Jasmine and Jinns

by Sadia Dehlvi

  Abba had a generous and compassionate heart. The kitchen areas of Shama Kothi seemed to forever have large cauldrons of food specially made for distribution. Friends who visited our home recall how they rarely left without being served a meal. After a party, Ammi would often pack some briyani, qorma and baqerkhani roti for my friends to take home. Some of them say that they never saw a house with so much food around all the time.

  Abba remained particular about the large number of domestic staff eating the same food as the family. I remember a distant aunt expressing shock at the way our staff helped themselves to whatever they wanted from the kitchen. She chided my mother for being a careless housekeeper, advising her to keep food provisions locked and give measured hand-outs for staff consumption. Ammi replied that those who locked food had locks on their hearts. She added that the food did not belong to her, ‘Daane daane par likha hota hai khaney waley ka naam,’ each grain of food has the name of the person for whom it is destined.

  At Shama Kothi, there were two sessions for dinner. The children were given an early dinner while the adults ate later. Similar to our boarding school routine, dinner was announced using a hammer on a gong bell. This was kept on a shelf in the dining room, which had a twenty-four-seat table in the centre.

  Lunch and dinner usually consisted of three or four main dishes that were mostly mutton based. Seasonal vegetables like peas, beetroot, spinach, turnips, carrots and cauliflower were added to meat. In summer, dal and rice were frequently served.

  While masoor, moong and other dal were served, rajma was never cooked at home. I grew up associating rajma with my Hindu friends! I relished it in their homes and became rather fascinated with its taste. Vegetables such as brinjal, cabbage and pumpkin had no place in our kitchens either. Sometimes fruit including bananas, pears and apples were cooked with mutton.

  My childhood memories are of Amma constantly hovering around the kitchen and pantry. Along with her retinue of women retainers, she sat in the veranda, surrounded by food items. Seeni were filled with spices. These were were kept in the sun for drying. Amma busied herself supervising the grinding of spices and making seasonal pickles. Apa Saeeda helped Amma with preserving the pickles in earthenware jars, leaving them exposed to the sun to mature.

  All essential masalas including turmeric powder, coriander powder and red chilli powder were prepared at home. These were ground in an imam dasta, mortar and pestle. Some spices were ground on the sil, stone slab, with a silbatta, stone crusher. Long after Amma left us, ground masala from reliable shops in Khari Baoli began to be used.

  Amma maintained a vegetable patch behind the bedrooms, adjoining the rear side of the boundary wall. Although the produce did not fulfil all our requirements, Amma delighted in cooking home-grown vegetables. After her death, my mother planted trees in that area for no one seemed interested in growing vegetables.

  Despite having a large-sized fridge, Amma kept her stock of ginger underground. She had a foot-long pit dug in one corner of the garden, where she buried the ginger. She pulled out some as and when required. This method ensured that the ginger remained fresh. I doubt if anyone follows these old ways anymore.

  Abba and Amma did not approve of us coming late to the table after the food had been served. Abba would say, ‘Khaney ko interzar nahin karvatey,’ don’t make food wait for you. He said it was against the teachings of Islam. He seemed upset whenever Daddy would excuse himself from joining the family for meals on account of work. Abba would say, ‘Insaan khaney ke liye hi to kamata hai, ’ after all we earn to fill our bellies.

  Abba ruled that the family had to eat at least one meal in a day together. Since his dinner consisted solely of a cup of milk, we all came together for lunch. Daddy and my uncles were away at office during weekdays, so the women and children joined Abba, who came home for lunch. He maintained that families who eat together, stay together. Although the three families continued to stay together after Abba’s death, they gradually began cooking and eating separately. The strong bond between them was never quite the same again.

  Family elders, my cousins and I

  Amma set the rules for the daily food routine. Despite the presence of a skilled cook and other kitchen staff, her bahus, daughters-in-law, had to set the menu and supervise the cooking. Two days of the week this responsibility fell on each of the three daughters-in-law. On Sundays, Amma supervised these duties. Shamim Auntie and Ameena Auntie were terrific at cooking. My mother did not enjoy kitchen chores. After being given the menu, the cook brought the masala for those dishes on a plate to the ladies. They checked the quantities of herbs and spices, adding or removing from the plate if needed.

  The cook bringing masala on a plate for approval is standard practice in our homes. Despite twenty years of training, Sabir, my cook, still checks the spices and their quantity with me before emptying them into the cooking utensil. For those who cook regularly, ingredients are measured only by andaz, a sense of proportion.

  Abba with Nargis and Idrees uncle at Shama office

  My father (right) with Raj Kapoor

  The Golden Days

  Shama Kothi was always filled with guests and we were often displaced from our bedrooms to accommodate an overflow. When we grumbled, Amma would say, ‘Mehmaan to Allah ki rehmat hotey hain,’ guests are blessings from Allah. In Delhi’s cultural tradition, Abba hosted mushairas, qawaali, music and literary gatherings followed by dinners. His graciousness earned Shama Kothi the reputation for mahmaan nawazi, hospitality, and for serving the finest of the city’s cuisine.

  Stalwarts of Urdu literature who wrote for Shama and Sushma, its Hindi version, visited our home. These included Ismat Chughtai, Qurratulain Haider, Kaifi Azmi, Sardar Jafri, Majrooh Sultanpuri, K.A. Abbas and Krishan Chander amongst others. I became friends with some of them. I was particularly close to Ainee Apa, Ismat Apa, Kaifi Sahab and Jafri Sahab. Lively conversations with them influenced my life in so many ways.

  Many of these writers contributed poetry, essays and short stories for our magazines Khilona, Bano, an Urdu monthly journal for women, and Shabistan, a digest. Our other magazines included Mujrim and Doshi, popular crime digests in Urdu and Hindi.

  Golden nights at Shama Kothi

  L-R: Phupijan, Ammi, Saira Banu, a guest, Ameena and Shamim Auntie at Shama Kothi

  L-R: Daddy, Ammi, Shamim Auntie, Gulzar, Abba, Raakhee, Idrees and Ilyas uncle

  In the seventies, my mother was the editor of Bano. I took over from her in the eighties and remained editor till the magazine closed in the early nineties. With my grandfather, both uncles and parents being writers, I grew up amidst newspapers, magazines, books and stationery. Newsprint, press and deadline, were among the first words that I learnt to say. The world of letters continues to be my refuge.

  The magazine’s film content was equally popular. Its film reviews affected box office results. Shama had a reputation for truthful reporting and often broke news about film stars. In the mid-fifties, Abba had begun to finance and distribute films. The distribution business was named after the magazine – Shama Distributors. In 1958, Abba financed and distributed the musical hit Ghar Sansar, with Nargis, Balraj Sahni and Rajendra Kumar. Films were regularly shown on portable screens on the lawn for family and friends.

  Rajesh Khanna and Dimple lunching at Shama Kothi

  Clockwise: Bano, 1969, Shama 1950s’ editions

  Growing up in an environment of literature and film was wonderful. When film personalities visited Delhi, Abba often hosted them. Our family was particularly close to Meena Kumari, Nimmi, Dilip Kumar, Raj Kapoor, Nargis, Saira Banu, Dev Anand, Dharmendra, Waheeda Rahman, Khwaja Ahmad Abbas, Kamal Amrohi, Mehboob Khan, K. Asif and others of that generation.

  Meena Kumari stayed at Shama Kothi a few times. Nargis, with whom Abba shared a special friendship, visited us frequently. It was on Abba’s insistence that Nargis agreed to work in Raat aur Din, produced by her brother. The film was released in 1967. Abba prevailed upon Sunil Dutt to allow Nargis t
o do the film, the only one she acted in after her marriage to him. Abba rightly predicted that she would receive the National Award for her performance. When Nargis became a Rajya Sabha member, Abba celebrated her nomination with a reception at Shama Kothi. On Nargis’s death, Abba held a Quran khwani,recital, at the office and distributed food as ways of sending prayers for her soul. Both Sunil Dutt and Sanjay Dutt attended the memorial function.

  Boarding school made us miss out on many of these glittering events. But I do remember Meena Kumari staying at our home and meeting Nargis, Nimmi and some other film personalities. I recall parties for newly married film couples. Rajesh and Dimple came home shortly after their wedding. They had first met at our Shama Film Awards function in Delhi. Raakhee and Gulzar also came home after their marriage. Abba gave the new brides an asharfi, gold guinea, as moonh dikhaai, gift money.

  A decade after Abba’s death, our magazines began to close down one by one due to the decline in Urdu readership in India, and these traditions too died. In 2002, Shama Kothi was sold. It was traumatic for us and we all wept on leaving that threshold forever. Tears still trickle down each time I drive past that road. Our house was bought by a political party, demolished and rebuilt. I caught a glimpse of an elephant statue where Amma’s lemon trees once stood.

  Jasmine and Jinns

  My childhood memories are filled with the fragrance of chameli, jasmine, the most delicate of floral scents. Amma loved these little white flowers and had planted rows of jasmine shrubs all around our gardens. Delhi summers are synonymous with motia and chameli flowers. During the dry hot months, we slept under the starlit skies on the terrace. Each evening the terrace was hand-sprayed with water. Every family had a specific place for sleeping at night. Late afternoon, we helped Amma pluck the flowers. These had to be gathered before sunset for Amma said that flowers sleep at sundown.

  Amma placed small bunches of jasmine on the chaarpai of the elders. These were taboo for us young girls. She warned that jinns are attracted to the fragrance of jasmine and if they smelled it on an unmarried girl they could become her ashiq, possessive lover. This would ruin their chances of getting married because many obstacles would arise.

  Apa Saeeda narrated a story from her village of a young girl who went for an evening walk and never returned home. Her family looked everywhere but in vain. One day, they smelled an overpowering jasmine fragrance from a small kothri, storeroom, in a corner of the house. They found the missing girl there, and she told them that she had married a jinn and should be left alone. She asked them to forget her and advised them not to ever break or rebuild the house!

  Everyone at Shama Kothi believed that jinns lived with us. Well after midnight, strange sounds would be heard. These resembled the creaking noise made when heavy furniture is moved. The same sounds were heard downstairs, upstairs and throughout the house for all the years that we lived there. There seemed no apparent reasons for this. The only explanation we came up with was that the jinns were dragging their beds in place before they slept. I guess we managed to coexist peacefully.

  Sometimes these scary nocturnal banging sounds would awaken me from deep slumber. I would quietly creep into Apa Saeeda’s bed. When I grew older, I simply got up, switched on the light and went back to sleep. Amma said we should not be scared because these were good jinns who had never caused us any harm. She said angels, jinns, humans, animals and birds were all part of God’s creation. Allah created jinns from fire and human beings from clay. Jinns belonged to different faiths with both good and bad among them.

  I do recall an occasional encounter with the jinns. One of our young cooks while making roti would suddenly stare at the sky and say, ‘Salaam Alaikum’ and faint. This strange behaviour continued for many days. Ammi then called a maulvi, who made the cook gaze into a candle flame. He apparently recognized the jinn who had been troubling him. The maulvi sahib then managed to successfully get rid of the jinn.

  Amma said we couldn’t see the jinns because they lived in another dimension. Jinns usually inhabit jungles, but sometimes their living areas overlap with humans. They have longer lives and travel at lightning speed, moving from anywhere to anywhere in the world in seconds. Jinns are known to be extreme in behaviour. This is why someone in a state of extreme rage is described as jinaat bana hua hai, he is behaving like a jinn.

  As kids, we sat around Amma in her room, where a large area had a dari chandni, sheet covering, and gau takya, bolster cushions. She always wore a white hand embroidered kurta and duppatta. I loved her kurta buttons made of gold, embellished with precious stones. These buttons and diamond tops in her ears was the only jewellery she ever wore. She had a silver toothpick with a diamond pin head that was clipped to her kurta.

  A silver paandaan in front of her, Amma cut chaliya, betel nuts with a sarauta, nut cutter, as she told us stories. Sometimes, she read us stories of Nastoor, the playful jinn, from Khilona. Most of the time these stories were of Prophets. I remember her telling us tales of Prophet Solomon, and how God endowed him with special gifts. All the jinns, animals and birds were made subservient to him. It is believed that the Prophet King constructed the temple at Jersualem, Dome of the Rock, with the help of jinns.

  Badi Khala, my mother’s elder sister, told us jinn anecdotes. She lived in Mohalla Baradari near Novelty Cinema. Strange and unusual incidents in her neighbour, Mariam Bi’s house, had convinced them of the presence of jinns. They never harmed the family, but handwritten notes began to appear demanding specific food at odd hours! The poor woman had to make pakora or procure jalebi for them. Apparently the note would specify where to leave the food, usually on the terrace. It would soon disappear. Apart from food, the jinns liked film music and wanted certain songs to be played on the gramophone.

  Tired of troublesome jinns, the family members discussed the idea of moving to another house. That night, a note appeared from nowhere threatening them with death if they left. The notes with strange messages kept appearing for a few weeks. Then one day a note apologizing for all the trouble appeared. The resident jinns said they had some guests who were just being mischievous. With that note and the departure of the guest jinns, the harassment stopped.

  Most family elders had some jinn story or the other to narrate. Ammi remembers taps and doors opening on their own in the house where she spent her childhood. This was attributed to Muslim jinns doing their wuzu, ablutions, before offering prayers. She also recalls how once a wooden bed that her sister was sleeping on suddenly overturned. Their mother explained that the incident occurred because her sister’s infant had soiled the bed. Impurities are said to anger pious jinns, so a fresh sheet was quickly put in place of the soiled one.

  Khilona magazine, 1971

  In the mohallas, it is said that one should never close a taq, niche in the wall, because it blocks the passage for the jinns. Taq are typical of old style architecture. Phupijan, my father’s younger sister, lived in one such house in Ballimaran, before selling it. The family that moved in suffered many misfortunes including a child falling off the terrace. They asked my aunt if a similar fate had ever struck them and she replied in the negative. Apparently, one of the family members then had a dream in which the jinns told them that they were angry at the taq being covered with cement. The cement layering was removed and the taq left open for the jinns to pass through.

  Although the jinn population is believed to be more than that of humans, I don’t hear jinn stories anymore. Maybe they have all moved to the mountains and jungles. I occasionally hear of mosques where jinns come to offer prayer. At dargahs, I often see men and women speaking and acting strangely while clinging to the trellis. It is presumed that they are possessed by a jinn and are probably trying to get rid of it.

  During qawaali at dargah courtyards or in a sama mehfil, Sufi music gathering, a wide space is always left empty for the jinns. I have heard of instances when people blocking this space have been kicked and thrown off by invisible forces. It is said that jinns are extremely fond of
Sufi music.

  Amma died when I was thirteen years old and Shama Kothi was never the same. The pampering, the stories and everything came to an end. My father gave me her gold kurta buttons. Abba had jasmine shrubs planted over her grave. He visited her every Sunday and took the garderner along to tend to the jasmine. Fifteen years after Amma’s death, Abba left us in the summer of 1985. He lies buried next to her with the waft of jasmine around their resting place.

  Khatoon Begum, my Nani

  My Nani from Karachi

  I first met Nani, my maternal grandmother, when I was well into my teens. Till then she was a faceless Khatoon Begum who lived in Karachi. Nana, my maternal grandfather, died long before I was born. They had eleven children, of whom seven survived, my mother was the youngest of them. In 1960, Nani moved to Karachi to join her brothers who had migrated there after Partition. Two of her daughters had also migrated to Karachi with their husbands.

  Nani visited Delhi occasionally, her last trip was in October 1983. She was not keeping well, so Ammi sent me to Karachi to help with the Indian visa and escort her to Delhi. Nani’s visa was valid for ninety days and I had submitted her passport to the home ministry for an extension. The need for an extension never arose because Nani left us exactly on the ninetieth day of her stay. She died peacefully in her sleep at our home, surrounded by her children and grandchildren. As fate would have it, after thirty years of Nana’s death, there lay a vacant grave adjacent to his. We laid her to rest there in Sheedipura, the centuries old community graveyard near Idgah. As death beckoned, Nani’s ancestral city embraced her.