But You Don't Look Like a Muslim

by Rakhshanda Jalil

  Unbeknown to us, the Jaipuri quilt, having travelled from the sandy wastes of the Thar desert, had marched into the toniest bed and linen shops across the country and invaded the popular imagination by becoming an ubiquitous winter statement. Light and easily rolled into a neat pile, it was once used by weary soldiers camping in cold battlefields or traders on the move or itinerant shepherds and bards; now, it had stolen a march and become de rigueur in most urban homes. What is more, being lightweight – but not flimsy – it can be used in summers too when the air conditioners are on at full blast! Also, unlike the coarse woollen blankets (bought more often than not from Khadi Gram Udyog stores) that were once to be found in all middle-class homes across much of north India, it is both naram and garam, soft yet warm! And, best of all, a Jaipuri quilt can be washed in the washing machine using the wool or delicate programme!

  These jewel-bright, handmade masterpieces take their name from Jaipur, a city with a centuries-old legacy of fine arts and artisans and one that is located in the heart of India’s cotton-growing belt. No less painstaking than Amma’s razais, these quilts undergo several stages of preparation: first, desi cotton is procured from the wholesale market at Sri Ganganagar, the dross removed and the wool carded, the process taking several days, for the trick lies in carding the cotton until it is evenly fluffed out. The next stage is filling it uniformly inside the cotton shell usually made of fine mulmul. Once the layers are snuggly fitted inside their soft and smooth cotton covers, the quilt passes into the skilled hands of expert needlewomen who have been hand-quilting for generations. They draw patterns on the reverse side, and using a running stitch create a multitude of patterns, both floral and geometric, the most popular ones being gol (concentric circles), phool (flowers), paan (betel leaf), lahariya (zigzagging stripes). Their purpose is not merely ornamental, for threading stops the stuffing from gathering into unsightly bulges. The test of a good quilt lies in its threading – for the lighter the quilt and the more evenly filled, the warmer and more comfortable it is supposed to be.

  While the test of a pudding may be in its eating, a good quality Jaipuri quilt reveals itself at first glance. A poke of the fingers shows how soft it is and one look is enough to tell that it is light and airy. But while buying one of these quilts, one is faced with the problem of plenty. There is such an unimaginable riot of colours, prints and contrasts that one can seldom choose any one. The dyeing and printing of the cloth that makes these quilts so distinctive is done in and around the villages of Sanganer, near Jaipur, where almost every third home is involved in hand-block printing. For generations, these families have been involved in the intricacies of engraving patterns on wooden blocks, mixing vegetable colours and mineral dyes, and transferring patterns through a laborious and painstaking process on to the cloth, drying and washing it. From village homes and low-roofed sheds to top-end ateliers and design studios where skilled artisans work under the watchful eyes of a new generation of designers – the Jaipuri quilt goes through many stages before it reaches our bedrooms. A new palette of colours is created every season – if it is fuchsia, russet, saffron, claret that is the signature of one studio, another’s would be violet, indigo, old rose, olive, and the classic black and white. A host of ‘foreign’ designers add a freshness and cosmopolitanism to the traditional Indian design sensibility causing the Mughal poppy to bloom in indigo and red; elsewhere the oriental hibiscus glows blood red on a sea of pure white, and concentric circles create post-modernist fantasies in yet another version. New interpretations are added to old motifs and the artistic language expanded to include new vocabularies. From its humble and entirely utilitarian and functional beginnings, the Jaipuri quilt has become a thing of beauty. And while I still feel the occasional twinge of nostalgia for Amma’s razais, I must confess I have turned my back to the razais of my childhood. In the chilly Delhi nights, as I snuggle into my reversible shocking pink and yellow number, I murmur snatches from Zehra Nigah’s iconic poem ‘Mulayam garm samjhaute ki chadar’:

  Mulayam garm samjhaute ki chadar

  Yeh chadar mein ne barson mein buni hai

  Kahin bhi sach ke gul boote nahi hai

  Kissi bhi jhooth ka taanka nahin hai

  Issi se main bhi tan dhak loongi apna

  Issi se tum bhi aasooda rahoge

  Na khush hoge, na pazhmarda rahoge.

  Warm and soft, this blanket

  Of compromise has taken me years to weave

  Not a single flower of truth embellishes it

  Not a single false stitch betrays it

  It will do to cover my body though

  And it will bring comfort too,

  If not joy, nor dejection for you.

  7

  TELLING THE STORY OF RAM-E-HIND

  MY MOTHER REMEMBERS WATCHING RAMLILA tableaux in Lucknow where the actors spoke in immaculate Hindustani interspersed with flowery Urdu verses. By my childhood, as Urdu became Muslim and Hindi became Hindu, and Hindustani became a casualty of their war, the secular elements had leached out from the Ramlila and while still a fairly inclusive community-based neighbourhood celebration, it had become a religious festival. By the time I began taking my children to the Ramlila pandals, Bollywood had taken precedence over all else; the scale and spectacle dwarfed the content and the dialogue, when not drowned by ear-splitting music, which too seemed to be inspired by poor Hindi films. The early influence of Parsi theatre, the florid Hindustani dialogue, the Urdu verses - not a trace remained.

  The coming of Dussehra always reminds me of the references to the Urdu Ramayanas I had heard as a child, especially fragments by Brij Narain Chakbast that several elders in the extended family could recite from memory. I remember my grandfather reciting this scene depicting Ram as he takes leave from Dashrath before going for banwas, his voice rising and falling as though he was reciting a soz:

  Rukhsat huwa woh baap se lekar Khuda ka naam

  Raah-e wafa ki manzil-e awwal hui tamaam

  He took leave of his father taking the name of God

  And thus the first stage of the path of loyalty was crossed

  Kaushalya’s lament at her son going away to exile too is expressed in a language that could only have emerged from the beating heart of Hindustan:

  Kis tarah ban mein ankhon ke taare ko bhej duun

  Jogi bana ke raj-dulare ko bhej duun

  How can I send the light of my eyes to the forest

  How can I turn my prince into a mendicant and send him away

  Versions of the Ramayana in Urdu - in both prose and poetry and as transliterations, transcreations and translations - have been appearing since Urdu gained popularity several centuries ago. According to a comprehensive study of Ram kathan in Urdu by the late Ali Jawad Zaidi there were over 300 such versions, many from the Awadh region alone, and several written in the style of marsiya-goi popularized by Anees and Dabeer. The earliest Urdu translation of the Ramayana by Munshi Jagannath Lal Khushtar was published by the Newal Kishore Press in 1860. Beginning with ‘Bismillah ir Rehman ir Rahim’, the Khushtar Ramayana, as it came to be called, presents an ankhon-dekha haal (an eye-witness account) albeit in a florid style. The Khushtar Ramayana was followed by Amar Kahani by Jogeshwar Nath ‘Betab’ Bareilvi and scores of others, often known by their author’s name such as Ulfat ki Ramayana or Rahmat ki Ramayana. Betab Bareilvi’s version, marked by much local colour from the Ganga-Jamuni belt, carries the following description of the ‘Shakti Baan’:

  Reh reh ke de rehe thhe duhaii huzur ki

  Kham ho gayi thii jung mein gardan guroor kii

  At every step they were pleading for mercy from the master

  The neck of pride had been bowed in this battle

  The remarkably named Hakim Vicerai Wahmi in his Ramayan Manzum writes:

  Ram ne Sugreev ko aage baitha kar yun kaha

  Bharat se badh kar tumhe main chahta hun bhai jan

  Ram bade Sugreev sit down in front of him and said

  I love you more dearly than Bh
arat, my brother dear.

  Then there’s the incredible Yak-Qafiya Ramayan by Ufaq, published in 1914, maintaining one rhyme scheme throughout, with very verse ending in noon (the ‘n’ sound):

  Jab khumar aluda dekhi chashm-e mehv-e aasman

  Ram ne bheji barai jung fauj-e jaanistan

  When he saw the sky become tinged with pink

  Ram sent his army of warriors to engage in battle.

  An entire play written in Urdu called Ram Natak, also by Ufuq, with detailed stage instructions, has lyrical rhyming dialogue:

  Ajodha ko maatam sara kar diya

  Bharat ko qadam se juda kar diya

  And Ayodhya was plunged into mourning

  As Bharat was separated from (Ram’s) feet

  There is also a great deal of scattered Urdu poetry either specifically on the charismatic figure of Ram or inspired by incidents from the Ramayana, the most famous being the long poem on Ram by Iqbal:

  Labrez hai sharab-e-haqiqat se jaam-e-hind

  Sab falsafi hain khitta-e-maghrib ke Ram-e-hind…

  Hai Ram ke vujood pe Hindostan ko naaz

  Ahl-e-nazar samajhte hain is ko imam-e-Hind…

  Talvar ka dhani thha shujaat mein fard thha

  Pakeezgi mein josh-e-mohabbat mein fard thha

  The goblet of Hind is brimful with the wine of truth

  All the philosophers acknowledge him as Ram of Hind

  All of Hindustan is proud of the existence of Ram

  The visionaries among them see him as the Imam of Hind

  He was an expert swordsman and unique among the brave

  And matchless in his piety and passion for love

  And this by Saghar Nizami:

  Jis ka dil thha ek shama-e taaq-e aiwan-e hayat

  Rooh jis ki aaftab-e subha-e irfan-e hayat…

  Zindagi ki rooh thha, rohaniyat ki shaan thha

  Woh mujassim roop mein insaan ke irfaan thha

  He whose heart was like a candle in the niche of life

  Whose spirit was like the morning sun seeking knowledge of life

  He was the spirit of life, the pride of spirituality

  In the shape of a human he was knowledge incarnate

  With Urdu gradually freeing itself from its ‘Muslim’ tag and reclaiming its rightful place as a people’s language, perhaps it is time to revisit these manzum Ramayanas and, perchance, stage a Ramlila on Ufuq’s Ram Natak. Written by both Muslim poets and non-Muslims at a time when inclusion and pluralism was the norm rather than the exception, they need to be revived and reread not merely for their evocations of communal harmony and goodwill, but also because many contain some fine poetry.

  8

  THE BEGUM WHO SANG OF

  LOVE AND LONGING

  MY SISTER USED TO NARRATE an amusing incident from her hostel days at the medical college. As she and her fellow young doctors broke the tedium of mindless swotting by listening to music from her rackety old tape recorder, one girl who was from the south and knew very little Urdu would often ask her to play that song where ‘the woman is having uncontrolled vomiting and the medicines are not working’. She was referring to Begum Akhtar’s ‘Ulti ho gayin sab tadbeerein/Kuchh na dawa ne kaam kiya…’

  Looking back, I see this incident as illustrative: more than the truism that music builds bridges across languages and cultures, it shows how different people at different times have ‘taken’ different things from Begum Akhtar’s music. A sociologist might view her journey from Akhtari Bai Faizabadi to Begum Akhtar as an Indian woman’s search for respectability, and the casting away of her former life as a courtesan who sang for the pleasure of her wealthy patrons to a ‘begum’ who had rather successfully refashioned her life after marriage into a sharif khandan. For the present-day musicians, especially women performers, there are valuable lessons to be learnt from watching this transformation and in walking the tightrope of being a woman and being a concert performer. Begum Akhtar’s severely elegant saris, the hair pulled back in a bun, the shunning of flashy jewellery save the diamond that twinkled in her nose, the instant rapport with her audience through the constant eye contact and the sudden, somewhat toothsome, smile that broke across her solemn countenance made her startlingly different from women musicians who had come from the courtesan tradition; for contemporary women performers she ‘showed the way’ and became a worthy example to emulate. For the lovers of Urdu poetry, there is her eclectic choice from the vast reservoir of both contemporary and classical poetry by established as well as lesser-known poets. For the musician, there is of course her inimitable voice and her training in classical music that infused every note of her preferred choice of the light-classical genres such as the ghazal, the dadra and the thumri with the rigour of tradition. And for the music historian and biographer, there is her life - with its rich lode of gossip and innuendo, fame and tragedy, truths and half-truths. What interests me as a literary historian with only a passing acquaintance with light classical music, is her choice of poetry.

  Like Mehndi Hasan, who came after her and took the ghazal to the masses, Begum Akhtar chose simple lyrics, enunciated each word with a bell-like clarity and built a repertoire that was a seamless blend of the classic and the contemporary, the pastoral and the urbane. If she sang ‘Woh jo hum mein tum mein qarar thha/Tumhe yaad ho ke na yaad ho’ by Urdu’s pre-eminent poet Momin Khan Momin, or ‘Ibn-e-Maryam hua kare koi/Mere dard kii dawa kare koi’ by Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib, she is also remembered for ‘Ai mohabbat tere anjaam pe rona aaya’ by Shakeel Badayuni, or the hauntingly lyrical ‘Deewana banana hai to deewana bana de’ by Behzaad Lucknowi or ‘Sakht hai ishq ki raahguzar’ by Shamim Jaipuri who were both lesser-known poets until they were immortalized by Begum Akhtar’s voice and her inimitable rendering of their verses.

  If she brought a rare lilt to her raga-based compositions of the ghazal, it was in the thumri that Begum Akhtar infused a new life. Wrenching it from its moorings in the salons of the rasik rajas and talukdars of upper India, she brought it to the public stage as a thing of tremulous beauty and throbbing pain. Popularized by the nawabs of Awadh and sung for gramophone companies by pioneering artistes such as Gauhar Jaan, the thumri as well as the dadra, hori, kajri dwell on the theme of viraha, or separation, rely on largely pastoral images to convey the sense of un-sated, or rather un-satiable, longing for the beloved. While Begum Akhtar sang several classical compositions such as ‘Laagi beriya piya ke aawan kii’ or ‘Koyaliya mat kar pukaar, karejwa laage kataar’, she can also be credited with enlarging the repertoire of the thumri with ones written by new writers, such as ‘Dekha dekhi balam hui jaaye’ by Sudarshan Faakir, the remarkable poet from the Punjab.

  No mention of Begum Akhtar’s music is considered complete without some reference to the many apocryphal stories about her less-than-orthodox choice of poetry and her generosity towards unknown poets. A young Kaifi Azmi wrote ‘Itna to zindagi mein kisi ki khalal pade/Hansne se ho sukun na rone se kal pade’ and recited it at a mushaira when he was all of eleven years old. Begum Akhtar set the ghazal to music and turned it into a nationwide phenomenon in pre-Partition India. But the best of the many mythic stories about her is the one about Sudarshan Faakir. During a visit to the Jalandhar radio station of All India Radio (AIR), the poet who then worked at the radio station offered her his ghazal as a humble tribute; she not merely accepted it but promptly set it to music and sang it within a few hours. The ghazal was:

  Kuchh to duniya kii inayat ne dil tod diya

  Aur kuchh talkhiy-e-haalat ne dil tod diya

  Hum to samjhe ke barsaat mein barsegii sharab

  Aaayi barsaat to barsaat ne dil tod diya

  The characteristic catch in Begum Akhtar’s voice – as much as Sudarshan Faakir’s verses – have made this ghazal an anthem of heartbreak and despair decades after it was first recorded.

  9

  OF KINGS, QUEENS AND INVADERS

  WERE IT NOT FOR THE controversy surrounding its making and eventual release, Padmaavat
would have been just another lushly mounted, superbly operatic film from the Sanjay Leela Bhansali school of opulent film-making. Were it also not for the sharply polarized times we live in, the Indian viewing public - as well as assorted writers, thinkers and large sections of civil society - might not have made much of the film’s flawed take on history. Even its misogyny and communal bias may have been overlooked in its glossy visual treat. However, a ceaseless barrage of controversies virtually from the time of the film’s announcement, to disruptions and vandalizing during its filming, and a release secured only after the intervention of the Supreme Court of India invested it with far more importance than it deserved. What is more, the sorry saga surrounding the film underscored yet again the thorny issue of freedom of speech versus hurt sentiments, truth versus public perception.

  Public anger verging on mass hysteria is not a new phenomenon in India. The strident illiberals have always managed to drown out the liberal, saner voices in an inglorious tradition going back many decades. An Urdu anthology, called Angarey (meaning ‘Embers’) was published in December 1932 and banned three months later by the colonial administration in the face of an unprecedented furore created by Muslims who felt that the four contributing authors (all Muslims incidentally) had hurt the sentiments of the Muslims. Decades later, Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses was banned when the Indian government, responding to a knee-jerk reaction from a section of Muslims, imposed a ban in – what it considered – the larger good of the community. Banned books usually stay banned but it’s not so with films.

  More often than not, a banned film is released after the intervention of the Censor Board with cuts, changes, or a change in certification. Some, like the Aamir Khan starrer Fanaa, faced an unofficial ban in Gujarat due to the actor’s unapologetic views on building the Sardar Sarovar Dam over the imperilled Narmada River. Parzania, a clear-eyed look at the communal riots, was banned in Gujarat as was Firaaq, Nandita Das’s directorial debut. Others with overt sexual content, such as Bandit Queen, Fifty Shades of Grey or Kamasutra, found release after multiple and often mutilating cuts. Seldom has a Hindi film generated such fire and fury in large parts of the country and not just the state of Rajasthan or the Rajput community who hold their queen Padmavati in the highest esteem. A vigilante group, calling itself the Karni Sena, set up in 2006 to ‘protect’ the interests of the Rajputs, was most vociferous in demanding a ban on Padmaavat, going to the extent of ambushing a bus full of petrified schoolchildren in an attempt to hog the limelight.