Delhi - Those Times and Lives - 5

(Continued excerpts from The Last Mughal by William Dalrymple)

For Sir Thomas Metcalfe, a little to the south at the Residency offices of Ludlow Castle in the Civil Lines, the day's work was also nearly done: his various meetings were finished, the queries from the kotwal and courts were answered, his letters were written, and the news from the Palace had been studied, summarised and forwarded to Agra and Calcutta.
Soon after 1pm, as Sir Thomas was heading back to Metcalfe House in his carriage, his day's work completed, things were just beginning to stir in the Red Fort.

The City Of Delhi - 1850s (picture from www.columbia.edu)

Zafar was quite capable of rising early if a hunting expedition was in store but after a mushaira or a mehfil, he preferred to lie long abed.His day would begin with 'the arrival of the water women coming bearing silver basin and silver water pots. Morning prayers would follow, after which Dr Chaman Lal was on hand to rub olive oil in to Zafar's feet. A light breakfast followed during which the metre and rhyme pattern for the evening's mushaira might be discussed. Then Zafar would take a quick round of the Palace, escorted by his troupe of Abyssinian, Turkish and Tartar women guards, all of whom wore male military dress and were armed with bows and a quiver of arrows.
Afterwards, Zafar would attend to petitions, receive visits and gifts from his gardeners, shikaris and fishermen, administer justice; and then receive his ustad Zauq, who would help correct his latest verses. Occasionally, he might also receive his own pupils for composition and help correct their verses. 'Zafar was madly in love with poetry'.
A serious princely education at this period put great stress on the study of logic, philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, law and medicine. It was also expected, as in the courts of Renaissance Europe, that any truly civilised prince should be able to compose verse.
In his youth, Zafar was himself fluent in Urdu, Arabic and Persian, but had also mastered Brij Bhasha and Punjabi sufficiently to write verse in both. He was also, in his youth, a renowned rider, swordsman and archer and remained a crack shot with a rifle in to old age.
Breakfast in the Red Fort would often coincide with the light tiffin lunch served at 1pm in the cantonment.
For three hours, during seven months of the year, the Delhi afternoon heat emptied the streets, leaving them deserted: a blazing white midnight clearing the lanes and galis, and hushing the city in to uncharacteristic silence. In the cantonments, the sweating young soldiers tossed and turned on their beds, shouting to the punkah-wallah outside to pull harder.
In the city, however, inside the cool shade of the courtyards of the high-ceilinged havelis, life would continue as normal: the khas screens made of fragrant grass would be soaked in scented water and then raised over the arcades of cusped arches; beautifully woven shamianas would be raised in the projecting eves of the baradari pavilions. Those who had cool underground tehkhanas would retreat there, to continue uninterrupted the day's chores - sewing, letter writing and teaching the smaller children - and pleasures - smoking and playing cards, pachchisi and chess.
It was only towards late afternoon, around five o'clock, that things began to stir above ground and life returned to Delhi streets. The bhistis would be the first out, emptying their goatskins of water on the dust and chaff covering the roads; in their booths, the paan-wallahs would begin preparing their betel leaves; the kakkar-wallah or hookah-man would begin roaming the dhabas; the opium shops would soon be doing good business too. In the sufi shrines, the pace would also quicken, as the thin stream of afternoon devotees thickened to the crowds of evening, as the thin stream of afternoon devotees thickened to the crowds of evening,as the rose-petal sellers in the lanes near by woke from their squatting slumbers, and the qawwals with their tablas and harmoniums struck up the qawwalis: Allah hoo, Allah hoo, Allah hoo..."
Zafar, meanwhile, was settling down to his favourite early evening occupation of watching his elephants being bathed in the river below his apartment or looking at the fishermen at work. This was followed by an evening of airing among the orange trees of the Palace gardens, sometimes on foot but usually in a palanquin. Occassionally, when Zafar was feeling energetic, he would descend to the riverbank and go fishing, or spend the evening flying kites on the sand near Salimgarh. Sometimes he would send for Ghalib to keep him company and entertain him, though Ghalib did not much enjoy being an attentive courtier and found the whole  experience fatiguing.
(Continued..)

Also in the series:
Delhi - Those Times and Lives - 1   
Delhi - Those Times and Lives - 2
Delhi - Those Times and Lives - 3
Delhi - Those Times and Lives - 4

दवा-दारु

"दवा-दारु" का इस से बेहतर नमूना आप को शायद ही कहीं मिले! हमारे मिलेनियम सिटी गुडगाँव की जय!

Delhi - Those Times and Lives - 4

(Continued excerpts from The Last Mughal by William Dalrymple)

Mirza Ghalib

But the biggest draw of all were the poets and intellectuals, men such as Ghalib, Zauq, Sahbai and Azurda: 'By some good fortune', wrote Hali, 'there gathered at this time in the capital, Delhi, a band of men so talented that their meetings and assemblies recalled the days of Akbar and Shah Jahan.' Hali's family tracked him down eventually, but before they found him, and hauled him back tio married life in the mofussil (provinces), he was able to gain admittance in the 'very spacious and beautiful' madrasa of Husain Bakhsh and to begin his studies there" 'I saw with my own eyes this last brilliant glow of learning in Delhi,' he wrote in old age, 'the thought of which now makes my heart crack with regret'.

Chandni Chowk (By Michael Kluckner)

Meanwhile, on Chandni Chowk, although Mr. Beresford, the manager of the Delhi Bank, had been at work since 9am, it was eleven o' clock before the first shopkeepers began turning up. They opened the shutters of their booths, fed their canaries and caged parakeets, and began fending off the first of the beggars and holy mendicants who bounced coins in their bowls as they passed up the gauntlet of shops. Some of these figures were well known and even revered Delhi characters, such as the Majzub (holy madman) Din Ali Shah: 'He is so careless about the addairs of this world,' wrote Sayyid Ahmad Khan in a sketch of Delhi's most famous citizens, 'that he remains naked most of the time and when surrounded by a crowd is likely to break out in to intemperate language. But when the desirous seekers ponder over the words, they find that behind the outward senselessness there is a clear answer to their queries'. Some of the most revered mendicants were women such as Baiji, 'a woman of exceptional talent who spent all her life under a a hay thatch near the Old Idgah of Shahjahanbad. While conversing she often quoted Quranic verses...whatever she had said would take place exactly as she predicted'.
Out on the pavements, tradesmen too humble to have their own premises were now filling their appointed places: the ear cleaner with this pick and probe, the tooth cleaner with his bundles of neem twigs, the astrologer with his cards and his parrot, the quack with his lizards and bottles of murky aphrodisiac oils, the kabutarwallah with his fantails and fancy doves. Meanwhile, in their workshops off the main street frontage, away from the eyes of the passes-by, the jewellers were preparing their emeralds and moonstones, topaz and diamonds, rubies from Burma, spinels from Badakshan and lapis from the Hindu Kush. Shoemakers took their cured leather and began curling the toes of their juties on the last; the sword-makers began lighting their forges, the cloth merchants pulled out their bolts of fabric; the spice merchants smoothed into shape their orange-gold mountains of turmeric.

Chunnamal Haveli today (taken from Wikipedia)

In the largest premises of all, guarded by mace bearers, were the great Jain and Marwari moneylenders of Delhi with their family credit networks and groaning registers stuffed full of debtors' names, which included, after Mirza Jawan Bakht's wedding, Zafar himself. Down they slumped against their bolsters, dreaming of schemes for recovering the implausible sums of money they had so unwisely lent to the impecunious princes of the Red Fort - men like Lala Saligram, Bhawani Shankar and the richest of all, Lal Chunna Mal, the largest single investor in Mr. Beresford's Delhi Bank, in his massive and opulent haveli in Katra Nil.
Just as Chandni Chowk was waking up, 2 miles to the north, in the cantonment, the working day was already drawing to a close, and most of the soldierly duties were already completed. A bathe, a quick read of the papers and a game of billiards filled an hour or two, before the heat in the small brick bachelor bungalows became unbearable and all that remained to do until late afternoon was to sprawl around in "loose dishabille, reading, lounging and sleeping'. With little to occupy them most of the day, for many British soldiers boredom was the principal enemy they faced in India.
(Contd)

Also in the series:
Delhi - Those Times and Lives - 1 
Delhi - Those Times and Lives - 2 
Delhi - Those Times and Lives - 3

64th Independence Day - Hope and Despair

On the eve of 64th anniversary of Indian Independence Day, my feelings alternate between hope and despair.
I am filled with hope when I realise that I am a citizen of the great democratic republic of India, which is a political & economic superpower in the making, taking great strides towards occupying a major role in the world order sooner than later.
Ominous clouds of despair, however, surround me when I realise how hollow these achievements sound in the deafening cries of burning Kashmir, Maoist violence, corrupt political and social system, hunger, poverty...a country failed by its people - us.

While I contemplate which of these two Indias is a reality, I am sure of one thing - I am proud to be an Indian!

Here is wishing you a very Happy Indian Independence Day! 

Delhi - Those Times and Lives - 3

(Continued excerpts from The Last Mughal by William Dalrymple)

By now in the city itself, in the high-walled privacy of the courtyards of the grander houses like that of the young courtier Zahir Dehalvi in Matia Mahal, the servants were beginning to stir, throats were being cleared, and bamboo blinds were being rolled up to reveal water channels and fountains in the cloister gardens. Soon bolsters and sheets were being tidied away to leave the verandas of the courtyard free for breakfast - of mangoes or aloo puri for the Hindus, or perhaps some mutton shorba for the Muslims. Servants would draw water from wells, or head out to buy fresh melons from the Sabzi Mandi; in some of the richer houses coffee might be prepared. From the masculine side of the house came the first gurgle of the hookah. In the zenana, children were being dressed, cholis, ghagras and angiyas buttoned and laced, peshwaz and saris wrapped. In the kitchen the daily ritual of chopping onions, chillies and ginger would begin, and the chickpeas and channa dal set to soak; elswhere, the different inhabitants of the zenana would begin their day praying, sewing, embroidering, cooking or playing.

Photo source: oldindianphotos.blogspot.com

Before long, the older boys would be heading off down the lanes to arrive at the madrasas in time for the beginning of the day's study:  to work on memorising the Koran by heart, or to hear an explication of its mysteries by the maulvi; or maybe it would be a day for studying the arts of philosophy, theology and rhetoric. Far from being a tedious chore, this was for many a thrilling business: one eager pupil who came to Delhi from a small town on the Grand Trunk Road used to go to the lectures at madarsa-e-rahimiya even in the pouring monsoon rain carrying his books in a pot in order to protect them from getting wet. The elderly Zakaullah remembered running at breakneck speed through the gullies of Shahjahanabad, such was his excitement at the new learning - and especially the mathematics - he was being taught at the Delhi College. Even Colonel William Sleeman, famous for his suppression of the Thugs and a leading critic of the administration of the Indian courts, had to admit that the madrasa education given in Delhi was something quite remarkable.
'Perhaps, there are few communities in the world among whom education is more generally diffused than among Muhammadans in India', he wrote on a visit to the Mughal capital.
He who holds an office worth twenty rupees a month commonly gives his sons an education equal to that of a prime minister. They learn through the medium of Arabic and Persian languages what young men in our colleges learn through those of Greek and Latin - that is grammar, rhetoric, and logic. After his seven years of study, the young Mohammadan binds his turban upon a head almost as well filled with the things which appertain to these branches of knowledge as the young man raw from Oxford - he will talk as fluently about Socrates and Aristotle, Plato and Hippocrates, Galen and Avicenna; (alias Sokrat, Aristotalis, Aflatun, Bokrat, Jalinus and Bu Ali Sena); and, what is much to his advantage in India, the languages in which he has learnt what he knows are those which he most requires through life. 
The reputation of Delhi madrasas was certainly sufficient to inspire the young poet Altaf Husain Hali to flee his marriage in Panipat and walk fifty-three miles to Delhi alone and penniless and sleeping rough in an attempt to realise his dream of studying in the famous colleges there: 'Everyone wanted me to look for a job', he wrote later, ' but my passion for learning prevailed.' Delhi was after all a celebrated intellectual centre and in the early 1850s, it was at the peak of its cultural vitality. It had six famous madrasas and at least four smaller ones, nine newspapers in Urdu and Persian, five intellectual journals published out of the Delhi College, innumerable printing presses and publishers, and no fewer than 130 Unani doctors. Here many of the new wonders uncovered by Western science were being translated for the first time in to Arabic and Persian, and in the many colleges and madrasas the air of intellectual open mindedness and excitement was palpable.

Also in the series:
Delhi - Those Times and Lives - 1
Delhi - Those Times and Lives - 2

 

कल शाम

बारिशों के धुले धुले, खुशनुमा मौसम में अपनी एक पुरानी कविता याद आयी है, सो लगा रहा हूँ -

कल शाम
जब प्रकृति मुस्कुराई थी,
जब बादल फट पड़े थे
अपने अंतर को उड़ेलते से
और यह हवा कुछ पगलाई थी.

याद है?
उन पत्तों पर तैरती बूंदों की रुनझुन
खिड़की के शीशे पर
पानी की एक बहती लकीर,
और हवा में तैरता भीगा सा मल्हार -
जब फुहारें आँगन में बिखर आयी थीं.

बरसाती मिटटी की वह सोंधी महक
रौशनी से खेल करता, वह नाचता कूदता कोहरा
व्योम के सीने पर चमकते, कौंधते बिजली के खंडग

छातों, बरसातियों के नीचे दबी ज़िन्दगी,
सब कुछ रेंगता सा, खिसकता सा
लेकिन खुशनुमा फिर भी.

कल शाम जब...