Tsubodai

Men of influence command reverence from those who believe in them. It is amazing to see the power of leaders, mortal human beings like you and me, save that they possess an 'edge' that sets them apart from the throng.

Such people inspire awe, and varying levels of respect. Depending on the nature of their leadership and the domains they work in, the number of people who follow them differs.

Small or large though it be, what they do bring to our collective lives is change, and depending on whether we love them or hate them, we acknowledge them and react to them as we see fit.

The military commander earns respect for the protection he gives to his people, monarchs and elected politicians for the way they run their territories. Actors, sportsmen and artists command the adoration of people enamoured by their craft.

The time that is today shall pass before long, the people of today will be gone a century from now. Names endure, though. It is the fate of most of us to be forgotten, for there were and are billions of us, with many, many more who are yet to come, and make their mark.

Even the great ones do not forever endure. The league of those who rose above the throng is a sizeable number  of people in itself, and only those who made the greatest impact on the world around them see their names last the test of time.

So many others are destined to have their legacy be only as permanent as footprints in the sand.

In the early thirteenth century, the Mongol hordes, unified by Genghis Khan, spilled out of their steppe homelands and made their first attacks on what is today China.

With the importance they gave to cavalry and their legendary accuracy as archers, they became a massive tide that killed, pillaged and conquered vast swathes of land, at such speed and with such efficiency that was hard to believe.

What gave the Mongols their edge against the massive, fortified cities they attacked was a very basic difference of opinion.

The rulers they faced were no less ruthless, determined or cruel. They valued their cities, though, as comfortable places to live, as centres of trade, as symbols of glory and power.

The Mongols, on the other hand, were steppe nomads, living in camps of felt tents, contending daily with harsh weather and the works. Used to the open air, they didn't find cities of much value. They found them too constricting and their residents too soft. So they felt it was better for cities to be burned to the ground.

Their first experience with cities baffled the Mongols, formidable in an open field, but inexperienced at sieges. Once they learned, however, they overran a very large chunk of the known world at the time.

Genghis Khan's greatest generals were termed by him as his 'dogs of war'. A man who valued merit in his armies, Genghis would raise all men who proved their worth to high ranks. His two most famous generals were Tsubodai and Jebe.

Tsubodai belonged to the Uriankhai clan, and is believed to have been a blacksmith's son, who rose to become the greatest of the Mongol generals owing to his legendary prowess in battle.

Jebe, 'the Arrow', was a former adversary of the Khan, so named because he had wounded Genghis in a battle, and had won the latter's respect for his courage and ability at arms.

Between the two of them, Jebe and Tsubodai were the greatest contributors to the victories of the great Khan, and were instrumental in the continuing expansion of the Mongol empire in the years after Genghis' death.

The medieval Chinese drawing of Tsubodai is incapable of inspiring the terror of the man, but few, if any, would dispute the impact he had on history. With a mind that despised politics and was devoted solely to winning the Khan's wars, he blazed through China, Khwarezm (a large part of what is today Iran and Iraq, among other centres of Muslim power in Asia), and eastern Europe, all his life desiring his dominion over all the different armies he faced and the lands he saw.

At its greatest extent, the Mongol empire stretched from China's Pacific coast to the gates of Austria in the east, and a southern limit as far as the Indus. Pursuing relentlessly a desire to see the great sea at the western edge of the known world (having killed and pillaged his way through to the East), Tsubodai led the sons, and later the grandsons of the Khan on the Great Trek into the West.

A master of battle, Tsubodai destroyed the Russian cavalry in his first encounters with them. Wherever he fought knights, his encircling method of combat negated the power of the heavy armoured cavalry, trained best for a frontal attack and extremely vulnerable from other directions.

The Mongols rode over the frozen Moscow river in the dead of the night in probably their best-remembered attack on Russia, frightening the unprepared natives who traditionally avoided warfare in the colder months.

Tsubodai's men left trails of smoke in their wake, a threat and a warning to people for many miles round, their ruthlessness leaving vicious scars that have them erroneously remembered as Tartars to this day.

Against Bela IV of Hungary, Tsubodai split his forces so that they were over five hundred kilometres apart, facing the West and making parallel attacks that brought down the Polish and Hungarian armies within two days of each other.

This point of his career was Tsubodai's proverbial 'finest hour'. Standing at the gates of Western Europe, he heard names of great cities, ripe for the taking, and a great sea beyond. He also knew that none in Europe were capable of fielding an army to rival his own. The Holy Roman Empire was his next target, and all Europe quaked at the catastrophe that was to come. 'Orlok' or eagle was the military title he held, and the men who followed him knew him as Tsubodai Bahadur, Tsubodai the Valiant, the man who would lead the Mongols to an empire from sea to sea. 'Genghis' meant ocean, after all.

What changed the course of a history that must have seemed inevitable at the time was a lucky death. A single death that helped shape the future of the world like few others outside the realm of religious belief.

Ogedai Khan, third son of Genghis and successor to the Great Khan, succumbed to a weak heart in 1241, and as tradition demanded, the Mongol princes and generals had to make the long journey home to swear allegiance to his heir.

No lover of politics, Tsubodai found it thwarting his ambitions. From his description in history, it is not difficult to understand the frustration, the disappointment and the grief of a man whose one joy lay in conquest.

I imagine him standing at a high spot in the Mongol camp, his gaze westwards, willing the landscape to paint a vista of the cities that further lay in his path. I imagine him dreaming of the sea, of hearing the sea-birds and realising that the world extended beyond the furthest reaches of his imagination. I also think of his grief at being turned back, longingly staring at the lands he wanted to see, with the crushing knowledge that he would never return.

The Mongols believed in making the most of their present, since all who lived at that time would be dead a hundred years into the future. What a man accomplished in his life mattered more than anything else. Tsubodai, as the single most successful military commander of all time, stood at the pinnacle of his race's achievements.

There can be no denial of the brazen cruelty of a man who followed orders that initiated hundreds of thousands of deaths. "Such were the times," we can say, perhaps, but there is little to admire when you look at the matter this way.

Yet Tsubodai is admirable. Inspiring. We live in a vast, beautiful world, with a wealth of knowledge for us, only if we are willing. Different kinds of people honour their world in different ways. As I said earlier, those who have their abilities, their opportunities and luck in conjunction have their names engraved in history, not to be forgotten for a long, long time.

There are those who travel far and wide, looking and learning. There are those who use art as an outlet for the way they see the world. Some write, some work for the benefit of the people around them. All said and done, the last one is the best way to leave a mark.

There is one thing that I believe. Conqueror or not, you long for what you love. And when people burn with the desire to see and understand the world better, then no matter where their faces may be turned, they look with longing, with hunger, with hope for knowledge and achievements they believe will make life worthwhile.

Like Tsubodai.

Discovery

It fascinates me to think of the thousands of years people in different parts of the world spent isolated, unaware of each other's existence.

The multitude of 'known worlds' that must have existed then, more than one on each continent, large and fascinating enough, but just a fraction of an amazingly diverse world.

I think of an isolated bunch of plucky men, walking, riding or sailing out into the 'unknown', forced out by the need to find food and land, or maybe just because they wanted to see more, know more.

I see them huddled in a group around a fire at night, listening to a wayfarer telling them stories of new places, strange people, beasts never seen before, hardships and joys unimaginable.

Some sit silent. Some brazenly denounce the fear of the unknown. But they are one in their hunger for discovery.

I think of great sailors who traveled for month after month on the open sea, hoping to sight land, quelling mutinies by their crewmen, ruthlessly crossing the great waters and finding a new world beyond Land's End.

I see people walking in new surroundings as they break out of their homelands from the earliest days of man, the stars in the sky being only constants in their lives.

I see Vikings treading wastes of ice as they move north, their longboats a bubble against a world that is hard, cold and cruel. I see nomads hemmed in by mountains, riding beyond.

I see men who live in huts startled by man-made mountains of stone, I see the first composite settlements as people learn to live with those who do not look or speak like them.

I see a world full of curious, expectant and eventually, startled faces. People determined to cross land and sea, mountains and deserts, and maybe one day, the stars.

I also see the world of today, laid out in full splendor to us by the achievements of Columbus, Dias, Magellan, Cortes, Da Gama, Peary, Amundsen, Polo, Ibn Battutah and so many others, and I wonder, is there much left to discover?

Of course there is. Discovery is a very personal thing, and there is no end to how much can be discovered by a person eager to take delight in all that is new.

The storyteller sitting at the fire, talking to the young people who drink in his words, is not necessarily a man who has seen the wide world. He has probably seen the tip of the iceberg, or stood at the edge of his world, building enticing, yet forbidding images.

What those images do to him, depends.

A man like Roald Amundsen, Robert Scott, George Mallory would want to race to the ends of the Earth before any other.

Some others like Ibn Battutah or Hiuen Tsiang would want to see all the places they could manage in a lifetime, to live and learn from the diverse peoples living across the known world, its boundaries expanding everyday.

There were also others, like the man I will tell you about in my next post, a man whose world grew to the size of a gigantic island, bounded by vast seas to the East and the West. A man who decided that the best way to honour a world so great and diverse was to conquer it.

Tsubodai.

When the Road is Funny

It pays to look around when travelling, because the most commonplace routes often conceal a lot that can fascinate, amuse and entertain.

Particularly in India, where 'amusement' can be generated by our healthy (?) disdain for those who do not speak and write our languages the way we do.

So, there are lots of chuckles to be had because of things written on shop boards, on the rear ends of vehicles, inside buses, on walls, buildings and the like.

If you miss these, there will invariably be people on your road who will do things inexplicable, which will leave you either in splits or shocked, or (more likely) have you looking for a quiet place, some distance away from the source, where you can hold your tummy and chuckle to your heart's content.

There are also other little surprises in store. For example, on a trip to Rishikesh, my friends and I were greatly amused by the miniature cows there. Adapted, no doubt, to their environment, they were very obliging when I had to take a picture.

I remember telling you about possessing an unfortunate sense of humour. This picture is one I've always found amusing in a very cute way, because of the cow at complete peace with itself, most likely unaware that there are bigger cousins in the plains. Why should it worry, anyway?

Then there are times when I've met people with worse comic timing than mine. In 2009, on a visit to Jodhpur for a college photography assignment, we visited a Bishnoi village. Fantastic place, beyond doubt, with houses set far apart, surrounded by fields, and blackbucks roaming freely!

Before you ask, it's the same people who raised hell when Salman Khan shot the beautiful antelopes. The Bishnois love all creatures great and small, and do not take well any attempts to harm them.

During an auto ride to the village, the driver looks at our equipment and asks us our names.

"Danish, Ali and Salman," we replied.

"Achcha! Toh aap bhi Salman ho, aur aap bhi shooting karne aaye ho?"
(So, your name is Salman as well, and you've come to 'shoot'?)

Sweet Lord, have mercy on my soul.

It is at times like this when the human soul feels desolate, forsaken, a lone chirpy bird in a world devoid of smiles.

Apologies for the digression, though. Got carried away.

When you travel with photography on your mind, the best images invariably turn up unawares. On the train to Jodhpur from Delhi, there was a rather long unscheduled stop. So i thought I'd take a few pictures.

Not very good, most of them, but then I saw a kid's legs dangling out of a window of the stationary coach. The photograph I got is one of my favourites.

Like I said earlier, though, shop signs and walls are the best for on-the-go entertainment. I regret that I have no pictures yet of the best ones I've seen. For now, I can just upload the lame ones with little grammatical errors and spelling mistakes.

And of course, stuff that makes you wonder.

Whatever a traditional 'Baba' massage may be.

The best, of course, are the ones I will tell you now.

'Latak mat, patakh doongi' on the door of a bus in Lucknow.

'Jatt' in Urdu on the rear number plate of a scooter in Delhi.

'Khadi kya hai soch mein, chadh ja Khurram Bhai ki coach mein' on the rear of a bus near Brijghat in western U.P.

'Fly Army Aviation, Combat Proven, Even Birds Are Jealous' on the rear end of an SUV in Delhi. Never figured out what that meant.

My favourite, though, was something I saw from the window of a bus, about five years ago in Ghaziabad.

There was a wall lined with mirrors, man-high, with the legend: 'Aap jo kar rahe hain, woh duniya dekh sakti hai.'

An effective deterrent, if ever there was one.

Next time, I'll make sure I have pictures.

Woodcraft

Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot...

That's the science of walking to most of us. But stealth is a highly prized skill in the walker, and when you have a hobby like bird-watching, it is of paramount importance, a significant skill in an art called woodcraft, a must for all of us who desire escape from our thickets of concrete.

My second post on the blog would have been based on my experience of walking around Old Delhi, but for an amazing walk a few days ago that changed my mind.

I accompanied my friend Megha to the Asola Wildlife Sanctuary on March 09, on a day that boasted of perfect weather. Not too hot, bright blue sky, a little breeze, and terrible light for photography.

We walked into the Conservation Education Centre where we met Mr Sajeev TK of the Bombay Natural History Society, who decided to show us around the place. So, armed with cameras and binoculars, the three of us set off into the park.

Asola is an area of open scrub forest, gnarled and knobbly vegetation dotting its landscape. Home to a fairly diverse assortment of flora and fauna, it is wonderful to walk through.

In case you have a guide, of course. Otherwise you are likely to get lost.

There are, as I have learnt, two ways of walking through a natural environment. Lay persons like me, walking 'silently', will make a fair deal of noise by animal standards, startling many really amazing creatures away, before even getting to see them. Also, we will manage to see, hear and identify much fewer creatures than there are present.

With someone who knows his woodcraft, though, you are instructed to walk in actual silence, which is when you realise what a racket the average urban walker actually makes, only it is masked by the engines, the horns, the screams and shouts that stay with us all the time.

You stop to admire trees, plants and flowers, realising that the beauty of forests must be savoured nice and slow. Stand still, listen to the sounds of nature (at Asola, there is also the faint hum of vehicles, the distant echo of loudspeakers. And horns. What would noise be without horns?).

To get to the point, though, the above described moment of stillness is the beginning of one's instruction in woodcraft, the point where the forest begins to yield its secrets, many a time giving to you the privilege of a long, satisfying observation.

Masters of woodcraft; of whom I have met a few; will walk the same route with you, but be aware of many more things than the lay person can see, hear or sense.

Which is basically how our walk with Mr Sajeev turned out. Woodcraft we saw, as we'd walk slowly along a path our guide knew like the back of his hand, waiting at specific locations, becoming familiar with the keekar trees, as well as the occasional neem, tesu and khejri.

Butterflies and birds became visible in their own time. Redstarts, White-eyes, Petronias added to the more familiar bulbuls, robins, babblers, warblers darting in and out of the foliage.

There was a small mongoose family that held our attention for quite a while. Moving in and out of sight on a little sandbank, nervous of our presence (I realised I walk very noisily), they were around for enough time for us to to take a few pictures.

Even better, though, was the sight of Purple Sunbirds feeding on flowers of the Tesu tree, the male's brilliant coloration arresting our attention.

Asola is set amid breathtaking surroundings, the Adilabad-Tughlaqabad ruins and the Lotus Temple visible from parts of the park premises.

It's a wonderful place to visit, early in the morning when the heat hasn't set in. Moderately strenuous walking, and the thorns know their business, so good shoes and tough denims are in order.

As is a bottle of water, a pair of binoculars, a notepad and pen, and a camera.

Walking

I remember so much better places that I've walked through. Obviously, because you move slower and commit to memory so many more things than you would notice otherwise.

I've always wanted to share the joy of a good walk, and I've been lucky to have been able to do so many times. A love for walking has often been the common ground from where some very precious friendships have begun.

Over six years in Delhi have been great, walking-wise. My first long walks were in Purani Dilli, where i lived before I moved to Hindu College. 

It was hard to avoid the shared association of the walled city with other beacons of the medieval  East that I'd read about, cities like Samarkand, Bukhara, Esfahan, Damascus; a clump of crowded residential areas alongside lanes radiating from a huge monument in the centre.

I'd read somewhere that the difference between an empire and a kingdom is often discernible from their monuments. Assuming the Mughals as my plane of reference, I can say I agree.

But the monuments are just where the charm of the old city begins. There is only so much that you can find walking around a mosque or a (once) riverside fort. The fun begins in the bylanes. There is a lot to say about that, and I will procrastinate.

Then there was North Campus. I still know of few places more suited to walking in the city, offering such variance across seasons. My undergrad days were my best days in Delhi, and walking was one major reason why they were that way.

I curse the inertia that his hitherto prevented me from sharing what I've always wanted to in the only way I can: writing. Fresh out of school in 2005, I'd thought life would be one long association with the written word, a good portion of it written by me.

Which is how it stayed for say, three years. Then of course, inertia took over.

I suppose it's never too late to begin again. Avast, Sloth! Let others curse thee.

I write most happily the things I think of when I walk, so there is a lot I owe to the business of walking.

To all those who read this, I crave the indulgence of your feedback. 

I'll try keeping inertia at bay, because there's lots of places walked through, lots of people met, lots of things thought about, and an unfortunate sense of humour all thrown into the bag.

Walk with me, then.