“water!!!!
water !!!
I want wa-water”, a sepoy fell down on the ground in desperation and fainted from prolonged thirst in Singhbhum.
The situation had taken a dire turn in the eastern Bengal Provinces.
Due to blockage of River Ganges, the eastern and southern parts of Bihar were hit by chronic and sudden water shortage.
The crops failed, tributaries dried up, the situation was alarming in Singhbum.
People clung to their last ray of hope, the wells.
But as the weather continued, there was scorching heat everywhere, even the wells finally gave up.
People had to travel to far away lands just to bring a gallon of water.
As a small child cried desperately for water, her mother took her in her arms, consoling her, she said, “There is no need to worry, mommy will go and find water for you.” As she took a step out in the scorching heat of afternoon heat, her throat went completely dry as if it had been sucked off every ounce of water.
She couldn’t do anything but clutch her throat with her own hand.
She, with every bit of her energy tried to move forward, her hands clutching her throat.
But as she had covered a little distance, exhaustion hit her like a hammer, her throat had been converted into desert, even breathing hurt her.
She desperately tried to move forward, but her knees gave out and she fell on the ground like a frail weathered autumn leaf.
The continuous crying of her child rang in her ears.
Tears rolled down her eyes as she looked in the sky and asked “Oh God!
What did I do wrong for to deserve a punishment like this.”
The thought of her child gave her some confidence.
She somehow dragged herself to the nearest water pump and desperately tried to get some water out of it.
The whole eastern part of Bengal had turned into a desert.
While in Bengal, the British officers remain unbothered.
They enjoyed soft drinks, sodas, swimming, even a single British officer residence had hundreds of fountains.
The environment was joyous and kicking.
In areas of Bihar and Jharkhand, the residencies and British officers were continuously supplied with fresh water from other parts of India.
My blood went cold as soon as I saw this, I ordered my men to spread the rumors that all the water resources had been occupied by the British and they were deliberately trying prevent local Indians from getting water.
At nights, I would come with my tankers and carts full of water vessels.
People waited in long queues but eventually thanked me for sending them water.
I told them not to discuss about me.
To solidify their feelings of hate, I secretly to infiltrated a British official’s mansion with some of the local men and showed them the view of the pool parties.
They were frustrated and angry.
As soon as we went back to village, I called out a meeting.
As soon as all the people had gathered the men spoke, full of anger, “Those Firangi dogs are enjoying these leisure time in pools and are having water parties while we die of thirst here.
I am fed up of them!!
Now, let us show them what we can do!!!” All the people were left in shock for a moment trying to contemplate what they just heard.
Soon loud voices agreed in unison “Yes, let us show them what we can do!”
Within a few hours parts of eastern Bengal provinces were on fire.
The British officers’ homes were raided and looted.
All the water supplies, stored in British warehouses were stolen.
The air in the office was stifling, but General Hewitt sat comfortably under a slow moving punkah, sipping lukewarm tea.
Willoughby stood before him, his uniform caked in the red dust of Singhbhum roads.
Willoughby (Leaning over the desk, his voice strained)
“Sir, you haven’t seen the streets.
It’s not just the sepoys anymore.
The villagers are gathering at the reservoir gates.
If we don’t release the locks and let the water flow to the public wells, we aren’t just facing a riot; we’re facing an execution.”
General Hewitt (Setting his cup down with a sharp clack):
“An execution?
Don’t be melodramatic, Willoughby.
It’s a dry spell.
These people are used to the heat; they are as hardy as the cattle they herd.”
Willoughby:
“This isn’t a ‘dry spell,’ Sir!
It’s a calculated siege!
The allied spies are whispering in every ear that we are the ones stealing the life from their throats to fill our ornamental fountains.
It’s a trap, can’t you see?
They want us to withhold the water so the rebellion has a reason to ignite!”
General Hewitt (Rising slowly, his face reddening):
“Enough!
I am tired of your ‘theories’ and your ‘traps.’ You speak as if these peasants have the tactical mind of Napoleon.
They don’t.
They are weak, thirsty, and leaderless.”
Willoughby:
“They aren’t leaderless!
Kunwar Singh is..”
General Hewitt (Slamming his hand on the table)
“Precisely!
Kunwar Singh!
The man you were tasked to bring me in chains months ago!
Instead of catching the rebel leader, you spend your time playing philosopher and worrying about the ‘comfort’ of the local populace.
You are slacking, Willoughby.
You’ve grown soft in the sun.”
Willoughby:
“I am trying to prevent a massacre of our own men, General!”
General Hewitt:
“You will prevent a massacre by doing your job. Visit g.com for the full chapter.
The reservoirs remain closed.
Every drop is for the garrison and the palaces.
If a crowd forms, disperse them with grapeshot.
Now, get out of my sight and don’t come back until you have Singh’s head or a map of the Begum’s hideout.”
Willoughby couldn’t comprehend what he had witnessed, even after multiple pleas for opening their own water reservoirs for the local people, to calm down the rebellion they paid no heed to his plea.
Forced by the system and superiors, he reluctantly diverted the last remaining fresh water reservoirs in the cities towards the British offices and palaces.
The iron wheel of the main sluice gate felt unnaturally cold against Willoughby’s palms, despite the sweltering heat of the pump house.
Every rhythmic clank of the machinery felt like a hammer blow against his conscience.
He stared at the brass pressure gauges, their needles twitching like the pulse of a dying man.
He knew the geography of the pipes better than anyone, he knew that by rotating this lever, he was effectively severing the life veins of the city.
He could almost hear the water rushing away from the communal taps in the marketplaces, diverted instead through the underground conduits toward the manicured lawns and marble baths of the British Residency.
His hands trembled, not from the weight of the iron, but from the sheer cowardice of his own obedience.
He was a soldier, trained to value duty above all, but this felt less like a strategic maneuver and more like a slow motion execution.
“I am a man of the Empire,” he whispered to the empty, echoing room, trying to steady his breath.
But the silence only amplified the truth, he was the architect of his own nightmare.
He had warned the General that this would be the spark to the powder keg, yet here he was, lighting the match himself.
With one final, agonizing heave, the lever locked into place.
The water was gone.
The city was dry.
Willoughby slumped against the cold stone wall, his eyes fixed on his trembling fingers.
He had followed his orders, but as the distant, muffled sound of a thousand thirsty voices rose from the streets below, he knew he had just surrendered the last shred of his humanity to the system.
“It’s malicious.
It isn’t war anymore; it’s a slow motion butchery masked as ‘logistics.’ To take the very essence of life and hoard it behind marble walls, it’s a stain that no amount of English rain will ever wash out.”
He looked at his trembling palms, the same hands that had mapped out strategies and held the line for the Empire.
Now, they were just the tools of a thief.
“Shun this!” he cried out, his voice cracking against the stone walls of the pump house.
“Find some shred of humanity to cling to!
If we win this way, we have already lost.
We are no longer a civilization; we are just a pack of wolves guarding a well while the world burns.
End it!
Stop this madness before the earth itself decides we no longer deserve to walk upon it!”
As I watched from the shadows of the alleyway, hearing the heavy thud of the sluice gate locking into place, my blood remained cold.
My heart didn’t waver.
I saw Willoughby collapse against the wall, a broken man.
I heard his curses and pleas directed at the air, at the system, at me.
Part of me wanted to feel the pity he felt.
But then I remembered the mother on the ground.
I remembered the dry wells.
This wasn’t cruelty for the sake of cruelty.
It was the only way to strip the British of their “civilized” mask.
By forcing them to hoard the water, I had forced them to declare war on life itself.
Their arrogance was their blindfold, and Willoughby’s guilt was the price of admission.
To break an Empire that thinks itself God, you must first deprive it of its humanity.
The city was dry.
The fires were ready.
The “necessary evil” had been done.
The air in the Khyber foothills was thin and biting, a sharp contrast to the suffocating, stagnant heat of the Bengal pump houses.
Here, there was no smell of smoke only the scent of pine and the faint, ozone tang of overcharged batteries.
Begum Hazrat Mahal stood atop a jagged ridge, her silken veil fluttering in the mountain wind.
In her hand, she held a sleek, obsidian-colored thermal tablet.
On its screen, the British garrison at the mouth of the Khyber Pass appeared as a cluster of glowing orange ghosts against the deep blue of the cold stone.
“The Guardian’s report has arrived,” whispered an aide, handing her a decrypted scroll.
“The East is dry.
The riots have begun.
Willoughby has turned the lever.”
The Begum’s eyes lingered on the mountains.
“The Guardian is an icy wind,” she said, her voice carrying a melodic yet firm authority.
“He believes that to kill a tree, one must starve the roots.
It is effective, yes.
But it leaves the land scarred.”
She turned to her commanders, her expression shifting from reflection to brilliant resolve.
“We will not starve this tree.
We will simply reclaim the soil it stands on.”
“General Reed expects a frontal assault,” the Begum noted, pointing to a flickering cluster of lights on her tablet the British telegraph station.
“He is waiting for the sound of our boots so he can call for the Peshawar reinforcements.
We shall give him only silence.”
“Your Highness,” a young officer asked, “shall we cut the wires as the Guardian did in Patna?”
The Begum smiled, a charismatic spark in her eyes that made the tired men around her stand taller.
“No.
Cutting a wire is a crude message.
It tells the enemy they are being attacked.
We want the British to believe they are simply being forgotten.”
She signaled to her tech corps, men dressed in local tribal furs but carrying sophisticated signal jamming arrays.
“Overlay their frequencies.
Don’t block their signal; mirror it.
Feed them their own yesterday’s reports.
Let them believe the North is as peaceful as a graveyard.”
As the jamming began, the Begum walked among her troops.
She didn’t stay in a bunker or a guarded palace.
She moved through the lines, touching the shoulders of the Afridi tribesmen and the rebel sepoys alike.
I, the Guardian, would have seen these men as a sum of their caloric needs and their combat effectiveness, variables to be spent for a strategic gain.
But the Begum saw them as a tapestry.
“Tonight, you are not just soldiers,” she told a group of young men sharpening their tulwars.
“You are the gatekeepers of our history.
When we take the Khyber, we don’t just take a pass; we take back our breath.”
Her brilliance lay in this: she made the impossible seem inevitable.
While I forced the British into a corner using their own cruelty, she invited the local population to witness the British failure.
At midnight, the strike began.
It was not a roar, but a whisper.
Utilizing the thermal tablets to navigate the pitch black mountain paths, her scouts bypassed the British sentries with haunting precision.
Inside the British command center, General Reed stared at his telegraph machine.
It was clicking steadily, reporting “All Clear” from the outposts, a loop of data the Begum’s jammers were feeding into the system.
By the time the first British officer noticed the silhouette of a rebel soldier on the ramparts, the Begum was already walking through the main gates.
She did not order a massacre.
She did not burn the warehouses.
As the British officers were rounded up, blinking in confusion at how their “superior” technology had failed them, the Begum stood before them, bathed in the light of the rising moon.
“Your technology was built on the logic of a machine,” she said to the captured General, her voice echoing with a magnetic triumph.
“But our rebellion is built on the spirit of a nation.
You looked at your screens and saw ‘All Clear.’ You should have looked out your window and seen the truth.”
Guardian (Voice low and raspy)
“The East is…
stable.
The drought has done its work.
The British are pinned to their palaces, guarding their water tanks like gold.
Kunwar Singh is moving in on the warehouses now.”
Begum Hazrat Mahal (Her image is sharp, her expression radiant)
“The Khyber is ours, Architect.
The British General was still reading ‘All Clear’ reports on his telegraph even as we disarmed his personal guard.
Your signal-looping strategy was a masterstroke.
The North is silent; the door to the West is locked.”
Guardian (I look away from the camera, rubbing your eyes)
“At a price, Begum.
I saw a mother in Singhbhum today…
she collapsed.
She was just looking for a drop for her child.
I had to watch it.
I had to let it happen so the riots would have enough ‘fuel.’ Sometimes I wonder if we’re just replaced one kind of tyranny with a colder one.”
Begum Hazrat Mahal: (Her brow furrows slightly)
“Power is a heavy silk, Guardian.
It chafes.
But remember, the thirst you caused is temporary.
The thirst the British caused for a century was intended to be eternal.”
Rani Lakshmi Bai: (Her voice enters the channel, warm and steady, cutting through your gloom)
“Guardian, look at me.”
(I looked up at her holographic projection.
She was in full armor, her eyes reflecting the campfires of her soldiers.)
Rani Lakshmi Bai:
“I know that weight.
I feel it every time I order a charge into the cannons.
You carry the guilt because you have a soul that is why we chose you to lead this campaign and not a machine.
But do not mistake ‘necessary’ for ‘malicious.’ You didn’t steal that water to hoard it; you diverted it to break the chains of a nation.”
Guardian:
“Does it get easier, Rani?
Seeing the ‘collateral’ and calling it a statistic?”
Rani Lakshmi Bai: (A soft, comforting smile)
“It never gets easier.
If it did, you would be no better than General Hewitt.
But listen to the wind, Architect.
In the East, the people are no longer crying for water they are shouting for freedom.
You gave them the anger they needed to save themselves.
Sleep for an hour.
The guilt is the price of our victory, but you do not have to pay it alone.”
Begum Hazrat Mahal:
“She is right.
Rest.
We will handle the morning reports.
The Architect has done enough for one day.”