There is a proud and ancient tradition in the subcontinent, one that predates even the invention of the begging bowl itself: the mendicant-poet. Long before WarEra reduced grown men to refreshing their resource tab every four hours praying for gold to regenerate, the faqirs of old walked the dusty lanes of Lahore, Lucknow, and Karachi, offering not sob stories but verse in exchange for a coin. A blind mirasi reciting Waris Shah's Heer outside a haveli was not begging, he was performing, and the alm was merely his royalty.
It is in this noble tradition that I, a humble soldier, now find myself. Stripped of gold by a war I did not start, denied resources by a treasury I do not control, I have taken to the digital street corner with nothing but my keyboard and my dignity, reciting the great Allama Iqbal to passing generals in the hope that someone, anyone, will spare a few coins for a man who once dreamed of empire.
I do not simply ask. I perform. I clear my throat, strike a pose befitting a starving philosopher-king, and begin:
(Bang-e-Dra-161) Khizar-e-Rah (خضر راہ) Khizr The Guide
By the river’s brink I stood one evening, lost in the scene,
Yet hiding a world of fretting thoughts in my heart’s cell.
Night deepened silence: calm the air, languid the current,
River or painted water the eye could scarcely tell.
As the sucking infant laid in the cradle falls asleep
The restless wave lay slumberously in its deep well,
The birds held captive by night’s gramarye (magic) in their nests,
And the faint‐gleaming stars fast bound by the bright moon’s spell.
There that would‐measuring courier I had sight of—Khizr,
That ancient in whom youth’s colours fresh as the daybreak dwell.
‘Seeker,’ said he, ‘of eternal secrets!
When the heart sees clear vision, the fates that rule earth wear no veil.’
At these words in my soul doomed to long search awoke
A tumult as of Judgment Day; and thus I spoke.
‘To your world‐ranging eye is visible the storm
Whose fury yet lies in tranquil sleep under the sea:
That innocent life, that poor man’s boat, that wall of the orphan,
Taught Moses’
wisdom to stand before yours wonderingly!
You shun abodes, for desert‐roaming, for ways that know
No day or night, from yesterdays and tomorrows free.
What is the riddle of life? What thing is the State
Or why must labour and capital so bloodily disagree?
Asia’s time‐honoured cloak grows ragged and wears out,
From upstart lands her young men borrow their finery;
Though Alexander could never find the elixir of life,
His robber spirit still revels here in drunken glee;
The lord of Makkah barters the honour of Makkah’s faith
That the stubborn Turk, late convert, guards through war’s agony.
Tyrants and flames once more on Abraham’s race have glared:
For whom this new ordeal, or by whose hand prepared?
The irony, dear reader, is not lost on me. Here I stand, invoking Iqbal's thunderous verdict on imperialism and the hollow greed of capital, while my actual and pressing concern is that I cannot afford to reinforce my Automated Engine. Khidr warned the poet of the exploiter's true face; I merely want someone to Venmo me fifty gold before the next offensive.
Still, the townsfolk gather. A crowd always gathers for poetry, even in a video game. Some toss coins out of pity, others out of guilt, and a rare few — the true connoisseurs — out of genuine appreciation for the couplet. I do not discriminate. Gold spends the same whether given in reverence or embarrassment.
And so the tradition continues, four hundred years and one game client later: when all else fails, when the treasury is empty and the war chest bare, a man may still stand in the square and recite. The subcontinent taught us that poverty and poetry were never strangers. WarEra has simply taught us that neither are patch notes and panhandling.