Muhammad Bin Tughlaq
Page 17
The wealthy obtained grain from the unaffected parts of the empire and hoarded it illegally, contributing to the grotesquely inflated prices of rice and other foodstuffs. Within their comfortable cocoons, they mourned the privations they were made to endure and were content to sit back and condemn the inaction of the Sultan.
‘The sheer folly of the Sultan and his failure to have foreseen and forestalled this natural disaster defies belief!’
‘These bloody beggars who gather at the entrance of our homes are a wretched nuisance!’
‘I agree! They are filthy and carry disease. The Sultan should send his troops to cleanse the land of them!’
‘This entire business is such an inconvenience. I have had to double the guards around my orchards and groves. Soon I will have to hire guards to keep an eye on the guards if this continues.’
Mercifully, Muhammad had little time for their nonsense as he sprang into action, pouring all the effort and resources he could muster to provide relief for his people. Grains were brought in from the south through Daulatabad and Oudh, whose governor, Ain-ul-Mulk, responded to the Sultan’s order immediately. Muhammad’s relay teams rose to the occasion magnificently, working tirelessly to transport lifesaving provisions with speed and efficiency to the distant reaches of the realm. Muhammad fuelled their enthusiasm with added incentives, bonuses and gifts of land.
Exhaustive measures were implemented in Dilli, the Doab, Malwa and the other drought-afflicted regions. Imperial officials were tasked with compiling registers with the names of his subjects from the affected areas, who were then allotted food, funds and other essentials that were to last them six months. The Sultan suspended the collection of land taxes and people breathed a sigh of relief, calling down the blessings of God on their sovereign. His subjects were also given loans to encourage them to obtain seeds, bullocks and all they would need to return to farming.
Many public kitchens were set up. The indefatigable Makhduma Jahan, despite her advanced years and failing health, worked harder than the lowliest slave to keep the droves who descended on her charitable institutions well-fed on soups, stews, rotis and vegetable and meat dishes from the royal kitchens. Khuda was happy to help as well, though she had her hands full with little Dawar Malik. ‘Feeding beggars and hearing them sing my praises is a lot more entertaining than coping with a screaming brat who does little besides eat, sleep and poop. Nobody warned me that motherhood would be so noxious or that future Sultans could be so disgusting.’
Dear Khuda! How she made him laugh! Perhaps he would release that odious husband of hers from prison in a year or two. ‘He can remain there for all I care,’ Khuda had been dismissive. ‘Husbands are even more annoying than babies. And unlike the latter, you can’t fob him off to the hired help.’
His mother was too busy for such frivolous talk. Instead, she helped herself to funds he could ill-afford to spare from the imperial treasury to buy buildings at exorbitant prices. She equipped these to provide lodging and medical facilities for the wretched peasants who had thronged to Dilli.
‘I have to make amends for the sins of my son,’ she informed him snidely, though he had not said a word to protest her extravagances. Haniya had never liked Saira, and yet she seemed angered by her death. Fortunately, she did not give him the rough edge of her tongue.
Muhammad and Ahmad closely monitored the operations to prevent the supplies from being rerouted to undeserving pockets. Justice was delivered swiftly and mercilessly to those tempted to take advantage of the crisis to enrich themselves. Profiteers and petty thieves who preyed on the populace were trod underfoot by his war elephants and their belongings confiscated to be used in relief efforts.
Nobles were nudged towards philanthropic activities after some were caught feasting and holding banquets, and were publicly subjected to a thousand lashes of the whip as well as made to pay crippling penalties.
All of a sudden, the Sultan found himself in the warm sunshine of his subjects’ approval. They cheered him on the streets and prayed for his health. Every time he rode out to check the supply trains with the imperial guard in tow, people gathered to bless him, prostrate themselves before him and call out words of lavish praise for his munificence.
Some even kissed the hems of his robe when he wandered into one of his mother’s charity houses. Muhammad was not averse to the goodwill, but it bothered him when his subjects pooled their resources in extremely difficult times to build a monument in his name, even hiring a scribe to inscribe the following words:
‘Muhammad Shah is the magnificent and magnanimous king of the whole world; in comparison to the waves of his heart the river found itself reduced to a drop.’
He had to admit it had a nice ring to it and was a welcome change from ‘tyrant’ and ‘mad monarch’. Yet, he wished his people would be pragmatists like himself and practice a little moderation, without swinging between the extreme emotions of hate and love, which made them do foolish things like clamour for his death or build him monuments they couldn’t really afford.
The Khwaja Ahmad was a pragmatist, too, and had this alone to say of his newfound popularity. ‘The enmity of the nobility which you insist on provoking far outweighs the fickle approval of the commoners. Besides, the mood of the mob usually melts away, while the malice of the mighty has the backing of money to make it grow like a malignant tumour . . .
‘And the nobility dare not forget they enjoy the privileges of birth only thanks to the munificence of their Sultan. If they do, it would be most unwise of them.’
Muhammad forgave Ahmad his curmudgeonly demeanour. After all, he had lost his good right hand on account of the Sultan. Najib, better known as the Sag-al-Sultan, though he had always been the grand Vizier’s man and his loyal lieutenant, had come to the end of a brilliant career and life somewhat abruptly. It had been a bloody business, but had a certain poetic justice to it. Even his mother had approved.
‘I had a good mind to have that vile creature poisoned myself,’ Haniya muttered with uncharacteristic vehemence, ‘for his role in Saira’s death. It is good you had the sense to put down that rabid dog.’
‘Najib carried his dark secrets with him to the grave.’ Muhammad tugged at his beard restlessly. ‘He never did reveal why he put together the evidence against her and handed it over to the Kazi. Nor did he confess the full extent of his misdeeds or the names of others who most certainly were involved.’
Muhammad had visited him shortly before the end. He still remembered the stench as he entered the inner apartment of Najib’s own torture chambers. The walls were spattered with blood and gore. His own assistant had torn out the hair on his head and beard by the roots and removed most of his scalp. Only stumps remained where his thighs and hands ought to have been.
He was still alive, though, and greeted the Sultan respectfully, almost as if they were merely discussing affairs of state on an average day. ‘Why did you do it? And on whose orders were you acting?’ Muhammad asked him coldly.
‘I have taken many confessions in this room and discovered that there is little to tell the truth from the lie, and it doesn’t matter in the least.’ Despite his reduced circumstances, he still had much of the swagger and morally ambiguous attitude that had characterized him in life.
‘That is not an answer. If you were to tell me what I need to know, I might be persuaded to give you a quick death.’
‘If my profession has taught me anything, it is that death hurts less than the infliction of pain or the wounding of others. It had been my duty to mete out all three to others. Now that it is my turn, I see no reason to flinch or be afraid.’
It was hard to ascertain if the sadistic brute was a fool, a brave man or a raving lunatic. Either way, it was hard to pity or respect him. And if ever a man deserved punishment, it was this one. He would die slowly, allowed to sustain himself on bits and pieces of his own flesh and drink his own blood till his beastly heart stopped beating. Muhammad walked away from him without a backward glance.
‘Saira, of course, was blamed for your lapse, and if that weren’t enough to make people plot her ruin, she was stupid enough to provide them with an excuse. Not that I blame her in the least. You need not have played into their hands and sacrificed that which you held so dear, making yourself even more miserable.’
Muhammad had nothing to say to that. Haniya softened. ‘It is done, and you will do well not to drive yourself to distraction by dwelling on it obsessively, the way you have in the past. The only thing I am curious about is why you saw fit to spare the Khwaja Jahan, when you took such a harsh stand against his toady . . .’
He seldom bothered with explanations. As a Sultan, he was under no obligation to explain his actions to his underlings. But this was his mother. Besides, this whole business was weighing on him, simply because unlike the others he had lost to death, Saira steadfastly refused to speak to him, adamantly cold and unyielding, just as she had been while alive. As his mother pointed out, though, who could blame her?
‘I daresay between Ahmad and Najib they have woven a fine tapestry of deceit, extortion, bribery and corruption . . .’ he began thoughtfully, ‘through shadowy dealings that are a little too convoluted for even me to fully unravel. They have amassed a fortune that in all likelihood surpasses mine, taken possession of enormous tracts of prime land and buried ownership beneath an avalanche of deeds and obscure legalese.
‘Ahmad is the holder of a thousand dark secrets and guilty of shadowy deeds. He did well to distance himself from the unsavoury elements of his worst enterprises, which was why Najib took the fall for gathering the evidence of Saira’s guilt and handing it over to the Kazi. But unlike the others who provided me with less than exemplary service while striving to rob me blind, Ahmad has always obeyed my instructions and fulfilled his duties and obligations. He may have helped himself, but he has helped his emperor and empire as well. And as Najib told me, there are worse things for the living than death. I suppose I spared him so that we can see things through to the bitter end.’
‘I am not sure I understand.’ Haniya looked bemused. ‘But I am glad that you didn’t act with your customary haste and recklessness. By ridding yourself of the hound, you have muzzled the master. He will be careful to repay you with stellar service.’
She took a quavering breath. ‘There, that’s enough of that. You did well to put your heart and soul into helping your subjects during a time of dire need. Deeds of genuine kindness outweigh the worst acts of evil, and it is the only true reason for living.’
‘She means she is proud of you, though more often than not you have disgraced your father’s memory,’ Abu whispered helpfully into his ear.
Haniya coughed and reached out for his hand. ‘I have always been proud of you. My Jauna is a good boy and nothing you have done or are going to do is ever going to change that.’
Muhammad squeezed her hand in response. Eloquent though he always had been, he couldn’t possibly find the words to tell her what her words meant to him. For once, even Abu was speechless.
6
Muhammad was on the march with his troops again. He wished he could have remained in Swarga Dhar and the cool embrace of the Ganga as they went on with relief efforts, hoping the interminable drought would end. However, insurrection had reared its ugly head yet again in the form of traitors and had been dealt with swiftly, but the situation in the far south had worsened and warranted his personal attention.
The traitor Sayyid Ahsan had declared the independence of the districts of Madurai, Tirunelveli, Ramanathapuram, Pudukottai and Tiruchirapalli from his empire and had styled himself as the shah of the south. Most of his generals could not even pronounce the names and simply referred to the southernmost province as the Ma’bar. Muhammad’s response had been instantaneous. He sent a detachment of his troops trained for the Khorasan expedition to deal with Ahsan, but the ingrates had been persuaded to throw in their lot with the usurper by the thrice-cursed Orthodox Sunnis in pursuance of their own spiteful vendetta against him. Meanwhile, Ahsan’s brother Ibrahim Sayyid had raised the standard of rebellion in Hansi.
The Sultan waited for the surge of anger that usually blinded him to reason. But this time, he saw all too clearly. His empire had taken one blow too many and it was bleeding. Sensing weakness and the whiff of opportunities, his enemies were circling. As they rode to battle, Muhammad saw the depredations of drought and detritus of rebellions fought and suppressed. Despair, his worst enemy, drew close, but the Sultan drove it back with all the determination he could muster.
At this critical juncture, maintaining his hold on Madurai would be difficult, but he owed it to himself to try. He would fight Ahsan Shah and Ahmad would march against Ibrahim. If God was kind, the brothers would be hauled up for an audience with him, minus their heads and grasping hands.
Ahsan Shah had made quite the speech, he was told, while proclaiming his independence. ‘The Sultan cares little for those of us who live in the south. He believes himself superior to us, and his northern subjects follow his callous example. They are driven by greed and seek to bleed us of our natural and financial resources. They seek to stamp out the proud culture and heritage of the glorious south. We will no longer stand for this treatment, we will throw off the yoke of tyranny and march forward into a glorious future of our own making!’
Of course, it was a lot of political claptrap and merely an excuse, for Ahsan spoke not a word of the Tamil language and knew even less than Muhammad about the people in the deep south or their customs. Having seen an opportunity, he had simply seized it. Muhammad wished he had followed through on his plan to visit Madurai and stay there for a brief spell after his stint at Daulatabad.
He had wanted to familiarize himself with southerners, their culture, temples, festivals and language, of which he had learned they were most proud. He had wanted to sample their cuisine, which he was told wasn’t as spicy as Telangana’s but quite tasty. They were seafarers and had travelled to distant lands to trade in salt, silks and spices. He had even conversed with one of the dark-skinned Tamils with the help of an interpreter who had made him a gift of the commodities he traded, in addition to a beautiful casket of precious stones and an exquisitely sculpted idol of a Goddess with bountiful breasts.
Muhammad had asked about the demand for common salt and the trader had been eager to explain. ‘This is sea salt and it is very much in demand wherever we Tamils travel. You will find that food seasoned with it can prevent as well as cure goitre.’ Muhammad had been suitably impressed.
The man had told him that Madurai was famous for its jasmine flowers, a river named something he couldn’t quite pronounce, and steamed rice cakes. And he definitely remembered a Goddess who was the guardian of the city. The Tamilian had felt it would interest the Sultan to know that she had three breasts and that the third one fell off at the end of his convoluted story. Muhammad had made a note then to travel south and make the people feel less removed from the rest of his empire, but there simply hadn’t been time. Now he had no choice but to handle this unpleasant business.
Perhaps once Ahsan Shan had been crushed, he would make it a point to try those rice cakes with lentil gravy or even the deep fried minced-meat balls the region was famed for.
Of course, there was more to this rebellion than met the eye, but he would deal with it in good time. In the meantime, they marched, their discomfort growing by the minute. The heat was unbearable, leaving them in a torment of thirst till their lips cracked. Muhammad let his men rest during the hottest parts of the day, and they resumed the march in the evenings and through a good part of the night.
None
of them were in peak physical condition following the ravages of drought and famine that had beset the land, but Muhammad was determined to do what he could to build up the strength and morale of his men. He ordered that they be given double rations, and organized archery competitions, running races, sword fights, wrestling and horse-racing, distributing valuable presents to the winners. His men were veterans inured to discomfort and punishing conditions, and Muhammad had every confidence that they would prevail.
And they would have prevailed if it hadn’t been for the deadly epidemic that swept through their ranks like a fire, leaving destruction in its wake. The disease afflicted them with the dreaded purging of bleeding bowels that left them too weak to get up, let alone march across a great distance and wage war.
Initially, Muhammad had hoped it was simply an outbreak of diarrhoea, but he was quickly disabused of the notion when his men succumbed quickly and in alarming numbers. Sanitary conditions worsened once the men found it impossible to walk the distance to the latrine pits, soiling themselves where they lay, too weak to clean themselves or fend off the fat flies that had materialized out of nowhere and landed on every exposed inch of skin. Their incessant buzzing was a torment that was as bad as the thirst.
The sickest among them lay doubled up in pain, turning their heads sideways to vomit or hugging their knees to their chests as their bladders and bowels were voided noisily and painfully. Wracked with fever, cramps and insatiable thirst, they burned and shivered, in mortal torment as their eyes turned dull, watery and unseeing. Eventually, they sank into unconsciousness and never woke up.
Dying men dug graves to bury the dead before dying themselves. Muhammad commanded his physicians to do what they could, but their efforts were futile, and most succumbed to the epidemic themselves. ‘It is the heat and lack of hygiene that breeds this disease,’ said Wasim, the royal physician who alone looked cool and unruffled. ‘Once it has taken hold, the epidemic spreads easily enough. Think about it, sire, a travelling army has little access to fresh, clean water, and food is prepared with dirty, unwashed hands by an oaf who has just relieved himself. I can’t be sure, but even the flies who flit from one body to the next spread the taint.’