भारतेन्दु

We are guilty of having put off pAtisAha’s apostasy for some time now, conveniently blaming it on the lack of time but in reality suffering from our chronic lack of discipline and the habit of suddenly losing interest in a task after initiating it.

But this is not acceptable to pAtisAha, who recently decided to haunt us, and inserted an unplanned trip to sikandarA in our recent itinerary through the region. Although we have visited before where he was buried by his fanatic murderous son, but coming here fills us every time with more ideas and insights about him. The monkeys guarding the ASI description at the place reminded us of the job that our textbooks have done with pAtisAha’s apostasy:

But this was not all. Just days later, pAtisAha next encountered us in mAravADa. Wandering through the alleys of a famous temple of AdinAtha around pAlI, we were sure to have missed this inscription, had our priyadarshinI companion not asked us to translate for her what was written on this one of those hundreds of pillars. And surely, here pAtisAha was, announcing in our face a grant he had issued for the temple during the happy days of his kAfirhood in 1594, through a famous AchArya! nAgarI lines announce in the second line, ‘pAtisAhi shrI akabbara pradatta…’:

But as though this was not enough. He now seemed to be furious with us for ignoring his task for too long, when right in the next week he suddenly popped before us on a plaque in ambara country, sitting in vIrAsana facing ShoDashabhujI jagadambA, angrily staring down at us, censuring us for our laziness.

We wonder what he would do next if we still ignored him any longer…