Gods, Kings & Slaves: The Siege of Madurai

by Venketesh, R.

  But a eunuch could not last for long in a dangerous world peopled with enemies. Even though Malik had manipulated the whole kingdom, he had no peace of mind. He, too, needed some solace in the dog-eat-dog world of politics, and he decided to visit Nizamuddin one day.

  When he arrived at the hermitage, Malik was informed that the saint had left. The saint who seemed to manifest extraordinary gifts of insight had literally left through one door when Malik had entered through the other. He had promised to do that only when a ruler of Delhi came to see him. Malik felt slighted, but also proud. He had arrived.

  Malik kept the royal family on a taut rein. For five weeks after the coronation, he had not heard a whimper of protest. The nobles were incensed but their grit was not sufficient to band against him. The population had accepted his verdict. He was confident that, in contrast to centuries of misgovernment, his rule was better. Nobody went hungry and tax evaders were punished. Delhi prospered with his efforts.

  *

  Malik strolled within the crown room, where the light from the sunset filtered in through the curtains to strike the gilded throne and made it shine like a beacon in the otherwise empty room. He climbed the step and felt the cushion on the throne. Then, he impulsively sat down on it, wanting to know what it felt like to sit on the throne of Hindustan.

  The throne felt strangely comfortable. The astrologer was right, he mused as he adjusted himself on the cushion. But he realized even a sweeper could sit on the throne while cleaning an empty hall. The prophecy would come true only if the hall was crowded. He knew what he had to do. Perhaps the time has come to deal with Prince Mubarak, the prince who still has his eyesight.

  Malik found that a blinding did not inflame the public as much as an execution. If for some reason, Umar died, Mubarak would be the last remaining claimant. He could be a rallying point for loyalists, despite his lascivious ways. He needed to lose his sight. Malik would leave it to Abbas, a crossbreed and a soldier who had no firm loyalties. After all, it was Abbas who had carried out his earlier orders to blind the princes without even the whisper of a question. He called Abbas to his chambers and issued the order: ‘Mubarak should not be able to see tomorrow’s sunrise. Gorge his eyes out.’

  Abbas took five men with him to the room in which Prince Mubarak was incarcerated. Rather than drowned in alcohol, the prince was quivering in fear, very sober indeed. Hemmed in by fear, he had not slept for days together. When the men opened the doors to his chamber, Mubarak stood up involuntarily, for he knew they were Malik’s men. A month ago he would have whipped them for trespassing, but now the situation had changed. Alauddin’s death had truly orphaned him.

  Mubarak knew what had happened to his brothers, so immediately, dread engulfed him. He could see the shadow of his blindness. He imagined the pokers going effortlessly through his sockets, the red-hot metal searing his eyelashes. The sound and smell of the scorching would be the last things he would feel.

  ‘Wh-a-at have you come for?’ he stammered.

  ‘We have been ordered by the Naib-Sultan to blind you,’ Abbas replied quite nonchalantly. Mubarak noticed a man behind him held two pokers while another held a sack, presumably filled with charcoal.

  All of them knew of Mubarak. He was a monster who was only at home in an orgy or a drunken stupor. Mubarak would not see another male for days at a stretch. They pitied him. Rather than waste his time and strength in the harem, he should have involved himself in the affairs of state. Now the prince had to pay for the folly of his youth.

  When the other princes had struggled, Abbas had merely laughed and gone ahead with blinding them. But Mubarak was different. He was a downright coward. Forgetting his princely status, he went on his knees and begged for their mercy, his dishevelled hair rubbing against the feet of his underlings. He wailed incoherently, ‘Let me go, I will escape through the back door. Tell the Naib-Sultan that I was not here.’ Abbas and his men were stunned. Princes who were forbidden to talk to the common soldier were now grovelling at their feet.

  Mubarak tightly shut his eyes and continued to grasp their feet as he begged. And then, fate interceded for the wretch.

  Anger swept over Abbas. He was angry, not with the prince, but with Malik. Was it not because of him that a prince grovelled at the feet of commoners? His men could feel his desolation but they were pawns who followed Malik’s instructions. What more dreadful offerings would Malik demand for his patronage? They felt ashamed at the weakness their prince was showing. Was this a son of Alauddin, the bravest among them all – a warrior free from the fear of death, his bravery unparalleled in the annals of the Sultanate’s history?

  The men felt their resolve growing weaker by the minute. The prince was the last link of their loyalty to their Sultan.

  Malik must be resisted at all costs, Abbas decided. In his fit of ungoverned greed, he had incapacitated the very hope of their land: he had brought a Khilji down to his knees.

  Abbas at first tried to subdue this mad passion, for he knew he would be well-advised to blind the prince and pick up the coins that Malik would arrogantly throw at him. But his allegiance to Malik was not enough to inspire such abhorrent malice towards royalty. His men felt the same stirring. The more they saw the cowering prince, the more it evoked their sympathies. This was supposed to be the prince who could save them all. How appalling that this man’s blinding could wipe out all resistance to the loathsome eunuch?

  ‘No, Your Majesty,’ Abbas said finally, ‘we will kill the eunuch rather than you!’

  His oath was echoed by the rest of his men. Abbas continued in the same pitch, and declared, ‘In the name of the Prophet, we will put you on the throne of Delhi!’

  Mubarak fell to the ground, weeping with relief. But he wished this man would not exhibit such loud patriotism inside the palace walls.

  The five men walked out, subdued. Their legs took them back towards the palace. Where else could they go? They were not heroes who loved the thrill danger brought. Their momentary compassion had brought about a new dimension to the game of thrones, but an uncomfortable thought occurred to them almost simultaneously. Each was aware of Malik’s ruthlessness. Would they be buried alive, their heads squashed by drunken elephants? How could they get rid of Malik, before whom they scarcely dared to even raise their eyes?

  If they succeeded, they would earn the gratitude of a person for whom the throne awaited. Mubarak would know that, unlike the nobility who had remained silent in fear of a terrible punishment, a bunch of soldiers had risked their necks for the cause of the right heir. He would be indebted to them for life. They would be rewarded with positions besides gaining a treasure in coins.

  Abbas had a plan in mind by the time they reached the chambers of Malik Kafur.

  *

  Malik was awakened by a heated discussion outside his door. After a moment of silence, there was an urgent rap. The door opened slightly and he could see his guard as well as Abbas. The men were back. The argument outside must have been his guard insisting on disarming them. Malik motioned for Abbas to come in.

  ‘Did you accomplish the task I set for you?’ he demanded of the four men who were now on their knees in front of him.

  ‘Sire, we could not carry out your orders,’ Abbas said.

  ‘What do you mean, you idiot?’ Malik shouted.

  ‘We tried to, my lord, but the prince escaped from our clutches,’ Abbas replied.

  One of the men who had quietly moved to Malik’s side during the conversation began to fret. At first, he had thought he would simply strangle Malik while Abbas kept him engrossed in conversation. But he could not kill this monster with his bare hands. If only that guard had allowed me to keep my hunting knife. At the last moment, he saw a statue, about two feet high, that stood proud and erect on Malik’s bedside table.

  Malik was beginning to get annoyed. Abbas was mumbling under his breath, his words indistinct, and it distracted Malik. The tremor in Abbas’s tone was not borne out of fear or guilt. The heightened fa
culties that Malik’s castration had gifted him set his alarm bells ringing. It took him a second to translate his intuition into the blare of warning. So busy had he been with reproaching them that he had not noticed the man behind him. His eyes darted frantically to his back, where Abbas’s colleague now stood, with the statue raised high above his head, ready to bring it down on his head.

  The horrid truth flashed upon him: they were out to kill him! History might, after all, record him as the foolish eunuch who had tried to tame the might of men.

  As Malik sprung around furiously, the man behind him lurched forward with a snarl. He swung the idol at Malik’s head. Malik was dazed when he saw the object in his hands as he struck him. He cast an agonized glance at it; if it had been any other weapon he would have certainly fought back. Malik saw the statue reflecting the light in the room. Unlike in the past, when it would have returned his look harmlessly, the idol’s eyes were now as bright as fire. The goddess had at last avenged herself. His head swam in painful dizziness. The pain filled his ears with feral echoes. He was reminded of the pain he had felt when his genitals had been cut off. His breath heaved in deep gasps. His knees lost all strength, and then everything blacked out as he collapsed onto the carpet.

  The scuffle in Malik’s room had warned the guard outside. Abbas opened the door and two of his men rushed out. They grabbed the sentry’s throat and strangled him before he had time to raise the alarm. The initial plan was to make Mubarak claim he defeated the eunuch in a straight combat and then claim the throne on the basis of his victory. But there was no time now. They had to dispose of the body as soon as possible. Three of them carried Malik’s inert body and Abbas held the idol in his hands as a weapon, in case any other guards saw them.

  They walked out of the palace in the darkness and into the city of Delhi, only the moonlight guiding them. They climbed onto the ramparts of the fort and sent Malik’s body flying over the emptiness into the moat. Abbas threw the statue behind him.

  At his hermitage, Nizamuddin woke up with a start. Khusro was awakened by the saint’s movement and queried, ‘What is it, my lord?’ He was surprised at the dance of shadows the light of the lamps played on his master’s eyes. Nizamuddin closed his eyes tightly and said, ‘What must happen has happened.’ He lay down once again, closed his eyes and went to sleep, leaving a puzzled Khusro awake.

  *

  Malik bounced off the thick carpet of grass that had grown in two years of drought. They had thought he was dead. However, the assault had just immobilized him. The impact of his fall after flying through the emptiness had woken him up with a racking headache. Something dark and gluey dripped down from the side of his face; he realized it was his blood. He opened his eyes but found he could not move at all.

  His eyes grew accustomed to the dim light, and slowly, objects became discernible in the darkness. He was seized with a longing to rewrite the last few hours of his life. But there was little he could do. He sighed. The curtains had fallen on his play; his enactment of the role of a ruler had come to a sudden and disagreeable end.

  He drew in a deep breath of air. The stench of the moat was revolting; commoners used it as a spot to defecate. It would be mutually embarrassing to both the ruler and the commoners if they found him in the midst of their morning ablutions. He suddenly remembered the dry moats of Madurai. Why am I thinking of that city of all places?

  With a slight twist of his neck, which had him writhing in pain, he could now see the walls of Delhi. From below, the fort was a granite monolith rising up into the dark skies. In the bare light of the creeping dawn, he could see its foundations and remembered advising Alauddin to bury a thousand decapitated Mongol heads in them. Perhaps they would bury me within these walls, too, to serve as a lesson for my fellow eunuchs.

  An empire and its citizens, who had allowed him to dominate them and their Sultan, had discovered he was not needed any longer. Was I not destined for the heights I had been promised? If he could just stand up, he would get back into the fort and teach Abbas a lesson. He groped for a hold, but collapsed in pain as if he was crushed beneath a vast weight.

  Malik hoped that his supporters would scale the walls and come to rescue him, but it was clear that no one looked out for him from the ramparts. So this was the fall he had always dreaded! But could he expect more? He was but a eunuch with a foolish hope of seizing power in the land of men. Malik’s mind started to wander towards more mundane things. He was thirsty. What if nobody came for him? What an inglorious end that would be.

  Malik noticed something lying by his side. In the glint of dawn, the statue of Meenakshi seemed to come alive. Its eyes were fixed on him. How many times had he found those eyes darting about and attributed it to a trick of light? He remembered the look in those eyes when Abbas’s lackey had swung it at him. So the goddess finally avenged herself after all.

  Beyond the moat stood myriad trees, some in full blossom. The wind moved through the tree branches creating a mournful murmur. Barely opening his swollen eyes, he felt a shadow pass over him. A fluttering of wings alerted him to the vulture that crossed over him at periodic intervals. Soon the bird was joined by another of its scavenger friends, then one more. This is how I will die, a feast for the vultures.

  Suddenly, the birds ceased flying over him and flocked to a nearby tree. He could feel a presence, one that scared off the carrion birds. The silence was broken by the elephants trumpeting from inside their fort stables, the sound reverberating through the city. As this dramatic show of acoustics assaulted his ears, a shadow moved across Malik’s face.

  Malik turned his head, withholding the cry stifled in his throat. His first instinct was that one of the traitors had come to finish him off. But a bearded man awaited him. He looked incredibly familiar. In fact, he looked like so many men from Malik’s past. He was the astrologer who predicted he would rule Hindustan; he was also the old priest in the village where he and Chaula were caught by the Rana’s forces; he was the saint Nizamuddin; and he was also the old man in the Meenakshi temple, at whose command the stone elephants ate the sugarcane. The old man’s face had faded from his mind like a dream but Malik could never forget the penetrating gaze.

  The elephants continued to trumpet inside. The old man hobbled to a boulder near him, a big rounded rock that had dislodged itself from the fort walls, and sat down patiently. He fixed his glare on the dying man lying prostrate in the dried moat. The old man had no intention of talking and the only movement from him was the vaporous breath that emerged from his mouth. Malik wondered why a man who spoke so much in Madurai would now remain silent. Had the man followed me from Madurai? Malik gazed at him, a silhouette against the sky, half-vacantly.

  The man’s presence was fraught with mystery and disquieting. But whatever the man intended to do, he was thankful for the company. Perhaps the old man would lend him a hand and give him some water to wet his parched throat. He could then get back inside the capital and set things right. He refused to believe that his achievements of a decade could end so abruptly.

  But it was not to be. Suddenly, a bolt of pain ripped through Malik’s body and a spasm jolted his body. The man still did not move. Then slowly, he faded before Malik’s eyes and blended into the mist that swathed him. Malik knew now why the old man had returned; he had come for his statue, the one he had let Malik take.

  Malik wanted to call out to him, to speak to him once more before it was too late. But words refused to form on his lips.

  The old man turned to Malik and smiled. His radiance was captivating. Malik found himself transported into a world of the past. For a moment his entire life flashed before his eyes. He remembered the life he had before being castrated, when he was a boy named Chand Ram, when people called him just Ram. He finally realized who the man was. But before he could react, a swirl of darkness engulfed him. And then there was no more pain.

  The man took one last look at Malik. Peace, that had eluded him for a lifetime, was now on his face. Nobody had fully und
erstood the man behind this mutilated mask, one who would be condemned as a monster by foes and friends alike. The old man walked around Malik and picked up the statue. He wiped off the blood with his shawl and sighed. ‘The goddess has been given a ceremonial bath in many liquids, Malik – milk, curd, honey, rosewater, but never in blood.’ Then, with a last sigh, he simply said, ‘It’s time to sleep, son.’ He turned around and began to walk.

  He had a long way to go.

  CHAPTER 41

  DREAMS OF A GLORIOUS FUTURE

  For once Veera woke up to good news.

  An old man had deposited the long-lost statue of Meenakshi at the Tenkasi temple. Tired after his long journey, he had asked for water. While the priest had gone in to get some, he had vanished.

  The news spread like wildfire: the goddess had returned to her people! The priest who had tended to the statue back in Madurai authenticated it, except for the brown spot on its head which just would not rub off.

  Veera rushed to the shiva temple. All the idols from Madurai were stored here, waiting for the Turks to be chased out of their land so that they could return to their rightful places. A huge crowd awaited him.

  The priest lit a camphor lamp and held it aloft before the idol. Turning away, Veera saw a spark of hope in the eyes of his people, filled as they were with the belief that the recovery of the statue augured well for their land. If it had been Vikrama, he would have blown the ember into a huge fire and captured Madurai. But he was not his uncle.

  The statue stirred within him a need he had suppressed for long. Madurai beckoned him. He had wished to conclude his life with glory, to lead Hindus into a battle and reclaim their lands and temples from the Mohammedans. But he did not care any more. He just wanted to see the city once before he died. Not going back was the ultimate acceptance of a meaningless death.