by R V Smith
You can imagine the rest.
But on that fateful night two policemen in mufti had followed the tikka seller’s victim. Soon after, the culprits were arrested.
Where exactly the tikka seller sat in the Mori Gate area is difficult to say now, and Hakim Maghroob, who must have been a bit of a detective at a time when Sherlock Holmes was yet to become famous, is just a name in a tale that does not identify the gang which plied the heinous trade. But that’s adventure for you on a plate all right. Ask Mullaji, if you can find him, and he will confirm that this is true.
17
Preserve these Monuments
urji Khan’s tomb in R.K. Puram and the monuments in Mohammadpur Village are not the only ones showing the ravages of time. There are several tombs in Delhi which are in urgent need of preservation. Among these is the mausoleum of Azim Khan, not to be confused with Azam Khan which was the title bestowed on Ataga Khan by Akbar for having saved the life of Humayun. Little is known about this nobleman of the sixteenth century, who probably served in Kandahar and the Deccan. Azim means magnificent and parental hopes while naming the child seem to have been realized in this case.
It is sad to note that the historical records of the minor monuments of Mehrauli got lost during the partition when families connected with personages of yore migrated to Pakistan. Those living in the vicinity of such monuments are still by and large reservoirs of knowledge handed down from father to son, even though their versions are tainted by additions not wholly historical. Azim Khan’s monument is one such. Therefore it falls to the lot of the modern-day historian to sift fact from fiction so that a proper account is left for posterity.
During the British days beer parties were held at Azim Khan’s tomb before the picnic season finally ended with the onset and the Lat Sahib’s departure to Shimla, leaving Delhi to bake in the heat of May and June. No sahibs, memsahibs, babalogs, and ayahs wend their way to the tomb of Azim Khan now. But it is heartening to note that the Archaeological Survey of India is making efforts to preserve the monument. But what about Kharbuze ka Gumbad, an exquisite medieval monument that is slowly crumbling away like a rotting melon?
You stand outside Delhi College of Engineering, housed in what was once a palace of Dara Shikoh, and what do you see? Desolation indeed. Even the structures of the twentieth century are in a dilapidated state what to talk about the time of Shah Jahan! Yes, Skinner’s Church looks better preserved, but what about the other buildings around, including the mosque and the verandahs on the opposite side of the road with rooms on top that are reminiscent of Kipling’s Shimla?
Wander towards the Kashmiri Gate and feel despondent at its state of ‘preservation’ – a place where people relive themselves after the closure of the historic gateway to DTC buses. The Bengali Club at the side evokes memories of the times of Nirad Chaudhuri. One met him sometimes walking from Maiden’s Hotel to Kashmiri Gate, stick in hand and dressed in a three-piece suit, a small man who talked to himself, ignoring the stares of passers-by.
Kashmiri Gate was a fashionable centre at one time. It is going the way of all human creations. And as you climb the stairs of the Kauria Bridge and its extension and descend to the other side, you see more desolation in the name of haphazard development. Even the grounds of Hardinge Library have been encroached upon. There are cars, scooters, buses, taxis parked on the grounds and behind them are the crumbling walls of the havelis of Chandni Chowk. The Chowk itself is devoid of its old charm with heavy traffic instead of a stream flowing through it.
Proceeding to the Jama Masjid, the shops and the dhabas make you wonder how Shah Jahan could have walked up to his grand mosque this way. The environs of the Masjid, particularly Urdu Bazaar, Matia Mahal and Chawri Bazaar, with shops competing cheek by jowl, and the stink from the fish and poultry market make you beat a hasty retreat via Azad Park, which had its days of glory as Edward Park.
You cross the busy road at risk to the life and limb and reach the rear of the Red Fort. The scene is again disheartening. The Jamuna flowed here at one time and boats were tied in it for the pleasure of the emperor and his harem. Now the river has retreated and is no longer fit for pleasure boating.
What would the great Mir Taqi Mir have said had he seen Delhi now? And Zauq? Would he have insisted on living in its galis? It’s a mercy they were spared the despoliation of Shahjahanabad in a perverse century. The only consolation is that the saga continues.
18
Reminiscences of An Old Mali
shiq Ali was a very old man. Nearly all his eighty years he had lived in the Civil Lines area where he was born. He used to recall that at the turn of the nineteenth century, the place was lively; he even remembered the names of the beauties of those days. ‘Mind you there were six: Miss Jenkins and as sure as Allah is in his heaven, each of them had a sahib to take her out. And what about Baden sahib’s daughter? The whole ‘chaoni’ (old cantonment) black and white, used to stand on the roadside when she passed by in her phaeton.’
At that time Ashiq Ali was barely fifteen years old and was being groomed into a sais in Hamilton Sahib’s household. But curiosity led him to indiscretions and as a punishment ‘he was transferred to the garden’. And recalled Ashiq Ali, ‘I was glad of the change for a groom’s life suited me the least. Quite a few of my evenings were spent at the hackney carriage stand (now a taxi stand) in front of Delhi Club where the sahibs gathered every evening.’ The grooms had to wait for hours sometimes, ‘An idle mind is a Shaitan’s’, added Ashiq Ali. ‘What do you think they did? They gossiped and spread scandal about the sahibs, discussed their private lives and staged love affairs of their own.’
‘Life in the garden over 100 years ago was bliss,’ said Ashiq Ali. The area was full of bungalows and the mali was an important man because the Civil Lines area was famous for its well-kept gardens and lawns. The houses of the sahibs all contained a green house where the mali held ‘court’ during the day and sold flowers and vegetables on the sly to servants of any ‘Hindustani sahib log who might be too lazy to go to the Subzimandi or Kashmiri Gate’, recalled Ashiq Ali.
Although the sahibs were very secretive about what they did at their club, the memsahibs were not. They encouraged their servants to learn the secrets of other memsahibs from their servants. The gardens were of course a favourite location for discussion and sarcastic comment where the nosey females met and as a result, the mali was much petted. Ashiq Ali used to recall that he was almost spoilt by his memsahib.
But those days trotted away with their paraphernalia of loops and flourishes, and eventually Ashiq Ali had to work in a school as a head mali. He fretted about the changes in his locality – the schools and the new sahibs and nourished a secret grudge against Connaught Place – ‘the upstart which had taken over all the charm of the Civil Lines’ – once the hub and centre of all activity in town.
Another old timer, Rasool Khan, remembers the heyday of the Civil Lines and of the tonga which was once a status symbol. Those were the times when the well-connected owned a tonga or phaeton and paraded it with pride in the fashionable centres of Chandni Chowk and Kashmiri Gate, not to speak of Jama Masjid where some of the best tongas in the country could be seen on any given Friday. Those tongas belonged to the nawabs and nawabzadas of pre-Partition days who came to offer ‘Jumma’ prayers at the mosque, dressed in sherwanis of the finest cut, along with their retinues of servants and flatterers.
The tonga was not confined to the Indian gentry alone. The British residents of the Civil Lines were just as enamoured with the horse-drawn carriage. He nostalgically recalls those colonial days when the British Officers’ Club was the rendezvous of the elite of Delhi. And listening to him one gets a picture of the tongas and phaetons racing to loud hurrahs, cracking whips, and breathless rivalry as to who got to the stand first.
And then there were the slower tongas in which memsahibs came arrayed in their evening best to become the cynosure of the young officers standing near the hackney stand. But times do cha
nge and the splendid tonga of yesterday with its daredevilry does not bear to stand in comparison to the rickety old rake of today. Swifter modes of transport have spelt the doom for a once ‘smart carriage for smart people’ and thus Delhi has lost another old association with its romantic past.
19
The Beggars’ Wedding
n 1953, the beggars of Agra came with a barat to New Delhi. The bride was the daughter of a beggar from Nizamuddin. Fakirs too observe caste rules and traditions. The beggars who sit in large numbers outside the eating houses of Matia Mahal, Old Delhi were among the invitees. It was the Amar Ujala, then a fledgling Hindi daily, which published the news as a small item, headlined ‘Faqiron ki barat’. What they ate and how the wedding went was well-known and the residents of Nizamuddin Basti were greatly amused. Incidentally, it was in this very locality, that Amir Khusrau had built his famous 40-gate haveli. One day a dervish came and sought alms at each of the gates and was not disappointed because Khusrau himself gave him money without a murmur. When someone asked him why he had satisfied a ‘greedy beggar’, he replied that charity had no limits.
If Amir Khusrau was to come back to life today he would not find much change in the locality of Nizamuddin. The houses are just as old, weather-eaten, ramshackle, and bear the scars of long years of existence. They have their courtyards and division of the apartments into male and female sections (mardana and zenana). There are goats – or rams tethered to the doorposts and fowls strutting about, sometimes laying an egg under the ‘takht’ on which men would relax after a hard day’s work and smoke their bidis or chew paan. The lanes are narrow and winding, often ending in a cul-de-sac so one might have to make an embarrassed retreat while finding one’s way out. Graves are another feature of the locality. One will find them amidst houses, on the pavement, near a shop, or even in the main squares. But Khusrau’s Mahal does not exist there anymore.
When Hazrat Nizamuddin came to dwell in this area, it was a deserted place but during the course of his long life, people started moving hither. The Khankha (abode) where the saint held his daily langar and distributed rotis attracted the richest and the poorest. Kings, noblemen, merchants, among them Prince Juna who was to become Mohamad bin Tughlaq and Hasan Gangu, the orphan boy who founded the Bahamani dynasty in the Deccan with the blessings of Hazrat Nizamuddin. At the beggars’ wedding most of the guests ate pulo-zarda in their begging bowls, which have many interesting legends attached to them.
The beggars who seek alms on the steps of the Jama Masjid and in the neighbouring Meena Bazaar are among those who are very conscious of their bowls and woe to the ones who show disrespect to them. A man was pestered by a beggar who kicked his bowl. The beggar squatting on the ground, got up and nearly assaulted him for his audacity. ‘Don’t give me a paisa,’ he shouted, ‘but kicking the bowl means you have insulted the whole tribe of mendicants, and these include some of the holiest men among both Muslims and Hindus.’
Any beggar worth his name keeps his bowl well-polished and clean. No obnoxious stuff gets into it. Even those who smoke hashish or drink liquor see to it that the begging bowl is not tainted because it is their daily breadwinner. In mythology, the begging bowl came from Shiva himself, who gave it to an importunate mendicant worried about how he would feed himself while pursuing his spiritual activities. The Bible does not say so, but Cain is believed to have received the first one from God himself when he became a vagabond on the face of the earth after murdering his brother Abel.
There is also a story that a beggar who frequented the gates of the eighth-century palace of Khalifa Haroon-al-Rashid in Baghdad did not know where to keep all the alms he got one day from the grand Caliph. The latter promptly ordered his wazir to get a special one fashioned for the man. Earlier, King Solomon is said to have filled with jewels, the begging bowl of a destitute who brought him news of the murder of Harim Abif, whom he regarded a rival in his affection for the Queen of Sheba.
20
Damari Tales
n old resident of Vithalbhai Patel House was curious to know how many damaries made up a rupee. Now the damari was among the smallest coins of the old currency systems, though it continued to be in use for some time even after the British takeover from the Mughals. Only the cowrie (seashell) was smaller than it and the dhela slightly higher in the monetary denomination.
The damari, akin to the proverbial widow’s mite, also figures in stories, like the one about the dacoit chief who, on being repeatedly asked for a damari he owed a fellow dacoit, responded with a flourish. Not being able to find the small coin in the loot he was distributing in a ruined grave, he took off the head-gear of a one-eyed dacoit and threw it at the one who was dunning him and remarked, ‘Damari ke badle pugree ley ley (take this in lieu).’ Would you believe it this action that led to the arrest of the whole gang? A vagabond Sheikh Chilli, who was watching the tamasha, informed the police and won a big reward in return.
Now for the damari, it was one-fourth of a paisa in most places and one-eighth of it in a few others. Since 64 paisa made up a rupee, 256 damries or 512 equalled it. Well the damari has been long out of circulation despite the nursery rhyme ‘Talli bajao, talli bajao / Banno da hoga / Damari ke tel mai biha hoga (keep clapping, keep clapping oil worth a damari would be used during the wedding of the girl-child hearing the rhyme). Since 25 seers of the best quality wheat cost just a rupee in the good old days, a rupee per present rates was equal to `500 (best wheat is now `20 a kilogram). That would mean a damari would be worth about `2. Not such a small coin after all!
My eighty-four-year-old aunt says when her grand-aunt was a girl she would buy a paisa worth of salt (samhari), an anna worth of sugar, two paisa worth of potatoes, with mange ka dhania (free coriander), a dehela worth of curry leaf and two damaries worth of kewara (rosewater). The kewara came in fancy, little bottles that children loved to collect and fill up with water to play Ali Baba and Forty Thieves.
Grand-aunt would recall how she used to collect damries as pin money so that she could buy cosmetics, pins and needles, and other things girls are fond of.
Sona, the cobbler who died aged 100 in 1948, used to say that people would pay in damries to get their shoes repaired. And in his father’s time, a pair of khadaons (wooden chappals) could be bought for a few damaries.
My grandmother was very fond of telling the story of the Damari Prince. A jobless youth, one day while resting under a huge tree heard two birds (male and female) discussing the case of the kingdom’s princess who had been lying ill for several months. All the hakims and vaids had tried to cure her of the persistent fever but failed. The king had announced that he would marry his daughter to anyone who cured her. The birds said if their dung was collected in a mudpot worth a damari, kept cool in the moonlight, and soaked in morning dew, the resultant mixture, if applied on the forehead of the princess, would cure her. The youth heard the birds (how he understood their language is not known) and did so accordingly. He then disguised himself as a medicine man and went about the city calling out ‘Vaid-Hakim’, ‘Vaid-Hakim’. The youth passed by the palace gate and was taken to the king’s chamber who asked him if he could cure his daughter.
‘Let me try,’ said the vagabond. The guards then took him to the room where the princess was lying on a cot, looking like a skeleton. The ‘Vaid-Hakim’ took out the dung paste from his bag and applied it to her forehead. He repeated the exercise for three days and by the fourth, the princess was rid of her fever. The vagabond then asked for the princess’s hand in marriage. The king and queen demurred at first but when reminded of the royal promise they reluctantly agreed to his proposal. The vagabond became a prince and after that came to be known as ‘Damari ka Shehzada’ because he had told the birds’ story to his newly-wed wife. ‘No more damries means no more vagabonds becoming princes’ was the parting shot of my grandmother when I, as a seven-year-old, expressed the wish to marry a princess.
21
Delhi’s poetic heritage
alman
was a handsome boy with a baby face, long hair and almost feminine manners, so much so that on a moonlit night one could mistake him for a teenage girl waiting for a lover under an imli tree. No wonder men were attracted to him and sometimes made his life miserable. But over the years Salman changed. He started wearing a black kurta and matching pyjamas or tehmet (lungi) and frequenting the shrines of saints in Delhi. Though semi-literate, he was drawn towards Sufism. He would talk about it in a sonorous voice imbued with devotion. And when mood seized him, he would go looking for the mazars of Urdu poets. He often visited those of Mir Dard, Hakim Momin Khan Momin, and religious reformer Shah Wallihullah. Dard is buried in the Kabristan on Mir Dard Road, opposite the Khooni Darwaza. Salman would walk there from Kucha Chelan, behind the main Daryaganj street, where he lived at the shop of his cousin, Sultan, a carpenter who made expensive furniture. Momin’s grave, saved from demolition, is in Katra Mehdian, behind J.P. Hospital but the tomb of Alexander Heatherley, ‘Azad’ was untraceable.
It was a friendship with Salman that made one accompany him to some of these venerated spots, including the vacant tomb of Bahadur Shah Zafar. Khwaja Mir Dard (1719-1785) was probably a courtier of Mohd Shah. Like his ancestor, Khwaja Bahauddin Nakshabandi, he was drawn to mysticism. Besides poetry, he also composed khayals, thumries, and dhrupads. When Nadir Shah invaded Delhi in 1739, Dard, despite repeated requests, refused to move to the Red Fort from his ancestral house near the present Baraf Khana in Paharganj. He later built a house in Kucha Chellan, where he settled down till his death. His younger brother, Mir Asar, wrote Masnavi-Khab-O-Khyal which, according to Dr Muhammad Sadiq, author of History of Urdu Literature, was a monologue to an imagined mistress that verges on pornography and ranks with the risqué works of Chaucer, Boccaccio, and Ovid. Mir Asar was a Delhiwalah out and out. Mazhar Jan Janan (1700-1781) was attached to Aurangzeb’s court, and Salman off and on went to his mazar near Madarsa Shabul Khair, close to the Jama Masjid. Mazhar was a pioneer poet who met a tragic end as he was shot by a zealot and despite lingering on for two days, did not disclose the name of his assailant, who was later identified as a misguided Shia.