The day had moved quicker than he expected. Had he fallen asleep? Perhaps so, for he was crowded with old faces, old events. The surge of pain they induced was actually welcome. He was so tired of the numbness that enveloped him. It was a strange disease, this numbness. He knew the exact second when it began. At that instant it had been a numbness of the fingertips. They were free and disconnected from his body, they moved of their own free will, quicker than thought. And having acted, left him burdened with what they had done. Only the fingertips at first. Then his arms, his legs, the entire cavity of a man that packs the machinery of life, all that fell numb.
His face followed, his eyes. Now all that remained sentient was thought. And that he sought to numb with drink. The Firangi evidently thought him a charsi as well. But he had never touched the stuff. The Firangi mistook a man’s pain for folly, and yes, he had been foolish. Humayun. Humayun. All his follies, save only one, had been because of Humayun. But there was plenty of time. He would set things right. He would drive the Mughals out of Hindustan. He could do that. He had lost his nerve earlier, listening to this fool or that. He was different now. Older. He could live with the pain in his head. Thirty—thirty-one—a man had seventy years gifted him. There were forty years ahead. He could afford one lazy afternoon, surely?
The fans of hokka overhead made a pleasant shade. The ocean murmured its lullaby. Bahadur slept. Why did that memory anger him so? Through the chill hour of the announcement of his father’s death, he had felt bereft of will, and in the days that followed, bereft of thought as well. His words were forced, his actions mechanical. Distanced from himself, robbed of grounding force, he was in free-fall. But now, the memory of those frozen days angered him. They returned barbed with words and sprung with thoughts he could never have uttered then, nor acknowledged without feeling their whiplash.
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In the afternoon silence now, those thoughts returned. Fanged and clawed, they tore mercilessly into his mind. The truth was still too shameful to be uttered aloud, but he could think it now, the thought that had been the constant refrain in all his days of wandering. I’ll show him! When he reached Dilli, the refrain had lengthened: I can’t have Gujarat? Very well, I’ll get Hindustan! I’ll show him! I’ll show him by driving out the Chaghtai! I’ll show him by displacing the Lodhi! I’ll show him! What then?
He had played the dream out in his brain so many times he had it down to the last detail. Bahadur’s dream always began with a flash, incandescent, blinding, searing his eyes with the tearless burn of dozens of sleepless nights. And then the brightness would come into slow focus. He would see with great distinctness a crystal tear tremble on the stubble of his father’s weatherbeaten cheek.
A tear glittering brighter than the diamonds in his earrings that flashed rainbows when he turned his head. At this point, Bahadur’s own eyes would feel the coolth of tears as his father’s voice said: My son. Those were the only words Muzaffar Shah Haleem uttered in Bahadur’s wild imaginings. Those two words completed his dream. They meant he had Hindustan and Gujarat and who knows what other land and its people.
He watched it all, all of it unrolling like one magnificent carpet at his father’s feet. He himself stood at the far end, and yet, magically, he could see that tear tremble as his father said: My son. Bahadur whispered those words now. The gentle rustle of hokka fans absorbed them and they became the caressing sound of the tree. But he had never heard them said, had he? Those words had never been spoken by his father, who always addressed him as Bahadur Khan. And that was never pronounced as a name but as a snarl, an insult, a jibe, a sneer, an epithet. Something that dangled from his neck—a proclamation of failure. The more he won, the more he failed in the eyes of Sultân Muzaffar. My son. He couldn’t dream those words any longer, but in those days they clung to his nineteen-year-old brain like cobwebs.
He hadn’t left home because of Sikandar’s attempt to murder him. He would have stayed and faced that, but Muzaffar Shah had been glad to see him go. He could not then see past the courtesy of kings. He saw his father now as he saw other kings: men like himself paraded about in luxury, but beneath that crust of gold and gems half-finished and empty, for what were they without majesty? What quality distinguished them from the meanest of their subjects? He shrivelled with disgust. It was second nature to him now, this disgust.
He felt it too often, towards too many, but principally towards himself. At such moments, the roar within him became unbearable till it settled into a deeper numbness. He called it a headache for want of a better word. What would Muzaffar Shah think of him now? That was all too clear, painfully clear. More painfully, it didn’t matter anymore. He recalled now the narrow twisting alleys of Dilli, sweating people at every pore. The Chaghtai would tax them and bleed them as the Lodhi, the Tughlaq, the Khilji had. Dilli never had a king of its people. The bards sang of earlier kings, unbelievers all, like the crowding populace, so how could they matter? They were nullities. It was the duty of a true believer to erase them—or so he had been led to believe.
What was this thing called belief? Its only purpose was to set man against man. More disgust. His empty stomach growled its disapproval. It was being purified by fasting through this holy month. There must be something to that. It made him calmer, stronger. Victorious. ‘Exalted,’ he heard Hari say. ‘Hunger gives us that feeling of being superhuman. Look at our sanyasis. They fast for months, and the whole world trembles before them.’ That was true too. The king who stained his sword with the blood of a sanyasi was dead within the week.
What was that story about Feroz Tughlaq? A Dilli story, but it could have happened anywhere. Still, Bahadur conceded, Dilli was not just anywhere. It was the heart of kingship. A place where the ruler distanced himself from the ruled. That distance was bridged by the flow of money. Coins, gold, silver, jewels, land, money. Relentless as a river rushing towards the ocean, everything flowed towards the ruler. Dilli was that tight power-mongering coterie in court, speaking the twinned language of barter and murder. He knew it all.
Why then did he covet Dilli? Because Dilli was Hindustan. He laughed from joy at the memory of crossing the border of his father’s kingdom. It was exhilarating, a moment of sheer abandon. He had never since felt so free. Everything was foreign—land, language, trees, people, even the weather, and that foreign-ness was freedom. Did Bābar Padshah feel that too? Is that why he chose to stay and not just carry away tonnes of treasure like Ghazni, Ghori, Sabuktagin, Sikandar? Freedom or treasure? He was far richer than any Padshah could be. Then, as now, even with Humayun having plundered his treasury.
Once a thief, always a thief … Bahadur stopped the ungenerous thought. Had he himself been any better? He had never coveted treasure. He simply loved its beauty, content that it might be his to gift, not own. Except the belt. That he had coveted, lusted for, as he had never lusted for any woman. And it was his now. In perpetuity. No, Dilli was not about treasure. What then? My son. Hari had called him a king in search of a kingdom. Hari was, as usual, right. But he was still outside Bahadur’s dream. Bahadur had not meant to keep it secret. He merely assumed that Hari, who knew everything about him, knew this too. He had told Barq. And the horse, hearing the wordless thought, held his head higher before breaking into gallop that rivalled the wind.
Ah Barq! Ah Hari! It was all Hari’s fault. Everything was. If Hari hadn’t deserted him, would he have turned to Humayun? But Hari had not yet deserted him then. He had merely refused to advise. ‘You will know what to do when the time comes, but it must be no man’s knowledge but yours.’
Whenever Hari took that lofty tone all you could do was address him as Pundit for a whole day or challenge him to a fight. Either way, his opinion never changed. Bahadur had evaded murder in Dilli. It was neither the first time, nor the last. Death on the battlefield was different from betrayal. He would have no rancour against the man who ran a sword through his heart. But poison? That rankled. Would he have fought at Panipat if Ibrahim Lodi hadn’t sought to poison him? No. Poison had not determined his choice. He sought revenge for that murderous act knowing the crafty Sultân would meet his end in the battlefield.
He felt no rancour against the Sultân’s mother either. Why had she said that it was not his fight? Of course, she was afraid the Jaunpuris would claim him. By the time he was on the road to Baghpat he felt like a piece of carrion fought over by crows. As always, he said nothing, leaving it to Barq and Hari to divine his thoughts. They had both deserted him now. But he still had the tree. The hokka nodded, reading his thoughts.
This excerpt from Kalpish Ratna’s ‘Bahadur Shah of Gujarat: A King in Search of a Kingdom,’ has been published with permission from Simon & Schuster India.