A Delhi Obsession

by M G Vassanji

  “Possibly,” she laughed. “You’d better behave!”

  “What kind of columns do you write?”

  “Human interest—from different angles—social, political. The last one was on teenage dating. A lot of that goes on nowadays.”

  “And do you approve? What did you say in the column?”

  “We have to accept that India is changing, I said. Obvious, isn’t that. How we respond to the changes depends on each family. But we should trust our kids.”

  “That’s very wise, I think.”

  They took a rickshaw back to Ajmeri Gate, where the young Nepalese driver stood patiently leaning against the car. Before she got in, she bought some vegetables from a street vendor, which the driver picked up and placed next to him in the front seat. They didn’t speak much on the way back and before long Munir had nodded off. He thought he heard her speaking on the phone.

  When they reached the Club, she got off with him and sent the driver off.

  “Ravi was on the phone, he will pick me up later. I’ll wait in the library. You must want to go up to your room and rest—don’t let me keep you.”

  That was abrupt and took him by surprise.

  “Well, thank you for showing me around. I would never have made it on my own—I’m truly grateful.”

  And they parted.

  * * *

  —

  In his room he fell instantly asleep; he was still jet-lagged. At half past five, after a shower and armed with a book to read, he came outside and walked across the patio to the lounge for tea. Resisting the temptation to order one of the pastries so abundantly displayed in the anteroom, he stepped inside the cafeteria. As expected it was crowded, filled with the clamour of voices and the clatter of migrating tea trays. There was only one table he could possibly sit at, at the far end, occupied by one person; it was Mohini. She was facing towards him and waved energetically at him to come over.

  “You look fresh,” she observed.

  “I feel fresh—like a new person. Listen—don’t let me impose—isn’t your husband joining you?”

  “He’ll take his time. Sit. Don’t be so formal.”

  He sat down and ordered a Darjeeling tea, feeling rather uneasy. She had dismissed him summarily after their sojourn, perhaps with second thoughts about having done the improper thing, being out with a man on a pleasure trip. Then why this change of…attitude?

  “There are men with automatics outside on the grounds,” he said. “Your husband’s?”

  “He’s not so obvious. Or he would not be good at his job. But there are others. A lot of powerful men come here; you couldn’t tell by just looking at them.”

  He didn’t inquire, and she fell silent. Then she went on, “You see that sardarji, the Sikh with the blue turban? With the pudgy pocked face? Don’t look now. He was head of security in Punjab during the Khalistan emergency. It’s said the emergency was defeated using ‘encounter killings.’ Shoot on sight. He was responsible. Those men outside must be his protection. And the slimy-looking one in the corner at the front—in the pure-white outfit, surrounded by that crowd of adulating women and young men…Don’t look. He’s Jetha Lal from Ahmedabad. A Hindu purifier. In the business of protecting cows and Hindu women. And calling for the censorship of books. According to him, our ancient gurus invented the internet and knew about relativity. A couple of years ago he was into breaking up impure liaisons.”

  “Impure liaisons? Such as?”

  “Love jihad.” She smiled. “Hindu-Muslim relationships; also Hindu-Christian. Not to forget low caste–high caste.”

  “How did he go about that?”

  “Not him, his goons. They would kidnap the girl and beat up the boy.”

  “And he got away with it?”

  “Got away? He boasted of it to a newspaper! You can watch him on YouTube.”

  He looked around the room, aware of her eyes on him. In the corner to his right a young man was giving an interview, straining to be heard through the din. There was a book on his table. A photographer was readying her equipment next to him. As Munir looked away, an elderly couple came by and warmly greeted Mohini. She introduced Munir to them as a famous author from Canada. They hadn’t heard of him. Finally a server came and told “Madam” that “Sir” was seated at another table, and she got up. Munir thanked her again for the morning and watched her leave. Ravi was at a table against the side wall, facing two other men. He too was watching his wife approach, and for a moment met Munir’s eye. Lean and straight, Munir observed, just like an army man, and with his hair dyed brown. An indulgent smile on his long, creased face.

  The next morning Munir spent a few hours in the library reading up on Delhi’s crowded and confusing history, knowing he could only catch partial glimpses of it. The library was a long hall with a bank of computers at one end and rows of bookshelves at the other. In between were carrels where men and women sat absorbed in study. The atmosphere was hushed and, according to a stern-sounding notice, mobile phones were strictly forbidden; the staff were helpful. Later he took a taxi to ruins of the thirteenth-century city of Siri, well within the present Delhi, from where the stern Sultan Alauddin had warded off a Mongol attack. If the Mongols had persisted, Delhi would certainly have been sacked and its story different. There were now a sports complex and an auditorium at the site. Nearby was Hauz Khas, site of a water reservoir built by the sultan for his city, and now an exclusive residential and shopping enclave next to a deer park. The following morning he visited Tughlaqabad, the city that came next after Siri; collapsed upon itself, it stood high on a hill, overlooking the bustling car traffic on the plain below, as stonily ascetic and grim as the ruler who built it, Muhammad bin Tughlaq.

  At DRC during those two days there was no sign of Mohini in the lounge or the bar. He would peer at arriving members as they were dropped off in their cars, glance frequently at his phone as though willing it to ring, inquire at the desk for messages. He missed her, he admitted to himself, providing perfectly innocent reasons why he did so, and quickly chiding himself not to act immaturely. But that oval face with those deep brown eyes, and the rich voice and lively combative manner, were hard to dismiss from his mind. Perhaps the attraction was nothing more than nostalgia, her Indian-ness reminding him of his Punjabi home in Nairobi’s Eastleigh; and certainly he was lonely, pathetically so, and desperate. But he would be out of here in a little more than a week and this silly phase forgotten.

  Meanwhile there was the library and Delhi’s fantastically crowded history—in which he had found a tiny corner for himself.

  * * *

  —

  On December 23, 1912, on the once-stately thoroughfare of Chandni Chowk that emerges from the Red Fort in Old Delhi, a bomb was thrown at British Viceroy Lord Hardinge’s procession in what came to be known as the Bomb Outrage, or the Delhi Conspiracy Case. “It exploded with terrific force,” a report said, “blowing to pieces the attendant standing immediately behind Lord Hardinge…” The Viceroy was thrown down from his elephant, unconscious and bleeding. Subsequently the police went on a rampage in the area, and four men were eventually charged with the conspiracy. One was captured and sentenced to jail; he had died only recently, old and invalid in an alley off Chandni Chowk, according to a report in the Express Times. The three other men were hanged, but the man who had thrown the bomb, Rash Behari Bose, had slipped away to Japan and was never caught.

  It was some months after this bombing—on March 21, 1913, according to an old British travel permit—that Yunus Ali Khan, Munir’s grandfather, had arrived with his bride in Mombasa in British East Africa, where he found work as a goldsmith; a few years later he moved inland to Nairobi’s Eastleigh area, where many Punjabis had settled.

  Have I come a full circle, Munir thought, somewhat stunned upon reading this snippet of history; has Delhi now reclaimed me? Dada having left Delhi only three months after the �
��Outrage”: is there a significance? And what a turn of fate that there would be a Hardinge Street in Nairobi—always pronounced “Laard Hardinge Street” in the home, in the Punjabi fashion.

  But it was an older Delhi that caught his writerly fascination.

  He was sitting on a bench in Sikandar Gardens, having completed his afternoon walk. He had never lived in any place where centuries spoke loudly from every direction. But then history in India came with a price, paid often with blood. Before him, on the green across the walking track, stood a large mausoleum, of the typical inlaid sandstone of such buildings, with a magnificent dome. The sun was low, the ground moist, the air effulgent. Flowers were in bloom, in every conceivable colour. He watched boys at a game of soccer in the shadow of the monument. A young, furtive couple strolled by in front of him, murmuring to themselves. He heard a woman’s high-pitched voice, and looked up to see a noisy group walking organically together like some multi-legged animal, in the middle of which was the man in white, Jetha Lal, whom Mohini had pointed out in the cafeteria as “the Purifier.” He was of medium height, somewhat stocky, and bald, with a sparse ring of white hair on his head and a smooth, radiant face. As before, he wore a folded blue shawl on one shoulder that was a sign of status, Munir guessed.

  They disappeared round a bend, and Munir nodded off, until he felt his phone buzzing against his thigh. His excitement as he shoved his hand into his pocket and clumsily brought out the phone was, in his own words to himself later, purely juvenile. It was Mohini calling, of course.

  “Where have you run off to? I’m at DRC, but you’re not here. I thought you might have left.”

  “I’m at Sikandar Gardens. I’ve just finished my walk and am catching my breath.”

  “I’ll come and join you.”

  “I missed you.”

  “Sure you did.”

  She took ten minutes to get there. The park had fairly filled up, he observed, watching her approach on the track from the left. She was wearing a pink salwar and a white kameez, and her controlled smile as she neared brought dimples to her flushed cheeks.

  “You’ve discovered Sikandar Gardens. Good. It’s wonderful, isn’t it, all this greenery. Can you believe it, we are actually sitting here in the middle of Delhi?”

  He told her what he’d been up to the last few days, and she was surprised by his adventures. Not only had he been to the tomb of the Mughal Humayun, he had also gone to the top of the old, abandoned city of Tughlaqabad. And he had returned to Old Delhi by metro and walked around.

  “I’m impressed. I guess as a well-travelled man you are used to exploring places by yourself. I must have been a burden the other day.”

  “Not at all. It’s always nice to have a local guide. Without your initiative, I might not even have ventured out.”

  How craven! She was flattered, smiled her appreciation. They discussed the various cities of Delhi and their sultans, which he was reading about and found exciting, and which she recalled only vaguely from her history courses.

  “I read that until not long ago, between the various cities of Delhi there used to be only vegetation,” he said.

  “You’ll soon become an expert,” she said, tilting her head to squint and smile at him, revealing a few thin lines at the edges of her eyes. “You’re already telling me things that I don’t know. But what does a writer do with all that knowledge about the past? Does it help in your writing? Give you ideas?”

  “A writer doesn’t ask himself that. Or herself. It’s simply there, the knowledge and the experience…and whatever. It comes out whenever, in its own way…”

  “You’re an odd one.”

  “How?”

  “No…I meant, the other day in the old city. You were hardly impressed by the great mosque—ho-hum, your face said. No—wait a minute! And then all that interest in Dariba Kalan—jewellery!”

  “Yes. Well the mosque is grand, but there are many grand buildings in the world, aren’t there? But Dariba…”

  “Dariba Kalan.”

  “Yes. I should have told you. My grandfather came from Delhi. And he was a goldsmith.”

  No need to say more. She took a deep breath.

  “So you are a Delhi-ite after all! It’s karma only, I tell you! Your dada left Delhi, and now you’ve returned. Why didn’t you say before? It’s so exciting!”

  “I was waiting for the right moment.”

  They walked back to the Club through the parking lot. The stray dogs were annoying; cars hovered around in frustration waiting for spaces, guided by an attendant. He helped her over a puddle, quickly withdrew his hand, and she threw him a glance. She shooed away a bothersome canine he didn’t know how to handle. They entered through the side gate, went through the library building and arrived at the front garden. It was dusk by now, the pole lamps had come on, and there were no men with guns to be seen. By this time the bar was open, but she preferred the cafeteria, which was deserted. They began their tea in a silence that felt rather conspiratorial, aware of the servers who knew them both. Finally she got up to go, and he walked her to the driveway.

  “I’ll call you,” she said softly, as she got into her taxi.

  And he knew from that last lingering look that something significant had happened.

  * * *

  —

  He took an auto rickshaw to the shrine of the Sufi Nizamuddin and was dropped off on a busy highway at the entrance to a metro station. He crossed underground and emerged into an unpaved, potholed alley—a world unto itself, crowded and noisy. Beards, hijabs, skullcaps; dhotis, long shirts hanging out. Beggars and touts rushed at him as he proceeded alongside a wall of loud Islamic-themed paintings and hangings, the artists sitting idly beside them on the ground. When he inquired about the shrine, he was encouraged to keep walking. All the while his train of hopeful beggars following him, goading him to walk faster. Aage chalo, sahab…this way, sir! The road took a bend, leaning towards a narrow, covered corridor to his right. Men called out, welcoming him as though he had been expected. He entered into a passage that was hectic and festive, and dizzyingly colourful. Vocal music blared out from every stall, religious videos flickering on small TVs along the way. The smell of spice and food. There were stalls for keeping your shoes and for buying roses and sweets to take to the shrine; restaurants cried out for money to feed the poor. Fifty rupees per beggar. All along, men gesturing and calling out. Finally, after several twists of the path, he came to an open doorway where it seemed right to take off his shoes. A man sitting on the ground nearby accepted them; another man in a window above sold him a tray of roses. He declined sweets and entered into a blaze of sunlight.

  He was in a paved yard quietly crowded with people and found himself gazing up at a rather awesomely oversized structure, glittering with blue miniature tiles, topped by a dome. This was the mausoleum of Nizamuddin Auliya, the Sufi mystic who had defied both sultans, Alauddin and Tughlaq. Still present in human hearts, seven hundred years later. Remembered even in Nairobi, he recalled. The building itself looked ancient yet new, beautiful yet makeshift. A tall, overweight man in white shirt and pyjamas immediately stepped over and casually greeted him, and advised him to place a handkerchief over his head. Fortunately he had one. Nizamuddin Dargah, the man said, lifting a hand, Come, and guided him through the crowd. A wide veranda went around the building, enclosed by a white latticework railing on three sides and open at the front. Munir took a step up to the veranda and his guide gently shoved him towards the door to the inner sanctum, into which a stream of men were proceeding. Munir joined them with his tray, threw his roses onto the grave, circumambulated around it and came out again into the brightness. Outside, the man was waiting for him with a register and took down Munir’s name and address and accepted a donation. Then he guided Munir to the second mausoleum on the site, further up, that of the poet Amir Khusrau, a close disciple of Nizamuddin. Somehow a poet was a kind
red spirit. Khusrau was a historian and a musician as well, whose compositions were still popular.

  “I understand there is the grave of the historian Ziauddin Barani here,” Munir told his guide. “I’ve recently read about it…”

  Barani was the historian of Alauddin’s period whose vivid lives of the sultans and their times had gripped Munir’s imagination in the library. Without Barani, Delhi’s history would have been a lot poorer. In his introduction he had rather touchingly complained about his contemporaries’ ignorance of their past; it was an observation, Munir thought, that applied even today.

  “Come.” The man led him to a small unmarked grave, opposite Nizamuddin’s mausoleum, on which had been placed a single rose.

  Thus the historian. And thus fate. Next time he would bring a fresh rose for Ziauddin Barani.

  He felt a mix of emotions. The spiritual atmosphere, the attendants hustling for funds, the piety on the faces, the desperation in the women who were not allowed inside the sanctum but had surrendered their desperation to the ribbons they had tied on the interstices of the railings. He imagined his dada coming here for one last time to seek blessings for his voyage to Kenya and the new life he was to begin there. He would never see Delhi again, would always remember it. Certainly the name of Nizamuddin Auliya was familiar from Munir’s childhood; he had never known what it signified, until now.

  He put on his shoes and departed. As he emerged into the dirt alley leading out to the road, desperate beggar women chased after him, some holding up their babies. He was horrified, embarrassed. Were they sincere, were the babies theirs, was there a godfather using them—but what did that matter? Hurriedly getting into an auto, he put some money into the hands of two women and received their blessings. “God help you. God give you a son.”