The minister’s wife, it appears, ‘felt a bit bad and small’. Understanding the reaction of the volunteers she asked the organizers if she could do anything. Would they like to meet her husband? Could he be of help? They went to see him the next day. To their surprise, perhaps, she confirmed their stories of Congress involvement. She had been visiting various camps and had picked up enough information. ‘If we had one name, the minister’s wife and PA confirmed many others.’ The minister seemed convinced.
Later, at the same meeting, the camp organizers asked the minister to do something to restore Sikh confidence in the government and the ruling party. It was important, they said, that those who had incited and led the mobs be punished, both in the courts and with expulsion from the party. Now it was the minister’s turn to plead his woes. ‘Confidentially,’ he is reported to have said, ‘in this government my own position is not clear. Till I get close enough to Rajiv, how can I put your case to him?’
For political Delhi the riots might never have occurred. As speculation over who would be favoured with Congress tickets grew this past week, no other concern was manifest. I dined at the home of one such Congress hopeful and the chatter of party district presidents and city presidents graced the table. At one point a guest who had nothing to do with the Congress party mentioned the riots. The host rose to the occasion, ‘Haan, woh jo Jan Sanghiyon ne kiya, haan (Yes, that which the Jan Sanghis did)’ and the sentence trailed off. I protested and my protest was carried—but only because a joint secretary of the party who was present came up with the most guilty hangdog expression I have ever seen. I may be naïve but I am convinced that this was the first time since 31 October that our host had begun to understand the complicity of his party in the riots. (If you read only the Times of India, the National Herald and the Patriot and mix with the right people, such blessed ignorance is only to be expected.) After dinner, and after the assistant inspector of police who had read the party hopeful’s hand had left, we asked what predictions the palmist had made. ‘Kehta hai ke chance bees percent badh gaya hai (He says chances have increased twenty per cent).’ ‘Pehle kya kehta tha, kya chance tha (What did he say your chances were earlier)?’ the district president inquired. And the serious reply: ‘Pehle kehta tha sau percent chance tha ticket ka, ab kehta hai sava sau percent chance hai (He said first that I had a hundred per cent chance of winning a ticket, now he says I have a 125 per cent chance).’
Earlier that day I had spoken to a friend of mine in the Opposition, a fairly important party aide. I had sympathized with him about the new situation and then (in my innocence) said that at least they now had a proper issue to fight the election on: who had started the Delhi riots? His reply made perfect sense: ‘Fight the election on this issue?’ he said. ‘Are you crazy? Go to the villages and they are saying aur kyoon nahin maara Sikhon ko (Why didn’t they kill more Sikhs)? In Bombay and Delhi, if we are lucky, this will count; in the press, amongst the intellectuals. In the rest of India, no way. It will backfire and people will say achha kiya Congress ne (the Congress did well). What can we do in such a country?’ So at last I knew why the Congress party hopeful didn’t need to know about the riots.
‘The tears have dried up,’ Jaspal Singh said to me at his father’s camp at Ajmal Khan Park. After 12 November the government representatives who used to come by regularly stopped coming. Even the response of the Indian press they had found disappointing. With very few exceptions, most of the reporting had been slanted and had tried to play down the impact of the riots. ‘Many reporters used to come here and take down details of cases, but after a few days when the people in the camp saw that none of their stories were appearing in the papers they stopped talking to the press. “What’s the use?” they said.’
The administration, however, has begun to throw its weight. Class I officers from all public sector undertakings have been deputed to report on what can be done. There are many suggestions in the air. Since the residents of colonies like Trilokpuri do not wish to go back (‘Do you want us to go back and live among those who killed our fathers and raped our sisters?’), it was suggested to the government that it exchange those plots for others of the same size in other colonies, preferably colonies where several Sikhs could live together in comparative safety. The government’s first response to this suggestion was: right, surrender your land first. The residents of the camps were willing to do so but the organizers intervened and said they would only countenance exchange of plots, not immediate surrender. Another suggestion that has been made is that the government allocate alternative plots and free cement to those whose houses have been damaged and get the able-bodied among the refugees to start building their own dwellings. ‘That will keep the men busy,’ said a Sikh camp organizer to me. ‘When the men are idle who can say what their minds will turn to? So far we have forbidden them from any slogan-shouting, not even Bole so nihaal within the camp, but if they are unemployed for long who can say?’
Young Sikhs have begun comparing the position of their co-religionists with that of the Jews and have begun thinking in terms of kibbutz-style dwellings. But kibbutz-style protection works both ways. Certainly those within the kibbutzes will be more protected in the even, of another such carnage but those who choose to live apart will be even more vulnerable.
Several Sikhs have begun contemplating building a new colony to resettle the refugees. Tilaknagar and Fatehnagar have been discussed as possible sites. But it is not enough to build houses; many of the people who have fled from their homes have lost their means of survival as well. So there is talk of setting up small-scale industries in the new colonies, knitting and papad-making. But for any such industry to succeed marketing institutions are required.
The horrors of the riots remain, a permanent legacy. Resettlement can only be a partial reparation. Those who are involved in the resettlement are constantly reminded of this. ‘Yesterday Mr Seth, an assistant labour commissioner who has been attached to us,’ Jaspal Singh recalled, ‘came with us to the Trans-Yamuna area for a survey to identify loss of life and loss of dwelling units. He had three colonies to visit. He could only go to three houses and then he broke down and cried. He said: “It is not possible, I can’t go on. Just fill in the forms, you confirm them and I’ll sign them.” We were in a house where the women were going about their work and there were ashes and bones all around. You see, the men had not yet returned and there was no one to clear the phul.’
April in Delhi
KHUSHWANT SINGH
This extract is taken from Nature Watch.
Delhi’s short spring is over; summer is yet to come. Mornings and evenings are cool, the day at times unpleasantly warm. March flowers begin to wilt under the heat of the sun, summer blossoms are ready to take their place.
April inherits some of its unpredictability from the preceding month. All Fools Day is almost twelve hours long; to be precise, 12.26 hours. Baisakhi, thirteen days later, is twenty-two minutes longer. Both days can be equally unpredictable. I have known them to be as chilly as some in winter and I have known Baisakhi to be uncomfortably hot outdoors. I have also recorded Baisakhi celebrations at Majnoon da Tilla Gurdwara along the upper reaches of the Yamuna in north Delhi being washed out by unseasonal rain. The Bard was correct in comparing the vagaries of a new love affair with the eccentric weather of April.
O! 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 bougainvillaes.
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 ber (jujube) and other scrubby flora manage to survive in this waterless wasteland. However, flame trees lit up th
e 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 (13th 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-lazuli blue of their tiny bell-shaped flowers. They 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 to eat out of). 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 Earl 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. 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 Shergill 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 still 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 15th 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. It’s Latin name Caesalpina 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 a
fternoon 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.
Delhi by Season
NAMITA GOKHALE
Delhi as we were taught in school, has an ‘extreme climate’. And if Delhi is in every other respect also a city of extremes, it is the sharp and sudden variations in temperature that explain its personality. Temperatures accelerate from 0 to 48 on the Celsius scale in the span of a few months, and the power situation being miserable any which way you approach it, Delhiwalas are in direct contact with their environment. The rhythm of the seasons rules and dictates the realities of life. There is beauty and brutality in almost equal measure.
Like all of northern India, Delhi has four distinct seasons: a brief vasant or spring, a long, sweltering summer, an erratic and moody monsoon, and a winter that ranges from chill to balmy. There is no autumn, and the fall, or fiza, occurs quite contrarily during springtime, when the trees shed their leaves. It would not be an exaggeration to claim that Delhi is really four distinct cities. Delhi in the spring is radically distinct from the manifestation of hell it assumes in the summer months; Delhi in the monsoon looks, sounds and feels quite different from its other avatars, and as for Delhi in December, margashisha in the Hindu calendar is known as the king of seasons.
City Improbable- Writings on Delhi Page 19
