History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v5.c80.s4.16

v5.c80.s4.16

A sense of unutterable loneliness haunted the heart of Aurangzib in his old age. One by one all the older nobles had died out, and the sole personal friend and survivor of the generation in which his youth had been nurtured that was now left to Aurangzib was Asad Khan the wazir, and even he was some five years his junior. As the aged monarch looked round his Court circle he only found on all sides younger men, timid sycophants, afraid of responsibility, afraid to tell the truth, and eternally intriguing in a mean spirit of personal greed and mutual jealousy. His Puritan austerity had, at all times, chilled the advances of other men towards him, but its effect was intensified by the reputation of being a miracle-working saint (*Alamgir, zinda pir*) which grew on him with each succeeding year. Men shrank in almost supernatural dread from one who was above the joys and sorrows, weakness and pity of mortals, one who seemed to have hardly any element of common humanity in him, who lived in the world but did not seem to be of it. The genial human heart was not touched in others by Aurangzib, and therefore his own heart's hunger could not be satisfied. His sole companions, when free from the ever-engrossing State affairs, were his daughter Zinat-un-nissa, already an old maid, and his last wife Udipuri, a low animal type of partner, whose son Kam Bakhsh broke his imperial father's heart by his freaks of insane folly and passion.