✦ 𑁍 Chronicle Note: 1842 CE – Kabul, Indus, and Two Lions 𑁍
Maharaja Ranjit Singh: Still alive in this world, past 60, body worn, mind sharp.
Narasimha Reddy: 42 years old in human years, Emperor of the Mandalic Dharmic Federation, bound by the 70-year treaty with Europe.
Stage: The "Great Game" between Britain and Russia spills into Afghanistan and onto the banks of the Indus.
In another history, Ranjit Singh died in 1839, and the Sikh Empire weakened, step by step, until it was swallowed.
In this history, one soul—meant once to be a Manu—walked in the south and changed the wind.
Not enough to stop every storm.
But enough to bend the trees.
I. The White Trail of Death from Kabul
Snow fell like muffled judgment.
The retreat from Kabul in early 1842 was not a march.
It was a slow dying.
On the passes, British soldiers and camp followers alike stumbled:
red coats stained brown with mud and blood,
faces cracked with cold,
boots torn,
hands clutching at rifles more like talismans than weapons.
Afghan ridges flashed with muzzle fire:
sudden, vicious, disappearing into rock and scrub.
Screams rose, then were eaten by the wind.
Those who survived remembered:
endless white,
endless gunshots,
The horror of realising that the column was being cut down to the last man, not defeated in honourable battle.
In Calcutta and London, the reports came like knives.
"Retreat from Kabul…
near total annihilation…"
The First Anglo–Afghan War ended in humiliation.
The British puppet in Kabul was gone.
Dost Mohammad Khan would, in time, be restored.
The prestige of the East India Company bled out across the snows.
In London, one whisper ran under all the analysis:
"We are no longer invincible in the East."
II. The Lion of Lahore Still Breathes
In another world, by 1842, Maharaja Ranjit Singh would already have been ashes for three years.
Here, he sat wrapped in a shawl, in a pavilion of the Lahore Fort, listening as his vakil read the latest dispatch from Peshawar.
His beard was thinner.
His good eye clouded slightly by age.
But the mind behind it was bright as steel.
"The English," the vakil said, "have been beaten in Afghanistan, Maharaj.
Their retreat from Kabul… it was a slaughter.
Now they seek to:
regain prestige,
secure control over the Indus route,
and press down upon Sindh and our western frontiers."
Ranjit Singh chuckled, the sound dry but amused.
"So," he said, "the Firangi tried to climb mountains they did not understand… and the mountains spat them out."
He coughed, then continued.
"They will not accept this easily," he said.
"When a proud man falls in front of a crowd, he looks around for someone else to push."
He pointed in the air, as if tracing a map.
"Afghanistan has burned them.
They will look instead to:
Sindh,
the Indus,
and yes, us."
His generals exchanged glances.
"Maharaj," one said, "our army is strong, but the English have new guns, drilled infantry, war-tested artillery."
Ranjit Singh smiled faintly."And we," he said, "have men who ride from childhood, gunners, who learned from both the Mughal and the European, and," he paused, "friends in the south who send whispers and grain."
He picked up a sealed letter, marked with a leonine sigil that was not his own.
"From Narasimha Reddy?" the vakil asked.
Ranjit nodded.
He opened it, eyes moving over the elegant Telugu-Persian mix.
The southern Emperor's message was clear:
"I am bound by treaty not to march my armies north against your enemies.
But dharma does not ask me to be deaf or blind.
Where trade goes, grain goes, powder goes, cloth and coin go.
Use what reaches you.
The treaty binds my sword, not my caravans."
Ranjit Singh laughed, genuinely.
"Ah," he said. "The lion of the south has indeed learned to walk the line of law like a court dancer."
He turned to his council.
"Prepare," he said.
"The English will move on Sindh and press our frontier. We will not invite a two-front war… but we will not be trampled. Send word to the Talpur Amirs of Sindh:
The Indus may be broad, but the Company's ships need harbours and roads.
Let them know:
Our scouts watch, our granaries are fuller than the English think, our cannons are not as few as they hope."
He tapped Narasimha's letter again.
"In this game, we are not alone.
In the south, another lion crouches.
We will see how far the British dare to step between our claws."
III. Kesarinagara: The Treaty and the Dharma
In Kesarinagara, the monsoon clouds had passed.
The air smelled of wet stone and new leaves.
Narasimha sat with Sri, Venkanna, and Kaveri in the Shastra Mandapam, where maps and legal scrolls shared the same shelves.
On the central table lay: maps of Afghanistan,
The Indus basin reports on British troop losses in Kabul, letters from Trinetra nodes in Calcutta, Lahore, and Karachi.
Sri's fingers traced troop movements.
"Just as expected," she said.
"Afghanistan has drained their prestige, bled their officers, rattled their investors.
They will look for: a theatre where they can win, a target that appears weaker, a route that ties together both trade and strategy."
"The Indus," Venkanna said.
"In another line of history, they manufacture excuses, invade Sindh, crush Talpur resistance, and annex Sindh into their Bombay Presidency."
He looked up. "Our presence has changed some things. But not their nature."
Narasimha leaned back, eyes closed for a heartbeat.
In his mind, he could almost see: red-coated soldiers drilling in the plains, officers in London pointing at maps, the humiliated pride of an empire pushing it to overreach somewhere else.
"The treaty binds us," he said quietly.
"For seventy years: no wars of expansion against British or allied Indian territories. That blade cuts both ways. If I send Dakshina banners north to fight beside the Sikhs, I:
break my own word, open the door to European coalitions, give them an excuse to call me an aggressor."
Kaveri watched him.
"But if you do nothing," she said, "and they swallow Sindh and crush the Sikhs, we will: face a stronger British front in the north, stand alone when our seventy years end."
He sighed."That is the rope", he said."Law on one side. Dharma on the other."
Sri spoke, eyes sharp.
"The treaty mentions armies," she said.
"It bars overt military alliances, expansions, and invasions. It says nothing about: trade routes, caravans, contracts with independent Sikh or Sindhi agents."
She slid another parchment forward: a report from the Dakshina Merchant Alliance.
"Our captains already trade as far as Muscat, Basra, Bombay, Karachi (quietly), and ports near Sindh."
"If: More barrels of grain happen to be shipped, more saltpeter and sulphur make their way into markets where Sikh and Sindhi buyers can purchase them, more hard coin and high-quality cloth reach Lahore through middlemen…"
She looked up. "That is commerce," she said. "Not invasion."
Venkanna nodded."The treaty binds your sword, Narasimha," he said."It does not forbid you from:strengthening other Indian hands to hold their own swords."
Narasimha smiled without humour.
"A lawyer's mind," he said. "Hidden in a saint's face."
He stood and went to the balcony.
Below, the city moved—a living ocean of people.
"I will not shatter the treaty," he said.
"But neither will I watch Bharat be carved like meat while I polish my crown."
He turned back.
"Authorize: increased shipments to independent traders who deal with Sikh regiments, quiet loans through third parties to Sindhi merchants friendly to Talpurs, sale of surplus arms that we 'no longer need'—to intermediaries whose caravans just happen to head north."
He held up a finger. "But no Dakshina flags," he said. "No Dakshina uniforms.
If the British accuse us, we show: books of trade, contracts of private merchants.
Let them argue against commerce they themselves worship."
Kaveri smiled faintly.
"Walking the line," she murmured.
"The gods will have headaches counting your karma."
High above, they did indeed watch:
Vishnu, Brahma, Maheshwara, and their consorts.
Lakshmi sighed, amused. "This child," she said, "treats treaties like bridge ropes. He never cuts them… but he swings on them in ways no one expects."
Saraswati's eyes glowed. "As long as he does so to uphold dharma," she said, "the law itself becomes a weapon for righteousness, not for oppression."
Mahadev said nothing, but there was a hint of approval in the tilt of his trident.
IV. Sir Charles Napier and the Indus
In Bombay and Calcutta, the British regrouped after Kabul.
In 1842, a new plan solidified: Take Sindh, secure the Indus route, regain prestige, show both Indians and Russians that the lion still had claws.
Sir Charles Napier stood before a map lit by oil lamps. He traced the river with one finger. "The Indus," he said to his officers, "is the spine. If we control: its ports, its crossings, its embankments, we regain: trade advantage, a route toward Afghanistan if needed, and a message to all India: we are still the arbiters here."
An officer asked, "And the Sikhs, sir? With Maharaja Ranjit still alive, they… loom larger."
Napier's jaw tightened. "Yes," he said. "In another set of circumstances, had he died earlier, their kingdom might have already started fracturing. Here, he lives. His Darbar is still a lion's den."
He tapped Sindh. "We move first on Sindh," he said. "The Talpur Amirs: are divided, less modernised, easier to portray as treacherous in dispatches." "But," he added, "we must be prepared for: Sikh maneuvers, Southern meddling, even if indirect, Russian whispers." He did not know, yet, how right he was about the second.
V. Powder on the Wind – The Hidden Hand
Throughout late 1842, odd things happened along the routes between the south and the north.
Caravans from the south arrived at markets near Punjab and Sindh with: unusually high stocks of high-quality grain, durable cloth, strangely plentiful saltpeter, barrels of sulphur, iron and brass fittings easily reshaped into war gear.
Sikh officials, purchasing through intermediaries, found that prices were favourable, supplies were steady, and the merchants spoke in a certain coded way: "We have surplus from a southern buyer who wishes these to keep flowing upriver…"
Talpur agents, less efficient but not entirely blind, caught scraps of this trade.
In Lahore's forges, cannons were cleaned, re-bored, and stocked with fresh powder.
Sikh soldiers ate slightly better, drilled slightly longer.
Ranjit Singh, in his private prayer chamber, knelt before the Guru Granth Sahib.
"Waheguru," he murmured, "the English have: rifles, discipline, factories. We have faith, courage, and allies who do not march, but feed. If I must face them, let it not be as a lamb."
Far to the south, Narasimha watched the same movements on Trinetra maps.
"We cannot decide the outcomes for them," he told Sri. "But we can do what a good neighbour does when he sees a friend's house threatened: strengthen the beams, oil the doors, make sure the grain stores are full."
VI. The Fire in Sindh and the Edge of Punjab
The British move into Sindh came with the usual language:accusations of Talpur perfidy, "breach of treaty", "defence of British honour". In the battles of Miani and Dubbo, history still echoed: Company troops advanced, Talpur forces resisted with courage but less organisation. Cannons roared, smoke churned over desert scrub.
The Amirs found that courage alone could not make up for: weaker supply lines, internal divisions, older tactics against drilled volleys.
In this world, as in the other, Sindh bled. Parts of the region fell under direct British rule. Ports were taken. Caravan routes seized.
But when the British pushed their shadow closer toward the Sikh frontier, things stopped being so easy.
At a fort near the Indus–Punjab border, British officers expected a show of force and a quick Sikh concession.
Instead, they found: well-fed infantry, artillery that answered shot for shot, supply lines that did not crumble after a week.
A skirmish turned into a sharp engagement. British guns blasted Sikh positions. The Sikhs, drilled with newer discipline mixed with old ferocity, held the line longer than expected.
A British colonel watched a cannonball smash into a Sikh bastion, only to see another gun roll forward from behind. "Damn it," he muttered. "They're better stocked than our estimates." "Reports from Bombay said their stores were depleted after the Afghan frontier tensions," his adjutant said, baffled."Then Bombay was wrong," the colonel snapped.
By the end of that engagement, the British had pushed the Sikhs back from one advance position, inflicted casualties, but they had also taken heavier losses than expected, and realised that a full-scale war with Ranjit Singh's armies would not be a swift, glorious march.
In the aftermath, scouts brought back troubling observations: Sikh artillery using powder of unexpectedly consistent quality, uniforms and gear with southern markings on the cloth before local dyeing, rumours of "lion-stamped" crates sighted months earlier in neutral bazaars.
Whispers began in British mess tents: "Is that Southern Emperor helping them?" No proof. Only patterns. But patterns were enough to make cautious men think twice.
VII. Treaty on the Indus – Not Annexation, but Passage
In London and Calcutta, the calculus shifted.
Sindh—especially lower Sindh—could still be taken and was, bit by bit, pulled under Company administration.
But the idea of pushing hard into the Sikh Empire, as if it were another Sindh, began to look… unwise.
Between: the sting of Kabul, the quiet but undeniable resilience of Sikh forces, the suspicion of southern resources flowing north, pragmatism overran arrogance—for now.
Thus, in late 1842, a treaty emerged between the British and the Sikh Darbar: The British would gain free commercial and military passage through certain Sikh-controlled stretches toward Afghanistan and the frontier, in exchange, they would recognise Sikh sovereignty over their remaining territories. commit—on paper—to non-interference in internal Sikh matters for a set period.
It was not a full victory for either side: The British regained some prestige through Sindh and secured ways around their Afghan humiliation.
The Sikh Empire had been tested, bruised, but not dismantled.
In the corridors of Lahore, many thought: "We have lost some face, but we still stand. The lion has bled, but not been skinned."
In the halls of London, some muttered: "In India, we now have two problems, not one: the southern constitution-maker and the northern lion who refused to die on schedule."
VIII. Letters Between Lions
A few months after the treaty, a sealed message arrived in Kesarinagara.
It came not through public diplomats, but via the invisible arteries of Trinetra: hand to hand, code to code, finally into Sri's palm.
She brought it to Narasimha in a quiet garden.
He broke the seal.
The script was a Persian-Gurmukhi blend, but the voice behind it was unmistakable.
"To Narasimha Reddy, Chakravartin of the Mandalic Dharmic Federation,
From Ranjit Singh, Maharaja of the Sikh Khalsa and guardian of Punjab.
The English came, as we both knew they would.
They tasted some victories in Sindh, as they often do when they choose weaker prey.
But when they pressed their gaze toward my house, they did not find a starving lion.
We were:
– better stocked than they guessed,
– able to bleed them in battle enough to force talk,
– still strong enough to make them sign paper instead of planting flags.
I am not blind.
Powder does not appear by miracle, nor does grain.
You have honoured our earlier words.
You kept your treaty—with your own hands—and still found ways to uphold dharma toward a fellow son of this land.
Know this: when the seventy years of your self-bound peace draw to their end, and the world grows stranger—as you often hint it will—if my line or my people still stand in any form, we will remember:
The lion in the south did not abandon us for convenience.
May your Constitution hold; may my armies hold.
Between your law and my sword, perhaps Bharat will not go quietly into the hands of foreigners."
Narasimha chuckled at the last word.
"Even he feels the ripple of what is to come," he murmured.
Kaveri, reading over his shoulder, smiled.
"Two lions," she said. "One on the Sutlej, one on the Krishna and Kaveri. The British must be developing a headache."
Sri added, more soberly, "They have footholds in Sindh now, passage through Sikh lands, bitterness from Kabul. This dance is far from over."
Narasimha nodded. "True," he said. "But today, we mark this: In the year 1842, when in another world Ranjit Singh would already be gone, and the British would march more freely…here, he still lives. Here, they had to negotiate."
He folded the letter carefully. "History still flows roughly where it must," he said softly. "Afghanistan burned them. Sindh bled. But in the cracks, we have preserved a Sikh Empire that should have died earlier, taught the British that not every river they step into is theirs.
The next time they plan, they will remember: "There is a south we cannot bully
and a north we cannot walk over."
IX. Above the Chessboard
In realms beyond mortal sight, the gods watched the shifting pieces.
Brahma spoke first. "Events around Kabul and the Indus," he said, "end in roughly the same shapes: British shame in Afghanistan, pressure on Sindh, a play for the Indus.
But our child has: changed their costs, changed their confidence, kept one more pillar of Bharat standing for a time."
Vishnu's eyes crinkled with quiet satisfaction.
"Preserving possibilities is often more important than forcing outcomes," he said.
"In this world, the British do not feel unstoppable in the northwest, the Sikh Empire does not crumble according to the old schedule, the Mandalic Federation silently feeds resistance without breaking its word. That is how dharma sometimes works in Kaliyuga: not by miracles from the sky, but by clever men walking tightropes."
Parvati looked down at Narasimha.
"He cannot save everyone," she murmured.
"He knows this. But he chooses: where to bend, where to risk, where to support quietly without plunging his own people into ruin."
Lakshmi added, "And in doing so, he creates a network of gratitude and respect that will matter later, when empires fall, republics rise, and heroes in capes argue in United Nations halls."
Saraswati smiled.
"The books of future history will not say: 'A southern Emperor saved the Sikhs.' But dharma's subtle records will note: 'He allowed the flame in Punjab to burn a little longer… and gave Bharat one more lamp against the coming darkness.'"
As 1842 closed, maps in Europe showed: Sindh partially shaded in Company colours, Afghanistan still a problem, the Sikh Empire annoyingly intact, the Mandalic Federation solid in the south.
In Kesarinagara, Narasimha rolled up another report and set it aside.
So many wars.
So many treaties.
And yet, in his heart, he felt: This is still only the opening act. The age of Captain America, Iron Man, sorcerers and mutants, and aliens, was more than a century away.
But the ground on which those battles would be fought—the political, cultural, spiritual ground of Earth—was being shaped now.
By: an old Maharaja who refused to die on schedule, an immortal Emperor who bound his own hands but freed others, and countless unnamed souls who simply defended their rivers, their fields, their rights.
The lion on the Indus roared.
The lion in the south listened.
The British, for the first time, began to realise that this land of Bharat was not a chessboard with only pawns.
It was a jungle with many lions.
And the game they thought they were playing was slowly, quietly, becoming something else.
✦ End of Chapter 52 – "Lions on Two Rivers" ✦