City Improbable- Writings on Delhi

by Khuswant Singh

  They say that the man who built it meant it for one minaret of a mosque—a mosque, you are to understand, always possessing two minarets and three domes. But as some say Kootub himself built this, and others say that a particular Emperor called Alexander II has the merit of it, and as nobody knows whether there ever were a Kootub or an Alexander II, I think it is just possible that we do not know what a man who never was born meant to make of a building that never was built. As it stands it is perfect. We went at six this morning to see a well into which divers are so good as to jump from the height of sixty feet. They seem to fly almost in the air, till they nearly reach the water, and then they join their feet together and go down straight, and the water closes over them. But they come up again, do not be afraid.

  We had dispatched all our sights before seven, and had two hours’ good sketching before breakfast, and now it is as hot as ever I felt it in Bengal.

  The heir-apparent of Delhi has been coaxed or threatened into waiting on G, so there was a second durbar to be held today, and when it came to the time, the prince had taken to his bed, and had sent for thirteen doctors to say he was too ill to come. However, he changed his mind again and came, and in the meanwhile, half our troops who were out for the durbar were fainting away from the heat. In the afternoon G had to go and return the visits of the rajahs in the neighbourhood, and we went to see Humayun’s tomb, about six miles off, where we meant to sketch till G came, but it turned out a failure after all we had heard of it.

  However, there were some beautiful white marble tombs in the neighbourhood, carved like lace; and then we went to another well, or rather tank, entirely surrounded by mosques and buildings, on the roofs of which divers were all waiting to jump. We implored and begged they would not take us for the Lord Sahib, and take the fatal plunge in our honour, and the guards went and pushed the crowds off, and declared the Lord Sahib was coming, and we sat down and sketched, and at last, just as we were giving him up, he and all his people arrived, and the divers all bounded off. Some of them jumped from a height of eighty feet, clearing several buildings in their way. It is much the most curious sight I have seen, and I now cannot guess why they did not tumble head over heels twenty times before they reached the water …

  In the evening we went to a nautch at Colonel Skinner’s. His house is fitted up in the native fashion, and he had all the best singers and dancers in Delhi, and they acted passages out of Vishnu and Brahma’s lives, and sang Persian songs which I thought made a very ugly noise; but Mr B, who speaks Persian as fluently as English, kept saying, ‘Well, this is really delightful—this I think is equal to any European singing—in fact, there is nothing like it.’

  There Once Was a Fair City

  MEER TAQI MEER

  This poem has been translated by Khushwant Singh.

  You men of these eastern regions

  Knowing my beggarly state you mock me;

  You snigger amongst yourselves and ask me

  Where on earth can you have come from?

  Let me tell you!

  There once was a fair city,

  Among cities of the world the first in fame;

  It hath been ruined and laid desolate,

  To that city I belong, Delhi is its name.

  1857

  GHALIB

  This extract is taken from Ghalib: Life and Letters: 1797–1869, translated and edited by Ralph Russell and Khurshidul Islam.

  Smiting the enemy and driving him before them, the victors overran the city in all directions. All whom they found in the streets they cut down. Those distinguished in the city by rank and wisdom, one and all took to their houses and shut the doors, that their honour might be safe. Of the army of scoundrels still in the city many determined upon flight, while a few raged to resist the attackers. These few now grappled with the brave conquerors of the city to spill, as they thought, the blood of the alien enemy, but as I deem, the honour of the capital. For two to three days every road in the city, from the Kashmiri Gate to Chandni Chowk, was battlefield. Three gates—the Ajmeri, the Turcoman and the Delhi—were still held by the rebels. My house … is situated between the Kashmiri and the Delhi Gate, in the centre of the city, so that both are equidistant from my lane. When the raging lionhearts set foot in the city, they held it lawful to slaughter the helpless and burn the houses, and indeed, in every territory taken by force of arms these are the sufferings that people must endure. At the naked spectacle of this vengeful wrath and malevolent hatred the colour fled from men’s faces, and a vast concourse of men and women, past all computing, owning much or owning nothing, took to precipitate flight through these three gates. Seeking the little villages and shrines outside the city, they there drew breath to wait until such time as might favour their return. Or if even there they could not feel at ease, they journeyed on day and night to some other place. As for the writer of these words, his heart did not quake, nor did his step falter. I stayed where I was, saying, ‘I have committed no crime and need pay no penalty. The English do not slay the innocent, nor is the air of this city uncongenial to me. Why should I fall a prey to groundless fancies and wander stumbling from place to place? Let me sit in some deserted corner blending my voice with my lamenting pen, while the tears fall from my eyelashes to mingle with the words of blood I write.’

  The Capture of the King

  W.S.R. HODSON

  This extract is taken from Twelve Years of a Soldier’s Life in India.

  24 September 1857

  I got permission, after much argument and entreaty, to go and bring in the King [Bahadur Shah Zafar], for which (though negotiations for his life had been entertained) no provision had been made and no steps taken, and his favourite wife also, and the young imp (her son) whom he had destined to succeed him on the throne. This was successfully accomplished, at the expense of vast fatigue and no trifling risk. I then set to work to get hold of the villain princes. It was with the greatest difficulty that the General was persuaded to allow them to be interfered with, till even poor Nicholson roused himself to urge that the pursuit should be attempted. The General at length yielded a reluctant consent, adding ‘but don’t let me be bothered with them.’ I assured him it was nothing but his own order which ‘bothered’ him with the King, as I would much rather have brought him into Delhi dead than living. Glad to have at length obtained even this consent, I prepared for my dangerous expedition. Macdowell accompanied me, and taking one hundred picked men, I started early for the tomb of the Emperor Humayoon, where the villains had taken sanctuary. I laid my plans so as to cut off access to the tomb or escape from it, and then sent in one of the inferior scions of the royal family (purchased for the purpose by the promise of his life) and my one-eyed Moulvie Rujub Alee, to say that I had come to seize the Shahzadahs for punishment, and intended to do so, dead or alive. After two hours of wordy strife and very anxious suspense, they appeared, and asked if their lives had been promised by the Government, to which I answered ‘most certainly not’, and sent them away from the tomb towards the city, under a guard. I then went with the rest of the sowars to the tomb, and found it crowded with, I should think, some 6,000 or 7,000 of the servants, hangers-on and scum of the palace and city, taking refuge in the cloisters which lined the walls of the tomb. I saw at a glance that there was nothing for it but determination and a bold front, so I demanded in a voice of authority the instant surrender of their arms etc. They immediately obeyed, with an alacrity I scarcely dared to hope for, and in less than two hours they brought forth from innumerable hiding places some 500 swords, and more than that number of firearms, besides horses, bullocks and covered carts called ‘Ruths’ used by the women and eunuchs of the palace. I then arranged the arms and animals in the centre, and left an armed guard with them, while I went to look after my prisoners, who, with their guard, had moved on towards Delhi. I came up just in time, as a large mob had collected, and were turning on the guard. I rode in among them at a gallop, and in a few words I appealed to the crowd, saying that these wer
e the butchers who had murdered and brutally used helpless women and children, and that the Government had now sent their punishment: seizing a carabine from one of my men, I deliberately shot them one after another. I then ordered the bodies to be taken into the city, and thrown out on the Chiboutra, in front of the kotwalie, where the blood of their innocent victims still could be distinctly traced. The bodies remained before the kotwalie until this morning, when, for sanitary reasons, they were removed. In twenty-four hours, therefore, I disposed of the principal members of the house of Timur the Tartar. I am not cruel, but I confess I did rejoice at the opportunity of ridding the earth of these wretches. I intended to have had them hung, but when it came to a question of ‘they’ or ‘us’, I had no time for deliberation …

  28 September 1857, Camp, Humayoon’s Tomb

  I have been out all day and at work, varied by diverse summonses from the Brigadier and by such very amusing duties as packing off the royal family’s lower branches into Delhi.

  With the column sent out here (to complete with 1,500 men the work of which I had overcome all the difficulties with a hundred), a young civilian was sent to carry on political duties, and take charge of the different members of hangers-on of the royal family. In an hour I had got possession of the persons of seven of the remaining sons and grandsons of the King who were ‘wanted’; they were made over, according to orders, to this civilian, and, two hours afterwards, all had escaped! In consequence of this we are halted here and parties sent out in all directions to recapture the fugitives.

  I confess I am much gratified by the congratulations I receive on all sides regarding the capture of the King and the retribution on the Shahzadahs; but I expect no reward, perhaps not even thanks. The Government will be delighted at the fact, but will perhaps pretend a reluctance to the judgment having been effected, which they certainly do not feel, and will probably throw all the onus on me. To tell the truth (in spite of all the praises and prophecies of the army), I expect nothing by this campaign but my brevet majority, and that was due to me for the Punjaub war.

  The execution of the princes could be hardly called one of ‘unresisting’ enemies, since they were surrounded by an armed host, to whom we should have been most unquestionably sacrificed if I had hesitated for an instant. It was ‘they’ or ‘we’, and I recommend those who might cavil at my choice to go and catch the next rebels themselves! The King was very old and infirm, and had long been a mere tool, a name in the hands of the Shahzadahs, Mirza Mogul in particular; moreover, the orders I received were such that I did not dare to act on the dictates of my own judgment to the extent of killing him when he had given himself up; but had he attempted either a flight or a rescue, I should have shot him down like a dog; as it is, he is the lion without his claws. I am now prepared to have all kinds of bad motives attributed to me, for no man ever yet went out of the beaten track without being wondered at and abused; and so marked a success will make me more enemies than friends, so be prepared for abuse rather than reward; for myself I do not care, and I am proud to say that those whose opinion I value most highly think I did well and boldly.

  Jat Households

  OSWALD WOOD

  This extract is taken from The Final Report on the Settlement of Land Revenue in the Delhi District, carried out in 1872–77 by Oswald Wood and completed in 1878–80 by R. Maconachie.

  There is no great difference in the style of houses of Hindus and Muhammadans. The main thing that causes variations is the pecuniary condition of the householders. The best way of noting the different parts of the zamindar’s dwelling will be to give a rough plan of a sample house belonging to a well-to-do Jat.

  In the main street its front will be a blank wall some ten or twelve feet high with a door somewhere about the middle. Turn in here and you find yourself in the dahliz (or dahlij) which is a kind of porch, it is also called deorhi as in parts of the Punjab. This is roofed with rough wooden rafters (kari) and opens on the inner side on the courtyard of the house. If it is deep it will have supporting pillars (thamb or situn) supporting the main crossbeam (shatir) which runs along its length. In the dahlij horses and cows are fastened up and the takht, a large seat, is often put there handy for a lounge or a meditative pull at the hukah. In our friend’s house if you look round to the left, i.e., the north end of the dahlij, you will see a khor or than or manger put up in the corner. This is generally a box like erection made of earth. The than for horses is say four feet high, the khor for cattle lower, either solid or hollow underneath, to admit of an arched recess (tak), a convenience which a thrifty zamindar is very fond of and will always get into walls and spare places when he can. At the right-hand end of the khor is the kundi, a hollow made in the top of the manger for the gram of the animal (when he gets any). The rest of the manger is kept for fodder, and on the outside an edge is made either of wood or earth to prevent the food from falling when tossed about in eating. The inner door of the dahliz is not generally exactly opposite the street door but on one side, so as to make a screen for the chauk where the women and children of the house pass much of their time and in the hot weather sleep—the cattle too stand about in it. Going across the yard we come to an ante-room or veranda roofed like the dahliz and leading to the inner rooms or kothas (also called obaras). In the corner of the dalan or in a corner of the inside room will be the kothi or house granary made of hard earth well mixed with chaff and cowdung and built up very carefully by the womenfolk a span height at a time. It looks white and clean and stands four feet high or more. A good wife will generally adorn her kothi with fantastic representations of peacocks, parrots or other birds, done in chalk or with the red earth (gerhu) which is sold in the bazaar: a big kothi will hold fifty maunds of grain, an average one about thirty. Its lid is called panah. The cooking of the family is done in the dalan or, as is very often the case, the room at the east end of the north dalan will be open to it and the cook room there (rasoi). The rooms which are at the east end are the principal rooms of the house. Their chief furniture will be charpais or kat, one for each member of the family—one or two low stools for the women to sit on (pidha)—the cotton spinning wheel (charkhi) and the women’s clothes box, a wicker basket some two feet high (patiar); the men’s clothes are kept in a locked box together with ornaments and papers or other property of value. There is generally too a chaj or fan made of reeds and its joints fastened with leather. For getting on to the roof which is used for storing juwar stalks and sleeping in the hot weather, there is the parkala, a rough set of steps built up into the inner side of the dahlij. The water for household drinking is kept in an earthen vessel (painda or matka) kept in the rasoi; it is brought twice daily, morning and evening, by the women from the village well.

  Unconquered Still

  PERCEVAL LANDON

  This extract is taken from Under the Sun.

  Delhi, the mistress of every conqueror of India, Aryan or Afghan, Persian, English or Mogul, remains unconquered still. Over twenty square miles of sun-baked plain lie out the debris of her many pasts, relics of her dead and gone masters, some perfect still, some once more crumbling back into the levels of red-yellow marl that have alternately fed and housed, and fed and housed again, forgotten generations of men. Yet Delhi lives. Like some huge crustacean, she has shed behind her her own outgrown habitations, as she has crawled northwards from Tughlakabad and Lalkot, through Dinpana and Ferozabad, till the long, red lizard of the Ridge barred her way, and now she suns herself, a raffle of narrow and congested byways, beneath the crimson walls of Shah Jehan’s great palace-fort. But Delhi is more than her streets and temples. You may go round about her and count her towers; you may tramp from the Jumma Masjid to the Fort, from the Fort to the Pillar, from the Pillar to Humaion’s Tomb and the great Minar; and when all is seen you will understand that these things do no honour to Delhi; it is Delhi that doubles their significance, and that of all that is found within her wide borders. Inscrutable and undeniable, her claim is different from that of all other towns
of India, for she has no rival in greatness from the mountains to the sea, and all men know that whoso holds Delhi holds India. A wide and almost waste plain stretches along the eastern bank of a sandy expanse of river bed. In the far distance low violet hills hem in the horizon, and almost every acre of the plain between the river and the hills bears its own monument of Delhi’s bygone days. In among the tangles of thorn bush and mimosa, where no living thing passes by save a wandering buffalo or the shadow of a kite wheeling high up in the sun, the walls and terraces of deserted temples crumble, and the white datura or the raw yellow acacia flourishes beside the altar stones. Here and there an arch springs forty feet to where a bird-borne pipal-plant slowly threatens a lingering keystone, and an azure-necked peacock scratches among the rotting stumps of last year’s self-sown Indian corn.

  Beyond the hard white shaded road—the only serviceable and well-kept thing in all the landscape—rises in a garden the dome of an ostentatious tomb. Some servant of an Emperor, some Emperor himself it may be, who sleeps soundly in his grave, all unconscious that the city he believed so abiding and so loyal has drifted far from him and his all-powerful dynasty, and now darkens the northward sky with the smoke of factory chimneys, and of locomotives straining across the iron-bridged Jumna. Far away to the south still stands the shaft raised by the slave-emperor from Turkestan, and underneath it the iron pillar of an earlier ‘conqueror of the universe’ bears witness yet to its royal maker’s foolishness. Tughlakabad, hard by, is given over to the jackal and the cobra and the owl—the very bats have found in it no ceiling for their foul nestings. Lalkot lies a weed-grown fold of scattered half-hewn stone and mud; it needs an antiquarian to guess where here and there a gate may once have pierced the vaunted fortifications of old. Indraprastha is there still, but she has given up the struggle against fate, and her cornices and parapets fall unheeded across her exits and her entrances. Only the Grand Trunk Road endures between and beneath the shadows of the heavy banyans above, whose leaves are whitened daily by the dust-shuffling bullock carts, just as when Shah Jehan’s vast equipage trailed slowly in to his new capital from that old one, which had become a burden upon his heart too heavy for him to bear. A few minarets have pierced the skyline for some time, but as one follows along its clear metalled strip, Delhi itself—Delhi, that is, of today—rises flat and uncomely behind her long, low, fortified and battlemented walls.