Delhi

by R V Smith

  The sly moon was beginning to peep out, while the winds that blow on winter evenings were fattening at the end of the misty day. It struck me that I might as well hide from the cold in the church. So I rushed in and it was so nice and warm there, a carpet below my feet. From the window I could see Miss Hayes walking away hand-in-hand with the officer. The coast was clear and time to go home; Miss Hayes may not be alive now but whenever New Year’s Eve comes around I think of her and of the officer whom she married before sailing away to England. Can auld acquaintance be forgot and days of auld lang syne?

  No, never. Nor can I forget Willie Wilson!

  37

  Phaeton & Austin yarns

  rederick Bosman’s phaeton has passed into the realms of gossip, but in its hey day it used to be a slick vehicle which romped through the streets of Delhi. Those were the days when there were few cars on the roads and horse-driven carriages were the general mode of conveyance. Bosman Sahib drove his phaeton in the evenings when he was back from St Stephen’s College where he was a demonstrator in the science laboratory. On the days he would play hockey, the phaeton was parked at his house and the horse was allowed to graze till late. The joke was that it generally ended up with a bout of indigestion on such occasions, causing a lot of embarrassment to Mr Bosman.

  Fiddi Bhai, as he was generally known, was a very good hockey player who would be the dismay of the rival team. He sprinted with the ball through the field and would be at the goalmouth in no time, leaving the perplexed rival players to count the number of goals he would score at will. But there was another side to Fiddi Bhai’s personality. He was very touchy and disliked spectators shouting from the sidelines.

  Whenever Bosman Sahib was in full flow, the supporters of the rival team would start shouting, ‘Fiddi nervous’. Losing his concentration Fiddi Bhai would miss the goal and come rushing back, cursing and swearing. This certainly helped his rivals, as after that the player in him was reduced to a mere wreck who would miss any number of goals.

  The next day one would see him in his phaeton driving furiously and giving a wide berth to the hockey field until in the course of the week he was persuaded to play again. As Bosman Sahib grew older his appearances on the field became fewer and fewer. The horse died and the phaeton was sold. But Fiddi Bhai was not the one to give up his long evening drive even when he moved to St John’s College, Agra. People saw him one evening on Drummond Road driving a Baby Austin he had bought from a prince. The younger generation, which had never seen him in his phaeton, still remembers the joyrides which some of them were fortunate enough to get in the Austin.

  Fiddi Bhai had a speech impediment and the best way to please him was to ask him to relate his shikar yarns. He stammered a lot while doing so but the trick was not to laugh or even smile when he got stuck with words. One just sat in the car and heard him out with a sufficient number of ‘wah, wahs’.

  He was very fond of relating the yarn about how he went for a shoot and thought he had lost his way; but the Austin, as though possessing a personality of its own, took him into a village where he saw two men sitting on a cot. Noticing a gun slung on his shoulder they asked him if he had shot anything. ‘No bhai,’ said Bosman Sahib. ‘I lost my way and I think I’ll have to return home empty-handed today.’

  ‘Don’t worry sahib, we’ll see that that doesn’t happen,’ they replied and getting up pulled away the cot, revealing a well. ‘Believe it or not,’ Fiddi Bhai used to say, ‘there was a pair of deer in the well. The two had fallen into it and all I had to do was to shoot and the villagers helped in hauling them up, which was not difficult as the well was dry.’

  You can make what you’d like of the tale but Fiddi Bhai was certain that like his long-dead horse, the Austin was no ordinary car but an entity which could communicate with him and understand his moods. Some detected growing signs of senility in his statements but others tended to be gullible. Encouraged thus, there was no end to his yarn spinning even when he retired to Kanpur.

  38

  Pigeon-Fanciers’ Day

  he New Year brings with it a host of activities and pastimes, one of which is pigeon fancying. Even now in the Walled City there are several mohallas where the kabootarbaz, as they are called, make the morning and evening ring to cries of Aah to call back the air-borne pigeons. However, there was a time when, like the patangbaz or kite fliers, they too went to open spaces near the Yamuna bank to engage in kulkulain or competitions after feeding coarse grain to their flocks. Now, because of encroachments on the river bank and consequent lack of space, the pigeon-fanciers compete only from their rooftops.

  Hafiz Mian was a great kabootarbaz in the last century and his main rival was Deen Badshah. Each of them had hundreds of pigeons, both of Indian and foreign breed. There were Russian, Turkish, Afghan, and Burmese, and some other South Asian breeds, and of course, those from all over India. Their cost even then was great, with the acrobatic Lotan kabootar occupying a place of pride in the kabootar-khana or specially built wood and wire mesh cages, with pigeon-holes for the birds to roost. The greybaz was also a highly prized bird like the Kabuli. Dennis Bhai’s old father, Elias Sahib, used to say that his son could recognize the breed of a passing-by pigeon by just examining its droppings. Dennis Bhai had greenish eyes, just like some of his pigeons, and when he married he found a Muslim girl with the same kind of eyes, making a friend remark, ‘Wah Dennis, dulhan bhi khoob chunni hai. Aankh se aankh mila dil (Bravo, you have found a bride with matching eyes). Dennis Bhai is dead but his dulhan, Kesar, still survives as a tall, fair, slim pretty lady aging with grace, whose eyes glow with excitement whenever she sees a flock of pigeons darting across the sky to the frenzied whistling of a rival kabootarbaz.

  Pigeon fancying is a very old sport. It was known in Egypt about 3,000 years ago and found great patronage in India during the Mughal era when pigeon fanciers from Bagdad, Turkey, Iran, and Egypt flocked to the court. Prince Salim, who ascended the throne as Jahangir, spent several hours in their company learning the tricks of pigeon flying. It is said that one day he asked a young palace girl, Mehr-un-Nissa, to hold two of his pigeons while he went to answer an urgent summons from his father, the Emperor Akbar. On his return he found the girl had only one pigeon in her hand. When he asked her what had happened to the other, she replied, ‘This’, and released the other pigeon also. Her witty answer pleased the prince and he fell in love with her. Later, he married the girl, who became famous as Nur Jahan.

  Akbar himself was very fond of pigeon flying and had some 20,000 pigeons of his own. He called the pastime Ishkbazi or love-play. Fr. Monserrate, who saw them, writes in his commentary, ‘The pigeons are cared for by eunuchs and servant-maids. Their evolutions are controlled at will, when they are flying, by means of certain signals, just as those of well-trained soldiery are controlled by a competent general by means of bugles and drums. It will seem little short of the miraculous when I affirm that, when sent out, they dance, turn somersaults all together in the air, fly in orderly rhythm, and return to their starting point, all at the sound of a whistle.’ To come back to Hafiz Mian and Deen Badshah, the two could do all that Monserrate observed and won many wagers against each other in competitions in which pigeon fanciers from Bareilly, Agra, Gwalior, Saharanpur, Allahabad, Lucknow, Kanpur, and Moradabad also participated. At two contests the stake was ^50,000, which was a very big amount years ago. The last Delhi Kulkulain took place on 1 January 1952 near Akbar’s tomb at Sikandra (Agra) and Deen Badshah won half a lakh of rupees in a grueling contest, after which Hafiz Mian stopped flying pigeons as he had lost most of his birds to his lucky rival and become almost a pauper. Like the pigeon fancier who lost his all after a fight with Nadir Shah’s troopers, leading to the 1739 massacre of Delhi.

  39

  Heroines & Bravehearts of 1857

  ay 11 passes off quietly, with few realizing that it is the anniversary of the outbreak of ‘The Great Sepoy Mutiny of 1857’ in Delhi. That uprising which began a day earlier in Meerut
, was a phenomenal event.

  There are so many places in Delhi, which remind one of those times. Particularly the area near Kashmiri Gate where a cinema now stands. There were huge trees here under which the sepoys rested or planned their attacks on the British troops stationed on the Ridge. Food was brought in huge vessels (deghs) for the freedom fighters and water was supplied by bhistis. Still the arrangements left much to be desired and there were frequent quarrels over an extra share, though the meat served was not all mutton, the rotis thick, and rice coarse. But it must be remembered that to feed so many men even in those inexpensive times was not easy.

  Sentries posted on the walls of the Kashmiri Gate kept a sharp lookout for spies. Indian, of course, but working for the British. But as the siege of Delhi entered its final phase, the sepoys began to lose heart. It was during this period that the Joan of Arc of Delhi emerged. She was a big-built woman, with hardly any trace of beauty, who rode on horseback and struck terror in the hearts of the British soldiers. Sword in hand she led the men on many a foray, and even the emperor’s sons and grandsons and the purdah ladies of Delhi came to witness her exploits.

  Nobody now seems to remember who she was and where she came from. But it is a well-known fact that some women in those days mastered the martial arts to defend the zenana. Among them were Pathan ladies, big hefty women who knew how to use the sword and spear, and could hold their own against an average solider. One example that comes to mind in recent times is that of Zorawar Singh who guarded the zenana for years and beat the daylights out of any intruder who dared to enter the ancestral Jat haveli.

  Besides ‘The Joan of Arc of Delhi’ there were other women who were equally brave. The two Amazons from Rampur, particularly have been described by some historians as the ‘real leaders’ of the demoralized sepoys whom they taunted into action. It was near the Kashmiri Gate that a party of British soldiers was fired upon with such ferocity that they nearly retreated. But one of them noticed some movement in a tree and fired back. Down came the sniper and it was a woman.

  There were brave British women too. Among them were Harriet Tytler Amelia, Madeline Jackson, Mariam, and Mrs Beresford, wife of the manager of the Delhi and London Bank, who killed two of her assailants with a hog spear before being slain like her husband and two daughters in Chandni Chowk. Harriet Tytler, however, was no relation of Jennifer Tytler or of the Reverend J.D. Tytler, who was born ten years after her death.

  Though the Mutiny brought two hitherto rival communities together, it had and unfortunate side effect – the killing of Indian Christians along with the feringhis. But that was under the mistaken belief that religion united the two. And in any case when passions rise, reason does take a back seat. So whom can you blame for it?

  How a common foe had been targeted can be gauged from these two quotes from English eyewitnesses, bias and all: ‘We encountered a native who appeared to be a Hindu priest running towards us. His long flowing hair was covered with ashes and flying loose all over his body. He was shouting curses on the Europeans and brandishing a naked sword.’

  That incident occurred at Agra, and the following one on the road to Aligarh: ‘When the Ghazees charged, an old mollah, or priest, sat by the bank chanting the Koran to encourage the warriors; as the combat thickened, his voice rose louder; at length he worked himself up into an ecstasy of fanaticism. He closed the volume, seized a sword and rushed on our soldiers one of whom ran him through with his bayonet.’ It was cruel no doubt but then 1857 was a year soaked in blood.

  40

  Holi in the past

  oli is celebrated by Hindus but not Muslims, who resent colour being thrown on them. The festival falls in the beginning of March which corresponds to the Indian month of Phagun, when the colours of spring transform the landscape as if by the magic brush of a painter who with deft strokes changes the bleak scenario of winter to the yellow, pink and golden hues of Basant, noted Capt. Ridgeway in his diary before the outbreak of the Mutiny in Delhi. By that time the heat of summer was to bring about a drastic change in the natural surroundings, with tree leaves drooping under the impact of the blazing sun and forcing people to take shelter either in their homes or in shady nooks and corners. The only redeeming feature, Ridgeway noted, was the pleasantness of the early mornings and late evenings, ‘when the heat subsided and one went to the gardens for fresh air and figs sold in leaf cups the size of dessert quarter plates’.

  That was an observation by a man who had spent a few years in India and even fewer in Delhi and Ambala. People did celebrate Holi in 1857 but it was much subdued the next year, when the British had regained full control of the capital and the surrounding areas. The same thing happened ninety years later in 1947 when Partition was yet to come into effect. Contrary to popular perception, some leading Muslims, among whom were nawabs, did celebrate the festival of colours with great enthusiasm that year also as their ancestors had been courtiers at the durbar of Mohammad Shah Rangila and later Shah Alam, Akbar Shah Sani and Bahadur Shah Zafar. Among them, Mohammad Shah, and Zafar celebrated Holi with great gusto, though Shah Alam did not mind dabbling in colours with Maratha chieftains, whose leader, Mahadji Scindia, was the most powerful military leader in North India with the emperor under his thumb. Akbar Shah did not mind his financiers, the bullion merchants of Chandni Chowk led by Seth Sidhu Mal, putting gulal on his forehead and sprinking rosewater on his royal clothes, which dried up very fast, leaving behind a faint perfume. Bahadur Shah Zafar, the least orthodox of them, liked the Holi revelry of his subjects and also participated in it but with regard to his status as the inheritor of Mughal dignity. The orthodox nobles of his court however, preferred to stay indoors during the time the colour throwing was at its peak.

  In 1948, post Partition, Holi was celebrated on a subdued note in Delhi, Agra and other prominent cities. There were warnings from the police that colour was not to be thrown on unwilling people, yet there was perceptible tension in Chandni Chowk, Daryaganj, Paharganj, and Dev Nagar. Fearing a riot, a strong police force was made to patrol the thoroughfares, along with the armed constabulary on the orders of Mr Beadon. Though there was no rioting, sporadic clashes were reported from some areas, where a sort of curfew-like situation prevailed later.

  However, by 1949 conditions became more stable and Holi was celebrated without major incidents. In the mid-1950s the nawabzadas of Aligarh and Agra, along with some kunwars of Wazirpura and Dhirpura celebrated Holi in style in Chandni Chowk. They went about in an old weapon-carrier spraying colour on all and sundry with rubber tubes immersed in big drums filled with coloured water. That year, like in other years, also saw grand celebrations outside Lala Chunna Mal’s haveli. In the Jama Masjid area, a much-married Urdu poet, one of whose compositions is echoed in the film song, ‘Gal Gulabi, chaal sharabi / Aap se accha kohi nahin hai’, went about greeting his men and women friends in the Walled City and presenting them his romantic verses sprinkled with wet gulal.

  A practice in those days for Hindi newspapers was to award ‘Holi degrees’ to friends, colleagues, acquaintances, and also political leaders. These were in the form of one-line sentences, which were both ribald and hilarious. About that time one old tradition that ended was the Christian Holi, celebrated on Shrove Tuesday, a day before Ash Wednesday, and the beginning of the fasting season of Lent. Now, Holi has lost much of its colourful past and even the colours are scarce as black and silver paint is generally used to smear people, who have to spend long hours in cleaning it and also risking skin infection in the bargain.

  41

  King’s Abode in danger

  here are some whom misfortune dogs even after death. Bahadur Shah Zafar is one of them. His last wish to be buried in India remained unfulfilled and he was laid to rest in Rangoon by the British late at night by lantern light, wrapped in a dirty piece of cloth. Zafar seems to have had a foreboding of this or he would not have written his famous elegy, lamenting the fact that he had been denied even two yards of land in his native place. Now
126 years after his death, for it was in November 1862 that he breathed his last (when Tagore was a few months old), fate has thought it fit to strike again at the ill-starred Mughal Delhi, which had been confiscated by the British after the revolt of 1857, is facing demolition at the hands of colonizers. The tehsil had been sold to Lala Chunamal but now it has changed hands once again with a large part of the baradari already demolished.

  The tehsil lies north of Hauz Shamshi, the focus of the annual Phool Walon ki Sair. It was given to Zafar by his father at a time when he was the heir apparent, but facing stiff opposition from his stepmother, who wanted her own son to ascend the throne after Akbar Shah II. But as subsequent events proved, Queen Mumtaz Mahal II’s wish could not be realized, because Bahadur Shah was destined to be the last in the line of Babar.

  Why did Zafar need the tehsil? One of the reasons is that he felt suffocated within the confines of the Red Fort, with all its intrigues and counter-intrigues in the zenana. He was a man of open spaces in his younger days, hunting deer across the Jamuna or spending time in Mehrauli with his friends and acquaintances. He was fond of mangoes and in summer there was enough of the fruit to tempt him to stay there. Another reason was his attachment to Qutubuddin Bakhtiar Kaki, the saint whose shrine he loved to visit – not only on Thursdays when the qawwalis were sung – but on other weekdays too. Zafar had great faith in the miraculous powers of the saint, one thing which he shared in common with his stepmother, for she too was a great devotee of Qutub Sahib.