Delhi

by R V Smith

  The Nizamuddin Well is about as old as the Baoli and is said to have provided water to the khanqah of Hazrat Nizamuddin, where Prince Juna (later Mohammed Bin Tughlaq) and Hassan Gangoo, founder of the Bahmani empire in the Deccan, were among the regular visitors. There are several wells in the Purana Qila and the Red Fort, for providing drinking water and for irrigation facilities. Some of those murdered during the later Mughal era were thrown into the wells in the fort – as happened during the Mutiny time too. Safdarjang’s Tomb, Humayun’s Tomb, and Safdarjang Enclave also have wells as does Mehrauli, which as a profusion of them. For that matter, several houses in Chandni Chowk and other areas of Old Delhi still have wells inside them, though INTACH has listed only about twenty-five in the whole capital.

  Some wells, whose names only survive now, were Beriwala Kuan, Laundon ka Kuan (well of gay boys), Randion ka Kuan (prostitutes’ well) in Chawri Bazaar, where the Red Light area was originally situated, and Chirimaron ka Kuan or the well where birdcatchers were found. Neem ka Kuan had a neem tree above it. Pipal ka Kuan a peepul tree and Kikar Ka Kuan, a kikar or babool tree. In Naraina there was Macchmaron ka Kuan or well of fishermen but the well which awed people upto the 1970s was the one in a field, now taken over by Inderpuri colony. It was supposed to be haunted afternoon, evening, and night. But now all this is part of the gossip of old fogeys.

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  Shearing innocence of the lambs

  n a month’s time after February, the lambs born in the old quarter of Delhi would have grown enough wool to require shearing. You will see them lying on the road with the shearer’s knee on their throats looking as silly as only sheep can look. They do not know what is happening to them, but they seem to enjoy it and perhaps know that the fleecing will give them relief from the heat. The shearers are from Rajasthan, which has a sizable population of sheep. But after business is over, they move to neighbouring areas like Delhi, Haryana, and Agra in search of work.

  The ewes are mostly confined to houses in the thickly-populated localities of Delhi. But the rams are openly trained for fighting. They are taught to butt against the palm of their master’s hand and later to fight among themselves. And before their horns grow they would have tested their strength against tree trunks and walls in order to be ready for the Sunday evening bout in the grounds opposite the Red Fort.

  Big bets are laid and garlanded rams, looking very self-conscious, are taken in procession through the streets to the arena with drums beating the call to battle. A lucky owner might make as much as 50,000 rupees on a bet. But remembering the evening of watching the shearers at work, the young ones tossed a careless glance at their adversaries of the future and snuggled closer to the ewes, after all they were still as innocent as lambs.

  The silence of the lambs can be associated with timidity. The famous painting of the Lady with the Fawn can be rivaled by one of Rachel with the sheep, while Jacob waits to introduce himself to his cousin and future wife. The Italian priest Father Luke of St Mary’s Church, Old Delhi, prized this painting highly.

  Whenever a curious visitor questioned him about it, he would come out with the following quotation, ‘As he (Jacob) looked at the well in the field he saw three flocks of sheep lying there beside it, for out of the well the flock were watered. Then he saw Rachel coming with the sheep, the daughter of his mother’s brother, Jacob went up and rolled the stone from the well’s mouth and watered the flock of his mamu Laban. He then kissed Rachel and wept aloud.’

  Incidentally, it was not far from the church that the shearers worked. Father Luke was among the few – some fifty years ago – who would crusade against cruelty to animals. He would request the owners of the lambs not to get them slaughtered. And since most of them were Muslims who believed in the Old Testament, Father Luke would have his way. ‘Better to go without lambskin caps than destroy these innocent symbols of God’s love,’ he would say.

  However, sheep and lamb were still exported in large numbers by livestock dealers, most of them from Haryana. Goods trains carrying them even now pass by Delhi Cantonment station. Let’s take a look at one of them.

  Ramu sits on one wagon, all cooped up like the man on the moon, lost to the world at large. A lantern swings above his head and there is the unmistakable smell of hay around him with which he is so familiar. He hardly feels that he is away from his post in the fields for the mooing of the sheep keeps him attuned to the rural scene.

  He started life as a shepherd taking the goats and sheep out in adjoining Rajasthan. The goats fed on the hard scanty vegetation or on the aroo leaves, which he broke for them with the long crook he carried in his hand. The goats were hardy and tough but the sheep, being sheep, were meek to the point of stupidity, jumping into the same pit if the leader did.

  Later, they left the goats and sheep and went to look after the buffaloes and cows in Haryana. The cows are opinionated he thinks. But the sheep can be moody, running about without provocation, posing a danger both to themselves and to the passers-by.

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  Splendour in the Grass

  he splendour in the grass’ is there for all to see and admire in the capital these days. See the expansive green belt in Harinagar, where grass and eucalyptus trees greet the eye and the magic of the rains begins to work. Mynas, woodpeckers, mute bulbuls, pigeons, doves, and sparrows peck in the grass, disturbed now and then by a crow or a swooping kite or the restless brain fever bird with its plaintive cry for water much like the harassed citizens of Delhi though on a different note.

  A whole family of woodpeckers feed together. They look very much like a group of nuns out on a Sunday picnic, for there is a certain poise and dignity as they move about. The doves come down for a quick worm or two and then fly back to the trees from where they coo one at a time like a devotee at his chant. The crows do tease them from time to time but are chased away, while the pigeons make love in discreet corners where peace just seems to drip like the morning dew.

  Far away is the hullabaloo of men and buses on the move, and far away too are the mundane worries as you watch this scene and count the buffaloes grazing in the distance. Soon the goats will be out and then the former will move to greener pastures.

  Will these pleasures be there after another fifty years? Perhaps the open spaces will make way for concrete houses for the teeming millions. But as of now the scene is idyllic with the skies loaded with clouds that sometimes part to allow the sun to peep at the goings on below.

  You walk across the fields of grass and come across men armed with scythes and sickles resting under the shade of a tree. It’s their job to keep the grass down wherever it has outgrown itself. But as they go about their task one might as well pity the grass like old Sadi who saw it bloom amidst the roses and in the crevices of old monuments and palaces. It was plucked out and wept, ‘Ours has no place there though in the garden of the lord we grew.’ Now they do the plucking with impunity on the pavements and roadsides to prevent the electric and telephones lines from getting clogged. But not all grass would be cut down so soon, for all through sawan until bhadon the good earth will sprout it in abundance, even where the scythe has wrought the havoc of the reaper.

  A rain hut stands below a tree as you turn from the iron and steel market into the road leading to Inderpuri and then on to the prestigious Pusa Institute. Nobody calls it the ‘rain hut’, but it is there for those who peep into the nursery that uses it as a greenhouse. When the sun shines at its brightest, the hut is the coolest spot in the area. And when the sky darkens with rain clouds you feel some hidden connection between the two as you hurry to take shelter in the hut.

  Rain houses have been a special feature of India from ancient times. The rajas and raos had them in their gardens and the Mughals added to their beauty. The Sawan-Bhadon pavilion in the Red Fort is just one example of an idea borrowed from sun-baked Rajasthan where the Rajputs witnessed monsoons surrounded by lakes or ponds.

  When the British came, they did not know that rain could be a reason for cele
bration. But long exposure to sunlight taught them something more than ‘the rain in Spain stays mostly in the plain’. They were convinced of the joys of the rainy season – the perennial Abdar.

  The Muslims, of course, had learnt of these joys earlier and added to the poetry of the monsoon. Besides Khusrau, Rahim, and others, we have Nazir, Mir, Zauq, Ghalib, and those who came in the twentieth century extolling barsat ki raat and lovers’ meetings prolonged by the rain, the thrill of lightning, and the roll of thunder.

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  Spring Festival

  ew perhaps know that the first celebration of Basant Panchmi during the Delhi Sultanate began in AD 1200, some decades before the birth of Hazrat Nizamuddin. This venue used to be what later came to be known as the Turkman Gate area (as briefly mentioned earlier). In the reign of Firoz Shah Tughlaq, the celebration was at Bhuli Bhatiyari ka Mahal, opposite present-day Karol Bagh’s Link Road. Bhuli Bhatiyari is identified with a fair innkeeper with whom Firoz is said to have fallen in love in the month of Basant. Sir Sayyid Ahmed Khan, however, says that the mahal was the palace of a nobleman, Bu Ali Bhatti, whose name in course of time was corrupted to Bhuli Bhatiyari. Kite-flying competitions at the palace, now just a ruined gateway, were the highlight, with yellow flags fluttering about in the balmy breeze. Even up to the 1970s one found manja (kite-string) makers using the palace ground to wind up yards and yards of string in the charkhis (reels) used by the kite-fliers. One doesn’t see them anymore, but Basant Kumars and Basantis are a dime a dozen (though none of the latter drives a tonga like the cute Basanti from the film Sholay). However, there have been outstanding Basant-born people too. In recent times Vasant Sathe was a well-known name, one-time Maharastra strongman Vasant Dada Patil, Basanti Sanyal – a rare beauty and before them Basant Kumar Biswas, who was hanged in the (Lord) Hardinge Bomb Conspiracy Case of 1912. No wonder yellow or saffron bags (jholas) have become a symbol of martyred patriots. The most romantic season, after Sawan, Basant, interestingly enough, was celebrated in pre-Sultanate times at the Yog Maya Mandir, in Mehrauli.

  Nizamuddin Auliya became fond of Basant in middle age, when he was passing through a bereavement – the death of his beloved nephew Taqqiuddin Nuh. His concerned chief disciple, Amir Khusrau, wearing yellow garments, danced before him to dissipate the gloom – first making the saint smile and then laugh. After that Basant became an annual feature at his khankah (abode), a custom still observed by his descendants, the Hasan Nizamis, with qawwalis. In Mughal times Akbar and Jahangir got attracted to the festival of spring, which was celebrated in a grand manner at Humayun’s Tomb to the strains of Basant ragas. Jahangir particularly relished the season because of his love for nature – the flowers, birds, and bees, which found expression in his paintings. Among the later Mughals, before Mohd Shah Rangila, Muizuddin Jahandar Shah picked his concubines at this time, among whom Lal Kanwar and Zohra found pride of place. His nephew Mohd Farrukhsiyar was more interested in state intrigues with the Sayyid brothers but Rafi-ush-Shan, father of Shah Jahan II (1719), is said to have lost his heart to a village belle in a Basanti sari, carrying a pitcher on her head. That he did not get to marry her is another story. During the reign of Akbar Shah Sani and Bahadur Shah Zafar, Basant got good patronage.

  Isn’t it a curious fact that once the biggest Basant Mela was held outside the Kotla of Feroze Shah. The mela during Zafar’s time was held behind the Red Fort, with the emperor watching it along with his begums from the open space between the Shahi Hammams and Dewan-e-Khas. The Basant mela of Raja Hindu Rao Ghatke was also a prominent fair in those days. Urdu poetry in that age found a worthy subject in the festival, with Nazir Akbarabadi (1740-1830) and others lauding it in eloquent verse. As a boy, Ghalib used to fly yellow kites from the roof of the Kala Mahal in Agra, where he was born until, like Mir Taqi Mir, he came to Delhi and had to restrain his enthusiasm for Basant under the tutelage of a stem guardian after his father’s untimely death – but not for long as it found an outlet in his exquisite poetry.

  When Pusa Institute came up in the 1930s, the residents of the villages of Todapur-Dasghara and present-day Inderpuri (whose land it was earlier) used to flock to the mustard fields of Pusa to celebrate Basant with song and dance. Now too, these mustard fields are a pleasant sight even for those passing by in DTC buses, though no flags are flown there, like at the Yog Maya temple, to gauge wind direction and predict the weather, for the saying goes ‘As the weather at Basant, so will it be till Holi’. With it goes the rustic wisdom ‘Ayo Basant, pala uranth’ (come Basant and ground frost flees). But the most popular one perhaps is ‘A love affair in Basant finds fruition at Sawan’. Prince Rafi-ush-Shan’s bitter experience, however seems to belie this adage.

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  Tales of Allah Diya

  llauddin Bhai came to Agra from a village in Aligarh district and then to Delhi but never went back home again, though he continued to cherish fond memories of his birthplace, like Goldsmith’s ‘Sweet Auburn’ where parting summer’s blooms lingered the longest. Working at a fuel store (taal) of timber logs and planks, he became a sort of legend in his lifetime, acquiring the pet name of Allah Diya (like the Sufi saint of that name mentioned in Sadia Dehlvi’s book on Delhi’s shrines). Well this Allah Diya was a pseudo-Sufi who had the natural intelligence of a man who judged things by the rule of thumb, a modern-day Kabir with a penchant for telling tales replete with rural wisdom such as, ‘if your neighbours say the cat carried away the camel, reply, Yes, oh yes, I saw it’.

  He never married though his friendship for a handsome boy made him the butt of many a joke. Raffo enjoyed the relationship as it assured him of good pocket money and the best milk and rabri from Hardayal’s shop, after he came back from work at a factory where wages were low but enough for him to add to the family kitty. His father, Sirajuddin, was a poor earner who could barely provide for his wife and children.

  Dressed in dhoti-kurta with a Gandhi cap (he never wore shirt and trousers) Allah Diya was much sought after by satta gamblers who pledged small sums every day on the future cotton market rates of New York and the handi gambling of Ballabhgarh. While the New York betting earned the lucky winner 10 rupees for every rupee pledged, the handi chits fetched just four rupees per rupee. The closing cotton market rates, however gave much more. Allah Diya’s calculations were based on a close study of the quotations of the previous three days. He kept adding and subtracting with a pencil stub on empty cigarette packets, although he himself smoked only bidis. Besides he dreamt about the end-numbers of quotations for which he credited the women saints of Delhi-Hazrat Mai Sahiba, mother of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya, Bibi Fatima of Sam, Bibi Noor and Bibi Hoor, Bibi Qarsum Khatoon, Zainab Bibi, and some others. Allauddin Bhai made frequent visits to their shires, sometimes on foot and sometimes on a rickety old bicycle. He only made token offering and lit joss sticks on the graves and then sat down to meditate before making his final predictions. It was not only mystic business for he had the quaint notion that gay sex sent a strange sensation to the brain, cleaning the mind of cobwebs and making one master the magic of numbers. Whatever may be the truth behind this assumption, it cannot be denied that his calculations seldom went wrong and the people who thronged his home in a little disused piau (water hut) usually made it good in the satta bazaar. There was a butcher called Jamalu who had left his shop to his sons and tuned a siddha (one who has acquired the half-way stage of being a majzoob or mystic). Jamalu was Allauddin Bhai’s rival. While the Bhai’s forte was his liaison with Raffo, the latter went about with the effeminate son of a bullion merchant of Dariba whose intimacy had ‘aided’ him in attaining siddhi, or so it was said.

  But then came the crash: Raffo went away to Karachi, leaving Allah Diya heartbroken, and Jamalu died, while his protégé Suraj went back to his hereditary business of selling gold and silver bangles. Allauddin Bhai’s followers slowly began to desert him as his calculations were no longer accurate and one of his chelas, Alimo, a part-time qawwal, began to draw his clientele. H
owever, Raffo’s framed photo continued to occupy pride of place in the piau and occasional letters from him provided some comfort to the dejected man. He could however not bear the strain for long and was stricken with paralysis. Both his legs were affected, which made him crawl to the grave of the Sada Suhag (fakir who dresses like a woman) in the Takia (resting place), where he never failed to make offerings. One summer day Allah Diya was found dead and was buried next to the nineteenth-century grave. Sadia’s book revived memories of this unusual satta gambler and of his love for Raffo and the women mystics.

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  Tales Ridge Monuments Tell

  t is surprising that the monuments marking the Mutiny of 1857 which, inadvertently, are also memorials to our First War of Independence, are among the best kept in Delhi. Take the Flagstaff Tower in Kamla Park, near Delhi University, where the British put up their last stand against the rebel sepoys. Both the park and the tower are in the best state of preservation. The only detraction are the monkeys who live in hordes on the surroundings trees and snatch bananas from visitors. Among them are mainly foreign tourists, some of whose grandparents fought as members of the East India Company’s force, and old men from the nearby areas who come for morning and evening outings, armed with walking sticks. They sit on the benches and talk about what their ancestors told them of those days when the sepoys and a large number of residents of the Walled City and Old Sabzimandi made a concerted attack on the spot where now the Flagstaff Tower stands. Among them was Budh Singh, a wrestler who fought with sword and spear and instilled terror in the hearts of his opponents. The freedom fighters were beaten back but Budh Singh, while retreating, rescued a pregnant Mem. Instead of taking her to his house, as a hostage or a prized catch for his zenana, (like Shashi Kapoor, hero of the film Junoon, did) he saw her safely off on the road to Karnal, to which town most of the British fugitives were fleeing in retreat. The only recorded case of a pregnant feringhi woman, who later delivered a child during the monsoon rain, however is that of Harriet Tytler, wife of Capt. Peter Tytler. The unnamed woman rescued by Budh Singh does not find mention anywhere but is still the subject of gossip.