CHANAKYA RETURNS
Love, I advise, and I speak from experience, is fragile as rotting silks and will disintegrate when infidelities, jealousies, betrayals, impotence infect it. The heart is not to be trusted as it is brainless and mistakes lust for love while the loins mistake love for lust. Love is a watery foundation on which to build one’s life. Love is violent too, be warned of its treachery. Men and women murder for love; the clash of bodies, hearts and souls only leaves behind the ashes of defeat when one is vanquished and abandoned on the battlefield of the bed. Believe me, love has sent more men and women to the gallows of tears, despair, grief and suicide than a thousand tyrants his enemies to an executioner. No, love will prove to be unfulfilling and transitory, but power (and I shiver at the word)—on the other hand—is to be pursued. It is an aphrodisiac, it is unending hot sex of 1001 positions, it is magical, it is miraculous. Your followers will worship you like an idol that can confer riches and miracles, more than any god, on those fortunate to worship you, and you will feel their outpouring of love in gratitude. Your subjects cannot take it from you, unless you give it away through foolishness, and you can keep hold of that lightning rod until you are buried in a grand tomb, accompanied by great pomp and ceremony and outpourings of grief.
My prince(ss) listened carefully to what I had to say. I wondered which would triumph—the power of love or the love of power. It is a crossroad—right or left—there is no middle way.
