Empires Rise, Empires Fall
Playing chess began as an antidote to idleness. After the thrill of battle had expired, the red sandstone palaces had been built, and the emperors and kings lounged on their velvet divans, gazing out at their vast courtyards with nothing left to do but surrender to boredom, the vizier reminded them of that millennia-old game, and sent them spiraling into their next addiction.
From sunrise to sunset, they would play. As palace servants fanned palm fronds before them, turning the sticky Indian summer air into a gentle breeze, they sparred with their minds. Across the board’s hypnotic pattern of alternating ivory and black, they fought imaginary battles: for, what difference did it make to them whether their games were played out in the distant world beyond the palace walls, or in the fortresses of their minds?
Then, because the art of the game was so intoxicating, because the mathematics of it was so exhilaratingly profound, they passed down all of the other, lesser games. The emperors and kings handed off the bureaucracy and military to the ministers and noblemen, and divided the diplomacy and statecraft among the members of the court, until they, too, could not help but lose themselves in those games. Brazenly bluffing to line their pockets, and gambling with lives like they were rolling dice, they left it to the peasants to carry the burden of footing the bill of an empire.
So when the ships first arrived on the shores of western India in 1608, they were all too entranced by the shrouded smoke of the game room to realize the smokescreen of deceit behind the East India Company’s arrival. They welcomed the British. With trumpeting elephants and parading peacocks magnificent in their iridescent turquoise plumage, they accepted the company’s request to trade for spices, silk, indigo and opium. They did not see what the British saw so clearly then—what they would have seen too if they had only walked the palace grounds and peered into the crystal blue waters of the lotus ponds to look at their reflection: a crumbling empire, clinging to a mirage of power and glory.
Enamored by the British, the emperors approved their decrees. They gave them more control. Oblivious to the world beyond their shuttered windows and ensnared by their illusion of invincibility, they acquiesced to the British commands and raised taxes on their subjects, slowly strangling the economy.
And the subjects? They looked up at the majestic silhouettes of the palaces generations of their ancestors had built with their bare hands in fury while they toiled in the sweltering heat to bejewel a throne a continent away, and felt a thirst for vengeance. As each statute became more demanding than the last, until the people were practically paying for their own loot and pillage, the emperors and kings looked away. They puzzled over their chessboard gambits, as the farmers, who grew rice that they could never eat, and artisans who wove muslin, lighter than clouds, which they would never wear, couldn’t bear the casual cruelty of indifference any longer. Armed with the piercing dagger of pain and British rifles, they decided to mutiny.
By the time the embers of internal division had been ignited into an uncontrollable red flame, and the emperors and kings looked up from their miniature bishops and knights at last to realize that they themselves were pawns in a much larger game, there was nothing left to do. Like lone pieces on a chessboard, outmaneuvered and defenseless, they surrendered, falling to their feet and pleading for mercy. The soulful yearning of ghazals and the dancing rhythms of the tabla which once rang through the court were drowned out by the thumping roar of masses marching in motion. Sound splintered into chaos and tortured cries of war. The viceroy snarled like a Bengal tiger when he saw the blood-soaked white flag raised to the sky, and let loose a crooked, cunning smile for a long-planned victory realized. Then the British fired a final resounding gunshot, crackling through the air, and declared checkmate.
