City of Djinns

by William Dalrymple

  After you have finally dropped off, sometime after three a.m., you can generally snatch a couple of hours’ sleep before the next round of jollities begins soon after dawn. Around eight o‘clock the sound of distant brass bands can again be heard wafting in through the bedroom windows. Slowly but inexorably the band draws nearer. Half an hour later, blowing as loudly as they can, the band halts three doors from your own. The groom has come to collect his bride. Why this ceremony has to take place so early in the morning has never been explained to me, but it appears to be as essential a part of the nuptials as the Hindi movie music the night before.

  The days are little better. One morning, reeling from lack of sleep, I set off to Khan Market to buy something for my headache, only to find the roads were clogged with white Ambassadors dressed up as Christmas trees. Above one windscreen - although almost totally obscured beneath creepers of gold and silver tinsel — was blazoned the legend: SUNIL AND NALINI CONJOINED 20 FEBRUARY. Ahead, jamming the traffic into long impatient queues, was a procession consisting of the groom sitting on a white stallion, and clutching in front of him a small boy, an empty marriage rath (chariot), a brass band, twenty rogues carrying portable striplights and, bringing up the rear, a scattering of eunuchs, dancing around, soliciting money and flashing at passers-by.

  Trying to get out of the traffic jam, I took a short cut down a back lane but found that it was blocked by a large wedding tent helpfully erected across the full width of the road. At this stage I gave up, went back home and retired to a half-darkened room to read the paper. Even here, however, the marriage season intruded. It was a Sunday, and half the paper was packed with marriage advertisements.

  For most Indian families a marriage is as much a business proposition as a romantic affair of the heart, and perhaps for this reason many of the advertisments sound as if they are marketing objects rather than advertising potential spouses:WANTED: Kayastha match for employed ordinance factory beautiful, slim, wheatish Ghari double, convented, well versed in household affairs, adaptable.

  Some of the adverts, like western lonely hearts columns, are slightly sad:WANTED: Handicapped girl, caste no bar, for handicapped blind Bengali boy. Lost parents at a young age; lame in one leg. Able to move around with limp.

  Some are embarrassing:WANTED: Life companion for 28 year old, good-looking boy, well settled in decent job, suffering from sexual disorder, i.e acute premature ejaculation. Girl should either be suffering from same disease or is not interested in sex otherwise.

  A few defy credibility:Alliance invited for innocent, beautiful, charming, compassionate, sober, soft-spoken and good natured divorcee.

  But my favourites are definitely the ambitious Punjabi boys out for what they can get:WANTED: very beautiful, fair, slim, charming, educated, well-connected Green Card holder for very handsome, athletic, energetic and elegant Jat Sikh boy of high ideology. BA and yoga practitioner. Working hard in excellent position in Gurgaon factory. Send photograph and horoscope.

  The Indian marriage advertisements are in fact a British invention, a hangover from the period when highly educated and thoroughly eligible ICS officers would spend their youths in remote postings in the jungles of Central India. There they had little hope of meeting, wooing or wedding even the most hideous and unsuitable English-women. For these people the marriage adverts acted as a kind of mail-order lifeline: from deepest Nagpur or Ujjain, a young man’s credentials could be easily brought before the eyes of an anxious Mama in Chelsea or Kensington.

  Yet, like so many other Raj survivals, the marriage adverts have been mutated out of all recognition from their understated British originals. Today the tone of so many of these adverts is so unashamedly boastful — full of triumphs in beauty competitions, prizes won and degrees achieved — that I often wondered whether these perfect matches are all they claim to be. For this reason my eye was caught one day by a small box-ad at the bottom of the column:BHARAT DETECTIVE AGENCY

  MARRIAGE FRAUD A SPECIALITY.

  A telephone call confirmed my suspicions. Mr Pavan Aggarwal, an ex-paratrooper, specializes in investigating the truth behind the adverts - usually by the simple expedient of sending one of his agents to the groom or bride’s home village.

  ‘I was trained to see behind enemy lines,’ Mr Aggarwal told me, ‘and I am knowing how to observe properly.’

  ‘What sort of thing do you look for?’ I asked.

  ‘I will check anything - see if boy is knowing too many girls or girl is watching too many Hindi films and not pursuing her studies,’ replied Mr Aggarwal. He added: ‘I am even checking-out mothers-in-law.’

  One of the most evocative passages in Dr Jaffery’s transcription of the Shah Jehan Nama is the part which describes Dara Shukoh’s wedding.

  The marriage of Dara to his distant cousin Nadira Begum took place on 11 February 1633, a year after the death of Dara’s mother, Mumtaz Mahal. On the day before the marriage, the preliminary ceremony of hina-bandi was held: ‘Numerous fireworks were ignited along the banks of the Jumna ... and the vast number of candles, lamps, torches and lanterns [that were lit made] the surface of the earth rival the starry expanses of heaven.’ Precious robes were distributed to guests, and paan and sweetmeats offered to the attendant nobility. Finally Dara’s hands were placed behind the covering curtain of the harem where they were dyed red with henna by the ladies within.

  The next day at noon, Aurangzeb and the other young princes escorted Dara through the palace to the Forty Pillared Hall of Public Audience. In the copy of the Shah Jehan Nama now in Windsor Castle there is a fine miniature painting by Murar illustrating the scene: all the princes are dripping with gems and strings of pearls; the youthful Dara, a downy moustache now covering his upper lip, leads his brothers into the great audience hall sitting on a black stallion. He fills the centre of the picture; Aurangzeb and his other brothers, on white horses, are relegated to the picture’s margin.

  After Shah Jehan had loaded his son with precious wedding gifts - ‘a superb robe of honour, a jewelled dagger with incised floral ornament, a sword and a belt studded with gems, a rosary of pearls’, two fine horses and a pair of war elephants - and the gifts had been displayed and admired, the festivities began:By His Majesty’s command, the gardens beneath the Royal Chambers and boats floating upon the Jumna were illuminated with lamps and fireworks; music and singing were kept with spirit [from noon until nine o‘clock at night] ... when the propitious moment for the nuptials finally arrived. Qazi Muhammed Aslam was summoned and he read the marriage service in the sublime presence, fixing the bride’s mihr [jointure fee in case the marriage were later dissolved] at five lakhs of rupees. At the conclusion of the ceremony, shouts of congratulation rose from earth to heaven and the sound of kettle drums of joy rent the skies.

  Having read (and heard) so much about Delhi marriages, I was pleased at the very end of February actually to receive an invitation to one under the door. The card read as follows:Mr and Mrs Shahiduddin Postman

  request the pleasure of your company

  on the auspicious occasion

  of the marriage of their daughter

  Saheena

  with Mr B. Khan

  (son of Mr M. Khan)

  At their residence:

  No. 11 Village Shahpur Jat

  (Near DDA Water Tank.)

  Mr Shahiduddin Postman was a familiar figure at the house: every morning after delivering our mail he would squat outside the front gate, smoking a bidi with the mali, a man to whom he bore a certain resemblance. Both gentlemen were lean, sharp-eyed characters with a highly developed taste for baksheesh; and both liked to dress up, whatever the heat, in their thick serge uniforms: the mali in his blue gardener’s donkey-jacket with its shining brass buttons, Mr Shahiduddin Postman in his official Indian Postal Service khaki.

  We had only really talked to Mr Postman on the regular occasions - Dusshera, Diwali, Christmas, New Year - that he came looking for tips, but were flattered by the invitation and out of curiosi
ty decided to take it up.

  On the morning of the ceremony, Olivia, the mali, Balvinder Singh and myself all set off to Village Shahpur Jat in Mr Singh’s taxi. It was a bright February morning, and the mali’s newly polished buttons glittered in the sunlight.

  ‘This Mr Postman very good man,’ said Mr Singh, who had not been invited to the ceremony, but was clearly looking forward to attending none the less.

  ‘Very rich man,’ agreed the mali. ‘For five years he saving shah-al-arhee for daughter’s wedding.’

  (The mali had a unique way of turning simple English words into Hindi or Urdu equivalents: the clay tubs in which he planted his flowers became fellah-i-puts, seedlings were Sid-ud-Dins, while my favourite flower - the hollyhock - became a holi-ul-haq. After you got used to the conventions of his speech, he became readily comprehensible: shah-al-arhee was the mali’s rendering of salary.)

  The mali proved quite correct about Mr Shahiduddin Postman’s resources. Shahpur Jat was Mr Postman’s ancestral village. It was originally a farming settlement in Haryana but had recently been absorbed into the Delhi suburbs. The small government flat I had been expecting turned out instead to be a large if simple village haveli, occupied by Mr Postman’s extended family — his three brothers, their children and Mr Postman’s old mother.

  The marriage was being held in the wide courtyard of the house. Striped awnings had been stretched across the courtyard and ranks of chairs arranged in rows around the walls. Fairy lights and streamers of tinsel hung from the tent posts; spicy smells wafted through the air. In the middle stood a huge tin trunk the size of a Roman sarcophagus, packed full of the wedding presents Mr Postman was giving to his daughter: twenty new salwar kameez, piles of crockery, huge copper pots, a sewing machine, an iron and so on.

  Our host greeted us at the entrance gate, shaking me by the hand, bowing to Olivia, embracing the mali and frowning at Balvinder Singh. Then, like Shah Jehan with the guests at Dara’s wedding, Mr Postman took us over to the trunk to admire the presents. Getting the gentle hint, we produced our contribution to his daughter’s dowry: a small electric blow-heater.

  ‘For winter,’ I said.

  ‘Not only winter,’ replied Mr Shahiduddin Postman. ‘On this most beautiful radio we will now be listening to Mr Mark Tully Sahib of BBC every day of year.’

  Before we had time to correct his mistake, Mr Postman had sat us in a row at the top of the courtyard. He presented the mali and myself with a hookah and while we took a preliminary suck, we were introduced to the other guests.

  Again I was surprised by the smartness of the gathering. On my right was Dr Adbul Haidar, a rather gloomy assistant lecturer from the Hamdard University in New Delhi; beyond him sat Mr Swaroop Singh, a clerk at the Jawaharlal Nehru University. Both were from the same village as Mr Shahiduddin Postman; both had managed to get educated and to break out of the village on to the lower rungs of academia. Dr Haidar proudly explained that the bride, Mr Postman’s daughter, was a rare creature - a Muslim girl who had been educated up to the tenth class.

  ‘Most of our children in willage Shahpur Jat are being literate,’ said Dr Haidar. ‘We are a very forward-looking willage. But,’ and here he lowered his voice, ‘the groom’s family are Jats. They are very backward farmer-people.’

  As we were talking, out of the corner of my eye I could see Balvinder Singh stumbling back from the cooking-corner of the tent, holding a plate piled high with hot pakoras. As he walked he was stuffing them into his mouth.

  ‘This man is a friend of Mr Postman?’ asked Dr Haidar.

  ‘Up to a point,’ I said.

  ‘This is animal-man,’ replied Dr Haidar rather harshly.

  Dr Haidar went off to talk to Mr Postman and I got into conversation with Mr Bhajan Lal, the Pradhan (headman) of the village. Mr Lal’s English was even less fluent than my Hindi, so we chatted, ungrammatically, in his tongue. Thanks to our twice weekly lessons, Olivia and I had now become confident enough in Hindi for the practice of it to become enjoyable rather than tiresome - if only because people were so surprised to hear any non-Indian speak even the most stumbling version of it. Mr Lal was no exception.

  LAL Sahib! You are speaking Hindi!

  WD A little.

  LAL Oh, sahib! Truly this is day among days! What is your good name, sahib?‘

  WD (confident now; a phrase I knew) My name is William.

  LAL Oh thankyou Mr Will-Yums Sahib. Where are you learning this beautiful Hindi?

  WD In Delhi. A munshi comes to our house ...

  LAL In Delhi! Heaven be praised ...

  As we chattered, other villagers crowded around and asked the usual round of Indian questions: where were we from? How did we know Mr Shahiduddin Postman? What was our mother tongue? Were we Muslims? How many Muslims were there in Scotland? One particularly persistent gentleman was clearly using us as a punchbag for his English. His conversation had a curiously circular quality:

  ‘I am Hindu, sahib.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘But I am not looking like Hindu.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I am looking like Sikh gentleman.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But I am Hindu.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Although I am not looking like ...’

  We had been at the wedding a full hour before I began to be curious about the whereabouts of the bride and groom.

  ‘Would you like to see the bride?’ asked Dr Haidar.

  ‘She is already here?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ replied Dr Haidar. ‘Of course. She is in ladies’ department.’

  I was led into a shuttered room off the courtyard. It was nearly dark, but in the half-light you could just make out four or five women fussing around a surprisingly elderly-looking girl trussed up in a red Rajasthani costume.

  ‘This is Muslim wedding in Hindu ambulance,’ explained Dr Haidar.

  ‘What is a Hindu ambulance?’ I asked.

  ‘This is the feeling of Hinduism,’ replied Dr Haidar.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said.

  ‘You see our bride is wearing a red Hindu dress,’ said Dr Haidar, ‘and also her hands painted with swirls of henna, like a Hindu bride. Also there is a large ring in her nose. This is what we call Hindu ambulance.’

  I looked at the bride. Her face was cast downwards but even in the half-light you could see that the poor girl looked terrified.

  ‘She has fair complexion,’ said Dr Haidar. ‘But she is little shy.’

  ‘Isn’t she rather old?’ I whispered.

  ‘Mr Shahiduddin is well off by village standards, but still he is not a very rich man,’ replied Dr Haidar. ‘For this wedding he would have to save for many years. During this time his daughter is not growing any younger.’

  ‘But she must be nearly forty,’ I said.

  ‘The salary of our government servants,’ explained Dr Haidar quietly, ‘is parlous in the extreme.’

  There came the sound of shouting outside.

  ‘Hurry!’ said Dr Haidar. ‘The groom is here.’

  Wishing the bride good luck, we pushed our way through the milling crowds of guests and out under the entrance arch of the haveli. We arrived just in time to see the first members of the brass band - a trombone and a tuba - come round the corner of the lane. Making no concessions to the concept of melody, the band members blasted away at their instruments as loud as they could.

  ‘Very beautiful music,’ said Balvinder Singh, who had appeared by my side, and was now wobbling his head from side to side in rapt appreciation. ‘Tip-top beautiful.’

  The band formed two lines around the entrance of the house. On the nearby rooftops street urchins were dancing frantically to the music. The noise got louder and louder, faster and faster, and less and less tuneful. The groom’s party — green-turbanned farmers from Haryana - appeared around the corner of the lane and formed a circle outside the entrance of the house. A few stumbled as they walked, indicating the cause of the delay.
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  ‘I am thinking that maybe these gentlemen have been to one English Wine Shop,’ said Dr Haidar, speaking in that slightly sanctimonious tone that Muslims sometimes adopt when discussing alcohol.

  As Dr Haidar spoke a party of sweepers appeared in the lane, coming from the opposite direction to the marriage party. They were a dirty-looking crew of dark-skinned rag-pickers; each carried a sack-load of rubbish on his back. Mr Shahiduddin Postman darted out from the crowd and with a set of violent curses sent the unfortunate untouchables scurrying off the way they had come. At that moment, with a final fanfare from the brass band, the groom appeared: a sallow-looking youth on a mangy white stallion supporting a young boy in front of him. The groom was wearing white pyjamas and a pill-box hat. Around his neck hung a garland of silver tinsel. Like his bride-to-be, he looked absolutely miserable.

  Wedding band

  ‘This is our custom,’ said Dr Haidar. ‘We think that a groom must look little bit shy.’

  ‘He certainly doesn’t look as if he is enjoying himself much.’

  ‘Maybe he is thinking that today he will loose his freedom. After this day he will be having to obey his wife,’

  ‘I thought Muslim men were always the unchallenged heads of their households.’

  ‘This thing is not true,’ said Dr Haidar. ‘In all countries, irrespective of religion, behind the scenes the women are ruling the men. How long have you been married?’

  ‘One year.’

  ‘After a while you will understand,’ said Dr Haidar, shaking his head gloomily.

  The band stopped, and a group of the groom’s more drunken friends broke into song. Their chosen melody was a paean of praise to a local politician, Mr Devi Lal, then the Chief Minister of Haryana. The song, which had become popular at the last election, went something like this:Devi Lal, leader of the farmers,