Lewis Allsop

The Thief and the King

In the month of July, our condition was worsening. For each impoverished family that lived in the slums of Bengal during the draught of 1600 - only 2 cups of rice were to be permitted per day. I could no longer walk to the palace of the King, Ghulam Musaroor, the protagonist of this melancholy occasion, without absorbing the cries from children that lay next to dead mothers & fathers, ‘Babi! Babi! My mommy!’ from one side of the street. On the other side, bodies that lay like a winding array of fallen dominoes with stomachs that had dissolved to a thin layer of skin.