City Improbable- Writings on Delhi

by Khuswant Singh

  A group of government officials stand a little apart, in one corner of the toilet. The gate to the toilet, which has been decorated with marigold flowers, looks no less than an entrance to a temple. The path leading to it has also been decorated with flowering plants.

  White and black cars finally begin to arrive, one by one. From the tent, a voice could be heard, welcoming these guests. The voice is announcing: ‘The chief of Sawda village is amidst us now …’, ‘Nizampur’s chief has arrived …’, ‘The chief of Ghevra village is here with us in this gathering …’ The cars continue to come.

  Lectures now began to be sprayed on the gathering through the loudspeaker. All the chief guests, it seems, have something important to say. Then someone said, ‘On this occasion of the inauguration of the toilet, I announce that blankets will be distributed to people.’

  The public became attentive. People began to go up on the stage. It seemed each person who would be given a blanket had been provided with a chit of paper beforehand. The man giving away the blankets would ask each person’s name, take his chit from him, hand him the blanket and send him back.

  Meanwhile, the other chief guests entered the toilet to see how it had been constructed. People who live in the colony also took this opportunity to take a tour of the toilet. Some even tried the facilities—they opened the taps, inspected the toilet seats. Men and women weren’t required to go into different sides of the toilet today.

  After much time passed in this fashion, people began to leave. A wave of restlessness spread through the colony. Everywhere people said, ‘What kind of a gift giving was this?’ Someone said, ‘It was as if a big favour was being done!’ Another said, ‘They knew the blankets were to be given to the old and the disabled, then couldn’t they have given bigger blankets?’ Yet another added, ‘These blankets are good only to cover the body of a small child!’

  The potted plants that had been swaying in the sun were loaded back into Tata 407 tempos. The strings of marigolds that had adorned the doors and the walls of the toilet were taken away on motorcycles.

  ‘The toilet has been inaugurated, but it is not yet open to use,’ someone said. ‘That will happen only after a caretaker is appointed.’ The lock to the main entrance, which had been removed in the morning, was replaced on the gate.

  Those who had set up the tent began to pack it up. The silver strings that had decorated the tent were left scattered on the road. All those promise-filled words that had been amplified through loudspeakers all morning had evaporated by now. The empty chairs asked each other, ‘Did we come here only to listen to lectures? Where is the feast?’ Slowly the chairs too were gathered up and loaded into tempos and carried away.

  16

  It was 4.15 p.m. on the fourth day of the month of March, the year 2009. Ved Singh, friend of retired army officer Om Prakash, cut the red ribbon and inaugurated the Mother Dairy branch. Om Prakash distributed laddus among children and barfi among the older people. That very day Mother Dairy began to sell milk. All other brands of milk stopped being bought, and milk from the Mother Dairy was seen in every household. Some people applied their intelligence and began enjoying the other milk products also available at the Mother Dairy.

  ‘I’ll remember this barfi,’ said Mehtab khala as she sat on the stool in the tea shop. Vijay, who is a sculptor, too was sitting there. Sipping tea with his piece of barfi, he said, ‘We make that memorable which we have and which we think or know won’t remain with us. But I make idols specially for immersing in the river. When I make something knowing it will be dissolved into its elements soon, how can I make it so that it remains memorable? This is something I’m always grappling with.’ For Vijay, it seemed, memory is not a factor of time, but relates to space. Or rather, it relates to what he has made getting dispersed over several places. This understanding stands in contradiction to how we construct memory through photo albums! Listening to Vijay, one is compelled to consider that memory-making is connected to something losing its wholeness, dispersing and appearing before the eyes of many.

  The sun was about to set. A little distance away, a Tata 407 could be seen making its way into Sawda-Ghevra J.J. Colony. Another family was arriving, its household items loaded into a tempo. As they moved through the streets of Sawda-Ghevra, the tyres of the tempo spread the dust from the untarred streets into the air.

  17

  The day dissolved amidst the clutter of ‘bring this’, ‘buy that’. No time to linger or chat. No respite. Evening descended softly upon the accumulations of the day. Bulbs hanging from poles lining the streets lit up, spreading a warm golden glow. Light came out in sharp streaks from houses with walls made of bamboo mats. Darkness seemed to have escaped into the grass that had sprouted on the edges, in the space between settled and as yet unallotted blocks. The night grew darker. A voice asked, ‘Son, does it get very cold here at night?’ Another voice replied, ‘Yes. There is no construction till far; the place is open from all sides. No one sleeps here at night. Here, people walk around in their sleep.’

  18

  To stake back its claim over the space, the Municipality built a thick, high, grey boundary wall around the temple complex. As if to announce, ‘We choose to allow you to be here. But remember, we can contain you, we can contain your spread.’

  It was night. A young man walked to a shop and bought himself a pack of cards. He sat on his cot, all by himself in his house, a candle burning softly by his side. He shuffled the cards, just like people who can gamble well do. Over and over again, he chose numbers and picked cards to check his luck. He did this sitting, then standing, then tried it while keeping near him different good luck charms. The following night, he bought himself yet another pack of cards, shuffled them, played with himself. Even now, every night, night after night, he practises and tests his luck, preparing himself, readying himself for that gamble which he knows he will soon have occasion to play.

  Across the River: Noida

  *When I first lived in Delhi, the city was dominated by Punjabis, many of them migrants from Pakistan at the time of partition. The census figures are not definitive, but it is likely that Poorvanchalis had overtaken the Punjabis as the largest community by the late 1990s.

  Notes

  New Delhi at War, 1939–45

  1. Dhanvanthi Rama Rau, An Inheritance: The Memoirs of Dhanvanthi Rama Rau (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1977), p. 199.

  2. Philip Mason, A Shaft of Sunlight: Memories of a Varied Life (New Delhi & Bombay: Vikas Publishing House Pty Ltd, 1978), p. 15.

  3. Letter from Hume to his parents, 6 November 1939, Andrew Park Hume Collection, MSS Eur D724/9, IOPP.

  4. Telegram from Amery to Linlithgow, 1 April 1942, L/P&J/7/5173:f9 in Nicholas Mansergh et al., eds., Constitutional Relations between Britain and India: The Transfer of Power, 1942–47, Vol. 1, The Cripps Mission, January–April 1942 [hereafter Transfer of Power, Vol. 1] (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office [hereafter HMSO], 1970), p. 605.

  5. Telegram from Linlithgow to Amery, 13 April 1942, MSS Eur F125/22 in Nicholas Mansergh et al., eds., Transfer of Power, Vol. 1, p. 765.

  6. Philip Mason, A Shaft of Sunlight, p. 15.

  7. Letter from Tyson to his family, 27 June 1943, Tyson Collection, MSS Eur E341/36, IOPP.

  8. Letter from Tyson to his family, 24 August 1941, Tyson Collection, MSS Eur E341/34, IOPP.

  9. Letters from Tyson to his family, 24 August 1941 & 27 July 1941 respectively, Tyson Collection, MSS Eur E341/34, IOPP.

  10. John Christie, Morning Drum (Putney & London: BACSA, 1983), p. 82.

  11. Emma Wilson, cited in Pat Barr, The Dust in the Balance: British Women in India 1905–1945 (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1989), p. 159.

  12. Letter from Tyson to his family, 14 February 1943, Tyson Collection, MSS Eur E341/36, IOPP.

  13. Letter from Tyson to his family, 10 January 1943, Tyson Collection, MSS Eur E341/36, IOPP.

  14. Letter from Tyson to his family, 13 June 1943, MSS Eur E341/36, Tyson
Collection, IOPP.

  15. Patwant Singh, Of Dreams and Demons (London: Duckworth, 1994), p. 23.

  16. Pat Barr, The Dust in the Balance, p. 161.

  17. John Richard Charters Symonds interview, interviewer and date of interview unknown, MSS Eur R207/1, IOLR Oral Archives.

  18. R.K. Nehru interview, recorded by B.R. Nanda, July 1970, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library Oral History Project [hereafter NMML Oral History Project], New Delhi.

  19. S.K. Kirpalani, Fifty Years with the British (London: Sangam Books, 1993), p. 283.

  20. Letter from Tyson to his family, 10 August 1941, Tyson Collection, MSS Eur E341/34, IOPP.

  21. ‘Santha Rama Rau’, personal interview conducted in July 2001 (transcript/1 tape), interviewer Nayantara Pothen, University of Sydney.

  22. Khushwant Singh interview, interview by Trevor Royle, 1987–88, MSS Eur R193/12, IOLR Oral Archives.

  23. Santha Rama Rau, Home to India, p. 58.

  24. Santha Rama Rau, Home to India, p. 70.

  25. Santha Rama Rau, Home to India, p. 71.

  26. Raj Chatterjee, cited in Zareer Masani, Indian Tales of the Raj (London: BBC Books, 1987), p. 68; see also Raj Chatterjee interview, interviewed by Charles Allen, 1972–74, MSS Eur R15/1–4, IOLR Oral Archives.

  27. Letter from Tyson to his family, 7 December 1941, Tyson Collection, MSS E341/41, IOPP; Badr-ud-din Tyabji, Memoirs of An Egoist, p. 179.

  28. ‘Santha Rama Rau’, personal interview conducted in July 2001 (transcript/1 tape), interviewer Nayantara Pothen, University of Sydney.

  29. Santha Rama Rau, Home to India (London: Victor Gollancz, 1945), p. 70.

  30. Letter from Hume to his parents, 13 February 1944, Hume Collection, MSS Eur D724/14, IOPP.

  City of Walls, City of Gates

  1. Hamlet, ‘In my mind’s eye, Horatio’ (I.ii.145).

  2. Hamlet (II.ii.593).

  3. Hamlet, ‘Murder most foul, as in the best it is;/But this most foul, strange and unnatural’ (I.v.27).

  4. See ‘Delhi is Dehali’ in Ramchandra Gandhi, I am Thou: Meditations on the Truth of India (Indian Philosophical Quarterly Publications No: 8, 1984), pp. 293.

  5. In The Hyoid Bone (Viking Penguin, 1992), pp. 38–39.

  6. Hamlet (IV.v.78).

  7. Hamlet, ‘I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams’ (II.ii.264). And those ‘bad dreams’ could be very troubling indeed inside Delhi’s walled cities!

  8. Hamlet (1.iv.90).

  9. Hamlet (I.ii.198).

  Notes on Contributors

  Shamsher Ali is a writer and photographer. He has pursued both passions since he left school after the tenth standard. He is a co-writer of Trickster City: Writings from the Belly of the Metropolis. His photographs and art works have been presented in the City As Studio exhibition series of Sarai-CSDS in 2010. He is currently working on a book of his photographs of LNJP colony, Delhi, where he lives now.

  Babur (1483–1530), also known as Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur, was the founder of the Mughal Empire. A descendant of Timur and Chingiz Khan, he succeeded to the throne of Fergana in Central Asia when he was a little over ten years old. After triumphing over Ibrahim Lodi in the Battle of Panipat in 1526, he captured Delhi and Agra, and subsequently conquered nearly the entire north Indian subcontinent. The Babur Nama, a collection of his memoirs, reveals fascinating details of his turbulent life.

  Sheela Bajaj teaches at Delhi University, and is a researcher and writer, specializing in habitat-related issues. Portions of her essay ‘The Building of New Delhi’ first appeared in the magazine Delhi Diary.

  Ibn Battuta (1304–69), also known as Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Abdullah Al Lawati Al Tanji Ibn Battuta, was an Arab scholar and traveller who is best known for the account of his travels and excursions in the fourteenth century. His journeys lasted for a period of nearly thirty years and spanned three continents, covering almost the entirety of the known Islamic world and beyond.

  Annette Beveridge (1842–1929) was an orientalist renowned for her efforts in women’s education. She came to India in 1873 to promote female education in Bengal and helped found the Hindu Mahila Bidyalaya in Calcutta, which later became Bethune College. Her lasting contribution was as a translator of medieval Indian and Central Asian texts into English.

  Dhiren Bhagat (1957–88) was a journalist, poet and short-story writer. His memoirs have been published as The Contemporary Conservative: Selected Writings of Dhiren Bhagat.

  Ruskin Bond wrote his first novel, The Room on the Roof, when he was seventeen. Since then he has written severals novellas, short stories, essays and poems, all of which have established him as one of the best chroniclers of contemporary India. He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1993 and the Padma Shri in 1999.

  Radhika Chandiramani is a Delhi-based clinical psychologist working on issues of sexuality, sexual and reproductive health and rights. She co-edited Sexuality, Gender and Rights: Exploring Theory and Practice in South and Southeast Asia with Geetanjali Misra and has recently written Good Times for Everyone: Sexuality Questions, Feminist Answers.

  Bharati Chaturvedi is the founder and director of the environmental advocacy group Chintan. Her specific area of work is related to material consumption and disposal. She writes on environmental and development issues, and has also edited the book Finding Delhi.

  William Dalrymple was born in Scotland and wrote his first book, In Xanadu, when he was twenty-two. In 1989 he moved to Delhi researching his bestselling book City of Djinns. After that came The Holy Mountain, The Age of Kali, White Mughals, The Last Mughal and Nine Lives. Apart from being an award-winning writer, he is also a co-director of the Jaipur Literature Festival.

  Sadia Dehlvi is a scriptwriter and film-maker who also works as a columnist with the Hindustan Times. She has been the editor of Bano, a popular woman’s journal in the Urdu language, and has recently authored the book Sufism: The Heart of Islam. She belongs to a family that has lived in Delhi for centuries.

  Sheila Dhar (1929–2001), a renowned raconteur, was also a Hindustani classical music vocalist who gained late recognition for some of the most insightful English essays ever written on culture and performance within the north Indian gharana tradition. Her books include Children’s History of India and Raga’n Josh: Stories from a Musical Life.

  Emily Eden (1797–1869) was an English novelist who gave witty pictures of life in the early nineteenth century. She was the sister of Lord Auckland, who was Governor-General of India from 1835 to 1842. Her accounts of the time she spent in India were later collected in the volume Up the Country: Letters Written to Her Sister from the Upper Provinces of India. She also wrote two very successful novels, The Semi-Detached House and The Semi-Attached Couple.

  Ghalib (1797–1869), whose original name was Mirza Muhammad Asad-ullah Khan, was a classical Urdu and Persian poet of the nineteenth century. A nobleman, wit and poet, he was born in Agra but spent his adult life in Delhi. His compositions remain popular among Urdu speakers all over the world.

  Namita Gokhale is a writer and publisher. Her books include Paro: Dreams of Passion; Gods Graves and Grandmother; A Himalayan Love Story; The Book of Shadows and The Book of Shiva. She has co-edited the anthology In Search of Sita with Dr Malashri Lal. She is also one of the founders and co-directors of the Jaipur Literature Festival.

  Khalid Hasan (1935–2009) was a renowned Pakistani journalist and writer. In his illustrious career as news correspondent, he worked in both the USA and Pakistan, reporting for Lahore-based papers as The Nation, Daily Times and Friday Times. He has written many books, including Scorecard, Give Us Back Our Onions, The Umpire Strikes Back, as well as numerous translations such as Bitter Fruit: The Best of Saadat Hasan Manto.

  William Stephen Raikes Hodson (1821–58) was a British leader of irregular light cavalry during the Indian Revolt of 1857. Popularly known as ‘Hodson of Hodson’s Horse’, he was famed for his capture of Bahadur S
hah Zafar from Humayun’s Tomb after the British capture of Delhi. He is also credited with being jointly responsible for the introduction of the khaki uniform. His letters were later published in the volume Twelve Years of a Soldier’s Life in India.

  William Irvine (1840–1911) was a distinguished scholar of Indian history.

  Khurshidul Islam (1919–2006) was a noted Urdu critic and poet. He has written extensively on Ghalib. Among his many works is included Ghalib: Life and Letters: 1797–1869, which he co-translated and co-edited along with Ralph Russell.

  Madhu Jain worked with India Today magazine from 1986 to 2000, writing on cinema, art, society and books. She has also written for Sunday, the Statesman and the French newspaper La Croix. She is the author of The Kapoors: The First Family of Indian Cinema.

  Anees Jung is a best-selling author and journalist. Educated in Hyderabad and the USA, she began her journalistic career as editor of Youth Times. She has since been a columnist for major newspapers in India and abroad, and has authored a number of books including Unveiling India, When a Place Becomes a Person, Seven Sisters, Breaking the Silence and Within the Courtyard, Beyond the Courtyard.

  Kamleshwar (1932–2007) was a prominent figure in Hindi literature. He wrote short stories, novels, drama, screenplays and literary criticism. His most famous novel, Kitne Pakistan, was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2003. Its English translation, Partitions, has been published by Penguin.

  Amir Khusrau was an Indian musician, scholar and poet. He was an iconic figure in the cultural history of the Indian subcontinent. He wrote poetry primarily in Persian, but also in Hindavi. A Sufi mystic and a spiritual disciple of Nizamuddin Auliya of Delhi, he was not only a notable poet but also a prolific and seminal musician and is regarded as the father of the qawwali musical tradition.