Delhi - Those Times and Lives - 9 (Final)

(Final excerpt from The Last Mughal by William Dalrymple)

Nevertheless, in 1852, at the height of the career of Zauq and Ghalib, the biggest draw was not the courtesans but the mushairas of the poets, especially those held in the courtyard of the old Delhi College just outside Ajmeri Gate, or in the house of Mufti Sadruddin Azurda.

Photo from internet

Farhatullah Baig's Delhi ki akhri shama (The Last Musha'irah of Delhi) is a fictionalised but well-informed account of what purports to be one of the last great mushairas held in Zafar's Delhi. Around the illuminated courtyard of the haveli of Mubarak Begum, the widowed bibi of Sir David Ochterlony, sit several poet-princes of the royal house, as well as forty other Delhi poets, including Azurda, Momin, Zauq, Azad, Dagh, Sahbi, Shefta, Mir, a celebrated wrestler named Yal and Ghalib himself. There was also a last White Mughal, Alex Heatherly, 'one of the great poets of the Urdu language,' according to one critic, who was related to the Skinners and so a cousin of Elizabeth Wagentrieber.

Photo by Mukul

The courtyard has been filled so as to raise it to the level of the plinth of the house. On the wooden plans were spread cotton rugs. There was a profusion of chandeliers, candelabra, wall lamps, hanging lamps and Chinese lanterns so that house was converted into a veritable dome of light....From the centre of the roof were hung row upon row of jasmine garlands...the whole house was fragrant with musk, amber and aloes...Arranged in a row, at short intervals along the carpet, were the huqqas, burnished and brightly polished...

The seating pattern was arranged so that those assigned places on the right of the presiding poet had connections with the Lucknow court, and on the left were seated the Delhi masters and their pupils. All those who came from the fort held quails in their hand as the craze for quail and cock fighting was very strong at that time.."

The often extremely complex metre and rhyme patterns would be set well in advance; many of the participants would know each other well, and a spirit of friendly competition would be encouraged. The hookahs would be passed around, as would paan and sweets. The the president - in this case Mirza Fakhru - would say the Bismillah.

At this proclamation there would be pin-drop silence. The guests from the court put away their quails in their quail pouches and disposed of them behind the bolsters. The servants removed the water pipes and in their place put down spittoons, the khasdans with betel leaf and trays with aromatic spices in front of each guest. In the meantime the personal representative of the king arrived from the court with the king's ghazal, accompanied by several heralds...He sought permission to read the ghazal. Mirza Fakhru nodded his assent...

From this point the poets began their recitation, passing couplets backwards and forwards, half-singing, half-reciting, applauding and wah-wah-ing those they admired for their witty or subtle nuances, leaving those less accomplished to sink in leaden silence. The versifying would continue until dawn, when it would be the turn of Zauq and Ghalib to bring the night to its climax. But long before that, from the north, would come the distant sound of the morning bugle. Two miles away, in the British cantonments, a very different day was beginning.

In 1852, the British and Mughals found themselves in an uneasy equilibrium: at once opposed yet in balance, living lives in parallel...

End of the series.

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

Delhi - Those Times and Lives - 5

Delhi - Those Times and Lives - 6

Delhi - Those Times and Lives - 7

Delhi - Those Times and Lives - 8

Delhi - Those Times and Lives - 8

(Continued excerpts from William Dalrymple's The Last Mughal)

If Zafar wanted an early night - which meant one that ended around midnight - singers might be admitted to his bedchamber, where they would sing behind screens, while his masseuses worked on his head and feet, and the Abyssinian guards took their place at his door...Sometimes it is clear that such singers came out from behind the bedroom screens: one of Zafar's last marriages was to a singing girl named Man Bai, who became known as Akbar Mahal, following her wedding in 1847, when Zafar was seventy-two.

Dancing girl Piari Jan
(photo taken from the book)

On such nights, when Zafar retired relatively early, many of the princes would head out in to the town as things began to wind down in the Fort. Some might have assignations in the kothis of the Chawri Bazar, where lights and the movement of dancing could be seen behind the lattices of the upper floors, and the sounds of tabla and singing could be heard as far away as Chandni Chowk. 'The women deck themselves in finery', noted one visitor, 'and position themselves at vantage points to attract the attention of men, either directly or through pimps. An atmosphere of lust and debauchery prevails here and the people gather at night and indulge themselves.'
The beauty and coquettishness of Delhi's courtesans were famous; people still talked of the celebrated courtesan Ad Begum of a century earlier, who would famously turn up stark naked at parties, but so cleverly painted that no one would notice: 'she decorates her legs with beautiful drawings in the style of pyjamas instead of actually wearing them; in place of the cuffs she draws flowers and petals in ink exactly as is found in the finest cloth of the Rum'. Her great rival, Nur Bai, was said to be so popular that every night the elephants of the great Mughal umrah completely blocked the narrow lanes outside her house, yet even the most senior nobles had 'to send a large sum of money to have her admit them...whoever gets enamoured of her gets sucked in to the whirlpool of her demands and brings ruin in on his house...but the pleasure of her company can only be had as long as one is in possession of riches to bestow on her.'
(next: the mushairas of Delhi)

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
Delhi - Those Times and Lives - 5
Delhi - Those Times and Lives - 6
Delhi - Those Times and Lives - 7

Delhi - Those Times and Lives - 7

I resume here with my serialisation of  excerpts from a great book "The Last Mughal" by William Dalrymple. These excerpts are culled from the chapter "An Uneasy Equilibrium'', which vividly describes the daily lives of Delhiwallahs during the reign of Bahadur Shah  Zafar. I insist you read right from Part-1 and be transported to the Delhi of yore.  William Dalrymple has most graciously allowed me to use these excerpts for our reading pleasure.   

Delhiwallahs used to like to surprise visitors from outside by taking them to eat there without telling them of 'the pot of hot chillis" with which Jani would marinate his kebabs. Maulvi Muhammad Baqar's son, the young poet Azad, told of one stranger to Delhi who 'hadn't eaten for a whole day. He stretched his jaws wide and fell on it [the kebab]. And instantly it was as if his brains had been blown out of his mouth by gunpowder. He leapt back with a howl. [But the Delhiwallah who brought him replied:] "we live here only for this sharp taste".
Zafar was also fond of a little chilli in his dinner, which he began to eat no earlier than 10:30pm, a time when most of the Brisits were already well tucked up in their beds. Quail stew, venison, lamb kidneys on sweet nan called shir mal, yakhni, fish kebabs, and meat stewed with oranges were Zafar's favourite dishes, though on festive occassions the Red Fort kitchens were capable of producing astonishingly varied and prodigious quantities of Mughlai cuisine: the Bazm-i-Akhir describes a feast consisting of twenty-five varieties of bread, twenty-five different kinds of pilaos and biryanis, thirty-five different sorts of spiced stews and curries, and fifty different puddings, as well as remarkable varieties of relishes and pickles, all eaten to the sound of singers performing ghazals, while the fragrance of musk, saffron, sandalwood and rosewater filled the air.
Whatever the dish, Zafar was known to like his food heavily spiced - and he was most upset when his friend, prime minister and personal physician, Hakim Ahsanullah Khan, banned him from eating 'cayene pepper' in August 1852, following a series of digestive disorders. Another of Zafar's great pleasures, mango jam, was also forbidden by the hakim, who said that Zafar's excessive indulgence in it gave him diarrhoea...

Ghalib
Image from the internet

For Ghalib, the late evening was also the time for indulging in mango-related pleasures, especially the exquisitely small, sweet chausa mango, a taste he shared with many other discerning Delhiwallahs, past and present. At one gathering, a group of Delhi intellectuals were discussing what qualities a good mango should have: 'In my view', said Ghalib, 'there are only two essential points about mangoes - they should be sweet and they should be plentiful'. In his old age he became worried about his declining appetite for his favourite fruit and wrote to a friend to express his anxieties. He never ate an evening meal, he told his correspondent; instead, on hot summer nights he would 'sit down to eat the mangoes when my food was fully digested, and I tell you bluntly, I would eat them until my belly was bloated and I could hardly breathe. Even now I eat them at the same time of day, but not more than ten or twelve, or if they are of the large kind, only six or seven'.
There was one another great pleasure that Ghalib reserved for the cover of darkness. 'There are seventeen bottles of good wine in the pantry, 'he wrote to one friend, describing his idea of perfection. 'So I read all day and drink all night'.

Himmat Khan, the famous blind sitar player
photo from The Last Mughal

As Ghalib was finishing his mangoes and looking forward to his bottle of wine, as the exhausted labourers were heading home to their villages before the muhalla gates were locked for the night, and as Saligram and the money lenders began finally shutting up their shops in Chandni Chowk, so in the Fort dinner was drawing to a close. This was the signal for Zafar's hookah to be brought and the evening's entertainment to begin. This could take a number of forms: ghazals from Tanras Khan; the instrumental playing of a group of sarangi players, or the court storytellers and troupes of the Fort's dancing girls. Most celebrated of all was Himmat Khan, Zafar's famous blind sitar player: 'Nobody came close to him in Dhrupad,' thought Sir Sayyid Ahmed Khan...

Moonlight from Red Fort

On other occassions, when Zafar felt the need for some peace, one of his greatest pleasures was to play chess while waiting for the new moon to come up. At other times, he is described as simply sitting after dinner and 'enjoying the moonlight'.

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
Delhi - Those Times and Lives - 5
Delhi - Those Times and Lives - 6