After scoring a costly victory over a local chieftain in western India's Rajasthan desert region, an Afghan warlord who briefly ruled the country in the mid-16th century remarked that for a mere handful of millet in this parched, forsaken area he had jeopardised his entire empire.
More than 350 years later a modern-day conqueror might be hard pressed to find even a fistful of grain in 1,058 of the 1,072 villages in Jodhpur district. The area, 450 miles west of New Delhi, is reeling under severe drought and near-famine conditions for the second year in succession.
Nearly 50 million people in the states of Rajasthan and Gujarat are suffering from drought, daunted by the prospect of fiercer, hotter weather yet to come during the next two months.
The hefty bronzed men of Jodhpur district, sporting colourful turbans as protection against the searing hot sun, and their statuesque women in billowing skirts are fast losing the battle against nature.
Their outward serenity and smiling faces are belied by the reality of pawned jewellery, the desert barometer of opulence, which they have had to sell to buy grain at exorbitant prices for dying livestock. Cattle and sheep are the backbone of the local economy.
Uneconomical animals have long been abandoned, with many dead, either of starvation or choked to death from eating plastic bags lying strewn around on garbage heaps in most villages and small desert towns.
"It's just a matter of time before the surviving livestock are left to the mercy of God," said Magh Singh, a resident of Manaklao, one of the worst-affected villages, where 300 cows out of 800 had died. The remainder were cadaverous wrecks, bleating constantly from hunger.
Tens of thousands of desperate, starving people are borrowing money at usurious interest rates of between 40 to 60 per cent per year. They know that failure to pay it back - and the chances of that happening are high - means forfeiting their meagre holdings or serving out their lives as "bonded" labourers to the loan shark, working the land they once owned to make good their borrowings.
"The resistance of the locals to fight drought and famine-like conditions has broken," an official said. Even the big livestock-owners have no fodder reserves left and cattle, sheep and goats face starvation.
Tanks which stored rain water in simple but ingenious ways had dried up, while the volume from a handful of bore wells was decreasing daily. Locals said the authorities had not repaired water pipes for years and had sunk deep wells without providing motors or electricity connections to pump up supplies. Whatever little water remained was locked and jealously guarded.
Thousands of families left Jodhpur district during the past month for the neighbouring states of Punjab and Haryana to work as farm and construction labourers.
"The failure of the authorities to provide any succour has triggered off this mass migration," said Yasin Khan, a tea-shop owner at Manaklao. He, too, is thinking of leaving, as there is neither milk for tea nor customers with money.
Locals say that officials in charge of drought relief justify their apathy on the grounds that the desert people have lived in such harsh conditions for generations and are used to them. They speak of their ingenuity in combating famine, using resources unknown to outsiders.
"They must be helping themselves, their friends and families with the relief meant for us," said Roopa Ram, who retired recently as Manaklao's headman.
Relief officials in Jodhpur gave details of food-for-work schemes, tankers rushing to provide drinking water and large quantities of fodder being distributed free and sold at subsidised rates. Additional District Magistrate S.C. Soni dismissed reports of migration and claimed the battle against drought was being conducted in a systematic manner with adequate resources.
But locals scoff at these claims. "We have not seen even one paisa [penny] of government aid," says Roppa Ram, a small farmer from Uda-ki-Dhani. Instead, he adds, the government-owned banks have started a loan recovery drive.