by R V Smith
Salman was very good at repeating dialogues from Hindi film classics like Yahudi, Yahudi ki Beti, Mughal-e-Azam, and Anarkali. He was also infatuated with the work of Mir Ghulam Hasan, born in Delhi in 1727, the son of a poetaster whom, Dr Sadiq says, the poet Sauda satirized in one of his memorable works. Mir Hasan migrated to Faizabad with his father, Mir Zahik, where he was patronized by Mirza Navazish Ali Khan, son of Salar Jang-Bahadur, and died in Lucknow in 1786. Mir Hasan’s ‘Masnavi-Sihir-ul-o-Bayan’ is the story of the son of the mythical king of Sandaldip, who was born in the king’s declining years and at the age of twelve was abducted by a fairy. Having fallen in love with him, the fairy gave him a magic horse and during one of his jaunts on it, he himself fell in love with Princess Badr-e-Munir. Betrayed by a demon, he was cast into a well in the Caucasus mountain, from where he was rescued by Najm-un-Nisa, daughter of the Royal Minister who, having donned the dress of a jogan (woman mendicant) saved him by charming the son of the King of Jinns. The prince and the princess were reunited and Najm-un-Nisa wedded Firoz Shah, the Jinnee Prince. This is the version recorded by Dr Sadiq but Salman had his own take on it.
Mir Taqi Mir, though greatly devoted to Delhi, died neither here nor in his birthplace Agra, but in Lucknow in 1810. So also Sauda, his rival, who wrote a famous elegy on Delhi. Having been born in Kabul in 1713, Sauda came with his father to Delhi, who eventually died in the city. But somehow Salman was on the side of Mir who, like him, had to leave Agra in shame after an affair with a relative. Salman was under the impression that both were buried in Delhi. It is sad to note that Mir’s mazar was destroyed when a city railway station was built over it.
Salman quoted Momin Khan Momin with ease, especially the lines ‘Tum mere pas hote ho goya / jab doosra aur kohi nahin hota’. Strange as it might seem, Momin predicted his own death in verse, saying that he would fall and break his limbs and die in agony. This is what happened in 1851 and people like Salman visited his grave to see their future in visions. Mirza Ghalib’s tomb in Nizamuddin draws budding poets who get their kalaam (poetry) blessed by keeping it on his grave.
Hasrat Mohani (1875-1951) who moved from Ballimaran, during the freedom struggle, to the mosque opposite Parliament House, before becoming an MP, was a great lover of the female form (particularly with windblown tresses). But he left Delhi to die in Mohaan, at Unnao. His ghazal ‘Chupke Chupke’, immortalized by Ghulam Ali, gives an idea of his mindset, which fascinated Salman. Ustad Daagh Dehlvi died in Hyderabad in 1905 and his pupil, Muztar, laments ‘Ek Daagh tha so who bhi tau Muztar guzar gaya / Baqi raha hai kaun ab Hindostan mein’. Salman’s claim to have known Benjamin Montrose Muztar is unbelievable since the poet died long ago in Allahabad, but he did visit Hali’s grave in Panipat. Though his story of Mohammad Husain Azad’s spying mission on behalf of the Punjab Intelligence Dept. in British times to Bokhara and Khiv was embellished with a lot of gup, Azad did not die in Delhi like his idol Zauq, whose mazar Salman visited before Partition, after which it was demolished and a latrine built over it. But now a memorial to Bahadur Shah Zafar’s ustad has been erected on the spot in Paharganj. Salman couldn’t have known about it as he died earlier. One misses him as he first introduced this scribe to Delhi’s poetic heritage.
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Denizens of Viran Wali
ali off Malcha Marg, is still a wilderness area of sorts. In bygone days it must have been a jungle where the emperor and his retinue hunted and drank deeply – the spirit of the wild. Such lonely spots are fast disappearing from Delhi and hence it is a pleasure to visit Viran Wali on a winter afternoon when there is nothing else to do. A part of it is well-maintained but the rest is still overgrown with trees and shrubs where doves coo and monkeys chatter. In fact there are several families of monkeys here, each with its leader, a fat and proud patriarch who fiercely enforces discipline and protects the members of his tribe.
He has a harem as of several maidens, madams, mothers, gay gallants and young ones learning the tricks. Sometimes, the monkey horde raids the neighbouring areas, but otherwise it is well-cared for by people who stop by to feed the denizens of Viran Wali.
As for the birds, there are several varieties – doves, pigeons, mynas, parrots, crows, kites, woodpeckers, seven sisters, bulbuls, an occasional partridge and also peacocks. The woodpeckers feed in flocks, sitting on the ground like a group of nuns. The pigeons make love in quiet corners, the partridge hide in the foliage, the crows and kites engage in running battles with the monkeys, the bulbuls swing on tender branches, the mynas peck away at stray animals, the peacocks flaunt their tails as they stride majestically before the peahens. But the seven sisters rush from tree to tree in keeping with the legend that they are actually seven princesses turned into birds by their stepmother, who was a witch and wanted her own children to possess the kingdom. The seven sisters keep looking for the magic leaf which will help to dispel the charm and make them princesses again. So says the fable.
Viran Wali in medieval times had a number of hunting lodges, some built by Firoz Shah. A story worth recounting is about his successor who fell in love with a girl drawing water from a well in this wilderness. He went back to his palace and kept returning to meet the strange girl who had stolen his heart. But he did not get to marry her as one day she just disappeared. Whether she was killed by a wild animal, carried away by robbers, or murdered at the behest of a jealous queen is not known.
The name with which posterity remembers her is Viran Wali (girl of the wilds), though Wali also referred to localities in earlier times, in which case Viran Wali could mean wild area. In a corner is a grave revered as that of Viran Shah, a mendicant, around which some people have built huts and hung festoons as though celebrating a perpetual Urs. Perhaps it is an attempt to justify encroachment. But this should be nipped before Viran Wali loses its charm.
Incidentally it is said that Firoz Shah himself fell in love with a gypsy girl, for whom he built the Malcha Mahal, not far from Viran Wali. This mahal also served as his shikargarh. Later, its occupants were a prince and princess from Awadh, children of Begum Wilayat Mahal, who died under mysterious circumstances some years ago. Some say the begum, who had been given Malcha Mahal in compensation for her claim to ancestral property in Lucknow, took her own life by swallowing a diamond. On the Ridge, opposite Pusa Road, is Bhuli Bhatyari’s Mahal, which has now almost disappeared, except for the gate and boundary wall. This mahal is believed to have been built by Firoz Shah for a fair innkeeper or gram roaster who offered him water during a thirsty shikar trip. There are other stories about the mahal, linking it with Bhu Ali Bhatt, a nobleman. One would also like to associate it with another girl of the wilds, like Viran Wali… legends are more enchanting than factual history.
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Diwali by Candlelight
iwali comes with great expectations as the joy it kindles pervades all communities, especially Hindus for whom it is the second great festival of the year after Holi. But over the years a certain change has come about the celebration of the Feast of Lights. It’s noisier, with many crackers breaking the harmony of the evening. However, it was not so thirty years ago when one used to live in the Walled City, where women led their children through the galis by candlelight.
Before that, Diwali was even calmer. One is reminded of the time when diyas were bought by the basketful and outshone electric lights. One of the attractions those days was Diwali at the mills – DCM, Swatantra Bharat, and earlier the John’s Mills.
Nearly the entire city made a beeline for the mills to see the grand celebration of Diwali at which the Atish-Baaz set off fire works, fairy lamps burnt, coloured fountains played and soft music floated to the ears as the pretty women of the John family walked about in long trailing dresses to the hushed comments of awe and admiration. But after Partition, John’s mills fell on bad days and Diwali celebrations ceased there. However, the other seths continued to enliven the festival but the old charm was missing, and today few remember those glorious days and the family of phila
nthropists.
So ended the Diwali of a bygone era. However, the celebrations in Chandni Chowk until the 1970s followed the pattern of those times. The Chowk was the hub and centre, and all around it were the spokes of the wheel, as it were. At Fatehpuri, Mori Gate, Kashmiri Gate, Darya Ganj, Jama Masjid, Nai Sarak, and Chawri Bazaar, the shops wore a festive look days before Diwali – as they do now too. Sweetmeat-sellers, toy-sellers, grocers, general merchants, jewelers, and bullion dealers all seemed to be part of a similar medieval set-up.
Some of the sights are still there and the spectacle is grander, for now people are better off and celebrate accordingly. The widespread use of electric lights makes it a brighter Diwali year after year. But at the same time the sound of crackers grows louder and louder, though last time, mercifully High Court restrictions helped check the noise to an extent, which otherwise could be heard till the wee hours of the night.
But the nostalgia for the Diwali of yore lingers for the older folk and one sometimes dreams of the sublime ambience that attracted the Mughals too – Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jajan, Dara Shikoh, Jahandar Shah Rangila, Shah Alam, Akbar Shah Sani, and Bahadur Shah Zafar – who had a chiragh-khana and a dargah in charge of it.
For them it was Jashan-e-Chiraghan, a sibilant festival of lights, louder than the Shab-e-Raat, and brighter than the ancient Egyptian Roman and Chinese festival of lamps, though their wives and daughters did not climb the Qut’b Minar or the ramparts of the Red Fort to see the illuminations.
The Jashan-e-Chiraghan held sway in the mahals and courtyards where the giant light-wick diyas, 40-foot Akash diyas, ticks weighing 25 kgs each with candles and mashals vied with the jharfanoos to lend a perpetual glow to the gay and golden night which came few times in a year – Diwali, Nauroz, and on the emperor’s birthday. It was during these celebrations that Shah Jahan’s daughter Jahanara got badly burnt and was saved by a European doctor. You can imagine the festivities that followed!
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Easter Garden parties
aster garden parties were a special feature during the days of the Raj. A hundred years ago, notices were put out in the newspapers (for donation of clothes and other discarded articles to the poor) through the ‘letters to the editor’ column during spring cleaning before the festival and the subsequent departure of the sahib-logs to England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland to escape the hot weather. One such letter dated 11 March 1913 signed by a pastor from Mission Row, Calcutta published by the Statesman says that on receipt of a postcard, a chuprassi would be sent to collect the goods from donors.
In Delhi too, such communications were not uncommon. Here instead of Mission Row, it was the pastors of St Stephen’s Church Fatehpuri, members of the CMS Victoria Zenana Mission, Jama Masjid, and the residents and missionaries of Kashmiri Gate who issued appeals for charity to those going to Old Blighty or the hills, particularly Shimla, where the viceroy and his secretariat moved from Calcutta during the summer months (something like the annual shift of the J&K Government from Jammu to Srinagar).
But before that it was time for garden parties on the Ridge, in Nizamuddin and Mehrauli. A favourite spot for Easter picnics was Humayun’s Tomb and the monuments round about, like the mausoleum of Isa Khan and the garden of Bu Halima. ‘Bu’ was the short form for Bubu, a lady of the nobility but nobody really knew who she was and might have been a member of Humayun’s harem.
Parties on the Ridge, just across Rajpur Road, were planned at the Delhi Club, opposite Qudsia Garden. From the Club, the picnickers went to the Ridge via Ludlow Castle Road (now Raj Nivas Marg). The favourite sport indulged in before lunch there was rabbit-hunting. Hares were abundant and became the favourite symbol of the traditional Easter Bunny. Wading into medieval history, it is well known that the emperors Akbar and Jahangir took part in Christmas and Easter festivities, which included the burning of the effigy of Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed Christ. The British had borrowed some customs from those times as practised by the early Armenian Christians of the Mughal Court, like eating of the pascal lamb on Maundy Thursday and pre-dawn Easter visit to cemeteries. A procession carrying the life-size statue of the dead Christ on a bier was taken out on Good Friday from Akbar’s Church in Agra to the singing of dirges and the Lamentations of Prophet Jeremiah. After a round of the huge compound with incense sticks and candles burning around it, amidst a profusion of marigold garlands, the statue was returned with due ceremony in the exquisitely made church crypt for another year.
The Easter parties of the Skinners in Nicholson Road are still remembered by old Delhiwalahs. Those who attended them at different times included Canon Allnut, the Heatherleys, the Riberios, Sir Malcom Hailey, Sir Maurice Gwyer, Sir Henry Gidney, Deputy Municipal Commissioner Beadon, ‘the Nawab of Kashmiri Gate’ (sic), Lala Sultan Singh, and a much sought-after pretty lady Winifried, a near-Skinner relation who eventually married the famous surgeon Dr C.B. Singh. One of her sons-in-law, Vice-Admiral Johnson commanded the Indian Coast Guard and the other one, Julian Francis gained recognition in the Andrew Yule tea gardens in Assam. The last of the Skinners in the capital, Brig. Michael Skinner died some years ago and that was the end of their parties in Delhi, Hansi, and Mussoorie.
The Easter lunch parties of Nikhil Kumar, former Commissioner of Police, Delhi, in Akbar Road were also remarkable. Some of his guests who drew attention were the late Archbishop Alan De Lastic, his assistant, Bishop Vincent Concassao, and Dr John Dayal of the Dalit Christian movement. The hostess, Mrs Kumar was not only in charge of the decorations, but also of the menu, which included pies and tarts, reminiscent of the ones made by the Queen of Hearts and stolen by the nursery rhyme Knave of Hearts ‘all on a summer’s day’.
A weird guest at the party, who must have been in his eighties, recounted an interesting story about a missing bunny rabbit, especially made for Miss Miranda Gwyer, daughter of the first vice-chancellor of Delhi University, after whom Miranda House is named. The bunny was ordered from a confectionery shop in Kashmiri Gate but when the time for delivery came on Easter morning it could not be found. A hurried search was made to avoid embarrassment and it was traced to Bombay House, the residence of ‘Old Lewis’ in Ludlow Castle Road. By oversight the bunny was packed with the Easter goodies meant for Louis Sahib’s party and he was only too glad to return it. Miss Miranda (christened so after the heroine of Shakespeare’s play The Tempest), Nikhil Kumar and his Easter parties are now part of memory, like the rumbustious Bombay House, which has become a home for priests.
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Epical Comparisons
he Purana Qila never ceases to amaze students of history. The Delhi High Court order directing the mahant of Kunti Mata temple to vacate the area occupied by him and his family for the past three decades is the latest development in the fort’s 3,000-year-old history. Kunti Devi, the mother of the five Pandava brothers, used to pray at this temple when Yudhishthira was ruling in Hastinapur. The Qila was a part of his capital of Indraprastha that is supposed to have been an Ilium of sorts, where the Trojan king Priam who, like Dhiritrashtra also had 100 sons, ruled. One sometimes wonders at its similarity with the Purana Qila, which was not known by that name then. The war between the Trojans and the Greeks took place some 3,000 years ago and that too over a woman, Helen of Sparta, just as beautiful as Draupadi whom the Kuravas, the cousins of the Pandavas had insulted. In the case of Helen, it was her seduction by Paris of Troy that had led her husband Menelaus to form the Greek confederacy for the invasion of Ilium. Helen was finally taken away after a ten-year war in which Paris and nearly all his 100 brothers had been killed. Something akin to the fate of the Kauravas. Aeneas, one of the surviving Trojans, went on to found a principality which later gave birth to Rome. Just as the surviving Pandava descendant (Parikshit) went on to establish a new kingdom. So to draw a comparison between the Purana Qila and Ilium is not far-fetched. The other Greek classic, The Odyssey by Homer corresponds to the wanderings of the hero Ulysses with the fourteen-year exile of Rama and his re
turn after the rescue of the kidnapped Sita to Ayodhya. Penelope, the wife of Ulysses was also united with him (after being harassed by several suitors) after a decade.
When one visits the Purana Qila all these thoughts cross one’s mind. Kunti built a temple in it to honour her favourite gods and goddesses but it is surprising that no temple of hers dedicated to Surya, the sun god exists there. It was Surya who had first fallen in love with Kunti while she was still unmarried. It happened while the princess was taking a stroll on her palace roof after a bath that the sun god got infatuated with her and she became pregnant with Karan, the son born out of wedlock and the half-brother of the Pandavas. The affair with Surya did not take place at the Old Fort but at Kunti’s paternal home. The child Karan was brought up by a royal charioteer and it was only when Karan, as the chief warrior of the Kaurvas in the Mahabharata war, disclosed his identity that his mother recognized him but she did not make his body invincible, like Dhirudhan was by his mother Gandhari except for the portion covered by the underwear. (The Greek hero of the Trojan War, Achilles was also made invincible by his goddess-mother in infancy, who dipped him in the river of hell, Styx, except for the heel held in her palm.) The meeting with Karan could have taken place at the Purana Qila, where Kunti lived after giving birth to five sons from her husband, Pandu, the younger brother of Dhirithrastra, who unfortunately died early.
