your bridge home
True Valor
Udaybhan’s blow shattered his shield. He wrapped cloth around his forearm and went on fighting without one.
Kondhana sat on a hill above the Pune plain, with Rajgad, Purandar and Torna in sight of it.
Which is why everyone wanted it. And why it was almost impossible to take.
It had been handed to the Mughals under the Treaty of Purandar.
And it was held for Mirza Raja Jai Singh by Udaybhan Rathod, with a garrison the accounts put in the thousands. The approaches were watched. The walls were high and the rock below them was worse. A siege would take months and announce itself; an assault up the usable face would be seen coming.
Shivaji wanted it back, and the man he needed was at a wedding.
Tanaji Malusare was preparing his son Rayba's marriage when the summons reached him. The tradition has him leaving the wedding preparations. This is the part every Maharashtrian child knows.
He told his family that Kondhana comes first, and the wedding will happen after. The historicity of that detail is traditional rather than documented, but what he did next is not in dispute.
He went up the wrong side.
The rest of this story, read aloud, and a new one every day.