Either You should have made me bear a royal crown, or You should have made my crown that of a beggar.

Here, Bahadur Shah Zafar captures the quiet tragedy of being trapped in a powerless kingship. He laments to the Divine that he should have either been granted genuine imperial authority or the untethered peace of a wandering dervish. The true heartbreak lies in this agonizing middle ground—bearing the hollow weight of a crown that brings neither sovereign power nor the spiritual freedom of renunciation.