want your
life to be,” said Satan.
“True,” replied Eve. “In fact, this life is quite
boring.”
“This is not the only life that’s open before you. What you’re now doing is to live like animals. You
and Adam are just like the elephants or the goats or
the fish or the birds. You wake up in the morning,
search for food, eat, rest, mate in the season and go
to sleep.”
“What else is there to do?” wondered Eve.
“That’s precisely what I’m going to teach you,”
Satan beamed with a kind of glee that could exist
only in the hell. “Imagine that you combine this
animal life with the consciousness of the spirits.”
Satan paused. Eve had begun to imagine. Buther imagination got stuck on the word
‘consciousness.’
“Mind, thinking, awareness...” Satan tried to
explain. Eve stared at him blinking in ignorance.
“See, the life of a pure spirit is boring too; more
boring than that of the animals’. The animals can atleast eat and mate. The spirits can’t do even that.
But the spirits possess a higher level of awareness,
consciousness, by which they know much more
than the animals do, they understand more, they can
give meaning and purpose to their life...”
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Eve began to understand.
“For example,” Satan continued. “Now you matewith Adam only when mating is a physical
requirement you feel in a particular season and that
is meant to produce offspring. But with a higher
level of consciousness you will understand the
delights of sex, mating not for reproduction but for
delight. You rise above nature and its ways. Youacquire culture...”
Satan was bored of his existence as a spirit. He
wanted fun. Adam and Eve were the best creatures
of God who could be the subjects of his experiment.
God was bored of life in the heaven. What was
there to do except listen to the angels singingAlleluia all the time? God did not prevent Satan
from carrying out his experiment.
God and Satan were relieved of their boredom
when Eve accepted the apple offered by Satan. An
exhilarating feeling overpowered Eve when she bit
into the apple. It frothed in her brain. It became an
intoxication. Her brain was dancing. Adam could
perceive the change in his mate. “Eat this and your
brain will dance too,” said Eve.
The intoxication aroused their spirits. The
aroused spirits understood their bodies differently. Now the mating of the bodies had a new
dimension. They mated again and again. Mated
until it exhausted them. And they glided into sleep.
When they woke up they looked at each other’s
bodies in a different way. They felt ashamed of
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their bodies. Their spirits knew shame. Their
spirits knew sensual delights. Their consciousnesswas evolving.
God watched them with amusement. Satan
watched them with inquisitiveness. God’s
amusement would eventually become grief. Satan’s
inquisitiveness would eventually be inherited by the
offspring of Adam and Eve. The inquisitivenesswas the original sin.
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Children of Lust
Self-righteous fool that I am! Lot beat his chest
and lamented. His cries rose to the heavens,
“Yahweh! Forgive me, forgive me.”
Lot’s sin was manifold. Lust and incest. He
copulated with both of his daughters. Hisdaughters’ children would not be his grandchildren
as it should have been. How disgraceful! The
mountains off Zoar echoed his laments.
Lot had fled Sodom because of its immorality.
The people were like pigs wallowing in filth: they
wallowed in sex and sensuality. Bored of the
women, the men of Sodom sought and found their
delights in male bodies. Left to themselves, their
women too discovered their own delights: in the
bodies of each other. Bodily pleasures. Of the
unnatural kind. Damnation. Death.
The wombs of Sodom cried to the heavens for
seeds to germinate. The heavens heard the cries.
Yahweh opened the gate of the heavens and told Lot
to move out.
“You have been a temperate man,” said Yahweh
to Lot. “You did not forsake the ways I hadordained for humanity. So shall I save you from the
perdition that is about to fall on your land and its
men and women as well as their offspring.”
A dream. A dream of a man who wanted
something more than the body and its pleasures. A
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dream of a man who wanted to dream of the
heavens.Dreams of heavens can lead people to caves. Lot
wanted to save his daughters from the evil world.
He took them out from the world. To a cave in a
mountain off Zoar.
Caves narrow down dreams, however. Caves
shrink one’s horizon. In the cave Lot saw only hisdaughters. There was nothing else to see in the
cave. Young daughters. Beautiful daughters.
Daughters who should be married off. Where are
the men who deserve to marry them?
The soil longs for seeds even in a desert. Ova
need fertilisation by spermatozoa even in a cave.Especially in a cave.
“When will we get husbands to fill our wombs
with children?” lamented Lot’s elder daughter.
“When will we get men to love us?” lamented
Lot’s younger daughter. We are doomed to die in this cave, they said to
each other as they hugged each other. Their breasts
met with the softness of each other. Sodom rose in
their groins like a volcano ready to burst. The heat
of the volcano scor ched Lot’s veins.
Lot took out the wine from the cask to quenchthe thirst of his veins. The wine flowed in his
veins. Wine mellowed his veins. Wine infuriated
his sperms. Infuriated sperms long to fertilise. Long
to mate. Long to meet a mate. Sodom had killed
meeting and mating. Wallowing in slush had taken
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the place of meeting and mating. There is no life
without meeting and mating. There is no life wherethe sperm is spilled like swine’s swill. Where the
ovum is thrown out with rags that had been stuck in
the foulest places.
Lot said, “Come my beloved. Lie with me. Let
my sperm meet your ovum. Let there be life.”
Lot’s wife was not there to heed his invitation. She had been turned into a salt pillar. She had
defied Yahweh’s orders.
But Lot’s girls had heard his mourn. They took
off the rags that had been smothering their stinking
bodies. Let our bodies find liberation. Let there be
life. They said.
They lay on either side of their father.
The night passed. Sodom was burnt out totally
by the volcano. But life was stuttering in the
wombs of Lot’s daughters.
“Oh Yahweh! What have I done?” lamented Lot
standing on the mountain outside his cave looking
up to the heavens. I wanted a moral world. I
wanted morality. Oh Yahweh! I have spurned a
brood of vipers. Children of lust. Oh Yahweh!
Yahweh proclaimed a “Promised Land” to Lot’soffspring. Lot dreamt on. Lot’s dreams crossed the
Jordan river. Beyond all rivers. Beyond all oceans.
Lot dreamt of a world where his morality would be
in practice. In practice. A world of dreams.
Dreams of a caveman. The Jordan formed a few
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ripples which died out soon. The dream of the
caveman continued. In scriptures. In the sameArab Land. Dreams. Dreams. Dreams of the
children of lust. Oh Yahweh!
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The First Christmas
I had seen greed of all sorts. My ancestors had
told me about the various kings and conquerors who
crossed the mountains and the seas out of greed for
land and its riches, for power and wealth, or for
sheer adventure.The usual varieties of princely greed failed to
enchant me. My parents were disappointed in me as
I did not grow up as a prince was supposed to.
“Caspar will be no good,” I heard my father tell my
mother once, “he gazes at the sky more than is good
for a prince.”
My greed was for knowledge. I wanted to know
everything that lay beyond the horizon. I wanted to
know what the stars knew. I became a star gazer. It
was thus that I noticed a unique star in the sky. Was
it a dream or an illusion? I was not sure.
Sometimes I could not distinguish illusion from
reality. The star invited me to leave the cosy
comfort of the palace and explore the world beyond
the horizon. Thus it was that I started my long, long
journey, across the Himalayas, through Persia and
Arabia, through lands that smelled of dust and lust.
It was during that journey that I came across two
wanderers similar to me: the Persian Melchior and
the Arab Balthazar. Melchior said that he had seen
a star too which marked the birth of some special
person. Balthazar joined us later and we all moved
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on, braving the mountains and deserts, the heat and
the cold.The world went on with its usual activities of
finding food, conquering lands, vanquishing other
people, mating and reproducing, killing and
plundering, building and destroying.
Following the star, we reached Bethlehem. The
star invited us to enter a cave where we saw anewborn baby. The moment we saw the baby, we
felt a pang within. Melchior and Balthazar shared
their experiences with me later. We all had an
experience of tragedy. Was it another illusion,
another dream?
In my dream or illusion, I saw the child’s future. He would grow up becoming increasingly
discontented with humanity. With humanity’s
greed and envy, dissimulation and treachery,
diseases of body and mind, ignorance, falsehood...
“I am the light,” he said meaning that each person
had to be a light. But people refused to understandhim. “I am the way,” he said and people chose to
misunderstand again. He sought to liberate them
from the evils that oppressed their being. They
made him their Messiah and demanded miracles.
Frustration was his destiny.
Melchior saw him covered with blood at a tender
age in his youth.
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His ways crossed in Balthazar ’s visions. Cross
purposes? Or wooden crosses? Balthazar was notsure.
We looked at the sky. The star had vanished.
But the regular constellations continued to occupy
their positions in the galaxy. The Hunter and the
Great Bear were all there. We longed for another
special star.
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War and Love
“You are so capable of loving. Yet why do you
fight and kill men?” Briseis asked.
“Fighting is not my choice,” said Achilles having
planted a passionate kiss on the ruby lips below
Brisei’s lilac eyes. Her eyes resembled those of agazelle, serene and pure. “I inherited it from my
father and his father and all the ancestors. One
cannot wish away one’s ancestral inheritance.”
“I wish you could,” said Briseis wistfully. She
had lost her husband, father, mother and three
brothers in the war led by Achilles’ people. Shewas delivered to Achilles for the nocturnal pleasures
of the day’s warrior.
Achilles looked at her as the soldier dragged her
along and threw her on Achilles’ bed in the tent.
The gaze and the grace of the gazelle charmed
Achilles instantly. He sat beside her on the bed andwiped away the blood from her ruby lips. But the
lips still shone like ruby. He smelled her hair.
“You a royal?” he asked.
She refused to reply. He took his towel,
squeezed it in the water basin and wiped away thesigns of masculine assault from her silky cheeks.
“You are as beautiful as Helen,” he murmured.
Helen was the cause of the war. Her beauty was
the cause. Or was it? Her husband, Menelaus, was
a man incapable of love. He knew only to fight and
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kill. To conquer. He too had inherited war in his
veins. Helen wanted love. She wanted to grow oldwith her man and not live in the palace like a
priestess in Apollo’s temple.
Women, mused Achilles. Strange creatures.
They make us mad. They make us love and they
make us fight. I killed this woman’s husband, her
parents and brothers. My men did. What’s thedifference? And here I am now falling in love with
her.
Achilles continued to kill the men of her
kingdom during the days and he made love to her in
the nights. As days went by, as war and love
followed their usual daily and nightly cycles, lovewas becoming more interesting to Achilles. He
longed to stop the killing and return to his own
kingdom with his love.
“This is what women do to men,” spat out
Patroclus, Achilles’ cousin and his bosom friend.
Patroclus walked out with Achilles’ armour andhelmet when the latter was in bed savouring love.
The army followed him.
Achilles’ armour could not save Patroclus.
“Please don’t kill Hector,” pleaded Briseis as the
news of Patroclus’ killing by Hector transmuted the passion in Achilles’ veins. “He is my cousin.”
“He killed my cousin,” Achilles gnashed his
teeth.
“How many cousins, how many husbands,
fathers and brothers have you killed?”
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Achilles did not wait to answer. He had
answered that already. Days ago. “Kings fight forland, fame or the booty,” he had told her.
“What do you fight for?”
“A thousand years from now,” he said, “people
will speak about Achilles.”
“A thousand years from now even the dust of
your bones won’t remain,” she reasoned.
“That’s why,” he said. “That’s why.”
How much should the women sacrifice for
satisfying the egos of men? The question grew in
her heart and became an unbearable burden. It
suffocated her. We are toys in the hands of men;they play with us to soothe their tired bodies and
minds.
Achilles, her new husband, was fighting with
Hector, her old cousin.
The sun had set long ago. Achilles had not
returned. Briseis went to the fortress. She couldalready see flames engulfing it.
Achilles lay dying waiting for the flames to
approach him and become his funeral pyre. Briseis
took his head in her lap and held him close to her
bosom.
“We will meet again,” he murmured. “In
Elysium.”
Why couldn’t we create the Elysium on the
earth? The answer lay dead in her lap.
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Barrel Life
“I’m going to die,” declared Diogenes. He was
96.
By the time you reach the age of 96 you will
have acquired the wisdom to know when to die.
You can have such wisdom even earlier. Dependson what life taught you. Rather what you cared to
learn from life.
Diogenes was on a street in Athens. Dying. The
street was his home. When the weather was too
good outside he chose to get into a barrel.
Somebody had gifted him that barrel.Why somebody? Greece was mad enough to
understand the madness of Diogenes and appreciate
it. But Greece was not mad enough so that
Diogenes was prompted to declare with the
certainty that comes only to the votaries of Apollo
and Dionysius that “Most men are within a finger’s breadth of being mad.”
“It takes a wise man to discover a wise man,”
declared Diogenes with the same Apollonian-
Dionysian certainty when Xeniades of Corinth
bought him from the slave dump. He had been sold
as a slave by one of the administrators of Greece
who wished to get rid of his ravings from the
country.
“What slave work do you want me to do for
you?” asked Diogenes when he had been bought.
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“Be a teacher to my children,” answered
Xeniades with the insanity that matched the wisdomof Diogenes.
It was 4th
century BCE. Insanity was not too
common except in the Greek Civilisation.
“I can’t live in such luxury,” declared Diogenes
when Xeniades offered him a comfortable room
with a comfortable bed.The streets were where Diogenes belonged.
“Your choice,” said Xeniades who was another
votary of Apollo and Dionysius. “But permit me to
give you a gift,” he said presenting a barrel to the
teacher of his children. A big clay jar. “Shall I fill
it with wine?” Xeniades asked. “No, let it be my
home,” answered Diogenes.
When he found pushing the clay barrel around a
boring job, Diogenes lit a candle and walked around
in the broad daylight. One sane Greek fellow dared
ask him, “What are you searching for?” “Human beings,” answered Diogenes.
When human beings failed to condescend with
their apparitions in the great Greek Civilisation,
Diogenes withdrew to his barrel and lay down in it
more comfortably than he had hoped to.
It was then Alexander the Conqueror came alongto visit him. The emperor wanted to meet this one
man who had not bothered to pay homage to him.
What made him so special? Alexander wanted to
know that.
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“Why do you go around conquering so much?”
asked Diogenes. “If you want to see what costsmoney and what does not cost anything, go there.”
He pointed towards the building nearby. It was a
brothel, Alexander the Great realised with a smirk.
“What can I do for you?” asked Alexander.
“Just move away. You’re blocking my sunlight.”
Alexander understood what made Diogenes special.“The sun too penetrates into secrets, but it is not
polluted by them,” said Diogenes to the children of
Xeniades, his students.
Diogenes died. The mad Greeks said that
Alexander the Great too died on the same day.
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And Quiet Flowed the Beas
The Beas sparkled like molten silver with the
gentle touch of the morning sun. It could not
assuage the mutiny that was mounting among
Alexander’s soldiers, however.
How long and how far? Coenus, the general ofAlexander’s army, raised the question. We have
come a long way in search of some mirage. We
have bathed in the Tigris and the Indus, played in
the Nile and the Euphrates, sailed across the Oxus
and the Jaxartes. We breathed the air of deserts,
mountains, steppes and fields. We trudged milesand miles, thousands of miles. Of victory, booty,
glory and novelty, we’ve had our fill.
Alexander looked into Coenus’s eyes. He saw
longing in them. Longing for wife. For children.
Father and mother. No harlot can ever replace the
touch of the wife. No victory can match the smilesof your children. Eight years. They’ve been away
from their homeland for eight years.
But we are conquerors, said Alexander.
Conquest is our way, our life, and our truth. There
is no retreat for a conqueror. Extricating yourself
from your victories is almost impossible. It will belike letting the ground slip away beneath your very
feet. The new friends we made will review their
allegiances the moment we begin to retreat.
Nobody wants to befriend a loser, a weakling. The
old enemies will return with vengeance, the moment
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you are on your retreat. We have only one way, one
direction, onward march until our death.Death, spat out Coenus. You are incapable of
love. So you speak so lightly of death. You won’t
ever understand the meaning of the sparkle that
lights up the eyes of Roxana whenever she sees
you. You are filled with your own self. A huge
Ego, that’s what you are.Alexander smirked. Was Achilles a mere ego?
Is Zeus an ego? I am the Lord of the earth. Or will
be soon. I have brought more than half of the earth
under my feet. I will conquer the rest too.
For what? Coenus stared into the Beas that was
acquiring a penetrating sheen as the sun rose higherin the sky. “Move out of my light,” the world will
repeat what Diogenes told you.
Alexander remembered. He visited Diogenes
because unlike the other great teachers in the
country that one man had refused to pay homage to
Alexander the great conqueror. He wished to make
his visit dramatic. Histrionics is part of the
helplessness of a conqueror. “Which wish of yours
can I fulfil?” asked Alexander standing majestically
before the philosopher who had even refused to
stand up from his reclining position on the ground.
“Don’t block the sunlight,” was his insolent
answer.
“If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes,”
said Alexander to Coenus as they moved away from
Diogenes.
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I’m not Diogenes, roared Alexander when
Coenus reminded him again of the master of themind. The roar struck the Beas producing ripples. I
am Alexander, Alexander the Great. I don’t turn
back.
A murmur arose among the soldiers. Alexander
could feel the murmur rising to a crescendo in his
veins. He went into his tent. And sulked there forthree days thinking that Coenus would come and
ask for pardon. But nothing happened.
So Alexander came out from his sulk. And
accepted defeat. Alexander the Great is
vanquished. Only once. By his own men.
But Alexander the Great won’t go back. There’sno retreat for Alexander the Great. We will take a
different route, ordered Alexander. We will sail
down the Jhelum and the Indus. To the Arabian
Sea. The great oceans will take us home.
The oceans will rage for Alexander the
Conqueror.
The Beas flowed quietly.
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Worship
Nebamun was determined and nothing could
deter him now. Now was his opportunity. Antony
had gone back to Rome being summoned by
Caesar. Cleopatra would be alone. Nebamun could
offer her his heart. Offer his heart to the goddess oflove whom age cannot wither or custom cannot
stale – that was how one of Antony’s commanders
described her the other day.
Let her trample upon his heart if she so chooses.
Nebamun was the devotee and Cleopatra was the
goddess. The goddess can choose what to do withthe devotee and it is the bounden duty of the
devotee to obey, to make whatever sacrifice the
goddess demands.
He stood outside Cleopatra’s royal chamber
waiting until she came out.
“Your Majesty,” Nebamun drew Cleopatra’sattention when she was about to pass him by as if he
never existed. Queens don’t pay attention to
ordinary soldiers even if they stand in places where
they are not expected.
“Yes,” said Cleopatra staring at him. “What do
you want? Why are you standing here outside my
chamber?”
“I wish to speak to you alone,” said Nebamun.
“What about?”
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“My heart’s deepest desire. A devotee’s most
fervent prayer.” “What do you mean?”
“You are my goddess, Your Majesty. I am your
devotee standing before you with a supplication. Be
merciful enough to grand my wish.”
Cleopatra stared into his eyes before ordering her
maids to leave them alone.
“What is your wish?”
“I have been worshipping you with my whole
heart and soul. Please grant my wish to worship
you with my body.”
Cleopatra was too stunned to decide whether toflare up or laugh out.
“How dare you? This is intolerable audacity!”
“You call it audacity, Your Majesty, but I call it
worship. I’m your devotee; you’re my goddess.”
Their eyes met again. Determination and
devotion were overflowing in Nebamun’s gaze. His
body language was a queer mixture of those of a
soldier’s and devotee’s. A unique combination. A
rare lover. Cleopatra’s eyes began to sparkle with
mischief.
“I will grant your wish,” she said to Nebamunwhose heart skipped a beat. “But on a condition.”
What do conditions matter to a devotee?
Nebamun waited eagerly.
“You won’t live to see the next morning.”
What does the next morning matter to a devotee?
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Cleopatra’s chamber opened itself to Nebamun
that night.There was a strange shade of crimson in the sky
when the sun rose the next morning from the Red
Sea. The executioner reported that Nebamun died
without an iota of regret. “Rather,” said the
executioner, “I have never met a man who seemed
more contented than that.”
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Scholar, Politician and Priest
“He is a mere scholar, he can never rule the
people,” declared Napoleon Bonaparte as he signed
the dismissal of Pierre-Simon Laplace as the
Minister of Internal Affairs. “Six weeks in power
and what has he contributed?” thundered theEmperor. “He sees subtleties everywhere,
conceives problems instead of solutions and thinks
in terms of infinity and infinitesimal.”
Laplace was happy to be out of power. He never
wanted any political power in the first place. But
the Emperor wanted the most intelligent people to be in the government. What has power got to do
with intelligence? Laplace did not ask that
however.
In the solitude and peace of powerlessness,
Laplace perfected the Newtonian solar system.
Mediocre people wish to become stars on the earth.Intelligent people wander among the stars in the
heavens. Newton was one such star who lived
among stars. But even he needed a divine
hypothesis to answer certain problems in his
scientific model. Laplace pushed God out of the
scientific model.The news reached Napoleon. The scientist was
summoned.
“The Emperor wants to see the toys,” thought
Laplace. By “toys” he meant the orrery, the
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mechanical model of the solar system, that he had
made.”Where’s God in the model?” demanded the
Emperor as he watched it with some curiosity.
“This model does not require that hypothesis,”
said Laplace.
“But God is the ultimate hypothesis that explains
everything,” exclaimed the Emperor wonderinghow Laplace could dismiss such a valuable
hypothesis so casually.
The cosmos does not require God, Laplace said
to himself. But Emperors require Him. All those
who seek to subjugate human beings in one form or
another require Him. Science does not need God.
Yet when he reached home, he concluded the
letter to his son by writing, “May God watch over
your days. Let Him be always present to your
mind.”
God is the eternal law, the law that governs thecosmos. The law of gravity is God. F = ma is
God. These laws don’t play politics. They don’t
hanker after power. They don’t subjugate anyone or
anything. They liberate, in fact. It is only man and
the man-made gods that subjugate.
“Ah! We chase after phantoms.” He murmuredto himself many times.
Laplace allowed one such phantom to give him
the last rites as he lay dying a few years later. The
phantoms needed to prove that the scholar and the
scientist was a believer in religion and God. The
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priest who gave the last sacrament to Laplace
proclaimed the pulpit while delivering the Sundaysermon, “Laplace died uttering the words ‘We chase
after phantoms’. My dear people of God, Laplace
died denouncing science and its discoveries as
phantoms....”
But Napoleon the Great knew better. While he
awaited his end on the island of Saint Helena, Napoleon the Emperor-no-more said to General
Gaspard Gourgaud, “I often asked Laplace what he
thought of God. He owned that he was an atheist.”
The scholar died. His lifeless body was given all
the ceremonies which the scholar would have found
amusing had he been alive. Would he have protested, however? Could he? After all, what is a
scholar vis-à-vis the Priest and the Politician?
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Life’s Journey
I will soon be thrown into the mass grave along
with the naked corpses of the other soldiers. I am
Colonel Chabert, not just an ordinary soldier,
Colonel Chabert who led a whole regiment of
soldiers to many a victory for none other than Napoleon himself. I have been famous when the
blood still ran in my veins reddening my cheeks
with the zest for conquests. But now I am no more
than a body going to be thrown into a mass grave
with very ordinary bodies.
Death makes you a mere body. All bodies areequal and ordinary. What makes you different is
life, your life.
My last battle was the toughest. The Battle of
Eylau. Our brave French soldiers met the equally
brave Russian soldiers in the most inclement of
weathers in Arctic conditions. The fatal wound Ireceived runs from the nape of my neck to just
above my right eye. You can still see it. My blood
stopped running through my veins. There was little
blood left for the veins to carry.
No wonder they thought me dead.
The distance between life and death is just a
moment. The other day I happened to watch a man
with grey hairs but a face suffused with vitality
buying apples from a wayside seller. The man
looked as if he would live another twenty years,
hale and hearty. Just as he picked up his basket of
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apples and got on to the path again, he staggered a
little and collapsed. He was dead in a moment.Marshal Murat dispatched a whole battalion, no
less than 1500 horsemen, to rescue me when I lay
wounded and dying. Napoleon himself sent two of
his best surgeons to save my life. Napoleon needs
me, I know. Every conqueror admires brave
warriors.Heroes admire heroes. Have you ever noticed
that? It’s only the weak that harbour petty feelings
like jealousy and distrust. I didn’t say heroes love
heroes. No, love has nothing to do with it. It’s
admiration. It’s an acceptance of the other’s
abilities and skills. Napoleon admires even theyoungest of his soldiers provided he is brave.
I can feel life oozing out of me. I will soon be
dead. And thrown into the mass grave, another
body among many bodies. Body. That’s what I
will soon be.
Nothing. That’s what I will be a little while from
now. The body will vanish, eaten by the soil and its
maggots.
The whole rugged path I travelled from the time I
was born is visible to my mind’s eye as I lie giving
up my soul. Every life is a journey. When you are born, a road is also born. Your road. The road that
you will travel inevitably. It is up to you how you
choose to travel that road. You can simply walk
along without noticing what’s on either side. You
can choose to kick away the pebbles on the way and
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beat down the brambles on the sides. You can
admire the fragrance of flowers and the music of the birds. You can conquer the lands on the sides. You
may even erect barriers on the road, your road!
Whatever you do, in the end, you will be a body,
lying dead on some cold mountain, ready to be
forgotten. Don’t count on the memories of people
whom you consider beloved. Love has little to dowith life. Other people have their roads still
stretching ahead and they have to travel it –
inevitably. They cannot mourn your death forever.
Even Napoleon will be a body one day. To be
buried and forgotten.
My spirit is giving up. I can feel it. I can see theend of my road. Oh, how pathetic! Like the
culmination of the French Revolution!
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Galileo’s Truth
“Generally speaking, truth has been suffered to
exist in the world just to the extent that it profited
the rulers of society.” [Barrows Dunham, Man
Against Myth, 1947]
“And yet it moves,” mumbled Galileo as he
walked out of the Inquisition Chamber having
accepted the punishment imposed on him for
upholding the truth.
The earth is not the centre of the universe.
Galileo had argued. The sun was the centre of thesolar system. The earth moved round the sun. The
earth was just another planet like many others.
“Your teaching explicitly contradicts the Holy
Scripture,” said Cardinal Bellarmine. “You run the
risk of being branded a heretic and being burnt at
the stake. “We exhort you to abandon the
mathematical hypothesis completely and
unconditionally. You will not hold the opinion that
the sun stands still and the earth moves. You will
not henceforth hold, teach, or defend it any way
whatever, either orally or in writing.”
The Scripture! What do these people understand
of the Scripture? Galileo had despaired of trying to
make the religious leaders understand that the
Scripture was poetry to be interpreted for the sake
of bringing the truth to the people in a way they
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could understand. The sun rises from and sinks into
the ocean. That is poetry. But that does not meanthe sun actually moves. Didn’t Copernicus say the
same thing? Yet wasn’t Copernicus a doctor in
canon law? Didn’t Augustine exhort the Church to
avoid making decrees about the physical world lest
they be overturned by new knowledge? And wasn’t
Augustine a saint of the Church?“The purpose of the Bible is to teach how to go
to heaven, while science teaches how the heavens
go,” Galileo had argued.
The scientist drew the attention of his religious
leaders to Anaxagoras who died two millennia ago.
In 467 BCE Anaxagoras pointed at the meteoritethat had fallen and raised the question: “What do the
authorities want me to say now? Will they permit
me to say that the stars up there which are
worshipped as gods are actually inert rocks like
this?”
If the Scripture is the divinely revealed truth,why does it contain so many contradictions? Is
truth the expediency of the authorities?
“You are inviting the wrath of God upon your
head, Galileo,” said the Inquisitor Cardinal. “God
finds you vehemently suspect of heresy. You are
questioning the word of God. Unless you abjure,
curse and detest your opinions, God won’t be able
to save you from the stake.”
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How helpless is God! Galileo suppressed the
thought. If God is so helpless, what can one sayabout the mortal man?
The mortal man abjured, cursed and detested
what he knew was the truth. He remembered
Bruno, the man whose tongue was imprisoned by
the same Cardinal Bellarmine before his body was
burnt at the stake and works put on the Index ofProhibited Books. When Bruno was burning on the
stake in Rome, Shakespeare’s Hamlet was
wondering on a stage in London: “To be or not to
be, that’s the question.”
To be, decided Galileo. To be. He abjured,
cursed and detested the truth. To Be.“Your recantation saves your life, Galileo,” said
Cardinal Bellarmine solemnly. “But we cannot give
you any more liberty. You will not teach anymore.
You will not appear before the public. We place
you under arrest.”
How long, O Lord, will you hide your face from
your people? Galileo asked God like the Psalmist.
Arouse Yourself, why do you sleep, O Lord?
The heavens were silent. But they moved,
Galileo knew. The bodies up there, they moved.
To Be.
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Caliph of Two Worlds
His smile could quell a mob or raise an army.
The charismatic Usman dan Fodio was a holy man
whom the Sultan of Gobir (later Nigeria) brought
into his kingdom in order to make the people more
religious. Bringing a religious person too close toyour life can be like taking the snake lying on the
fence and putting it in your pocket. At least that’s
how it turned out to be in the case of Yunfa, the
Sultan of Gobir.
William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor
Coleridge had just brought out their RomanticManifesto, The Lyrical Ballads, ushering a poetic
revolution in England. The bloodcurdling violence
of the French Revolution had given birth to a whole
series of reforms implemented by Napoleon. In
Africa, Allah was beginning to bring light in quite
another way.“There is no God but Allah,” Usman’s voice
reverberated in the streets and highways. “All ways
are impure except those shown by Allah.” Usman
denounced the ways of the ordinary people as evil.
Suddenly almost everything became evil for the
ordinary people. Usman decided what was holy andwhat unholy. Usman decided when people could
smile and whey they should weep. Usman decided
what they could eat and drink. Usman became the
law. “All laws come from Allah,” Usman declared.
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“Allah appeared to me in a dream,” he told the
people. “All the prophets of the past stood on eitherside of Allah. And Allah told me, ‘I anoint you as
the Messiah of Africa. You are the forerunner of the
Mahdi, who is coming soon along with Jesus to
initiate the cosmic struggle against the Antichrist.
The end of the world is near. Teach your people to
repent and turn to Allah if they are to be redeemedon the Day of the Judgment.’”
Listening to their Messiah, the people swayed
like palm leaves caught in a desert wind. The dust
storms conjured up bizarre shapes of the Antichrist.
The world was going to end, believed the people.
Like the children of Hamelin who followed the pied piper, the people flocked behind the Messiah.
The Sultan was not very pleased by this
usurpation. Who is more powerful: the sultan or the
maulana? The answer depends on who you are or
on whose side you are.
Sometimes the maulana has to be got rid of if thesultan is to save his throne. The sultan began his
conspiracies. An earthly king’s conspiracies may
not be powerful enough to eliminate a god’s
representative.
The maulana became the commander of an
army. The religious followers became political
warriors. The line between politics and religion is
an illusion that can be shifted in any direction as
required by the occasion.
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“Win the war,” Usman told his warriors, “and
you will get seven towns filled with dark-eyedmaidens each one of whom being served by ten
thousand slaves. Win the war and you will embrace
those dark-eyed beauties for seventy years. You
will do it again and again until you are tired. You
will have no other work, save the play of delight.”
Usman’s warriors stood erect with their swordsunsheathed. Lust both spiritual and temporal
dilated their veins and maddened the neurons.
Armed with that intoxication, it didn’t take much
time for Usman to decapitate the sultan. Usman the
holy man became Usman the Caliph.
The successful warriors demanded the promiseddark-eyed maidens and seventy years of delight.
The Caliph became the holy man once again, “Wait,
children, wait. The final reward is in heaven. Wait
until your time.”
They waited. People always wait.
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The Saga of a Warrior
When they killed my husband, it was the spirit of
undaunted daring and unfailing love that was
murdered.
You romanticise the love that Shahjahan bore for
Mumtaz because he erected that mausoleum calledTaj Mahal in memory of his supposedly unfailing
love for Mumtaz. But Mumtaz was just one among
the many wives and concubines on whose bosoms
Shah Jahan expended his lust night after night.
Your historians will romanticise the heroism of
many a ruler just because they went far and widemarauding and massacring.
My husband may find no place in such histories.
But he was a genuine hero and romantic lover, a
rare combination. He fought the battles of life more
bravely than any conqueror. He loved me
passionately, more than any Mughal emperor lovedany of his women.
Yet the universe conspired against him just as
mediocrity conspires against the genius. He was
subjected to so many deaths. Deaths in life.
Khusru, my beloved, was also the beloved of the
greatest Mughal emperor, Akbar. The strong love
the strong. The genius loves geniuses. Akbar loved
his grandson, Khusru, more than he could ever love
his own son, Salim. But Salim succeeded his father
to the throne through a heinous conspiracy against
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my husband. That was the first assassination of my
husband by the universe.Murad and Daniyal, Akbar’s younger sons, had
killed themselves at tender ages with their addiction
to opium. Salim too was an addict and remained
one till the end of his wretched life. But the opium
did not kill him. You could see death in his eyes.
There was weakness in his eyes. And the weak arecruel. Salim was cruel beyond imagination. The
weak are manipulative too. Cunningly
manipulative.
Salim’s weakness craved for power. The weak
love political power. He led many a revolt against
his own father, only to realise bitterly that he was nomatch for the great Akbar. His mother, Man Bai, a
shrewd woman who wanted to rule the empire
through her only surviving son, killed herself when
the court had become a snake pit of conspiracies.
She chose her younger sons’ way to death: opium.
She had learnt the bitter truth that her elder son wasno better than the younger ones.
But she was wrong. Salim did become the
emperor. Ironies accompany the royal life just like
the plague accompanies filth.
It was not Salim who manipulated the events at
the time of Akbar’s death, however. After Man
Bai’s death, Akbar’s senior wives wriggled in the
pit like snakes in the mating season. They mated
with the ministers and commanders. Intrigues
flourished in their wombs.
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Akbar was in his death bed like a new born
infant. Where did his glory go? Where did the power vanish? Oh, Akbar the Great, where did your
greatness disappear?
The women came impregnated with schemes to
Akbar’s death chamber. They whispered in his
ears. Their words were poison. The poison
transformed Salim into Jahangir.One of the first things that Salim did after
becoming Jahangir was to order the imprisonment
of Khusru.
Salim imprisoned his own blood. Opium flowed
in his veins. Khusru was confined to a gloomy
chamber in the palace, with me as his onlycompanion. The weak and cruel Salim ruled the
country, while the real hero walked restlessly in a
little chamber with only his wife to utter words of
consolation.
And then began the next assassination of Khusru.
Jahangir’s sycophants started rewriting history.
They wrote the most vile things about Khusru.
Khusru became a characterless man in their
chronicles. They wrote that Khusru had inherited
the deficiency from his mother. Hadn’t she
committed suicide? Hadn’t his two brothers killed
themselves with opium?
History is replete with blunders written by
sycophants.
Khusru stopped calling Jahangir ‘father’ and
started addressing him as ‘bhai’, brother.
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One day Khusru requested Jahangir bhai to let
him visit his grandfather’s tomb in Sikander nearDelhi. Jahangir was never intelligent enough to
understand Khusru and so the permission was
granted. Soon Khusru reached Lahore along with
his supporters. Many leaders of the Chugati and
Rajput clans extended their support to Khusru.
They knew that Khusru was worth a thousandJahangirs.
But Jahangir acted with a swiftness that could not
have been expected of an opium addict. Dilawar
Khan was sent to Lahore to deal with Khusru.
Dilawar reached Lahore from Agra in just eleven
days; no mean feat, it should be said. A 50,000-strong army was deployed in Agra to encounter
Khusru and his supporters.
Finally the battle took place on the bank of Ravi.
It was raining cats and dogs and the soldiers fought
in a soup of mud.
Khusru was defeated. His soldiers andcommanders were impaled alive on stakes erected
on either side of the streets. Hundreds of brave men
writhed in agony on the stakes. Their blood made a
pool in the streets. Khusru was led along that pool
of blood, forced to see his men dying in worm-like
wriggles. Even the Sikh Guru, Arjan Dev, wasexecuted just because he had blessed Khusru while
he was on his way to Lahore. Poor Arjan Dev, he
was just fulfilling a courtesy.
Your cruelty is directly proportional to the
weakness of your character.
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Jahangir was not satiated with all that cruelty.
He asked a soldier to pierce Khusru’s eyes with ametal wire.
Khusru did not utter a sound as the metal wire
nicked his vision like an ant eating into a piece of
cake. Bit by bit. Slowly.
Khusru was then thrown into a dungeon. With
me as his only companion.Jahangir soon felt remorse. Or was he trying to
gain some popularity among the people? He knew
how much the people admired and loved Khusru.
He asked the royal physician to restore Khusru’s
vision. The physician tried his best. Khusru did not
regain his vision, but he could just see shadows. Iwas his abiding shadow. The other shadows that
came and went could not be trusted.
Khurram was one such shadow. He was
Jahangir’s son too. Unlike his father, Khurram was
brilliant as a general of the army and very
ambitious. When Jahangir asked the royal
physician to r estore Khusru’s vision, Khurram knew
that the old man’s heart was too weak for an
emperor. What if he handed down the empire to
Khusru?
The empress Nur-Jahan was another shadow inKhusru’s derelict world. There was no love lost
between her and Khurram. She was both suspicious
and afraid of him. In order to keep Khurram far
from the throne, Nur-Jahan hatched a plan.
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“Marry my daughter from my first marriage,” she
told Khusru. “She is still beautiful like the melonsin our garden. She sparkles like the waters of the
Yamuna. In return for this marriage, I’ll give you
freedom. Nay, I’ll give you power. Yes, you will
succeed to the throne after His Majesty’s reign
comes to an end. Who can offer you a better deal
than this?” Khusru knew that the promises were not hollow.
Nur-Jahan had the sagacity to carry out the
necessary manipulations in the court.
“Why don’t you speak?” asked Nur -Jahan. “Say
something.”
“You may leave us,” was Khusru’s answer.
“I want an answer immediately,” said Nur -Jahan
imperiously.
“I refuse to have any woman other than this in
my life,” said Khusru hugging me close to him.
“Is that your final decision?” asked Nur -Jahanrising imperiously.
“Final and irrevocable,” said Khusru imperially.
Nur-Jahan did not waste time. She plotted and
manipulated. She conjured and contrived. Finally
Khusru was handed over to Khurram.
Khurram became Shahjahan.
Shahjahan ordered Khusru to be transferred to
Burhanpur in the Deccan. And there, far away from
the people who adored Khusru as a hero, they killed
him. They attacked him in the middle of the night.
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Khusru drew his sword and fought like a warrior
unto the last.My warrior is dead. My hero is dead. Let
Shahjahan live and rule to his heart’s content.
And erect mausoleums to perpetuate the
memories of his banality.
Now I am an old woman. Every wrinkle in my
skin carries the memory of Khusru, still afresh.
History in brief:
1600 – 1605 : Salim (Jahangir) led many
revolts against AkbarMay 1605 : Man Bai commits suicide
28 Aug 1605 : Akbar dies – Khusru is 18 years
old
2 Nov 1605 : Salim anointed emperor,
assumes the name Jahangir15 Apr 1606 : Khusru escapes to Lahore
27 Apr 1606 : Battle between Khusru and
Jahangir
1616 : Nur-Jahan’s conspiracies and
Khurram’s ascent
Jan 1622 : Khusru is killed
The citizens were appalled to hear about
Khusru’s murder and there were loud cries for
vengeance. Jahangir was more angry with Khurram
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for concealing the murder from him than for the
murder itself. In order to placate the people,Jahangir ordered Khusru’s body to be exhumed and
brought to Allahabad where a magnificent
mausoleum was erected next to his mother’s. The
place has since come to be called Khusraubagh. In
the story, I have telescoped the time between
Khurram’s struggle for power and his becoming theemperor Shahjahan.
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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. Sonsmake 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 conqueringsome 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.
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Under the Peepal
It was years since I had met Siddhartha. When I
heard that he was sitting under a peepal awaiting
enlightenment, I was curious. I embarked on the
metro train that would take me near to Kapil Vastu
Estate.Kapil Vastu Estate was a huge complex
developed by Siddhartha’s father, Shuddhodhana
Gautama, one of the most successful industrialists
of neoliberal Hindustan. “Profit is the dharma of
the trader,” was Shuddhodhana’s motto. He had
graduated from the London School of Economics before doing MBA from Harvard University.
Siddhartha and I were classmates. Not that my
father could afford to send me to the same public
school as Siddhartha. Since my father was
Shuddhodhana’s personal assistant and a close
confidante, the business magnate decided to put mein the same school as his own son. Probably, it was
his way of monitoring his son indirectly.
Siddhartha showed little interest in academics or
co-curricular or extra-curricular activities. He came
and went back by a chauffeur-driven air-
conditioned car. The school was centrally air-conditioned. Siddhartha didn’t have to see the
world outside. But he longed to see it, I think.
Shuddhodhana was alarmed by his son’s
increasing melancholy contemplativeness. He
decided to do some cleaning up. Starting with the
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library, he removed all serious literature and filled
the shelves with books of Sidney Sheldon and hisHindustani avatar, Chetan Bhagat, as well as other
such stimulating writers. “Burn all the books by
intellectuals and subversives,” ordered
Shuddhodhana. “Bring in our classics
like Kamasutra and Arthasastra.”
Nothing worked. Neither the ancient classics northe ultramodern metro reads stimulated Siddhartha’s
soul. It hankered after something that all the
fabulous wealth of his father could not buy.
In the meanwhile, I completed my post-
graduation and teacher training and became a
teacher in a fully residential school which occupiedme body and soul round the clock. I was not aware
of what was transpiring in the walled world of Kapil
Vastu Estate. But when the news of Siddhartha’s
contemplation under the peepal tree reached me, I
applied for a casual leave from school and rushed to
meet my old mate, son of my benefactor.The ten feet massive steel gate opened before
me. I still had some contacts with people inside,
you see.
“There is death, I learnt,” Siddhartha told me.
“Human life is wretched. There is illness. There is
much evil. The air-conditioning is an illusion. The
Estate is an illusion.” He went on to give me a long
lecture. All desire is evil, he said. He was going to
found a new religion, he said, to help people
overcome desires. Live without desires and attain
nirvana.
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“Can you arrange one nirvana for me free of
cost?” I asked. After all, I was his closest friend atschool. He could do me this simple favour. It was
then I noticed the book lying near Siddhartha’s
meditation mat.
“What’s this?” I was stunned. “You’re reading
Dostoevsky?” I picked upThe Idiot . “This is as
outdated as Das Capital by those two nuts.” Sitting under the peepal tree with Siddhartha
Gautama, I became enlightened. Nirvana is living
out of joint with time.
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Maya
Her face made my heart skip a beat. Was it
really her? I had not met Maya for over thirty
years. But the perfect symmetry of her thin but
mysteriously seductive lips could not have escaped
me. I was walking up towards the HanumanTemple on the Jakhoo Hill in Shimla when the
perfect symmetry on a wrinkled face beneath a
silver shock of fluttering hair hit my heart like a
perverted arrow of Kamadeva. She was wearing a
saffron robe. A rosary of fairly
huge rudraksh beads lay on her breast. The fire inher eyes had not burned out yet though melancholy
was threatening to overpower it. She had entered a
narrow trail from the main road.
“Maya,” I called.
She halted but did not turn back. I called the
name again. This time she did turn back to look atthe person who had uttered a sound that she did not
apparently want to hear. I walked closer to her.
She stared at me. I smiled.
“Sam!” She said concealing her surprise with
practised expertise. “Why are you here?”
“As a tourist,” I said matter -of-factly. “But I
seem to have struck a goldmine, I ran into you.”
I assured her that I was not searching for her at
all. Our encounter was a pure coincidence. But a
lucky one, I added.
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I followed her to the hut where she said she lived
all alone all these years.Maya was my classmate in college during our
undergraduate years. Indira Gandhi had declared
Emergency in the country. Maya opposed the
Emergency with all the spirit of a true Marxist.
Well wishers warned her to be cautious. Many
people who had questioned the Emergency hadalready disappeared under the sycophantic reign of
K. Karunakaran. Nobody knew what happened to
the arrested. “It’s better to die on your feet than live
on your knees,” Maya dismissed the friendly
warnings. I was always struck by the way her
beautiful lips moved when she spoke passionately.Whenever she spoke I would occupy the front row,
not to listen to her but to watch her vivacious lips
whose movements rivalled the gracefulness of a
Bharatanatyam dance.
“I wish I could hang on to your lips more than
metaphorically,” I once told her half in jest. “What do you mean?” Her eyes burnt into mine.
“Just a kiss, nothing more,” I was not
intimidated.
She caught my head in both her hands and
planted her lips on mine. More than a flirt but lessthan a commitment, the kiss was the first and the
last physical contact we ever had and its sweet
shock remained in my veins like a restless neuron
for many years.
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“My marriage is as fixed as my destiny,” she told
me immediately after the kiss so that I wouldn’tnurture any illusion. “A family commitment.”
As soon as she graduated she married Rajan
Namboothiri, an eccentric scientist at ISRO,
Trivandrum. A few years after the marriage, Dr
Namboothiri gave up his job and became a pujari at
the local temple. He spent all his time reciting theVedas and the Upanishads and teaching the
meanings of the shlokas to whoever cared to listen.
His family members blamed Maya for the situation
though nobody knew how she was responsible for
any of it. Eventually Maya vanished.
“Varanasi, Haridwar, Badrinath...,” Maya spokein a voice that was uncharacteristically subdued. “I
searched for meanings. Or joy. I don’t know what.
Finally I reached here. Away from crowds and the
noise of spirituality.”
“Rajan Namboothiri passed away last year,” I
said. She looked at me but without any particularemotion. His life was consumed by the scriptures.
“I left him because I could not accept what he
was doing,” she spoke after a long silence. “I
accused him of escapism. Finally I became just
what he had become.”
“Do we become what we hate?” I asked without
realising what I was doing.
“Love and hate, virtue and sin, revolution and
counter-revolution, all poles vanish when you arrive
at the truth of Param Brahma.”
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She paused and then said, “Please do not visit me
again. Please do not tell anyone about me. I wantto be alone.”
I knew I had to keep the promise. Maya had
planted a renewed neuron in my veins and it would
continue to be restless for many years.
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Destiny
“What are you thinking of so deeply?” Anita
asked her husband as they were walking up the
narrow street leading to the school where they were
going for an interview for teaching jobs. The bus
that took them from the suburban rail station haddropped them at the foot of the hillock that was
majestically crowned by the school building.
“I was thinking of our destiny,” answered
Sridhar. “I’ve just a few years left for retirement.
You have a few more years. And here we are
hunting for a job.” “What is in your destiny, no one can take away.
What is not in your destiny, no one can give you.”
She laughed glumly. She was repeating exactly
what Sridhar had told her the other day when she
grieved the death of the school where they both had
been working for years.Their school was founded by an industrialist. He
now wanted an amusement park in its place. The
city needs relaxation, he argued. People who were
not very kind to him said that the school failed to
bring in as much profit as an amusement park
would.
Sridhar shared his wife’s gloomy laughter. “This
street strangely reminded me of my village and my
walks to my school and back home,” he said. “Wild
shrubs and brambles with carefree flowers on the
sides. No traffic. Only the hum and buzz of some
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insects and the rustle of the leaves. Rustic serenity
of kongini blooms.” “Full many a flower is born to blush unseen and
waste its sweetness...” Again Anita was teasing him
by quoting one of his favourite lines from Thomas
Gray.
“I was thinking whether we could give up this
job hunt, return to our village in Kerala and settledown there.” Sridhar ignored her taunt which was
actually meant to liven up his spirits.
“I’m ready,” she looked at her husband eagerly.
“But we can only return to the place. Not to the
time.”
Sridhar’s heart was roaming the streets of the
village of his boyhood days when Anita asked him
what he was thinking of so deeply. His memories
had conjured up pictures of farmers pedalling the
water wheel, women carrying water in pots
balanced on their heads as well as hips, childrenthrowing sticks to fell mangoes from the trees...
Ready to let go the water wheel when a howl for
help rises in the air, let go the pots and sticks...
Letting go.
“Destiny can only move forward?” Sridhar could
not make out whether it was a statement or aquestion.
“What is destiny?” he asked his wife in return.
“Who shapes it? The industrialist who converts a
school into an amusement park or the economist
who computes the worth of human life in figures of
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profits and losses or the Man-god who draws the
Lakshman rekha for human potential or the politician who dangles all of them and us on puppet
strings?
Sridhar and Anita had reached the school. “You
stand outside,” the security guard ordered looking at
Sridhar.
“But...” he explained that he was a candidate too.The guard looked at Sridhar’s grey hairs and
laughed. “At this age? Moreover,” he chuckled,
“only ladies.”
As Sridhar fiddled with his smart phone while he
waited outside for Anita to come after her interview,
the ring tone sang John Lennon’s lines: There's
nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to
be.
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The Devil has a Religion
It’s not only the gods but the devils too have
specific religions, Maria realised when she saw the
devil appearing on her husband’s face fifteen years
after she had seen it the last time.
Fifteen years ago, one nondescript autumnafternoon in Shillong, Philip came back from the
school where he worked as a mathematics teacher
and declared that he had resigned from his job.
Maria was stunned though she had known deep
within her all the time that this was coming.
Reverend Father Joseph Potthukandathil, theHeadmaster of Saint Joseph’s School where Philip
taught, had been rubbing up Philip in the wrong
way for a long time, years in fact, assuming that it
was every Cathol