Ibrahim along with his horsemen and train of slaves canters leisurely through the narrow lanes of the encampment and through the markets thronging with people. The slaves cry aloud and curse when flogged. Passersby shout Mubarak to congratulate Ibrahim for his catch of human booty. Finally they enter the old town, a sharp contrast to the encampment. If the encampment is like a python, the town is like its victim about to be crushed in the reptile’s grip. Here, the rickety balconies of huddled houses look empty and forlorn. Not a single window is open but light sneaks out through the slits of the windows like a guilty thief. A few lanterns do burn faintly at the crossroads, while stray dogs howl soulfully at the edge of the gloomy town. Finally, they reach a small patch of overgrown forest at the rear of Lal Mahal.
Ibrahim signals his men; they dismount and tether their horses while the shackled slaves are set free. As the slaves dissolve in the shadows of the woods, Ibrahim and his men walk confidently towards the rear entrance of Lal Mahal. Khalid, holding a torch, is a newly acquired friend of Ibrahim. He is on palace duty patrolling the place adjacent to the backyard and is startled to see Ibrahim and a few Pashtun men there at midnight. He greets Ibrahim followed by a question, ‘Assalamu Alaikum, Ibrahim Bhai. Are you supposed to be here at this time?’
‘Waalekum Assalaam, wa Rahamatullahi wa barakaatu hu,’ Ibrahim reciprocates in Arabic with a trusting smile and continues, ‘I have been entrusted to bring some able men.’
Khalid, who has received many a gift from Ibrahim, narrows his eyes and persists, ‘Who has asked you?’
‘Abdul Azeez, the head of palace security,’ comes the quick answer.
‘Why at this hour?’ Khalid wonders.
‘He had said he wants to put the men straight on duty and see their endurance. I have been told to be at the rear of the compound wall of the general’s house,’ Ibrahim explains patiently.
‘No one from the sentinels guarding the house has informed me,’ Khalid wonders, but does not sound alarmed.
‘Come, let’s go together and verify,’ Ibrahim sounds terse, his heart pounding in his chest.
‘I did not mean to sound suspicious,’ Khalid says apologetically.
‘Shall we?’ Ibrahim insists.
‘It is not necessary; we shall meet in the morning,’ Khalid says, then shakes his head and continues, ‘I must go and check on the musicians and remind them of their last performance of the night.’
Ibrahim sighs quietly with relief. He hopes that the others have managed to reach the backyard. The wedding procession had gone to the Ganesh temple near Lal Mahal to seek blessings; they were supposed to sneak out one by one and reach the rear of the palace. It is dark at the back of Lal Mahal. Ibrahim and his men take a few moments to adjust to the darkness. A few yards away, a cottage stands illuminated by a single torch. Ibrahim walks behind the hut and sees several men, more than hundred, some dressed in finery and some in soiled clothes, sitting under a huge tree, and he knows one of them is Raja Shivaji.
‘Is that you, Ibrahim?’ This is surely Tanaji.
‘Yes,’ Ibrahim replies and asks, ‘Was there any trouble for the wedding procession?’
‘No.’
‘Did they search you for weapons?’ Ibrahim asks.
‘No.’
‘Is the groom here?’
‘Yes, I am very much here,’ Ibrahim hears the familiar voice of Raja Shivaji.
They wait there for about an hour or so. As the moon disappears, the night turns darker and they can see the shadows of the sentinels moving about the house, their sandals making a rhythmic sound. The torches hanging in the baskets attached to the walls of the house are extinguished one by one with only a few meant to be on all through the night. As planned, fifty Sajag men move like noiseless spirits in the direction of the house, scale the compound wall as if they are gliding over it and vanish.
The Sajags have dispersed like drifting mist, only to appear from the shadows of the trees to pounce on Shaista’s guards. They go directly for the jugular, giving the enemy no chance. The guards fall one by one, and are dragged into the backyard and hidden behind the trees. One of the kitchen hands suddenly comes out from the back door holding a big pot. The chief of Sajags notices him and stands very close to the wall but he remains directly under the torch that burns overhead. The man holding the pot opens his mouth to let out a scream. The Sajag lurches forward and clamps the man’s mouth shut with his hand, letting only a soft groan. The man is pressed against the kitchen wall and his throat slit. The pot falls down, making a loud metallic sound, from the hands of the dying man.
‘What is happening?’ someone screams from the kitchen and leaps out from the door and falls directly into the Sajag’s hands who is still holding the limp body of his victim. He leaves the body and lets it crumple on the ground, takes on the second arrival and silences him within just a moment. Someone else starts shouting from the direction of the main palace in chaste Farsi, ‘Is everything all right?’
The chief Sajag takes a chance and shouts, ‘Baleh, baleh,’ in Farsi, saying ‘yes’, and waits, his heart beating in fluttery panic. If the man from inside the kitchen suspects foul play, he will alert the inmates and soon everything will start going downhill, but the much-desired silence prevails. After a while, the lights in the kitchen dim. Heaving a sigh of relief, his eyes dart about. The place is deserted, there are no more sentinels pacing about. He scampers in the direction of men waiting in the dark, well-hidden in the shrubs.
The chief Sajag signals by crowing thrice.
Shivaji jumps to his feet. The time has come to move. Babaji, Chiman, Ibrahim Khan and Tanaji take cue and rise quickly. The three, followed by many more, proceed towards the house and wait for a while under the mango and fig trees before entering the kitchen. It is empty, lit by a lone lantern hanging on the wall darkened by soot. Within an hour, the place will be crowded by men cooking for sohoor, the morning meal before sunrise. Shivaji moves cautiously, and is aware that there is a huge granary attached to the kitchen. He enters the granary followed by the others; it was their favourite place to hide in childhood. Chiman, who walks behind Shivaji, knows that from this granary one can enter the main house. He quickly goes to the spot where the door ought to be, but there is no door there.
‘It’s been sealed,’ Shivaji whispers as they face just a wall.
‘They have sealed it with just mud, and painted the wall to camouflage it. It is here,’ Chiman says while marking the wall with his fingers.
‘Break it,’ Shivaji orders a Sajag standing on his left. The man takes out a small hammer tucked in his belt, but this is going to be noisy. Just then the music celebrating the anniversary of Aurangzeb’s coronation starts in the front yard of the Lal Mahal. The ear-splitting sound of drums disturbs the horses in the stables inside the compound of the house and they start neighing too. This is the last time the musicians will play it, so it is louder and more robust than the previous bouts. After this, their master Shaista Khan will be going to bed. The Sajag has started hammering the mud wall with a vengeance, and before the music stops, the opening to the courtyard is wide enough for the men to step through.
The courtyard is enclosed in an elevated veranda, an enclosed walkway, its wooden canopy supported by stone pillars. It has a main gate as an exit point. As they enter, they notice that the place is dimly lit by just one lantern hanging on the veranda wall. A few rooms at the entrance of the courtyard are perhaps occupied by Shaista’s grown sons. The large foyer at the other end is submerged in darkness. Chiman looks at the staircase in one of the corners that goes up to a covered terrace with several rooms opening into it. He starts calculating, what is the probability of Shaista sleeping on the ground floor? There are neither any guards nor is the place lit. He takes the lead and directs a few Sajags in the direction of the foyer while he leaps towards the staircase followed by Shivaji and the others. When they reach the first floor, they are shocked to see a number of women sleeping on the floor of the upstairs’ veranda. Shivaji wonders how
claustrophobic the place has become with so many curtains hanging from the ceiling and blocking the view of the courtyard. Here too just one lantern burns in the corner, with a candle that is about to die out.
The men tiptoe past, avoiding the limbs and torsos of women sleeping in various positions. But one woman wakes up to see silhouettes of men hovering above her with naked swords. She lets out a wild scream, and mayhem breaks out as the others wake up in hysteria and the screams become louder.
Ibrahim grabs hold of an elderly woman; her thin frame is bent with jewellery, she is probably the khan’s first wife. He says to her urgently in Farsi, ‘Moshekeli nist, no problem, I shall help you. Where is your husband? I must save his life.’
The woman’s trembling hand points to a room, the door of which is shut. The ‘intruders’ dart towards the room but are shocked to see the elderly woman sprinting ahead of them. She kicks the door open and shouts, ‘Khatar! Khatar!’, warning of danger. Shivaji ducks and, avoiding the woman, he enters the dimly lit room. He sees a very fair man with white beard quickly jump up from his bed; a younger woman sleeping on the other side is jolted awake and starts screaming. Before Shivaji can chase him, the elderly woman who had kicked open the door scampers ahead with amazing agility and blows out the only oil lamp burning in the room.
There is but one option left for him and the men who have entered the room after him to move their swords in forward and backward strokes. Thereafter, all hell breaks loose, as women inside the room start yelling. There is a room behind the khan’s bedroom; some more women from there enter the room and come in the range of the blades of the Maratha swords. Shivaji thinks he heard a man groaning. Then, in the pale yellow light streaming in from the doorway, he realizes that some women are lying dead on the ground and the elderly fair man is nowhere to be seen. In the courtyard, the Sajags are busy fighting with men who have come out from the adjacent rooms with swords and daggers. Soon, the khan’s flowerpots are covered in blood.
Some servants have broken free and have run towards the camp shouting incomprehensible words. Most of the Sajag men too follow them shouting, ‘Ghaneem! Ghaneem! Ghaneem!’ People in the camp watch the exodus of men coming out from the direction of Lal Mahal, some dripping with blood, shouting, ‘Enemy! Enemy! Enemy!’ Shivaji, Babaji and Chiman too have joined the Sajags, and all of them soon dissolve in the confused mass of people living in the massive encampment, like vapour disappearing into mist.
Shaista, despite excruciating pain, keeps hanging outside the balcony and patiently waits for someone to rescue him. After what seemed like ages, he notices a few men peering down at him from the balcony. When he realizes that they are his servants, he utters some expletives and asks them to pull him up. When he is pulled up the reality falls on him like lightning. He kneels down and starts howling.
His bedroom, the upstairs veranda and the courtyard are covered with dead bodies, and among those dead is his first son, Abul Fath. The bodies of his other two younger sons, three wives, one of his sons-in-law and all fifty sentinels guarding the house are lying about. It is like a sinister nightmare. Hakims are called to tend to those who are injured; Shaista has lost three fingers of his right hand which are later found near his bed. Dead bodies, some intact and some in pieces, are finally lined up in the courtyard. There are six strangers among those.
Outside, in the camp, a thousand horsemen from different camps have mounted their horses. They gallop in the eastern direction, for some scouts have seen hundreds of men holding torches and moving eastwards near the banks of the river Mula. They let their horses fly, gritting their teeth and wielding their naked swords, occasionally shouting ‘Ghaneem! Ghaneem!’, cursing the enemy they do not know and chasing the enemy they have not seen. It is a dark night, and the forest on the banks of the river Mula is even darker. The enormous trunks, branches and canopies of giant rain trees cast ominous shadows on the floor covered with shrubs. The gallopers spot the flickering torches in the dark and ride through the narrow trails to reach the enemy, only to find oxen running about with burning torches tied to their horns!
5
It is now a known fact that Shivaji had, in person, come along with his men to kill Shaista Khan.
It is afternoon. Summer has begun and the weather has turned hot. Shaista Khan sits on a reclining chair in the foyer while a hakim sitting near his feet washes the wound with a medicinal solution. The pus has disappeared and tiny brown crusts have started appearing. Shaista curses as a throbbing pain starts, and intensifies within moments. ‘It is healing nicely,’ the doctor comments to soothe his master’s nerves. Shaista feels numb with shame and grief. How could he have been so careless? Why did he underestimate the Maratha? And now what would Aurangzeb think? What was his and his remaining family’s future? There is but one logical explanation and that is that Shivaji must be a disciple of a sinister djinn. How else could he do what he did and suddenly appear in his bedroom?
Shaista shakes his head with dismay. He had heard of people catching fire, stones from the sky crushing heads, sand spilling out and blisters exploding from one’s body! Stranger and more sinister things have happened under the spell of a tantric. Such black-magicians can make the victim’s body parts vanish one by one. His fingers are gone, what next? A shiver runs down the general’s spine.
Shaista has decided to leave for Aurangabad early the next morning.
‘Maharaja Jaswant Singh Rathod has come to see you, my master,’ a servant comes in and informs him. Shaista Khan smiles bitterly. He does not want to see the face of Jaswant who has surely committed treason after taking expensive gifts from Shivaji. In any case, the man is famous for his traitorous nature; he has proved it during the battle of Khajwa.
‘Bring him in,’ Shaista murmurs. ‘Fan faster,’ he says to the two men who are fanning him with large fans made of peacock feathers as he wipes his forehead with his left hand.
Tall and handsome Jaswant walks in wearing a white turban and a white jama to show that he is mourning. The young man is stooping, his face is grief-stricken.
Shaista raises his eyes and regards Jaswant. The doctor has finished putting a fresh bandage on his master’s hand. He gets up, bows and says, ‘Take care, Sahib, do not allow water to touch the bandage.’
Shaista waves his hand, indicating to the doctor to leave them alone.
After the medic is gone, Shaista looks at Jaswant and says sarcastically, ‘Have you come to see if I am really alive?’
Jaswant refuses to look into Shaista Khan’s eyes.
‘You are camping near Kondana Fort and you claim to have seen nothing on that fateful night.’
Maharaja Jaswant Singh Rathod is filled with shame too. He had refused all the presents that were sent by Shivaji and he and his men had truly not seen anything suspicious that night, but the general will never believe him.
‘Besiege Kondana Fort and wait for my further instructions!’ the Mughal general instructs Jaswant, dismissing him.
6
Aurangzeb’s procession of about four lakh people and animals has left Dilli for Kashmir. Aurangzeb has decided to camp at the foothills of the Himalayas. Evening has fallen and a brilliant orange sun lingers on the western horizon. Clusters of pine trees with their straight and tall trunks rising above the velvety green slopes at the foothills of the high mountains look alluring. The snow caps of the mountains reflecting the golden beams resemble the gilded pinnacles of temples and mosques, while gentle yet icy winds from the north flirt with the panels of Aurangzeb’s shamiana. Its panels are violet-red and embroidered with hand-painted chintz from Masulipatnam in Golconda. Fringed with gold, silver threads woven in silk, its poles are painted with gild. The entire mobile palace is separated by wooden screens from the rest of the enormous camp that is three kos in circumference. In the front yard of the shamiana, from a mast rising forty guj high hangs a sky lantern, akashdeep—an imperial beacon to guide the wanderers to their tents.
Aurangzeb, who has finished his evening p
rayers, enters the audience chamber adorned with silk and velvet canopies as thoughts buzz in his head. Few messages have come from the Deccan and he is eager to know about his maternal uncle’s success stories.
He eagerly goes to his gilded, throne-like chair and asks his scribe to read the messages. In the light of a few oil lamps burning on his desk, the scribe starts reading.
Shivaji Bhosale with audacity and malignity carried out a midnight attack on amir-ul-umara, khan-e-khanan, General Shaista Khan’s camp, and killed many. Unfortunately, Shivaji is rewarded by an immense increase in his prestige. Now he is considered an incarnation of Satan. No place is believed to be proof against his entrance and no feat impossible for him. Everyone is talking with respect and terror of his almost superhuman deed. There is no doubt that Shivaji has mastered witchcraft. Amir-ul-umara is humiliated, has lost a part of his family as well as his face, along with his fingers. Some say that Shivaji is wise and dangerous; it was not a shot in the dark but a well-planned military operation.
There is one more letter from Aurangabad, the Mughal capital of the Deccan.
Soon after the raid of amir-ul-umara Shaista Khan, Shivaji has again marched into south Konkan, taking over important ports and some sea forts and collecting money from rich traders. The rumour is that he is planning to build an enormous sea fort somewhere near Malvan. The news is true because Shivaji’s adviser, one Niraji Raoji, has bought several thousand maunds of iron and lead for the same purpose.
As the words of the scribe start making sense, a slight tremor of fury lances through Aurangzeb. Moments ago, he was looking forward to a lovely holiday in the Shalimar gardens of Srinagar in Kashmir with Udepuri, but that happiness vanishes in a moment. Everything he so longs for—the streams, lakes reflecting the azure sky, palaces built on islands of such lakes surrounded by richly canopied trees, trails vanishing into flowerbeds and the gardens filled with bird songs—seems to have lost its meaning.
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