Un cuadro del Motín

God, God! How many sights full of longing there are in the rise and fall of time. This same Delhi, which has watched the blood of thousands of hearts full of hope flow in its lap, keeps turning back to wound the old scar and rub salt in it. There was a day when Babur's sword gave the blood of Ibrahim Lodi to the sands of Delhi to drink, and saw his wives and children standing before it with folded hands, the very image of longing and despair. A day came when his own descendants, through their own deeds, became the pattern of those helpless ones.

Ah! As I entered the exhibition hall of the Delhi Durbar my eye fell on a picture in which the candle of the Timurid assembly that was about to go out, Abu Zafar Bahadur Shah, is being taken prisoner at the tomb of Humayun at the hands of Major Hodson. Behind him the tomb of Humayun can be seen, and over it a strange and heart-sore dejection has settled. Bahadur Shah stands in a cloak. In his hand a prayer-mat. On his face the colour of an old age drowned in grief and sorrow, and a look of endurance and despair. Major Hodson, in red uniform, stands holding the Emperor's hem, and his two companions can be seen behind the Emperor. At this brazen daring of Major Hodson's, an old retainer of Bahadur Shah's rushes forward with drawn sword. There is a shield in his hand, but his face is spent. The moment he comes near, the soldier beside the Major levels a pistol at him and lays low his rising courage and cools his thirst for revenge.

It is a pity that even at this calamitous end of the world's affairs, people's greed for it remains.

As I was leaving, my eye fell on a page of the Divan of Hafiz that lay open, as if holding its breath. Its first line was:

At last turn your gaze toward us,
O fortune of the few and longing of the many.

Reading this I came out, and addressing that picture I repeated the couplet.