A Place Within

by M G Vassanji

  In 2002, Ahmedabad suffered yet another of these orgies of violence.

  The old city of Ahmedabad, situated west of Sabarmati river and connected by bridges to the newer developments, is a sharp contrast to Old Delhi, Shahjahanabad. The latter still has a medieval feel to it; regardless of anything else, there remains some continuity, history still abides in its narrow streets and alleys presided over by the fort and the grand mosque. People are aware of the past. Not so Ahmedabad, uneasy with time and history. No one built a New Ahmedabad, and so the old one has had to simply make do, patching, adapting, resoling. Streets have been widened, gates destroyed, prosaic structures squeezed in to replace the old. If history seemed ignored to my eyes when I first went to Delhi, here it seems to have been beaten on the head. Not surprisingly, Ahmedabad is not a tourist destination. Searching the catalogues of three major libraries, I could not find a book in English describing the city; I’m not sure one exists.

  Still, this is an historic city, there must be a story to every stone here. You just have to scratch for it. But it is a city to keep returning to; it bewitches you the more you discover of it. We have put up at a modest hotel on Relief Road, in the Teen Darwaza area, close to the river. The owner is from Siddhpur, an ancient city north of here. You should go there, he says. We plan to. Outside, the day is a blur: hot, sunny, dusty, traffic pouring along the street as if from a spout, the wonder of life throbbing in all its variety and colour all around. At such moments, even with the heat bearing down, it seems a privilege to have got away from life’s mundane chores, to be out on a quest, at large in this intriguing, frustrating city. A quest for what? We are not sure, but we hit the footpaths.

  Walking along Relief Road, we turn right into a small street to head towards the famous great mosque of the city—built by Ahmed Shah, the founder of the city, what better place to start from?—when suddenly we find ourselves at the entrance to a shrine. It’s called the Pir Mohamed Shah Dargah, and doesn’t look very exciting, but on a whim we stroll in. A few people are about, tending to the place. There is a mosque to one side, and a tank in the middle of the compound for ablutions. Across from the mosque is the mausoleum of the pir, a modest structure with four small domes and a verandah with many arches. Inside is the grave, covered with a red and green chaddar. At the far end of the compound are guest rooms, presumably for pilgrims. What’s striking here is the dark, cool shade of the interiors, away from the glaring sun beating down outside and all around. We are told we should see the library. What kind of library could there possibly be here? It’s easy to be skeptical and turn out looking foolish, and this is one such moment. As directed, we climb up a flight of stone stairs situated near the entrance, walk along a corridor and come upon an amazing sight: beyond the entrance lie three rooms, leading one from another, people sitting behind desks, bookshelves along the walls, a catalogue system chart posted on a board. A research library.

  We are asked who we are, then a guide is assigned to us, a retired man who volunteers. There are several hundred manuscripts here, he says, as he shows us the contents of a glass display case containing about a dozen examples. Handwritten Qurans, a manuscript of a work by the great traveller and scientist Alberuni, another with the seal of Ahmed Shah, the founder of this city, upon it. There is no way of telling, of course, how true these attributions are, but the specimens look old and are evidently much prized. There is a manuscript strip several feet long with a verse written on it; within each character are inscribed, microscopically, parts of the Quran so that the whole of the Book is contained in the verse.

  With all this treasure, the library looks unprotected against fire, riot, theft. Against fire, the man tells us, they have extinguishers; and then there is God. It is the kind of place that, with its naive fragility, could suddenly cease to exist one day. My companion is the irrepressible Mahesh from Delhi, and as we sit and drink the tea offered to us, he gives the man a long lecture on the importance of preserving all the treasure that is housed here and making sure that there are copies. The library receives a government subsidy, the man says, and the department responsible has restrictions on the making of copies, in case the originals get damaged. A discussion ensues on methods of preservation.

  Outside, we are back on a short but busy street; old, once-elegant balconied houses jostle against each other, barely upright. This is a street of shoe stores, from which lead off smoky residential alleys. Further on, a poorer section—a butcher crouched on the ground chopping meat for customers, cots outside houses, children playing (and staring). We come upon the main Gandhi Road, and find more shoe stores, lock and hardware stores, twine stores; in front of them, sidewalk vendors selling juice, fruit and vegetables, handkerchiefs and underwear, slippers, jewellery, luggage, one after another, so that it can be hard to get through into the street. It is the colour and the names on the signs that gives each place its character and distinction, stand in for architecture. Intermittently, bicycles piled like flies upon a piece of meat. Bright billboards shading the balconies. And then the mosque.

  The Jama Masjid of Ahmed Shah was completed in 1423. Its majesty is marred by the fact that its minarets are absent, having been destroyed by an earthquake in 1819, and its front facade is lined with stalls, leaving only the entrance visible. There is a man who sits on the steps to look after the shoes, but we take ours in our hands, as we see others do, and proceed up to a vast square courtyard contained on three sides by walls carved with inscriptions in tall Arabic characters, presumably from the Quran. The fourth side has the prayer hall. There is a large covered pool in the centre where a few people do their ablutions before proceeding to the hall. The roofed section of the mosque is supported by a thick forest of pillars, about three hundred in number. A magnificent central archway constitutes the main entrance into the hall, flanked by lesser arched accesses. The entranceway is intricately carved, an example of the Indo-Saracenic style. Very few people are about, and they sit quietly and privately in prayer, away from each other. Two girls in blue and yellow chaddars at the entrance add a sudden dash of exotic colour to the old red sandstone background. They must be tourists. The electrical cables strung about among the pillars, the speakers attached to the ancient walls, the tube lights, the electric fans, the cheap clock, and the scaffolding are ugly reminders of today. The exigencies of daily life, the importance of prayer, leave no time for the appreciation of architecture, the contemplation of history. In the distance, above the walls, loom the drab modern buildings we left behind to enter here.

  As I turn to go, waiting for my companion, who potters around near the entrance to frame just the right photograph to add to the multitude of Indian images he has captured in his lifetime, I experience a certain sense of bleak wonder. This vast, plain prayer ground, in the middle of it now a slight young man in white robe and white cap knelt in prayer, how empty it looks, and forlorn; how different this space from the enclosing, intimate, and perhaps oppressive space of even a large cathedral, or a temple clamouring with carvings and statues. How different are the senses of God represented in them. I imagine for this young man a distant, patriarchal, and even haughty Allah; but then he goes to a dargah to seek assistance from a pir, a man who could grapple with that distant patriarch.

  On the opposite side of the prayer hall, at the eastern end, is a gateway that leads outside to the tomb of Ahmed Shah. The area is dirty and neglected, and endowed with a faint odour of urine. The path is littered; there is a goat or two running around, an overturned trash can, dysfunctional push carts, a parked scooter, a discarded mattress. Two kids ask us for pens, then chocolates, finally rupees. A man carving a red block of stone tells us it is for repairs to the mosque. Further on we reach the royal tomb, a rectangular stone building with a verandah and three rooms, the central one of which is the dingiest and contains the grave of Ahmed Shah, shrouded in a cloth of green with red borders, as well as those of a son and a grandson, who followed him as sultans. On the walls, badly framed pictures of the Kaaba, a mosqu
e, and Quranic sayings. Elsewhere, an oil lamp, a money chest for donations, two threadbare carpets, gaudy fixtures. Everything is makeshift, a hand-me-down; there is an air, here, of neglect, ignorance, and poverty. People come to pray in this place, I don’t know why—perhaps there are families that trace their roots to the sultan. The two other rooms also contain graves. The place has been looked after by the same family for nine generations, I am told by a woman, who now has the job with her epileptic son, who has two front teeth missing. They earn nine hundred rupees (twenty-three dollars approximately) a month, paid by a committee, and she earns money part time by constructing paper flowers and such for sale in the bazaar. There is another son who works in the city.

  Thus, the founder of Ahmedabad. The site is protected by the Archaeological Survey of India; but just outside the monument lie four carved stones broken away and perhaps destined for the market. Nearby, a goat rooting among the garbage, a chai shop selling excellent tea at a mere two and a half rupees a cup. There are no other customers about.

  In the British Raj, musicians would sit at the entrance of the mausoleum with their instruments, singing verses three times a day. An urs festival was held once a year in honour of the dead sultan. And khichdi, poor people’s fare consisting of boiled rice and daal, was distributed daily from this site. The expenses for all that were paid from the government treasury.

  Past this site, after two cups of tea each, we enter the Manek Chowk market, which begins with a line of stores selling printed cloth, the owners or their assistants sitting in the wide doorways inviting you in as you pass. The one we patronize is world-renowned, belying its modest appearance. A narrow staircase leads to a second floor, a riot of colours and a whiff of cotton dust. The cloth is printed in Kutch and, while you sit on the proffered bench to inspect it, the owner, in impeccable white kurta-pyjamas, will spend as much time as required, spreading out his samples on the floor, from the more modest to the most exquisite, to suit your needs. The price is non-negotiable. After this uplifting experience we arrive at a bustling outdoor market, its stalls makeshift or permanent, displaying spices, cassettes, CDs and DVDs, decorations, dried and fresh fruits, worship paraphernalia, candies and paan masala, gift cards with coins attached to add auspiciousness, all in such a brilliant display of colour as to dazzle the eye. Behind these stalls, more clothing merchants. Then, right beside this section of the market, comes a shabby, quieter section, in the midst of which we have been told is the Rani no Hajiro—the Mausoleum of the Queens, where lie buried the queens of Ahmed Shah. We walk through a short, narrow, crowded street and finally find it, behind a row of stalls. How do we go in? we ask a hawker. Go round the corner, ask the aunty for the key, he tells us; it’s self-service. We turn the corner, find the aunty, an impressive-looking woman with a white dupatta around her hennaed hair, her mouth red with paan, sitting with two other women on a metal charpai surrounded by junk. Behind her, steps lead up to a verandah and the tombs. There’s the key, she says, it’s hanging from a nail on a board. We climb up the steps of the mausoleum to a gritty verandah covered with charpais, bundles of merchandise, trunks, furniture, and more junk. A teenage girl sits on the floor playing with a toddler. And silent, muted witnesses humbled by time: ancient columns, fragments of wall carvings, delicate latticework, all covered in grime. The door is blue, oil painted; we open the padlock, step in. There, in an unswept, neglected, broken courtyard open to the weather, lie three queens in their graves, draped in old chaddars: Mugalibibi, Mirakibibi, and Hazaribibi. We stare a couple of minutes, then close and lock the door, greet the girl and toddler, and leave. As we depart, after thanking the aunty, the stall-keepers grumble about how the government doesn’t preserve this precious heritage. They could do with some tourist business, obviously.

  Ahmedabad, indeed Gujarat, is full of such neglected historical sites and architectural wonders. Perhaps there is simply too much of the past to cope with, written and rewritten, fragmentary and disputed; all of it seems to relate to sultans and rajas. If there is glory to remember, someone’s victory is someone else’s defeat, and memories are long, they are convenient. If history is taught in comic-book versions of us-versus-them, it’s better that history itself has such a low premium. Better to keep your eyes on the future; on the stock markets and cricket scores; on globalization and the GDP; on America and China. And history can be revisited when it’s less personal and wounding.

  The market, Manek Chowk, is named after a fabled saint called Maneknath Godaria who—legend tells us—when the walls of Ahmed Shah’s new city were going up, would every evening unravel the threads of a quilt he was weaving, whereupon the day’s construction would all come tumbling down. The sultan was understandably annoyed and sent for the holy man. He asked him what other wonders he could perform, and Maneknath replied that he could enter a badna, a teapot-like vessel, and emerge from its spout. Show me, the sultan said. Maneknath entered the vessel, whereupon the sultan quickly closed off the spout with his finger, thus smothering the saint.

  A short walk from the tomb of queens, right in the midst of the market, is an exceedingly modest temple dedicated to Maneknath, who it seems was a very real figure, magician or not. We are met there by a woman and her son, the caretakers, who give us a very confusing account of Maneknath’s sect. There is an inner room, with the shrine, and an outer room, which has a fridge with a variety of soft drinks for sale. We buy our Limcas, make a modest donation, and leave.

  Further on, in the vicinity of the rather elegant old stock-market building—where in the Share Mania of the 1860s numerous people lost their fortunes—comes the jewellery market, the shopkeepers all looking out hopefully, there being not much business at this hour. A villager with a stiff, upright bearing, in the typical rustic white dhoti, white overshirt, and a high folded white turban, walks into a goldsmith’s store and sits down on the floor. We wonder what this patriarch will come out with, perhaps there’s a wedding in the village, but he takes his time. Walking further on, we pass the utensils market, gleaming with brass and aluminum ware—a brass bell catches my eye, reminds me of the one we had in my high school, which surely must have been cast in Gujarat—and come to a vegetable market with fresh produce and more than a dozen kinds of vegetables: long purple wormlike moghra, the tenderest okra, small green peppers, guar, green bananas, baingan (egg-plants) of all shapes and sizes, to name a few. Mahesh is like a kid in a candy store. We buy what in my childhood we used to call English imli, a tender, mild version of the tamarind, which here is the red, rather than white, variety. Its seeds Mahesh hopes to plant back at his farm.

  And finally on to Gandhi Road. Back in the hotel we have imli and watermelon for lunch.

  At Fernandes Bridge is the Chopda Bazar, the paper and book market: stalls piled upon stalls in a narrow maze of alleys, selling paper, notebooks, envelopes, and books, mostly school and college texts, on shelves and piled on the floor. In some cases it’s impossible even to push through inside to browse; you stand at the door and make your request, and a book makes its way to you from somewhere inside, or magically appears behind you, or it is recommended you inquire elsewhere. But ask for a book in English on Gujarati history, and you get a look that says, Are you kidding? The last such book, a very good one, was published in the 1930s by a Parsi with the intriguing name of Commissariat, and then nothing else appeared until a recent exhaustive survey by Yagnik and Sheth. But this one touches on the politics of communalism and therefore has met with dead silence in the state. I find it in Delhi.

  For Gujaratis, business is of overriding importance. I did not have to be told this in Baroda or Ahmedabad, this knowledge was part of my growing up, it was in the blood, so to speak. And so the pride of modern Ahmedabad, across the river, where we wander off briefly, is the prestigious Indian Institute of Management. A degree from here can land a graduate, it is said with envy and wonder, a salary on an American scale. Everyone from this area of the city, you can be sure, has someone in America. Some Gujaratis even ca
ll their state the fifty-first state. We pass an American pizza store with the Stars and Stripes proudly displayed, and next to it a not-insignificant Statue of Liberty outside a storefront. We pass a mile-long strip of jewellery stores before heading back to the old city, where vendors run after us desperate to sell cotton kurta-pyjama suits for any price, starting at two hundred rupees, or four dollars, and coming down finally to a ludicrous fifty. With my proverbial Gujarati acumen, I cannot help but wonder, at that price, how much the cloth cost, how much the tailor, the presser, the vendor would make.