Indian Movies Thread V

[Bodhi]

One final military engagement disturbed his contemplation on the homeward road. One more upstart princeling to slap down. A diversion into the Kathiawar Peninsula to quell the obstinate Rana of Cooch Naheen, a young man with a big mouth and a bigger mustache (the Emperor was vain about his own mustache, and took unkindly to competitors), a feudal ruler absurdly fond of talking about freedom. Freedom for whom, and from what, the Emperor harrumphed inwardly. Freedom was a children’s fantasy, a game for women to play.

No man was ever free. His army moved through the white trees of the Gir Forest like a silently approaching plague, and the pathetic little fortress of Cooch Naheen, seeing the advent of death in the rustling treetops, broke its own towers, ran up a flag of surrender, and begged abjectly for mercy. Often, instead of executing his vanquished opponents, the Emperor would marry one of their daughters and give his defeated father-in-law a job: better a new family member than a rotting corpse. This time, however, he had irritably torn the insolent Rana’s mustache off his handsome face, and chopped the weakling dreamer into garish pieces—had done so personally, with his own sword, just as his grandfather would have, and had then retreated to his quarters to tremble and mourn.

The Emperor’s eyes were slanted and large and gazed upon infinity as a dreamy young lady might, or a sailor in search of land. His lips were full and pushed forward in a womanly pout. But in spite of these girlish accents he was a mighty specimen of a man, huge and strong. As a boy, he had killed a tigress with his bare hands and then, driven to distraction by his deed, had forever forsworn the eating of meat and become a vegetarian. A Muslim vegetarian, a warrior who wanted only peace, a philosopher-king: a contradiction in terms. Such was the greatest ruler the land had ever known.

In the melancholy after battle, as evening fell upon the empty dead, below the broken fortress melting into blood, within earshot of a little waterfall’s nightingale song—bul-bul, bul-bul, it sang—the Emperor in his brocade tent sipped watered wine and lamented his gory genealogy. He did not want to be like his bloodthirsty ancestors, even though his ancestors were the greatest men in history. He felt burdened by the names of the marauder past, the names from which his name descended in cascades of human blood: his grandfather Babar, the warlord of Ferghana, who had conquered, but always loathed, this new dominion, this India of too much wealth and too many gods, Babar the battle machine, with an unexpected gift for felicitous words; and before Babar the murderous princes of Transoxiana and Mongolia, and mighty Temüjin above all—Genghis, Changez, Jenghis, or Chinggis Qan—thanks to whom he, Akbar, had to accept the name of Mughal, had to be the Mongol he was not, or did not feel himself to be. He felt . . . Hindustani. His horde was neither Golden, Blue, nor White. The very word “horde” struck his subtle ears as ugly, swinish, coarse. He did not want hordes. He did not want to pour molten silver into the eyes of his vanquished foes or crush them to death beneath the platform upon which he was eating his dinner. He was tired of war.

He remembered the tutor of his childhood, a Persian Mir, telling him that for a man to be at peace with himself he must be at peace with all others. Sulh-i-kul, complete peace. No Khan could understand such an idea. He did not want a Khanate. He wanted a country.

The Rana of Cooch Naheen, young, slender, and dark, had knelt at Akbar’s feet, his face hairless and bleeding, waiting for the blow to fall. “History repeats itself,” he said. “Your grandfather killed my grandfather seventy years ago.”

“Our grandfather,” replied the Emperor, employing the royal plural according to custom, for this was not the time for his experiment with the singular—this wretch did not merit the privilege of witnessing it—“was a barbarian with a poet’s tongue. We, by contrast, are a poet with a barbarian’s history and a barbarian’s prowess in war, which we detest. Thus it is demonstrated that history does not repeat itself but moves forward, and that Man is capable of change.”

“That is a strange remark for an executioner to make,” the young Rana said softly. “But it is futile to argue with Death.”

“Your time has come,” the Emperor assented. “So tell us truthfully before you go, what sort of paradise do you expect to discover when you have passed through the veil?” The Rana raised his mutilated face and looked the Emperor in the eye. “In Paradise, the words ‘worship’ and ‘argument’ mean the same thing,” he declared. “The Almighty is not a tyrant. In the house of God, all voices are free to speak as they choose, and that is the form of their devotion.” He was an irritating, holier-than-thou type of youth, that was beyond question, but in spite of his annoyance Akbar was moved. “We promise you that we will build that house of adoration here on earth,” the Emperor said.

Then, with a cry—Allahu Akbar, “God is great,” or, just possibly, “Akbar is God”—he chopped off the pompous little twerp’s cheeky, didactic, and therefore suddenly unnecessary head.

Fiction: The Shelter of the World
Salman Rushdie