Of how this spring of love resembleth
The uncertain glory of an April Day.
However, Delhi in April is indeed ‘well-apparelled’ and ‘proud-pied’. Gardens continue to look like painters’ easels. Flower shows in different parts of the city exhibit new strains of roses and bougainvillaeas.
One year, early in April, I happened to drive out of the city towards Jaipur. It was rugged country typical of the Aravalli range which extends across the Rajasthan desert and ends in the northern suburbs of Delhi; keekar (camel thorn), cactus, wild thorny shrub (jujube) and other scrubby flora manage to survive in this waterless wasteland. However, flame trees lit up the countryside. And as I drove back in the evening the bitter-sweet perfume of keekar flowers wafted across the road. How well the poet Avimaraka caught the breath of a summer evening! How enchanting is the great variety of the world!
Gone is the heat of the day as the earth dresses for night;
The evening breeze of this strange world gently the body touches
Slowly she removes the sun from her forehead
Quietly puts around her neck a garland of stars
Scatters the brave throughout the sleeping city
And joins together the bodies of young lovers.
(Avimaraka, Love’s Enchanted World, translated by J.L. Masson & D.D. Kosambi.)
I must have muddled my calendar of flowering trees in believing that the flame tree and the coral come into flower at the same time as the semul. They do not; the semul comes first. The coral and the flame blossom almost a month later. By Baisakhi (13 April) silk semuls have almost entirely shed their blossoms while the flame and the coral are in their best finery. By then bauhinia beans are ready for plucking. Trees that flower at the same time as flames and corals are jacarandas (their Indian name neelam—sapphire—is an apt description of their colouring), widely planted in New Delhi. You have to see them in a cluster to catch the lapis-la-zuli blue of their tiny bell-shaped flowers. There are a few in the roundabout facing Parliament House on Sansad Marg, avenues of them along the Safdarjung flyover, on Siri Fort Road and in new residential areas. They can be seen at their best between the first and third weeks of the month.
People often confuse the coral and the flame, since they are both the same colour. Coral’s Latin name Erythrina means ‘red’, but there the resemblance ends. The flowers of the coral (Gul-e-Nastareen or Pangra in Hindi) stand erect; flame petals are curved like scimitars and resemble a parrot’s beak. Their boles and leaves are also quite dissimilar. The coral tree can be seen in abundance in most of Delhi’s parks. It has many uses, its wood being made into stakes to support betel (paan) and pepper vines. The flame is still largely wild. There are many flame trees on the Ridge and a whole forest of them beyond Surajkund. People don’t care to grow this tree in their gardens because its glory lasts barely seven days; the rest of the year it is just a mass of leaves that make a clattering noise in the wind. In north India they sew flame leaves together to make donas (cups) and pattals (plates). A variety of astringent gum known as the Bengal Kino is extracted from its bark. For some reason the lac insect which breeds on flames is not cultivated on Delhi’s trees. The tree, Butea frondosa, derives its Latin name from an eighteenth century botanist, the Karl of Bute. It has many Indian names; dhak, palas and tesoo. My friend the poet Jaseemuddin in Dhaka had many in his garden, so he named his house Palas Baari. It is said that the famous battle of Plassey (AD 1757) came to be so known because it took place in a jungle of flame (palas) trees.
One morning on the way to the Club I saw a whirl of kites dive-bombing an injured bat which had fallen on the road. It managed to elude them by dragging itself into a drain.
Since the poor bat could not fly, it would almost certainly be eaten up by dogs.
How had the bat come to grief? What makes bats choose certain trees in preference to others? In New Delhi their favourite perches are arjuna trees growing between Motilal Nehru Place and the roundabout where Janpath meets Maulana Azad Road. They can be seen and heard squabbling amongst themselves every morning. I used to see lots of them in my father’s garden on Janpath. Their favourite trees were the fragrant maulsaris. When these were in fruit, bats were as thick as bees in a hive. There are other varieties of bats (or are they flying foxes?) which inhabit old monuments. They have many nests in the ancient seminary at Hauz Khas.
By more than trebling its population in the last forty years, Delhi has lost a great deal of its bird life that I lived with in my school days. A weekend in Kurukshetra made me aware of nature’s sights and sounds now rarely heard or seen in the Delhi of today. At the university guest house I was shaken out of my slumber by the trumpet call of a peafowl by my window: paon, paon, paon—very much like the way its name is pronounced in French. As I opened the window, it scuttled away. The eastern horizon had turned grey and it was drizzling. All at once a papeeha (hawk cuckoo) perched on a neighbouring tree, wound itself up and began to call ‘brain-fever, brain-fever’. Besides peacocks and papeehas there were lapwings screaming as they flew about in the grey dawn, as also koels and drongos. No sooner had these birds fallen silent than the doves took over and the ‘voice of the turtle’ was heard over the campus. An hour later when the clouds lifted to reveal a deep blue sky, flocks of swallows chittered as they wheeled about in the high heavens.
Soon after Baisakhi, the first crop of mangoes grown around Delhi appear in the market. They are seldom very sweet or succulent. It takes the searing heat of summer to bring them to their full richness of taste and colour.
More trees are in the process of shedding old leaves and donning new ones, coming to flower and being deflowered (sic). What could have induced New Delhi’s master-gardener, Lancaster, to import sausage trees (Kigelia pinata) from East Africa and plant them in Delhi? Sausage trees can be seen along Amrita Shergil Marg and many other avenues. It is a singularly ugly tree with scraggy red flowers which exude a malodorous oil and bear solid sausage fruit for which neither man nor bird nor beast have any use. Its flowers are said to open up at night and begin to close up by mid-morning. Apparently fruit-bats relish their taste. Some rural folk make a paste out of its fruit and use it against skin eruptions. How different is the siris! It is quick-growing but short-lived. It is leafless till spring. Then suddenly fresh, light green leaves appear, and soon its pale powder-puff flowers spread their fragrance far and wide.
The dual highway running from the airport to the city is divided by beds of bougainvillaeas and has siris growing on either side. There are two varieties of siris to be seen in Delhi: Albizia lebbek, the fragrant variety, and the much taller white Albizia procera (safed siris). The second variety has a pale, smooth bole with branches well above the ground. There are a few lining Man Singh road on either side of its intersection with Rajpath.
By the last week of April the days are distinctly warmer and the afternoon sun unbearable. It is time to put on air-coolers. As long as the air outside is dry, which it usually is through April, May and June, they effectively cool rooms blowing in dry air through wet khas screens. But beware! Damp air is the mother of body aches and pains and an invitation to mosquitoes and cockroaches. If you can afford it, use air-conditioners rather than coolers.
In the last days of the month the first gulmohar blooms begin to peep out of their green casings (my diary records some appearing as early as 15 April). The Gul (‘gold’) mohar derives its Latin name Ponciana regia from M. de Poinci, a governor of the French Antilles in the mid-seventeenth century. The tree is a native of Madagascar. It has become the great favourite amongst flowering trees because of its flamboyant display of fiery red and orange. Connaught Place has a cluster of these trees and they are now grown extensively in most new residential colonies.
Another flowering tree which resembles the gulmohar in colouring and is grown extensively in Delhi is the peacock tree, also known as the dwarf ponciana or Barbados pride. Why peacock? There is nothing of the peacock’s blue about it. Its Latin name Caesalpin
a pulcherrima (most beautiful) is well-matched by its Indian ones, Krishna chura or Radha chura, the crest of Krishna or Radha.
Pink cassias, cherry-red and white are now in full bloom. So also are yellow elders and oleanders, both pink and white. At the same time neems shed their flowers like sawdust about their boles. Semul pods burst and scatter their fluff which lies like snowflakes on the ground. The summer heat and damp rouse serpents from their hibernation. Delhi has all three species of the most venomous snakes; cobras, vipers and kraits. It also has others which are quite harmless to humans but prey on man’s worst enemies—rats and mice. One warm afternoon I went to see Arpana Caur, a young painter working in the artists’ colony at Garhi. The studios are built along the walls of this ancient robber fortress. In between is an open space, now lush with grass and cannas. As I entered I saw a gang of urchins hurling stones, brandishing sticks and yelling as they ran towards a snake basking on the lawn.
Before I could stop them they had beaten the poor reptile into a bloody mess. ‘Saanp ka bachha (a baby snake),’ they cried triumphantly. It was a small orange-coloured snake with diamond-shaped black spots—a full grown diadem (rajat). It was too late to tell the children that like many other snakes of Delhi it was not only harmless but also a well-meaning reptile.
Worship of the Ganga
Of all the rivers of the world, none has received as much adoration as the Ganga. Though there is scant reference to it in the Vedas, it assumes a dominant position in the Puranas. She is the daughter of Himavat, the Himalayas, and Mena, the sister of Parvati, wife of Siva. Originally, the river was confined to the realms of paradise. When brought to earth to irrigate barren land, it came down in such a mighty torrent that it would have drowned everything but for Siva breaking its downfall on his head and allowing it to flow out into seven streams, Sapta Sindhava—the seven sacred rivers of India, the most sacred being the Ganga.
No one knows why or when Ganga’s waters acquired powers of healing minds and bodies. But long before records started being kept, men who were disillusioned with life or were in search of eternal truths gave up other pursuits to retire into caves in valleys through which the Ganga ran to meditate in the silence of mountain fastnesses. At dawn, they stood in the icy-cold waters of the river to welcome the rising sun. At sunset, they floated leaf boats with flowers and oil lamps on its fast-moving streams.
Waters of the Ganga acquired the reputation of healing properties. They were undoubtedly the cleanest, clearest source of portable water near Delhi and Agra which were for centuries the seats of rulers of India. The fourteenth century ruler at Delhi, Mohammed bin Tughlaq, organized a regular supply of drinking water from Hardwar for inmates of his palace. The practice was followed from one dynasty to the next. The Mughal emperor Akbar drank only Ganga water and ordered it to be used in the royal kitchen. Though Muslims attached no religious significance to it, the Ganga found an important place in their thinking. Allama Iqbal, one of the founding fathers of Pakistan and the greatest Urdu poet of his times, had this to say:
Ai aab-e-rood-e-Ganga,
Voh din hai yaad tujh ko
Utra terey kinaarey
Jab kaarvaan hamaara?
(O, limpid waters of the Ganga,
remember you the day,
When our caravan stopped by your banks
And forever came to stay?)
For the Hindus, Ganga jal (Ganga water) has more spiritual than mundane significance. A newborn babe has a few drops put in its mouth. So has a dying person before he breathes his last. A dip in the river washes away all sins. Ashes of the dead are immersed in it.
The water of the Ganga is in great demand all over the country. As you go along the road to Hardwar, you pass long lines of kanwarias carrying pots containing Ganga jal slung on poles. At short distances, there are small platforms for them to rest their cargo, as the pots must never touch the ground. In Calcutta, there are jal yatris, water pilgrims. Soon after Shivratri, they can be seen taking water pots from the Tribeni in Howrah district, to the Tarakeshwar temple in Hooghly district, calling out Baba Tarakeshwari serai nomo (obeisance and service to Baba Tarakeshwari), or Bholey Baba paar karega (Lord Shiva will take you across) or simply, Bom, bom bholey, Taraknath boley bom bom.
The Ganga is sacred from its source, Gangotri, down the mountains past Rudraprayag, Devprayag, Badrinath and Rishikesh till it enters the plains at Hardwar. So far it is a fast-moving river, crystal clear and sparkling. After Hardwar, it slows down. By the time it reaches Allahabad for its sangam (confluence with the Yamuna), it becomes a sluggish stretch of water full of human garbage. It continues to gather debris as it goes past Benares and Patna to its junction with the mighty Brahmaputra to become the Hooghly and empty itself in the Bay of Bengal.
On its long journey from the Himalayas to the sea, many rivers join it while canals rob it of its waters. It is a strange phenomenon that though the water from the main stream is regarded sacred, the same water running in canals and taps is accorded no sanctity. Even in the places of pilgrimage, some small areas along the bank are more sacred than others. In Hardwar, Har-ki-paudi (Footsteps of the Lord), a 50-yard stretch on the right bank of the river, is about the most sacred place in India. Here, pilgrims throng in thousands from early hours of the dawn to late at night, to bathe, pray, make offerings and ask for favours. A never-to-be-forgotten sight is the aarti, worship with oil lamps, which takes places every evening at sunset.
Hardwar is a comfortable four-hour drive from Delhi. However, it is advisable to choose an appropriate time of the year for the visit. The best time is from January to April, preferably around Holi, when the countryside en route and the hills around Hardwar are ablaze with the flame of the forest and the coral. Choose a couple of days before the full moon and plan to spend at least one night in the town. It has plenty of hotels, small and big, ashrams and dharamshalas, lodges to suit your pocket. The menu everywhere is strictly vegetarian; there is also prohibition, but soda water is available and no one really bothers if you enjoy your drink in your room.
A short halt at a midway eatery, Cheetal Grand, outside village Khatauli, is a must. It is laid out in a spacious, well-kept garden. Large cages with roosters, ducks, geese, turkeys and guinea fowl call and cackle all day long. The service is fast, the food of gourmet quality. The owner, Urooj Nisar, does good business: he feeds upto 8,000 guests every day. It is a meeting place for people taking the ashes of their loved ones to immerse in the Ganga at Hardwar and those returning after having done so. It is also the favourite picnic spot for boys and girls from schools in Mussoorie, Dehra Dun, Hardwar and Ranipur.
Make sure you get to the ghat (embankment) well before sunset. Stroll along the banks of the river and you will meet many well-fed cows, ash-smeared sadhus smoking ganja and opium in their chillums. Every few yards, there will be a conclave of men and women—many more women than men—listening topurvachans being delivered to some holy personage. In Hardwar, holy men are nine to a dozen. So are pandas who can trace your lineage back to forefathers you have never heard of—for a fee. Also, men with receipt books asking for donations for gaushalas (cattle pens) and other worthy causes. Avoid them.
As the sun goes down over the range of hills in the west, a deep shade falls over Hardwar and the silvery moonlight takes over. It is time to find a vantage point from where you can see the aarti. There is a bridge along the right bank to an island facing Har-ki-paudi on which stands a clock tower. The bridge and the island give a splendid view of what is going on at Har-ki-paudi where the action takes place. Most pilgrims prefer to sit on the steps along Har-ki-paudi just above the stream because it is there that pandas take offerings from them. In return, they give them leaf boats full of flowers and lit oil lamps, and invoke the blessings of Mother Ganga—all for a fee.
Hardwar has hundreds of temples lining the bank, but not one of them of any architectural pretensions. Evening shadows envelop their ugliness and the skullduggery of pandas looting gullible pilgrims. Only the
Ganga remains as pure as the snows which give it birth. Bathed in early moonlight, it assumes ethereal beauty. Suddenly, a cry goes up, Bolo, bolo Ganga Mata Ki, and thousands of voices yell in triumph, Jai—victory of the Mother Ganga. The aarti is about to begin. All the steps leading to and around Har-ki-paudi, the bridge and the clock-tower island, are crammed with pilgrims and sightseers.
Men start striking gongs with mallets: this is in honour of the lesser gods. Then, bells of temples start clanging. Men holding candelabras with dozens of oil lamps each, stand ankle-deep in the river and wave them over it. Conch shells are blown. Leaf boats with flowers and diyas bob up and down the fast-moving current and disappear from view. Above all this cacophony of light and the din of gongs and bells, rises the chant:
Om, Jai Gangey Mata
(Victory to Mother Ganga)
The spectacle lasts barely ten minutes. It transports you to another world. It will haunt you for the rest of your nights and days.
Village in the Desert
It is safest to begin with the beginning.
Where I was born I have been told by people who were present at my birth. When I was born remains a matter of conjecture. I am told I was born in a tiny hamlet called Hadali, lost in the sand dunes of the Thar desert some thirty kilometres west of the river Jhelum and somewhat the same distance southward of the Khewra Salt Range. Hadali is now deep inside Pakistan. At the time I was born, my father, Sobha Singh, was away in Delhi with his father, Sujan Singh. When the news was sent to him, he did not bother to put it down in his diary. I was his second son. At that time records of births and deaths were not kept in our villages. Unlike Hindus who noted down the time of birth of their offspring so that their horoscopes could be cast, we Sikhs had no faith in astrology, and therefore attached no importance to the time and place of nativity. Several years later, when he had to fill a form for our admission to Modern School in Delhi, my father gave my elder brother’s and my date of birth out of his imagination. Mine was put down as 2 February 1915. Years later, my grandmother told me that I was born in Badroo—some time in August. I decided to fix it in the middle of the month, to 15 August 1915 and made myself a Leo. Thirty-two years later in 1947, 15 August became the birthday of independent India.
Not a Nice Man to Know Page 23
