the nomad learns morality

8/18/2019 The Nomad Learns Morality

1/143


2/143

2

The Nomad Learns Morality

Short Stories

Tomichan Matheikal

To

Radha Soami Satsang Beas

EspeciallyDr Pranita Gopal


3/143

3

OnlineGatha – The Endless Tale

Published by: OnlineGatha – The Endless Tale

Address : Indradeep complex, Sanjay Gandhi Puram,

Faizabad Road, Indranagar, Lucknow, 226016

Contact : 0522- 4004150, +91-9936649666

Website : www.onlinegatha.com

ISBN NO – 978-9385818-01-1

© All Rights including Copyrights reserved with the

Authors.

OnlineGatha is a division of CompAddicts Infotech

Pvt. Ltd. Established in the month of January 2014,

the site is a step into the online literary world. It works

by connecting the hardcopy creations to the online

world. Will provide platform to the newcomers to

publish their creations and also utilize the existing

resources for their further evolution. We can also add a

feather to the hat of established writers by adding to

PUBLISHER NOTE

http://www.onlinegatha.com/http://www.onlinegatha.com/http://www.onlinegatha.com/http://www.onlinegatha.com/


4/143

4

their business and their income simultaneously. Now

forget about the fussy laws and printing-publishingissues-for we are here, working day and night to make

your dream come true.


5/143

5

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


6/143

6

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


7/143

7

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


8/143

8

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


9/143

9

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.


10/143

10

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?


11/143

11

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?


12/143

12

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.


13/143

13

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.

http://matheikal.blogspot.in/2015/02/snakes-and-ladders.htmlhttp://matheikal.blogspot.in/2015/02/snakes-and-ladders.html


14/143

14

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.


15/143

15

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.

http://matheikal.blogspot.in/2014/10/the-autumn-of-patriarch.htmlhttp://matheikal.blogspot.in/2014/10/the-autumn-of-patriarch.html


16/143

16

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


17/143

17

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


18/143

18

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


19/143

19

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.


20/143

20

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...”

http://matheikal.blogspot.in/2014/10/the-original-sin.htmlhttp://matheikal.blogspot.in/2014/10/the-original-sin.html


21/143

21

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


22/143

22

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.


23/143

23

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


24/143

24

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


25/143

25

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


26/143

26

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!


27/143

27

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


28/143

28

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.


29/143

29

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.


30/143

30

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


31/143

31

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?”


32/143

32

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.


33/143

33

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.


34/143

34

“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.


35/143

35

“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.


36/143

36

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

http://matheikal.blogspot.in/2015/02/and-quiet-flowed-beas.htmlhttp://matheikal.blogspot.in/2015/02/and-quiet-flowed-beas.html


37/143

37

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.


38/143

38

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.


39/143

39

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?”

http://matheikal.blogspot.in/2014/09/worship.htmlhttp://matheikal.blogspot.in/2014/09/worship.html


40/143

40

“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?


41/143

41

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.”


42/143

42

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

http://matheikal.blogspot.in/2015/01/scholarpolitician-and-priest.htmlhttp://matheikal.blogspot.in/2015/01/scholarpolitician-and-priest.html


43/143

43

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


44/143

44

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?


45/143

45

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


46/143

46

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


47/143

47

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!


48/143

48

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

http://matheikal.blogspot.in/2015/04/galileos-truth.htmlhttp://matheikal.blogspot.in/2015/04/galileos-truth.htmlhttp://matheikal.blogspot.in/2015/04/galileos-truth.html


49/143

49

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.”


50/143

50

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.


51/143

51

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.

http://matheikal.blogspot.in/2014/09/caliph-of-two-worlds.htmlhttp://matheikal.blogspot.in/2014/09/caliph-of-two-worlds.html


52/143

52

“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.


53/143

53

“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.


54/143

54

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


55/143

55

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.


56/143

56

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.


57/143

57

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.


58/143

58

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.


59/143

59

“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.


60/143

60

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


61/143

61

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.


62/143

62

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.


63/143


64/143

64

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

http://matheikal.blogspot.in/2014/10/under-peepal.htmlhttp://matheikal.blogspot.in/2014/10/under-peepal.html


65/143

65

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.


66/143

66

“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.


67/143

67

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.

http://matheikal.blogspot.in/2014/06/maya.htmlhttp://matheikal.blogspot.in/2014/06/maya.html


68/143

68

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.


69/143

69

“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.”


70/143

70

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.


71/143

71

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


72/143

72

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


73/143

73

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.


74/143

74

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

the nomad learns morality

Documents