THE HEAD THAT WEARS THE CROWN... I Empire of the Moghul: Ruler of the World by Alex Rutherford I

There is something immensely fascinating and heroic about a warrior king. While history is replete with tales of such monarchs, we never seem to get enough of them. Empire of the Moghul: Ruler of the World is the third in the series of fictionalised accounts of the Mughal empire. Diana and Michael Preston, writing under the pen name of Alex Rutherford, pick up the reign of King Akbar in this work. Their focus, however, is not the exploits of the warrior king and the giant expanse of his empire but also the single strain of weakness in his rule: his sons.
Indian history commonly evokes the image of the hunt: King mounted on a tusker vanquishing a tiger. Akbar himself is believed to have a fascination for cheetahs and is known to have kept a large number of them in captivity. At the opening of the book too we find the 13-year-old Akbar on such a perilous expedition complete with drums, elephants and gunpowder. While he is still celebrating the kill the news is brought in that he had lost Delhi to King Hemu.
As the first “real” action faces him, the boy is coaxed to leave Delhi and move to safety. Minutes later, we are at the boy-king’s war council. But it is the commander-in-chief Bairam Khan, who calls the shots while Akbar sits and waits for his turn to speak. As the council begins to mull ways of retreat, a dramatic speech by young Akbar brings the chiefs back to onslaught mode.
At Panipat, Akbar with his 1,00,000 men faces a stronger army of Hemu. This is the battlefield where 30-years-ago his grandfather Babur had defeated the Lodhi Sultan. A mix of manoeuvres, grit and courage sees him bring down Hemu. It is a landmark win for Akbar but as Bairam Khan chides him for his brashness we know the king has yet to lose his commander-in-chief and his boyhood.
It’s a quick climb for Akbar into manhood as Mayala, a concubine, gives Akbar his first lessons in lovemaking.
Years later, when he has built a huge harem with several wives, Mayala continues to be one of his favourites. However, what stays missing is the bond he had seen his mother share with his father.
After defeating Hemu, Akbar begins to find Bairam Khan increasingly irksome. The king easily falls prey to a court plot to get rid of his right hand man. As the royal conspirers are brought to justice Akbar regrets his own gullibility. The echoes of this episode are felt much later as over the years Akbar trusts few, not even allowing his own sons the privilege to know his mind.
After recovering from the loss of Bairam Khan, Akbar turns his attention to Chittorgarh. Rajput warriors of Chittor prove worthy opponents. Akbar has his victory but only after losing an equal number of his own troops and witnessing the women throw themselves into live pyres. He decides it would be better to have the Rajputs fight for him than against him.
A Rajput princess, Hirabai, becomes his first wife. The alliance is a great success for the king but to the man it brings little comfort.
In Akbar, Hirabai sees a ruthless conqueror, someone who had to be driven away. In the author’s version Hirabai could never get reconciled to the marriage, beginning from the first night when she tries to stab her husband. Despite his vast harem, Akbar could not ignore Hirabai as he sees in her eyes the expression of a wild leopard. He promises, however, to leave her alone once she gave him an heir. After the birth of Salim, he keeps this promise.
Salim’s birth comes after much delay. A hostile Hirabai is suspected of using ways to keep off childbirth. However, after the blessings and predictions of Sheikh Salim Chishty, a son is born and consequently named after the saint.
Hereon, Akbar gradually fades as the story veers towards Salim. While he sees in his father a tolerant, generous king, his mother’s views are different. The father meanwhile, suspects that his wife is turning his son against him.
Unable to bank on his family, Akbar finds a faithful in Abul Fazal, who grows from being a mere chronicler to the king’s right hand man. In the course of time he meets the same fate as Bairam Khan at the hands of a jealous Salim.
No problem is insurmountable for Akbar, be it the Ulemas, the Christian priests or the queen mother’s displeasure. But it is a strange stalemate when he finds his son unable to control his desire for his prized dancing girl Anarkali. On discovery, the image-conscious king sentences the girl to death while the prince is banished to Kabul. Unlike the popular Salim-Anarkali lore there is little love in the affair. The authors give us a peep into the sexual jealously between the father and son that culminates into an open rebellion.
While Salim with all his ambitions and faults seems lifelike, Akbar begins to appear a mere fixture. Salim’s insecurity on sensing the odds of his own son superseding him is acute whereas, Akbar’s misgivings for Salim look insipid. The story deals numerous aspects of Akbar’ reign, reminding you of the history book subheads: Akbar as a warrior, builder, administrator, religious head etc. However, none of these are the core of the novel which essentially deals with Akbar as a family man. An excess of angles douses out the focus.
Hirabai, for example, is an intriguing character, but over the 36 years of Akbar’s reign that the story traces, her case stays the same. The authors make an attempt to pare down the King, his queens and princes and show us their human side but too much history is piled on and the men, women and boys in the royal corridors stay hidden.

PERFECTIONISTS

Half-a-woman
she was
no beauty
no coy
no mystery,

and half-a-man
was he
no grit
no rich
no logic.

No people these,
wandering
in their world
of no words
no language

and yet, look,
in the arms
of a shameless
night,
they weave

Our world of
full women
robust men
and clever
things to say.

NAUGHTY AT SIXTY I Pure Sequence by Paro Anand I

Munching biscuit-namkeen, clicking cutlery and trading dirty jokes at a card game are not activities one associates with 60-year-old Indian women, but that is what Kunti, Satya, Sheila and Tosh do and that is what makes them worthy of being the leading ladies of this novel. The setting for Pure Sequence, Paro Anand’s first venture into adult fiction, is unique yet familiar. Anand styles her characters after the aunties next-door: the retired, unmarried schoolteacher (Satya), the wife shackled to a bed-ridden husband (Sheila), the lonely grandmother longing for her foreign-settled brood (Tosh), the temperamental mother suffocating in a house full of grandchildren (Kunti). But she gives them all that one special thing — joy of living.
We are familiar with one half of the stories of such women who fill our mundane afternoons with drama and gossip: A past full of beautiful memories, a present plagued with pain and a future holding little promise. But Anand’s aunties are not brooding, oldies resigned to fate and gods. Their chatter spiced with popular Punjabi slang and gaalis, these women struggle to beat old age, and sometimes they win.
Anand cuts into a card game and traces the shadows of pain on their lives. Like most old women, they too regret not having led a life of their choice, so, it’s catharsis time when they meet. The result is obscene jokes, ingenious swear words and nasty rounds of bitching. From struggling to get a hang of email, to screaming out “bitch”, they try hard to stay relevant in the changing times. Often realising that they can’t.
Anand switches montages quickly. We find ourselves in the middle of a brawl as Kunti screams “F**k! F**k! F**k!” in her son’s face. She then faints while attempting to call him up to say sorry. Tosh is called in to stay the night. When alone with Tosh, Kunti confesses, “You can’t imagine the gandi, gandi gallis I gave my son”. Tosh admits her own burden, “I did wish, they, my own family, would just go away”. Relieved of their guilt, the two women have a whale of a time eating chips, watching Jungle Book and singing aloud. Sheila and Satya watch with envy the change in the other two and wish for a similar getaway.
The next jolt comes when Sheila’s husband passes away. Satya steps in to help, also hoping that she will find some relief from her own loneliness. The hard life of a single woman has left Satya scarred and she finds herself unprepared for the delicate situation that unfolds at the house of her bereaved, widowed friend. With her successful attempt to make Sheila smile, the ice in Satya’s heart begins to melt. As they lie down for the night, Sheila talks of her dead husband while Satya reveals her secret: Why she never married.
As days pass, Satya finds years of bitterness lifted from her voice while Sheila is freed from the death of husband. Satya breaks the mourning period declaring, “Bhad mein jaye this dakhiya noosi thinking”, and revives the card party.
Soon, Sheila asks Satya to come and live with her and the deal is sealed with a hug. The four eventually plan a weekend at Sheila’s house. They christen themselves the “Bitchy Biddies Bunch” — BBBs, and swear to have no rules. The weekend also being Satya’s 70th birthday, she is promised a surprise. The weekend is a riot. Drinks are “seduced”, porn DVDs stolen and Playboy copies distributed.
But the book is no fairytale, and the joy seems to be on a short fuse as Sheila’s house is put up for sale, Satya survey’s old age homes and the others return to the lives they were living. As the story runs its full course, Satya gets her birthday surprise and crowns it with her first real kiss. The old women are brought together again to complete the Pure Sequence, the perfect life.
Kunti, Satya, Sheila and Tosh may seem empowered, even liberated, but a feminist reading of these characters is less appealing. These are upper middle-class women, their sense of freedom fuelled by the money left by their husbands. Even the “poorest” of them, Satya, has a flat of her own. Also, they use a lot Punjabi words, even complete sentences, which puts the book out of bounds for readers not from  Delhi.
Yet, Pure Sequence is an interesting read for the position it takes on old age. Old characters usually end up pitiable or dead. Hemmingway’s Old Man, for example. You would never want to be in Santiago’s shoes. But here, you want to be a part of Paro Anand’s old biddies. They are profane and naughty, and determined and spirited, and you want to grow old like them.