A Place Within

by M G Vassanji

  Is the reticence about details simply a weariness of stating the obvious; or a fear of speaking out and becoming a target? The Walled City seems to have been a painful book to write, for more than one reason. When I called David, who still lives in Ahmedabad, to ask to speak to her about the novel and the neighbourhood in which it is set, she told me, There is nothing there. And she gave me the name of another person to call, who in turn directed me to Johnny Jacob.

  In the vicinity of the synagogue, at a busy, hectic intersection on Sardar Patel Road, comes the small and elegant Rani Sipri mosque. This is an old neighbourhood of buildings of two and three storeys packed together, many showing signs of reconstruction or extension, some abandoned, others falling apart. Gates lead off into enclosed areas, the famous Ahmedabad pols, residential “micro” neighbourhoods of the poor variety. Traditionally, however, the pols provided security during riots to a community linked by caste, faith, or profession.

  A small iron gate opens into the mosque site, which consists of a water tank in front, behind which, up some steps on a raised platform, are the mosque, on the left, and across the yard from it, the mausoleum of the queen, Rani Sipri. Both buildings are of red stone. The mosque, commissioned by Rani Sipri, widow of Mahmud Begada, was built in 1514 and is called “masjid-e-nagirna,” jewel of a mosque, for its beauty, very much evident in the fine tracery on the outer walls and minarets, the intricate see-through latticework of the windows, and its proportions. The mosque is a shallow space, with three domes, three doors, two minarets. The mausoleum is padlocked, opening only at certain hours. From outside, looking into the dark shade of the room, lighted only by the rays filtering through the latticework, we see the single raised tomb of the queen, covered with a large red and a smaller green chaddar. The queen’s burial chamber serves also as a storage space; there is a pile of mattresses on the floor, rolled mats, and metal kitchen and eating ware for communal meals.

  Outside on the road, the traffic streams by, but the sound hardly intrudes here on the raised level of the mosque. A handful of people are about, a few walk in from the street past the small wrought-iron gate. It’s close to prayer time. The azaan pierces the air; two cats go chasing after a chipmunk who runs up the tracery of the mausoleum wall. The Arabic cadences of the call to prayer linger high above us, but the voice is of a young man standing a few feet away, in clean and pressed white kurta-pyjamas and cap, a hand to his ear, reciting into an ancient microphone fixed to a pillar. On the next pillar, a sign in Gujarati asks, Did you switch off your mobile?

  As we walk out, more people trickle in from the street. A woman sits on the steps begging.

  A little further up the road an odd sight meets the eye: two round ancient-looking domes perched over otherwise quite ordinary squat, drab buildings. Between the two domes is a stone gateway, from which a narrow road leads into a pol. From one side of the gate a flight of stairs leads up to what I presume is a lookout post from bygone times, because there is a window at the top. The road branches inside into two narrow cluttered streets, the odd man sitting outside, women hanging out clothes or cleaning grain, resting on cots or stretched out on the ground. Boys and girls of various young ages run around happily, playing cricket with a bat no more than a foot long and a plastic ball. They pause in their play, watch us, big smiles on their faces. The adults look up curiously. We ask them what the domes signify, had there been a temple or a mosque here? No one has an answer. We walk back towards the gate.

  One of the domed buildings opens onto the main road and is used as a tire shop. The other one does not open to the front; behind it, however, is a modest residence, with a little verandah with a cot, and on the wall above it small coloured prints of Ganesh and two other deities. At the end of the verandah, and opening presumably into the inside of the dome, is a shut door, on which is stuck a small printed symbol, an open palm. There comes a nonplussed look on Mahesh’s face. Wait, I tell him, with a mysterious smile. I have been here before, and it was to show him this place with the domes that I dragged him all the way from Rani Sipri mosque, promising him a surprise.

  The door opens after some minutes, and a man in his sixties appears, a wiry fellow with a bristly white beard all over the face. He is wearing a Muslim cap, and a long shirt and trousers, all white. He comes out with twinkling eyes and smiling. Greeting us, he says he’s been saying the namaz, the Muslim prayer. He is a follower of Imamshah. He takes us inside to his room. What I see there stuns me.

  Two years ago, the door had been similarly closed, and just as today, the man had come out and bade me come in. There was at that time in this room a small personal shrine to Imamshah in the corner just behind the door, consisting of a picture of the Imamshah shrine in Pirana, a lamp, an Imamshah symbol—the open palm—and other items. It was decorated with a series of multicoloured festival lights. The man told me he had two names, Mohan and Akbar, that he was a Thakur by caste and a Parmar, descended from the kings of Gujarat. The room was quite dark and dingy, as it is now.

  It was uncanny, this experience. Imamshah was hardly a major character known to all, like Kabir, Mira Bai, and Sufis like Nizamuddin of Delhi. I had no doubt that, were I to inquire, there would not be a soul walking outside on the road who would know the name. What was the probability that in this great bustling city, of all the roadside shrines here, I would walk into one I could directly relate to? Was this man a Hindu or a Muslim? He did not have to be exclusively one or the other, as his two names vouched, and according to the original Imamshah tradition. But for me, here was an example of how a holy man of the past could be reinvented and assimilated, how a tradition could be modified into a personal faith in total disregard to the orthodoxies that dictated to and bullied the masses. How contradictory and mysterious India could be.

  And now, with Mahesh beside me? The shrine I had seen then is still here, but on the ground before it is something new: a small—a mini—grave covered with a green chaddar. On top of it are small stuffed animals looking like donkeys or horses.

  Akbar-Mohan now says his two names are Akbar and Madhav—the latter of course is a form of Mohan, both are names of Krishna. He tells us that he visits the Rani Sipri mosque to pray and he has a guru in Pirana who is a sayyid, a descendant of the Prophet. So is the man a Muslim now? Worshipping stuffed animals is as un-Islamic as you can be. And there are the two names. Is it a coincidence that Akbar is also the name of the Mughal emperor who conceived of a universal Indian religion? But scruffy-looking Akbar-Mohan-Madhav does not seem to be a man of lofty or regal thoughts.

  We sit outside on the verandah, where Akbar-Mohan-Madhav offers us tea, which we are served in saucers. People come to his shrine, he informs us, bringing physical and mental ailments, and through “his” (I presume Imamshah’s) mercy they get cured. A grandson lies quietly beside us on a traditional baby hammock, a ghodio. Akbar-Mohan-Madhav has two sons, who have decent jobs, he says. When he wanted his daughter to get married—he does not say when—money for expenses had appeared for him through “his” miracle.

  And so this little branch shrine too has a commercial angle it did not have the previous time. And there’s yet another angle.

  The pol is entirely Hindu. This bit of information Mahesh, always the political animal, extracts from the man. No sane Muslim would live in an exclusively Hindu area in today’s Ahmedabad. But this follower of Imamshah admits that the two domes could have had graves in them; one of them, the tire store, could well have been a mausoleum. In fact, he goes on, the area had been a Muslim graveyard before.

  How did an ancient Muslim graveyard with a mausoleum turn into a Hindu residential area? The pol has a name, an attribute of Krishna that I will not reveal, written—as Mahesh shows me as we come back into the street—on a BJP poster, with the names of its patrons, well-known right-wing politicians, prominently upon it.

  With politics part of the picture, this little shrine makes no coherent sense. The idea of a down-and-out Ahmedabadi inspired by the mystic Imamshah is
wonderful, especially with his several names and mixed faith, even if he is also a rascal playing the money game. Mahesh, however, is convinced of the perfidiousness of Akbar-Mohan-Madhav; he must be an informer against the local Muslims, Mahesh says, in these times when every Muslim is considered a potential terrorist.

  I tell my friend I prefer the unresolved enigma.

  After a long, hot day spent mostly on our feet, a treat seems to be in order. We decide to eat at the nearby upscale Agashiye, a vegetarian restaurant in the Teen Darwaza area, on the roof (as the name suggests) of a traditional home converted into a heritage hotel. As soon as you step off the elevator, you are invited first to sit inside a covered receiving room, a mandap of sorts, on low seats with bolsters for the back. In this formal ambience, with little time wasted, the starters are brought—a delicate sherbet of fudina and kothmir, with dhoklis and daal bhajias accompanied by exquisite imli and fudina chutney—after which you are taken to the open terrace for the main meal. Our longing for a cold beer on this hot night soon disappears as the food and accompanying drinks are consumed. There is the chaas with jeera, delicate, and endless; spicy hot daal for drinking; kadhi for drinking and to top the khichdi with; gobi muttar, tori patra that tastes like bhindi, pakri (rice bread), chila, gajar halwa. Nothing is overspiced, too sweet, or coarse; the courses are endless, but discreetly so. The servers come like Gandhis, wearing dhotis under long white shirts and white pandit caps. To conclude the meal, badam-pista ice cream, paan, and chai. A convincing answer to those who maintain that vegetarian fare is boring, plebeian, or at best merely homely. The night is clear, an almost full moon is in the sky. Other tables are occupied by noisy middle-class families. The talk is of business, and my academic Punjabi companion grumbles good-naturedly; business talk is one of those stereotypical Gujarati characteristics, the others being that they eat well, like sweets, and are miserly.

  Across the bridge from the old city, on Ashram Road, which runs beside the Sabarmati river, is the site of Gandhi’s first ashram, named after the river. The road is a mix of residences and businesses, which stop a little way before the ashram, now the Gandhi Museum, opened in 1963 by Nehru, who planted an ashok tree at the gate. A couple of kiosks outside are the only signs of business in the area. The place is quiet and shady, has the feel of a university campus on a summer’s day. There are a couple of rooms with somewhat patronizing tutorial-style questions and answers about Gandhi’s philosophy displayed on the walls. The questions are posed in three languages, and below each one is its answer, a saying of Gandhi. The quotations are pithy, of course; and some of them are shown in enlarged specimens of Gandhi’s handwriting. A room contains almost life-sized and vivid paintings depicting important episodes from Gandhi’s life, for example the Salt March to Dandi, which gives the impression that Richard Attenborough and Ben Kingsley might have spent some time doing research here for their epic film on the Mahatma. The exhibition, and the film, spend little time on the personal side of Gandhi’s life; this messier and personally painful aspect is depicted in a more recent and quite gripping Indian film, Gandhi, My Father, about the tragedy of his eldest son, Harilal, who started out by ably assisting his father in the South African struggles. A gift shop sells a few books and kitschy Gandhiana; for example, a pen with Gandhi’s head at the top.

  The residences from Gandhi’s time, including his own with his few possessions, including his spinning wheel, have been preserved close to the river. The houses, of a red brick coated with white plaster, the wood all red, look plainly handsome and sturdy. Ashok trees proliferate, with some palm and peepal. Langurs sit quietly in the shade.

  There are only a few people about, this weekday. A Japanese girl sits in the Mahatma’s verandah learning to use a spinning wheel.

  An altogether simple but necessary experience, and a moving one.

  The well-known sweetmeat shop Kandoi’s has been in operation since the 1840s, and now you can also order over the Internet. My companion has a new obsession—his in-laws, now that his daughter is marrying, and he has to bring back something for them. We had sweetmeat shops in East Africa, of course, and our mothers also somehow found the time to make all variety of sweets, when not tending to shops, teaching, or cooking meals. But the display here is bigger than anything I’ve seen, and there are specialty items, too; churma laddoo, for example, which I had not expected to see again in my lifetime. Mahesh and I taste the samples placed without question or hassle before us and make our selections, and we emerge with more than two pounds of goodies, in beautiful gift boxes wrapped up in silver paper.

  Road to Road: The Places We Came From

  Have I come back in truth to my home island?

  HOMER, The Odyssey XXIII

  A FEW PLACES IN GUJARAT were sometimes mentioned in my childhood, and I knew they were the places where my people came from. They included the city names Jamnagar and Junagadh, and Mandvi and Mundra. For some reason the names of the latter two cities were often twinned with the region in which they belonged. Thus: Kutch-Mundra, and Kutch-Mandvi. The other two were in nearby Kathiawar. Kutch and Kathiawar make up the elephant-ear-shaped peninsula in western Gujarat, and are separated by the narrow Gulf of Kutch. Kutchis and Kathiawaris did not intermarry, my mother would say, a taboo which was gradually lifting in my time; their languages were related but different, though some families, including mine, were bilingual. Bombay, in addition, was always a presence in our imaginative lives; it was the city of the movies. For the Africans, Bombay was the metonym for India. For the Indians, it was the port you left from and to which you returned, if you ever did. Many did, on “home leave,” the long periodic vacation that was an entitlement when in government service. Any further details would have slipped my child’s mind, which looked to the future and away from both the colonial present and the Indian past. But these names carried the ring of ancestry and origins, just enough to live by, in the embrace of East African small towns and cities that allowed us, and other Indians, to retain wholesome but not static identities. From the seashore of Dar es Salaam, I could look north-eastwards to India without wishing to live there.

  During my initial visits to India, it was enough for me to say that my ancestry was Indian, or Gujarati; the precise locations carried no importance or urgency. There were no relations I knew of, so what would I look for? And where exactly? I had a community, the Khojas, but how would I relate to them in India? I made one very brief exploratory visit to Jamnagar, when I did not yet know Gujarat outside Baroda. And, as I have said, what I did know of modern Gujarat since my first Indian visit made me nervous, so I always looked elsewhere, where I felt comfortable and had formed close friendships.

  A tour of Kathiawar remained pending, until I was ready for it.

  This time I come armed with a more precise knowledge of ancestral coordinates, gleaned from an accidentally discovered second cousin and from my mother. From the cousin I have learned the name of the village near Junagadh from where our great-grandfather came; and my mother has told me the name of a small town near Jamnagar from where her own mother came. I have two companions with me. They come with cameras, which can be intrusive; but they can also open up possibilities, for in my experience Indians (unlike the Masai of my youth) do not suspect the camera of robbing them of their personalities but rather love it, sometimes to the point of stealing into the frame. Perhaps that is the influence of Bollywood.

  But before we head westwards for ancestral places in the peninsula, there is a detour to make, to another city I would hear of in childhood, in a few of the ginans we sang. It was called Patan. To those willing to listen to the meanings of those songs, Patan was the city where the king lived. One such monarch was the famous Jaisingh Siddhraj. Patan’s other ancient name was Anhilvada, I read much later, along with all its history and legends.

  From the bus depot in Baroda we hire our taxi.

  The glory of Anhilvada reached its zenith during the reign of the Solanki dynasty (942–1242), and especially in the reig
n of its greatest king, the legendary Siddhraj (1094–1143).

  Of Anhilvada at its height, Alexander Forbes quotes the Kumarapala Charitra:

  Unhilpoor [Anhilvada] was twelve coss in circuit, within which were many temples and colleges; eighty-four squares; eighty-four marketplaces with mints for gold and silver coin…. There was one marketplace for money changers; one for perfumes and unguents; one for physicians; one for artisans; one for goldsmiths and another for silversmiths; there were distinct quarters for navigators, for bards, and for genealogists. The eighteen wurun [varna, or castes] inhabited the city; all were happy together. The palace groaned with a multitude of separate buildings—for the armoury, for the elephants, for horses and chariots, for the public accountants and officers of state. Each kind of goods had its own custom-house, where the duties of export, import, and sale were collected—as for spices, fruits, drugs, camphors, metals, and everything costly of home or foreign growth. It is a place of universal commerce…. The population delights to saunter amidst the groves of champas, palms, rose-apples, sandal trees, mangoes, etc, with variegated creeper, and fountains whose waters are umrut [amrat, or ambrosia]. Here discussions take place on the Veds, carrying instruction to the listener. There is no want of Jain priests, or of merchants true to their word and skilled in commerce; and there are many schools for teaching grammar. Unhilwara is a sea of human beings.

  This great city was conquered by the army of Alauddin Khilji of Delhi in 1297; Anhilvada remained the capital of Gujarat for another hundred years, though shorn of its prestige, before the capital moved to Ahmedabad.

  Alexander Forbes, having described the glory of Anhilvada in his nineteenth-century Ras Mala, relates thus the state in which he saw it: