DELHI BY HEART

by Raza Rumi

  The eclecticism of Delhi over centuries provided the catalytic impetus for the sophisticated development of the Urdu language. Though the Mughals made Persian the language of the court, Urdu remained the language of the masses. Even the elites spoke Urdu at home. The Sufis also used Urdu to communicate with their devotees. Several poets changed their idiom from Persian to Urdu. Leading lights such as Wali Daccani (1668-1744), Hatim (1669-1734), Mir Dard (1788-1843), Mazhar (1700-1781), Sauda (1730-1780), Mir (1722-1810) and Insha (1778-1838) were the modern agents of this linguistic evolution. It is said that, once, Mir declined to recite his poem in Lucknow saying that only knowledge of Urdu, as it was spoken on the steps of the Jama Masjid in Delhi, will enable them to understand what he wrote!

  By the 1850s Urdu had almost completely replaced Persian as the popular literary medium. India and Urdu’s fortunes were to change after 1857—the watershed year.

  The constructed identification of Urdu with Muslims and later with Pakistan led to its gradual abandonment by the Indian state and the elites. History testifies to the fact that it was a language that connected all and was used by everyone in pre-1857 India. ‘Hindustani’, another version of Urdu mixed with Hindi, still survives in Bollywood and its songs, and is the popular language of TV soaps and the streets of northern India. The purist Doordarshan (national television of India) anchors who talk to their guests in shuddha Hindi are replied to in chaste Hindustani that highlights what the state channels are trying to do—remould identity and language using a nation-state filter.

  As I find out, Urdu is not extinct in Delhi mainly due to its inherent value, and one could surmise, its cultured past. The Partition and the biases that it created have receded in the decades and no longer find place in contemporary Delhi.

  For instance, Indira Varma, a Sikh migrant from Pakistan, runs the Sham-e-Ghazal Society that sponsors mushairas on a regular basis. Indira also composes verses in Urdu and has a few collections to her credit. I spotted her recent book, Shafaq Ke Rang at the Makataba bookshop in the Urdu Bazar. In Delhi, I picked up a copy of the enjoyable and profound novel Ka’i Chand The Sar-e-Aasman, authored by the eminent critic Shamsur Rehman Faruqi, and published by Penguin. Ka’i Chand is Urdu’s major novel in the last two decades. Once again its theme deals with Delhi, the decline of Indo-Muslim culture as represented by its central character, an eclectic singing woman remarkable for her culture, emotion and tragedy. There is also a revival of the medieval tradition of Dastangoi by the energetic duo of Mahmood Farooqi and Danish Hussain. Mainstream theatre also keeps Urdu alive and thriving.

  Delhi’s relationship with Urdu is intimate and seminal. In particular, the Urdu ghazal, notwithstanding the immense contributions made by Lucknow, evolved and flourished in Delhi before anywhere else.

  High literature in Urdu grew in three different centres—the Deccan, Delhi and Lucknow. The Deccan emerged as the earliest centre for the Urdu ghazal, due to the linguistic interaction between the local people and Muslim conquerors from Central Asia who settled there in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. From the middle of the fourteenth to eighteenth centuries, Urdu poets flourished in northern India and the Deccan. Quli Qutub Shah (1565-1611) is known as its first major poet, like Chaucer is in English, with a volume of significant poetry in a language later named ‘Urdu’. Wali Deccani (1635-1707) and Siraj Aurangabadi (1715-1763) followed Shah in the Deccan. Delhi was concurrently experimenting with the Urdu ghazal and, by the eighteenth century, had turned into a major centre. Lucknow followed suit as the third literary capital of Urdu in the nineteenth century. The Urdu ghazal reached its zenith with Mir and Ghalib of Delhi, qasida with Sauda in Delhi, mathnawi with Mir Hasan of Lucknow and marthiya with Anis and Dabir again in Lucknow.

  Ghalib, you write so well upon these

  mystic themes of love divine

  We would have counted you a saint, but

  that we knew of your love of wine.

  Our Urdu teacher at school, Dr Jaffri, was the only doctorate holder. His area of study was Ghalib and his metaphysics. This was rare even in the Urdu universe that Pakistan is. Dr Jaffri’s mentoring initiated a personal journey for me into Ghalib’s world. Ghalib cannot be classified as a ‘sub-continental’ poet; his rank and stature need to be further assessed. The obstacles of translation and communication render this task difficult; impossible, perhaps. Ghalib’s Urdu verses are widely available in Devnagari in Delhi, but even then it remains ‘too difficult’ as many a reader tells me.

  This is what Dr Jaffri used to warn me about as I asked him questions on the complexity of Ghalib’s poetic universe. He would insist, ‘Once you break the initial barrier, hundreds and thousands of paths will appear before you; you can wander and navigate as you wish.’ Undaunted, I have been treading these multiple pathways into an Indian garden with Persian flowers and still, at times, I wonder how little I understand.

  Ghalib lived within the decline, fracture and eventual dissolution of Mughal rule. He had moved to Delhi around 1810 from Agra where he was born into a family of Turkish aristocratic descent. Coming to this city was an important event in the life of this thirteen-year-old newly married poet who desperately needed material security, who was set on a long literary career, and who was later to be declared a genius.

  In Ballimaran Street in Shahjahanabad, Ghalib lived a life of relative ease despite his continued struggle for patronage and financial solvency. His early works were steeped in the classical Persian style. However, within a few years, he was to adopt a personal idiom which was unrivalled for its originality and iconoclasm. He continued the traditions of Mir and Dard (other two eminents poet of Delhi) in composing verses that were embedded in the Wahdatul Wajud philosophy that evolved from the Sufi thought of Ibn-e-Arabi on the one hand, and local Indian streams of Vedantic cosmic-personal reality.

  Constant financial insecurity, not unlike that faced by many poets and writers of that age in India and outside, merged with an underlying sense of personal inadequacy. This defined his existentialist worldview. There are references in his letters as well as verse, how liberation from the constant search for a means of livelihood could bolster the creativity of an artist. By 1847, Ghalib gained access to the royal court and his dabbling in Urdu was encouraged by the Emperor’s penchant for the language. But he always remained at the margins of power, both native and imperial, except during a brief interlude when he became the poet laureate. He wrote:

  I used to attend the durbar, and receive a robe of honour; I cannot see that happening now. I am neither one of the accepted nor one of the rejected, nor a culprit, nor an informer, nor a conspirator. Well, tell me yourself, if a durbar is held here and I am summoned, where am I to get an offering to present?2

  His rivalry with Zauq, the king’s Ustad, emanated from this competitive view of access to patronage. But there was also some arrogance and a belief in the immortality of his verse that made him complain about the King’s patronization of a lesser poet such as Zauq. Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal king, a distinguished poet himself, was not enamoured by Ghalib’s personality that, at best, remained defiant despite his show of outward obedience. Ghalib perhaps felt that subordination to the court was a little belittling, and his astute understanding of the world made him realize that the Mughal court was a mere twilight of what the Empire was. Nevertheless, after the demise of a pliant Zauq, the Emperor had no choice but to appoint Ghalib as the leading court poet.

  Another royal assignment for Ghalib was to document the official history of the Mughals—the Partavistan—in two volumes. Mehr-e-Neem Roz, the first volume, was completed with much boredom (as gleaned from the tone of his letters). The second volume could never be completed as the world changed with the uprising of 1857 and the end of the Empire itself. Ghalib was too disinterested to do it anyway.

  Ghalib never owned a house in an age when everyone lived in personal abodes. He was overwhelmed by the imperatives of paying rent or accepting a house from a patron on a temporary basis
. He was also strikingly not into possessions either. Most of the books that he read were borrowed. None of his children survived except the two sons of his wife’s nephew. The nephew died at a young age in 1852, leaving Ghalib with the onerous task of raising the young boys.

  Ghalib’s one wish, perhaps as strong as the wish to be a great poet, that he should have a regular, secure income, never materialized. His relationship with his wife was not a happy one and bordered on an indifference not uncommon to those times. Deprived of the security of having a father in a male-oriented society, he had looked for material and moral certainties. His poetry is filled thus with his vulnerabilities.

  Ghalib’s complex poetry transcends time and boundaries of human thought. Here are some verses that bring out his myriad facets where he indulges in a fascinating post-modern ‘unpacking’ of the self:

  I have nothing to do with the rosary

  Or with the wine bowl

  In a dream, I am as one

  Whose hands have been cut off.

  Being most humble

  I bear enmity to none

  I am neither a fallen grain

  Nor a stretched-cut share.

  In the circle of the pious

  I am contemptible,

  But in the company of sinners

  I am the most select3

  Finding Ghalib’s haveli in Kucha Ballimaran, where he died, was not a problem. Passing through various lanes and the overpopulated corners of Shajahanabad, I reach the legendary haveli, distinctive for its rather ordinary appearance. For one, it is only a partial space recovered by the government from encroachers, victims of circumstance themselves. There is a little parking stand that one had to cross to get into the structure. The architecture is also not that spectacular but there are sad efforts to celebrate the great poet by adorning the walls with his framed poetry and some photographs. One poem read:

  Even in captivity,

  I have fire under my feet, ablaze

  Every loop of my fetter melts

  like a hair in front of a flame.

  I am alone that afternoon and sit on the entrance stairs for quite some time trying to create in my mind, the mood of this era—intimate, personal and yet so affected by power struggles. The night before I was browsing through the pages of a new work by a devoted Ghalib-scholar, Ralph Russell, who describes the relative stability of Delhi4 despite the shrunken size of the Mughal Empire:

  The city itself was prosperous, being the distributing centre for the northern trade to the east and south. By 1852, it had about 160,000 inhabitants. Within it there lived the merchants, the financiers, the learned and the dependents of the court. Of the 2014 salatin or descendents of the emperors listed in 1852, a considerable proportion lived outside the Fort walls.5

  Mughal pre-Mutiny pageantry was best represented by grand festivals that were a matter of public excitement. The emperor would ‘parade the streets on his elephant, the ministers, the heir-apparent and the Mirzas in their places. A straggle of foot soldiers went in front and behind; musicians sounded trumpets and rhapsodists recited the imperial praises—a slightly tarnished and tawdry assembly perhaps, and raucous to the ear, but cheerful and colorful and much appreciated.’6

  Every landmark recalled an authentic association with individuals or events. Localities such as Habash Khan ka Phatak, Bangash ki Sarai, Haveli Haidar Quli, Gali Qasim Jan, Jarnail Bibi ki Haveli, Begum ka Bagh, Kucha Ghasi Ram, Baradari Sher Afgan, Namak Haram ki Haveli, all represented snippets of an urban life that was personal and intimate and which accorded due recognition to individuals and their lives.

  Ghalib’s Delhi and its nobility engaged in a colourful variety of sports. The sandy slopes of the Jamuna near Delhi gate, Mahabat Khan ki Reti, was the kite flying arena with its colourful contests. Kabutarbazi was another popular game. It was common sight to see the nobility go about with their prized quails and partridges perched on their shoulders. Several akharas operated in the city as did chess competitions and satta. On the steps of the Jama Masjid, Dastangohs always attracted large crowds.

  Phoolwalon ki sair were held during the monsoons and gardens would be frequented by families during winters. Bhands, Bahrupias and Bhagat Baaz (street performers) and Kathputili baaz (puppeteers), were sources of popular entertainment. Cultured courtesans were central to a prosperous man’s life, allowing the latter to mingle with women other than their wives and indulge in a poetic language of longing, union and separation from the beloved. Urdu literature was full of these themes and its proponents, such as Ghalib, idolized the courtesan figure. Ghalib’s poetry has references to his beloved courtesan who tragically left him lonely after her untimely death.

  At the parallel Mughal centre, Lahore’s Hira Mandi was also flourishing right under the shade of the grand Badshahi Mosque built by Emperor Aurangzeb. The prevalent culture of the time spilt into the regional centres. The fabled Umrao Jaan Ada in Lucknow was also a metaphor for this decadence.

  The loss of masculine (dynastic) power generated a feminized renaissance, and to be creative and powerful it had to be free of institutional bonds such as family, honour and respectability. These islands of free interaction between noble men and highly cultured women therefore came about in kothas that smacked of courtly elegance and yet suitable enough for the continuation of patriarchal relations.

  In Ghalib’s Delhi, Hindus and Muslims shared common saints, pirs, mazars, dargahs and even popular gods C. F. Andrews, the renowned British historian, describes his meeting in 1904 in Delhi with Munshi Zakaullah, a well-known younger companion of Ghalib, who recounted this feature of those times:

  The intimate residence together side by side in the same city of Mussalmans and Hindus had brought about a noticeable amalgamation of customs among the common people. The art of living peacefully with neighbours of a different religion had reached a very high level during the reign of Bahadur Shah Zafar… Influenced by this milieu, Ghalib proclaimed:

  In the Kaaba I will play the shankh (conch shell)

  In the temple I have draped the ahram (a robe worn during pilgrimage to Mecca).

  The verse above describes the Sufi concept of ‘fana’ or dissolution of the self into divine reality, similar to the unity articulated in Vedanta. Ghalib’s secular person and society were shaped by the crystallization of a centuries-long evolution of co-existence, of a culture that was inclusive and beyond the rigidities imposed by clergies. Ghalib wrote:

  A free man does not hide the truth; I am half a Muslim, free from the bonds of convention and every religion; and in the same way have freed myself from grief at the sting of men’s tongues.

  The most haunting and immortal testament of this spirit was expressed through the Persian mathnawi Chirag-e-Dair (Temple Lamp) which is a tribute to the temples of Benaras. This was not the first or the last poem to be inspired by the ambience of Benaras, but for a Muslim poet to compose it was phenomenal. Ghalib was tempted to settle down in Benaras. He had broken his journey to Calcutta where he was headed to plead for the renewal of his pension with the British authorities. Ghalib stayed in Benaras for a month or so and imbibed the temporal and spiritual beauties of the ancient city. The mathnawi of the symbolic 108 verses7 depicted a subversive (from the Muslim point of view) idea that Kashi was Kaaba-e-Hindustan or the Mecca of India:

  Where autumn turns into the touch of sandal

  On fair foreheads

  Springtide wears the sacred thread of flower waves,

  And the splash of twilight is the crimson mark

  of Kashi’s dust on heaven’s brow.

  The Kaaba of Hind,

  This conch blowers dell

  Its icons and idols are made of the light,

  That once flashed on Mount Sinai.

  These radiant idolations naids,

  Set the pious Brahmins afire, when their faces glow

  Like moving lamps on the Ganges banks.8

  As I muse on that entrance staircase, the temperamental humidity of July interrupts my rever
ies with a rather heavy downpour. Half wet but pleased with the rain, I take shelter in the nearby dhaba that pretends to be a restaurant. Evidently Muslim by its name and various types of meat dishes, I wait for the rain to end and re-open Russell’s brilliant book. I read, ‘Long after Delhi had ceased to be the Paris of power, it continued as the Versailles of good manners. Secondly, it continued the royal tradition of patronising the arts… The most favoured, however, was poetry.’

  I recall this verse as I wait for the rain to stop:

  Look not upon me slightingly;

  Though I am dust beneath your feet

  Men honour your capital because I dwell in it.

  Many people did not share Ghalib’s unconventional views in his time. But there must have been some sort of acceptance of unconventionality enabling Ghalib to have a Hindu pupil and friend, Hargopal Tufta, or to pronounce Shivji Ram Brahman as his son.9

  In 1857, the year of the Mutiny, Ghalib was fifty-nine years old and had lived for more than forty years in Delhi. He had also visited Calcutta where the British were in full control. He astutely observed the inner rot and decay of the old Mughal order which was powerless to resist the new force of British imperialism. In one of his letters, prior to 1857, he had predicted that the Mughal court would not survive many more days. In a post-Mutiny letter (dated 1859) Ghalib cried:

  My friend, what a question to ask! Five things kept Delhi alive—the fort, the daily crowds at the Jama Masjid, the weekly walk to the Jamuna bridge, and the yearly fair of the flowermen. None of these survives, so how could Delhi survive? Yes, there was once a city of that name in the realm of India… Only three Muslims are left—Mustafa Khan (Shefta) in Meerut, Maulvi Sadr-ud-din Khan in Sultanji and that slave to the things of this world, Asad Ghalib in Ballimaran. And all three are despised and rejected, destitute and distressed.10

  In a ghazal, that was more open than his cautious verses for public consumption, he laments: