Fall of the Mughal Empire v3.c37.s1.14

v3.c37.s1.14

The Emperor called him a hardened liar, a man of deceit, and in the bitterness of his soul cried out, "Abdul Ahad was a hundred thousand times better than you. I have no faith in you, nor ever had." The ladies of the imperial harem, equally exasperated by the withholding of their allowances, vowed to link their arms together and drown themselves in the Jamuna rather than constantly whine for their subsistence money and yet not get it for months together, while their credit with the shop keepers was exhausted. They even went into a hunger strike for some days. To the emissaries who came to offer Najaf Khan's excuses for his default of payment, "His Majesty said things which were not fit to be spoken." One day, driven to extremity by his distress, he told his slave Qambar, "If you eat any meal today, it will be drinking swine's blood. Go to Najaf Khan's house and sit down before him [in dharna.] Don't eat anything but prevent him too from eating, till the allowance of the harem is realised in full." Another day he told Maulavi Atāullah, "My condition has come to this that I have no second coat in my wardrobe." Then, before his sons and nephews he wrote the verses: —