DELHI BY HEART

by Raza Rumi

  Now every English soldier that bears arms

  Is sovereign and free to work his will.

  Men dare not venture out into the street

  And terror chills their hearts within them still…

  The city is athirst for Muslim blood

  And every grain of dust must drink its fill…11

  The nobility of Delhi became paupers following the 1857 uprising, ending in the final control of the British in 1858. In an 1859 letter to his disciple Tufta, Ghalib wrote:

  Hakim Ahsanullah Khan, one of the senior ministers of Bahadur Shah is living in the stable of his own mansion whereas the English are occupying the main house… The moon faced begums of the Red Fort are wandering the streets in filthy clothes, ragged pajamas and broken shoes.

  During the revolt, Ghalib remained pretty much confined to his house, undoubtedly frightened by the rampant massacres in the city. Many of his friends were hanged, deprived of their fortunes, exiled from the city or detained in jails. By October 1858, he had completed his diary of the Revolt, the Dast-Ambooh, and presented copies of it to the British authorities, mainly with the purpose of proving that he had not supported the insurrection. Although his life and immediate possesions were spared, little value was attached to his writings; he was told that he was still suspected of having loyalties toward the Mughal king. During the ensuing years, Ghalib’s main source of income continued to be the stipend he got from the Nawab of Rampur. Ud-i-Hindi, the first collection of his letters, was published in October 1868. Ghalib died a few months later, on 15 February 1869.

  During my many visits to Delhi I came across a wealth of literature on Ghalib. Walking through the old lanes of Delhi, I discovered how the greatest of his woes was the crumbling of a civilization before his very eyes:

  But for that I should not have been in Delhi now. Do not think I am exaggerating; everyone, rich and poor alike, has left the city, and those who did not leave of their own accord have been expelled. Nobles, grant-holders, wealthy men, artisans—none are left. I am afraid to write you a detailed account. Those who were in the service of the fort are being drastically dealt with and are harassed with interrogations and arrests, but that is only those who entered the service of the court during these months and took part in the revolt.12

  And again:

  If Ghalib sings in bitter strain, forgive him,

  Today pain stabs more keenly at his heart.

  Post-1947 Delhiites, like Ghalib, complained of the transformation of their city. They could not find many friends and people they knew. But then this is what makes Delhi so resilient and oblivious to the shocks of time.13

  In the decade that followed 1857, Ghalib witnessed the British-led reconstruction of a city that they had ravaged. The famed Phoolwalon ki sair was revived in the 1860s; classes in Delhi College were resumed in 1867. The Town Hall was built opposite the railway station in 1863, a Post and Telegraph Office and a dak bungalow were built near Kashmiri Gate. A clock tower was erected in Chandni Chowk. The new Victorian architecture emerged as a counterpoint to the rest of Shajhanabad that was Ghalib’s spatial universe.

  A year later, on a freezing December evening, I marched in a procession from Chandni Chowk to Ghalib’s haveli to celebrate the 210th birth anniversary of the great poet. The procession began from the Town Hall and terminated at the haveli in Gali Kasim Jan. The poet Gulzar who had flown from Mumbai to attend the birthday celebrations of Mirza Ghalib, led this literary pageant. Such was Gulzar’s charisma that even Delhi’s chief minister and the local Member of Parliament seemed like ordinary guests at the event. Several Urdu-walas, an endangered species in India, were also there in their closed-neck achkans, carrying its lost glory. Ghalib’s brilliant and most recent biographer, Pavan Varma, introduced me to Gulzar, and what an exciting moment that was!

  The haveli, with its characteristic semi-circular brick arches supported by square columns, was illuminated for the occasion. A group of hip-hop reporters from TV channels wanted to know why Ghalib ji was so great. I was also asked to speak and this marked my first TV appearance in India. I spoke about Ghalib’s humanism, relevance and universal appeal. Local poets, including Iqbal Ahmed Khan, who lives in Ballimaran, and who has, for years, recited Ghalib’s verses befriended me and treated me to chai later.

  For a Pakistani whose identity is wrapped around Urdu, this was a confusing moment. Pakistan does not claim Ghalib; the ‘enemy’, that is, the Indian state, owned this archetypical Urdu bard.

  At Ghalib’s haveli, I talk to Pavan Varma about the all-round decay. This was not our first meeting. Long before, I had met him in person. His book on Ghalib, Ghalib: The Man, the Times, had acquainted me with his rather direct style. This was Varma’s first book published in 1999 and was later translated into several Indian languages. A distinguished Foreign Service officer, he is also one of the last remnants of the ‘Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb’ that values India’s past in its entirety instead of picking and choosing what would suit a particular power-narrative.

  Varma approached the Sahitya Akademi to publish his manuscript, but they were rather unhelpful. A common friend asked him to meet the famous writer, Khushwant Singh who liked the draft. Singh sent it to Penguin who loved it and called it ‘A’ class. It has now acquired an evergreen shelf life and its nine editions were printed in English.

  After several stints in foreign missions, Varma became the director general of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations in 2007. He continues in the tradition of the eminent men of Delhi who have undertaken the onerous task of advocating cultural preservation, valuing heritage and the Urdu language. His outspoken laments on the state of Urdu are also well known:

  I have often met people who want to enjoy the meaning of an Urdu couplet but are unable to. Others come out with the conventional ‘wah, wah!’ when a poem is recited, but have not, I am pretty sure, understood its meaning. There are understandable reasons for this inadequacy. For at least two generations now, Urdu has not been studied by most of our educated, simply because it is not part of the school curriculum. People don’t know the script, and, increasingly, very little of the vocabulary. The result is the neglect of the good Urdu poets, and the proliferation of the mediocre…

  Varma’s second book, Havelis of Old Delhi, is a tribute to the architectural and cultural legacy of Shajahanabad. Havelis highlights ‘age’ and transports the reader into a lost world. This book provided me with the formidable reference material that I had been looking for. I owe it to his insights, the range of his inquiry and his accessible style to further discover the lost havelis and their stories.

  Gulzar, who I met at Ghalib’s birthday celebrations, is India’s finest poet in Hindustani and Urdu. He has gained both critical acclaim and commercial success. Gulzar (Sampooran Singh), like many other Punjabis, is heavily inspired by Urdu poetry. His film songs are an instant hit for they are not just forced lyrics; most often they are not rhymed but modernist in their structure, tone, symbols and unconventionally simple images. His work has been published in Pakistan as well. The late master of Urdu poetry, Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi, hailing from the same region of Upper (Pakistani) Punjab, accepted Gulzar with open arms and their relationship grew strong. Gulzar, thus transcended the label of ‘Bollywood lyricist’ and entered the Pakistani Urdu world of poetic imagination.

  Gulzar’s lasting contribution to Ghalib was his presentation of the poet’s life and poetry on national television. Hailed as one of the finest literary productions, this audio-visual production carried Ghalib’s story and verse into millions of Indian homes and abroad.14 Gulzar’s love for the poet finds expression in his words:

  I always say Ghalib had three trusted servants who were always with him. The first was Kalloo, who was with Ghalib till his very last days. The second was Wafadar who had a lisp. The third is me. They lived their time. I am still in service of him.15

  The hallmark of Gulzar’s Ghalib was its attempt to explore the iconoclastic vision of the poet. We see Ghalib’s se
nse of humour despite the tribulations of life, uncertain financial conditions and the loss of seven children who never lived to provide a family to the poet. Most importantly, Gulzar’s rendition highlighted Ghalib’s utter lack of pretence and rejection of worldly appearances, ‘Nothing about him or his life was put on.’16

  In 2008, Varma rendered forty-five of Gulzar’s verses into English in a collection entitled Selected Poems. The last three lines of one of his poems, ‘Rape’, read:

  Just a woman, weak, vulnerable

  Four men, only because they were men,

  Pinned her against a wall and raped her!

  Stark. Chilling.

  In Jamia Millia’s quaint, modern ambience, Rakhshanda Jalil and I discuss Ghalib’s attitude towards the British conquest of and subsequent rule in India. He had a range of attitudes that are often conflictual and contradictory. His journal-monograph of 1857, the Dast-Ambooh was, on balance, evidently pro-British. He cited British excesses but also expressed dismay at the ruthlessness of the resistance. On the other hand, his letters, addressed to his close friends were critical and frank. There were occasions where, apprehensive of a leak, he requested his friends to destroy his letters. A few written to the Nawab of Rampur made such requests. Thankfully, not all the addressees followed Ghalib’s advice. They seemed to know the value of these letters.

  Ghalib’s awe of the British was to some degree undone by the events of 1857 and the brutalities that the people of Delhi, especially Muslims, had to face. The hangings, according to one estimate, of 27,000 persons17 in a single year shook his sense of humanity. Rakhshanda reminds me that the Muslims were allowed to return by November 1859, more than two years after their expulsion.

  Ghalib soon understood the new realities. In response to an 1858 government order, he wrote:

  All well-wishers of the British are to illuminate their houses, and there are to be illuminations in the bazaars and on the Deputy Commissioner sahib’s bungalow. Your humble servant, even in this state of penury, not having received his appointed pension for the last eighteen months, will illuminate his house, and has sent a poem of fifteen couplets to the Commissioner of the city.18

  At Jamia Millia Islamia, I am introduced to Professor Sadiq-ur-Rahman Kidwai, the secretary of the Ghalib Institute. Professor Kidwai is a mild-mannered critic and academic reminding me of a more genteel past. Within a couple of days I find myself riding a Delhi auto-rickshaw, searching for the Ghalib Institute in response to a lunch invitation. I struggle with Delhi’s chaotic and mercurial traffic. The auto driver has never heard of the institute and, to make matters worse, he takes a wrong turn past the India International Centre. As we were groping for the way, we pass the well-known Sai Baba temple, packed for a pooja ceremony. Helped by the traffic jam, I have time to quickly peep into the temple. I cannot help but notice how the dargah culture—the chadars, the flower-sellers and incense, not to mention the greedy clerics collecting donations—has influenced the temple. I vowed to visit the temple again.

  Finally, we reach the Ghalib Institute. The lunch has been hosted for a group of visiting Pakistanis; quite a few Delhi-based Urdu writers and critics have also been invited. Eminent writer and critic, Shamim Hanafi, the Karachi-based Dr Asif Farrukhi, Editor of Dunya-zaad and several others are chatting as I reach the room where a pre-lunch discussion is concluding. I see a large number of guests from Pakistani universities. Is this the result of a more liberal visa regime, I wonder.

  The former Indian President, Dr Zakir Hussain had launched the idea of setting up this institute during Ghalib’s centenary celebrations in 1969. Two years later, the institute became functional. Now a thriving centre for research, it is managed by a trust of eminent people. The Institute, known as Aiwane-Ghalib, has an impressive library, a museum commemorating Ghalib’s life and a decent auditorium. Each year, Aiwan-e-Ghalib holds an international seminar and maintains a myriad network of scholars and researchers. It also awards achievements in Urdu prose, poetry, criticism and drama. Qurratulain Hyder was also an awardee of the Institute.

  We sit in one of the visitors’ rooms and enjoy the hospitality of the Urdu-walas of Delhi. The conversation traverses common ground—happenings in the Urdu world, sentimental and not-so-sentimental remembrances and, of course, Ghalib. Urdu’s binding force momentarily suspends Indo-Pak differences and the politics of separateness.

  The other hunt for Ghalib memorabilia leads me to the privately managed Ghalib Academy located in the congested Nizamuddin Basti. This is an uninspiring site for an institute focusing on the life and works of such a great poet. The alley leading to the building is thronged by Ghalib-illiterates—unemployed boys, burqa-clad beggars and hundreds of pilgrims on their way to the Hazrat Nizamuddin dargah. His tomb is always unvisited even though it is situated in a very busy lane, probably the way Ghalib may have wished. He had no pretensions of being a people’s person despite his innate humanism.

  Inside the Ghalib Academy, the first impressions are disappointing—paan-stained walls, cobwebs, walls with peeling plaster and emptiness. This is a privately supported institute established to promote Urdu poetry by Hakim Abdul Hamid of the Hamdard group. Interestingly, this academy receives no funding from the state. Hence the worn-out state of affairs, including, some would say, the language and its appeal.

  On the brighter side, this auditorium hosts important events and the library proudly offers books free of cost and for reference. There is also a little museum on the second floor showcasing kaftans, caps and portraits of Ghalib’s life and times. An art gallery with paintings by M. F. Hussain, Anis Farooqui and Satish Gujral is a bonus. Ghalib Academy also publishes books on Ghalib in English, Hindi and, of course Urdu (Diwan-e-Ghalib is the perennial bestseller). To serve the local community of unskilled youth, a computerized calligraphy training centre boasting of ‘exhaustive lab practice and very low fees’ also prepares Urdu typists. The library is a little treasure of thousands of archived newspaper clippings, which makes it quite a treat for Ghalib fans..

  In one of his letters Ghalib wrote about what his Delhi would become in the twenty-first century:

  It grieves me to hear of the desolation of Lucknow, but remember that there this destruction will give way to creation—that is, the roads will be widened and the bazaars improved, so that everyone who sees it will approve of what had been done. In Delhi, destruction is not followed by creation, and the work of destruction goes on all the time. The whole appearance of the city, except for the street of shops that runs from Lahore Gate of the Fort to the Lahore Gate of the city (‘i.e.,’ says Mihr, ‘Chandni Chowk and Khari Baoli’) has been spoiled, and will go on being spoiled….19

  A random walk around Urdu Bazaar and several parts of Shajahanabad today would bear witness to these prophetic words. But Ghalib never lost his zest for life or his sense of humour. Even on his deathbed he was composing poetry and writing letters. He could not see properly, could not write and sought the help of his disciples to create new masterpieces in modern Urdu prose. Such were the poets of Delhi. Such was the city—even in its ruins it glowed like a splintered, uncut jewel.

  13

  Love’s Labyrinth

  P

  rofessor Amita Singh is an accidental friend of mine. We had met in Beijing in a high-sounding conference in 2006 where we were delegates from our respective institutions. As is the case with South Asians, especially those from the two constantly squabbling neighbours, the bonding is instant, almost pre-destined.

  There was a large contingent from India at the conference. Ideologues from the West Bengal universities, the marketists from Maharashtra and Gujarat and, of course, Dr Amita Singh from the firebrand, left-leaning Jawaharlal Nehru University, or JNU, comprised this assorted group. Exuberant and passionate, Amita, a public administration expert, is not the archetypal academic living in an ivory tower. Imbued with a sense of the real, her communication skills are terrific. Dressed in ethnic-chic saris, her intelligent eyes not willing to miss anything,
Amita is an engaging character. In a short conversation, she can traverse subjects and paradigms, experiences and anecdotes often not without a sense of humour. We spent several days in the sub-zero temperature of Beijing and her energy kept the conference and its various sessions animated.

  Our interaction turned into friendship. There was also a self-conscious attempt to break political divides and historical gulfs. Amita has a large number of Pakistani friends and her frequent visits to Lahore and Karachi have also erased the commonly held media-inspired prejudices.

  A year later, I pack for a trip to Delhi to attend a conference at the JNU. Dr Amita Singh heads the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance. She makes sure that I confirm my plans and arrive at the venue. A little ado and I also get a visa! At Lahore airport I once again face the immigration official who asks me why I am visiting Delhi. The man, imbued with textbook patriotism, also warns me that there is no stamp on the visa form (an additional layer on the passport-visa-embassy quagmire). Our conversation, as I recall from the corner of my memory, proceeded along these lines:

  Me: (fake-polite) I have a legitimate visa, why would you not let me go?

  Official: (earnest) Sir, they send many people back due to the stamp not being there. You know how Indians are… don’t believe their high sounding rhetoric!

  Me: (rankled) Well, I really have to reach there. I am supposed to speak tomorrow morning.

  Official: (irritated) At your own risk, jaiye jaiye!

  Panicking, I call Amita from the airport who also gets disconcerted by this piece of news. Within minutes she has called the liaison officials and assures me that JNU will arrange for the airport pickup and that I should call Mr X and Mr Y at the university. Not a little perturbed, I board the flight. The Lahore–Delhi route is one of the smallest rides in the South Asian airspace. Within minutes of take off, and even before one tries to finish the newspaper, the announcement for landing hits the ears.