by R V Smith
More famous however are Saqqa Gali, where the watersellers, who sold water filled in skin mashaqs, reside, Gali Kebabian, or lane of kebab sellers, where the original Karim’s restaurant is situated, and the gali of royal cooks (Shahi bawarchis) in Matia Mahal who take orders for weddings now, but were earlier attached to the royal kitchen in the Red Fort. Other galis are abound too, the names of some of which are lost in antiquity.
According to the AIR survey, which will presumably cover the kutchas (like Katra Neel, Katra Ustad Hamid, and Ustad Hira) of Chandni Chowk, ‘The residents of the localities are losing interest in their past. They are not sure how their street got its name… But they are nevertheless conscious that the old city is fast losing its charm because of the ‘builder mafia’ and the sorry state of civic amenities. However, religious harmony is one thing that is still vibrant in Purani Dilli,’ along with its delicious khana.
64
The Ghostly Trail
elhi is a spooky place – or so it is believed. The Indian Paranormal Society, and a travel company, Let’s Get Packing, have decided to explore haunted places in the capital and also Mumbai, Kolkata, and Bangalore. They organized a tour, ‘Creatures of the Night’ which took tourists to Jamali-Kamali’s tomb, the Mehrauli Archaeological Park, and the Nicholson Cemetery. How many ghosts they contacted is not known but their K-2 metres were able to record some unusual things, like the smell of sandalwood at Balban’s tomb (maybe a Thursday ritual agarbatti for the slave king was a quite a scrooge), and a shining red triangle at a mosque, to quote a story in a daily. But the ghostbusters were silent on what happened at the cemetery. They expected to see the headless spectre of General Nicholson who was shot near the Khari Baoli during the British assault on Mori Gate by a sniper standing in the window of a double-storied house. A marble tablet still marks the site. Though mortally wounded, he breathed his last after Delhi had been retaken, with the words ‘Thank God, I can now die in peace’, or something to that effect.
The story about the headless soldier is associated with another site – the Delhi Gate, where a British sentry shot himself after the woman who swept the road every morning, and with whom he had fallen in love, got married. The yarn is that he walks from the gate right down Daryaganj street and later disappears into the nearby Lothian Road Cemetery, where he was presumably buried. The peepul tree at the Delhi Gate is also said to be haunted by a banshee (wailing churail) who sometimes troubles belated passers-by by making a jingling sound with her anklets. Incidentally, the Lothian Road Cemetery, the oldest existing in Delhi, is believed to be the most haunted as many of those who were killed in 1857 are buried there. Even during the day the cemetery looks spooky with tumbled-down tombs all around and a weird middle-aged woman sitting under a tree to quench the thirst of stray visitors in the afternoon.
Another story would have us believe that every Thursday the Last Emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, and his begum Zeenat Mahal, lead a procession of their courtiers, and members of the harem, out of the Red Fort and back into it. This is surprising since both Bahadur Shah and Zeenat Mahal died in Rangoon and were buried there. Ghosts are never known to cross such long distances as the one between Delhi and the Burmese city, where Zafar is honoured as a saint and a Pir who grants wishes to those who light candles and joss sticks at his mazar, though he poetically mourned that there would be none to do so after his death. Many years ago the custodian of the Red Fort, Asghar Ali Khan, reported seeing the ghosts of Mughal princes and princesses during his nightly rounds of the fort. Later a photographer of the Hindustan Times spent a night there photographing paranormal activity but his pictures showed either blobs of light or some weird skeletal images of which nothing much could be made. The army authorities of the fort tried to bring the issue to an end saying some soldiers used to frighten the custodian by pretending to be princes and princesses but the matter did not die down so easily, with Asghar Ali Khan holding his ground and swearing that he was not so naïve as to be taken in by masqueraders. It later transpired that the army authorities were trying to put an end to the ghostly yarns as they were hurting the army’s image in the public eye.
Students interested in paranormal happenings can also try their luck on the Ridge, where some of the bloodiest events of 1857 took place. As a matter of fact, young doctors of the Hindu Rao Hospital, which was once a British mansion, reported seeing feringhi bhoots while going to a canteen for tea during night duty or biking down in the dark to the hospital. Panchkuian Road cremation ground and its roundabout are also said to spring a ghostly surprise now and then, like a motorist who honked to get a man out of the road one night and unable to stop, drove right through him. On looking back he saw the man strolling on the Link Road just as before, unmindful of another approaching car. Connaught Place and Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg also have their own phantoms.
Fashion-cum-cine journalist Amir Rajpal, who died on 7 September, was one of the early ghost busters, who spent a night at the Martyrs’ Cemetery in Agra and managed to get some spooky photos for Sun magazine in the 1970s, which created quite a stir among Delhi’s Fleet Street. But the group sponsoring ‘Creatures of the Night tours’ would be well-advised not to go looking for a headless Nicholson, for he was buried with his head quite intact, and no evidence of his grave ever being dug up.
65
The Battle of 1803
eptemebr 10 marks the anniversary eve of the Battle of Delhi, fought 209 years ago. There were many battles of Delhi, starting from 1191-92, which included the ones fought between Mohammad Ghori and Prithviraj Chauhan, the one of wits between the Mongols and Alauddin Khilji, Taimur’s rout of the forces of Mahmud Tughlaq at Loni, then the three battles fought at Panipat between Babar and Ibrahim Lodhi, Akbar and Hemu (not counting the Karnal skirmish between Mohammad Shah and Nadir Shah, the Persian invader), and the Maratha confederacy and Nadir’s successor, Ahmed Shah Abdali. Though referred to as the battles of Panipat, they were really those for the possession of Delhi and as such linked with the fortunes of this imperial city. In all these battles (save the first one between Prithviraj and Ghori) the invaders were victorious, though Alauddin succeeded in chasing away the Mongols camping below the very walls of Delhi by not losing his nerve. In Shah Alam’s reign 30,000 Sikhs under Baghel Singh camped at Tis Hazari with the intention of invading Delhi but were prevailed upon to withdraw, thanks to the sagacity of Begum Sumroo, who saved the emperor the indignity of capitulating to the besiegers, and thus earned for herself the honorific title of ‘the emperor’s beloved daughter’.
However, the only ‘Battle of Delhi’ recorded as such in history is the one between Scindia’s Marathas and the British, with the former pretending to fight on behalf of the Mughal emperor, though Shah Alam himself was wavering between support to the two parties as he knew that he was caught between the devil and the deep sea. This battle was fought on 11 September 1803 in what is now East Delhi, with Patparganj being the main arena of action and thus the battlefield.
To quote from Percival Spear’s Twilight of the Mughals, ‘The British Governor-General, Lord Wellesley’s objective was to secure the prestige of the Mughal name without any admission of its superior authority; Shah Alam’s to maintain the imperial pretensions at the cost of any conceivable practical concessions.’ Lord Wellesley’s agent was the British Commander-in-Chief, Lord Lake, and his agent in Delhi was the Sayyid Reza Khan. During July and August Shah Alam’s letters wavered between appeals for help (against the Marathas who had made a virtual prisoner of him, keeping him in a golden cage as it were) and complaints of his treatment by the British as the fortunes of war ebbed and flowed. On 27 July 1803, Wellesley, in a personal letter, assured Shah Alam that if he accepted the asylum which he had directed Lake to offer, ‘then every respect and degree of attention would be shown to him and his family and adequate provision will be made on the part of the British Government for the support (ease and comfort) of your Majesty, your family and household’.
But as Spear also thinks, t
he governor general’s assurances were those of a forked tongue for, besides promising respect, dignity and personal security, he wanted Lake to ‘urge Shah Alam and the heir apparent Akbar (later Akbar Shah II) to reside at Monghyr in Bengal’ (now in Bihar). However, Sir Charles Napier, the conqueror of Sindh under the apology ‘Peccavi’ (I have sinned) was of the view that the emperor should be sent to Fatehpur Sikri, Akbar the Great’s deserted capital, which was closer to Delhi and hence perhaps more acceptable to the blind emperor.
Shah Alam asked for British support on 29 August, and on 1 September under French dictation, had announced that he would take the field against the British, ‘whose invariable custom it is, in whatever country they are allowed to reside under fixed stipulations, speedily to seize upon that country’. Despite this assertion he welcomed Lord Lake five days after the general had won the battle.
As for the battle itself, there was not much to it as it turned out to be more of a skirmish, with the Marathas, more used to guerrilla warfare, failing to carry the day. Their French commanders and the freewheeling local soldiers of Delhi, who had raised the cry of Deen Dean (Faith) and come out to give battle to the pork-eating infidels ‘from the galis and mohallas of the city with antique swords, spears and matchlock guns, were the first to retreat, despite individual acts of bravery.
The women of Delhi, the able-bodied men who had stayed at home, the emperor, his son, and begums in the Red Fort waited for some miracle to happen, but their hopes were belied and the British finally put their seal on Delhi, which was to last till August 1947, when Lake and his troopers were dead for more than a hundred years, and so also Shah Alam and his harem. It is that event that will, as usual, go unnoticed in Delhi this year too, except for some British tourists coming to pay homage to their ancestors who died in that battle and on 19 September, when the feringhis retook Delhi, forty-four years later, in the war of 1857.
66
The Mughals’ Rain-Holiday
he annual rains were something novel for the Mughals. Babar found the dust and heat of Hindustan too overbearing – and so did his son Humayun. They had hammams built in their palaces to keep cool during the beastly summer months. But when the monsoon showers moistened the earth, they felt relieved. The first monsoon that Babar experienced was a joy to him. Used to the cool valleys of Afghanistan, he had never seen the rains descend in such torrents amid streaks of lightning because the monsoon’s reach does not extend to that country. As a matter of fact, it does not even cover Sindh. The noted civil servant C.A. Kincaid was to write later that the monsoon dies out before it reaches Sehwan. The famous grapes of Chaman, on the Baluchistan-Iran border, thrive without these seasonal showers.
Babar’s heat-stricken body felt revitalized when the rains hit his abode and he hastened to Aram Bagh to enjoy the monsoon pouring its bounty on him. His Charbagh too came alive with green grass and a variety of shrubs that seemed to have sprung up overnight. It was the perfect time for swimming in the Jamuna and then resting in the Charbagh where he was initially buried.
Humayun also liked the monsoon as he too had spent his youth in cool climes. But what made him apprehensive were the floods. Rivers in spate posed problems of governance as he was still trying to consolidate the conquests made by Babar. His fears were not unfounded and as fate would have it, after being defeated by Sher Shah at Chausa, he barely managed to save his own life in the swollen Ganga with the help of a water carrier (bhisti) who supported him on his mashaq (waterskin). How Humayun rewarded the bhisti by allowing him to become king for a day is part of history and so the name, Nizam Saqqa lives on.
While tasting the delights of the monsoon, Babar sat down with his companions to drink, and while many of them rolled over the carpet after getting drunk, he alone sat in regal splendour without showing signs of drunkenness, for he could stand a lot of the hardest liquor. Humayun too drank when the weather turned pleasant but he was more fond of opium than wine, and that was what weakened his mind and made him indecisive to the extent of losing his kingdom to Sher Shah and his Sur family for fifteen years, until he recaptured Delhi and Agra. But he still enjoyed taking opium though Babar had given up wine after a pledge he made before the battle of Sikri with Rana Sangha. He broke his drinking vessels and vowed never to drink again, come rain or shine. The story about the mullah who was forced to drink against his will is erroneously connected with Babar. That probably happened during a subsequent regime. The story would have us believe that instead of putting the liquor in his mouth, the mullah used to pour it into his shirt sleeves. Once when the king stood in front of him to see if he really drank, he shrugged his sleeves and two tigers leapt out of them, scaring both the king and his courtiers out of their wits.
Akbar loved the monsoon and had boats tied in the Jamuna until the river got so flooded that they had to be untied, and so sleeping in them at night was no longer possible.
Jahangir drank in all seasons but particularly during the monsoons. Still he carried his wits about him and had enough sense to sit down and paint the splendour in the grass – the clouds, the flowers, and birds and beasts. Some of his paintings still survive.
Shah Jahan drank in his early years but forsaking his wine did not mean that he stopped relishing the rains. When Mumtaz Mahal was alive, he enjoyed her company (just as Jahangir had enjoyed that of Anar Kali at Fatehpur Sikri when he was Prince Salim). After the death of Mumtaz, Shah Jahan sat in the Mussamun Burj to see the rain beating down on the Taj Mahal and soothing his heart or he spent time in the Sawan-Bhadon pavilion in the Red Fort. Earlier he had swum the Jamuna in flood and was given the ustadi of swimming (during the event in Sawan) by his father, Jahangir. Aurangzeb may have spent many monsoon nights with his courtesan lady-love, Hira Bai Zainabadi, but in later life he became too pious to enjoy sensual pleasures.
Of the latter Mughals, Jahandar Shah found the rainy months most conducive to make love to the ravishing Lal Kanwar. After him Farrukseyer went all the way from his capital to Agra to build a Delhi Gate during the monsoon. Mohammad Shah Rangila is renowned for his Barsat ki Ratain (monsoon night revelry). Shah Alam as Shehzada Ali Gauhar enjoyed swimming in his youth – so did Akbar Shah and Bahadur Shah Zafar. Remember Phool Walon ki Sair, started in the reign of the former after the rains were over. But Zafar liked to spend the season in Mehrauli, where swings came up on nearly every tree and the Malhar intoxicated the swingers into ecstasy.
67
The Sirens of Delhi
he dancing girls of Delhi have become the stuff of legend and folklore. Quite a few of them had come from Faizabad, like the celebrated Umrao Jan Ada. For that matter even Begum Akhtar had her roots in Faizabad, the seat of power of Salar Jang and Shuja-ud-Daulah. Delhi in those days was facing bad times because of the decline of the Mughal empire. It was in such a milieu that Qamar Jan flourished, and courtesans like Tara, the beloved of Nawab Asghar, briefly held the stage. The ‘Mutiny’ rung the curtain down on that sort of life and manners.
Tara was the typical Muslim beauty, the kind Urdu poets are always hankering after. Her face, eyes, nose, hair and arms – all chiseled in the classical mould, while the beauty of her unclothed body was reserved for the eyes of the lover and the imagination of the onlooker.
To hold Tara in one’s hands was like embracing Venus herself. But Tara was more a creature of moods and passions who flared up at the slightest provocation. Yet, she combined the grace of the entire lot of Delhi’s sirens in her being. Even British officers and men were captivated by the dancing girls and counted them among their sweethearts.
Their love for the courtesans of Delhi was surpassed only by their idiosyncrasy for native manners and lifestyle. But earlier still the first lovers of the nautch girls were the East India Company’s Bara Sahibs posted in Calcutta. The young Robert Clive, while still a clerk, was as open to the influence of that culture as Warren Hastings, who could make an after-dinner speech in Persian.
It was in the latter half of the eighteenth century that
the British began to patronize the nautch girls. Captain Williamson in his early nineteenth-century account, while complimenting the dancing girls for their personal charms and for the superior elegance of their accomplishments, makes mention of a celebrated nautch girl, Kaunam, who was at ‘the zenith of her glory’. Despite her homely looks, she held dominion over a numerous train of abject followers and solely by the grace of her movements held them in complete subjugation.
Kaunam was, probably, a corruption of the name Khanum and there were others like her and the poetess Janet (Jamiat Jan) similarly popular among the sahiblog. Their love, incidentally, was not confined to the nautch girls alone for the housemaid too, more often than not, ended up in the sahib’s bed. Then there were cases like that of the soldier who fell in love with a sweeper woman and shot her dead one morning. Her wails, they say, can still be heard. While Nicki was making waves in Calcutta, Alfina held sway in Delhi.
In his journal, Capt. Mundy found her ‘pretty and dusky’, who ‘like Calypso among her maidens, greatly excelled her fellows in stature, beauty and grace’. A similar tribute was paid to Alfina by Lt. Thomas Bacon, while the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Combermere, went into raptures over her singing which alas, ruined the fortunes of many a Delhi nawab, observes Pran Nevile.