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

Delhi - Those Times and Lives - 6

The posting of this series has been somewhat irregular, mea culpa. But I hope you are enjoying reading it as much as I did. Here is the next part: 

(Continued excerpts from The Last Mughal by William Dalrymple)

As the sun set, the churches, mosques and temples filled again: the ringing of the bells of the evening arti, the final call to prayer from the minarets, and the basso profoundo of the organ chords concluding Padre Jennings' evensong in St James's, all fusing together with rumble of British carriages heading out towards the Civil Lines through the bottleneck of Kashmiri Gate - where the bricking up of the second of the two arches was a cause of frequent complaints in the Delhi Gazette.

Delhi-RamageBradford-1870

As then gloaming thickened, the lights were lit in the Red Fort by a procession of torchbearers accompanied by tabors, trumpets and pipes, while out in the city the streets were filling with the Delhi College students and the madrasa boys returning in the half-light, exhausted from a day's hard study and memorising. The two streams would rarely mingle, however.
For the English, sunset was the beginning of the end of the day. They had another vast meal to look forward to - ......... but there was little to look forward to thereafter. The French traveller Victor Jacquemont was particularly unimpressed by the after-dinner entertainments offered by the British society of Delhi: 'I have not seen the slightest exhibition of pleasure among the idlers at [Delhi] parties', he wrote. 'None of the conditions which make a ball a pleasurable thing in Paris exist in the European community in Delhi'.
It was certainly true that the British community in Delhi were an eccentric lot, even by the standards of Victorian expats.
Certainly, the British in Delhi were always to some extent looking over their shoulder to the more Anglicised station of Meerut, which with its huge cantonment and large English community was famous for its theatre and its lavish regimental balls. But Delhi could boast almost none of that: 'There is little society here, complained one junior Residency official, adding that after he had finished his court work, he had little option but to take refuge in the company of his classical library.'
For the people of Delhi, however, the best part of the day lay ahead. Chandni Chowk really came alive only after sunset, as the pavements swelled with wide-eyed boys from the mufussil or Jat farmers and Gujar herdsmen in from their villages in Haryana, ogling the gamblers locked in the stocks outside the lotwal or heading off to ask for blessings and good fortune  at the city's matrix of bustling Sufi shrines. Elsewhere could be seen gentlemen visiting from Lucknow in their distinctive cut of wide-bottomed pyjamas or tall, bearded Pathan horse traders fresh in from Peshawar and Ambala, spilling out of the sarais and in to Ghantawallahs, the famous sweet shop, whose laddus were supposed to be the best in Hindustan. The coffee houses - the qahwa khanas - were filling up now too, with poets reciting their verses at some tables, scholars locked in debate at others.

Photo courtesy: http://oldindianphotos.blogspot.com/

On the steps of Jama Maszid, the story tellers would be beginning their recitations, which could go on for seven or eight hours with only a short break. The most popular of all the tales was the Dastan-i-Amir Hamza, a chivalrous epic romance....) In its fullest form, the tale grew to contain a massive twenty thousand  separate stories, and would take several weeks of all-night story telling to complete, the printed version filled forty-six volumes. As listeners gathered around the Dastango (the story teller), at the other side of the steps, Jani the celebrated kebab man would now be fanning his charcoal. Delhiwallahs used to like 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.
(Contd..)

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 - 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

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

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

 

Delhi - Those Times and Lives - 2

(Continued excerpts from The Last Mughal by William Dalrymple)

(Picture Courtesy: i.dailymail.co.uk)

As the cantonment memsahibs awaited the return of their menfolk from the parade ground, inside the city walls Padre Jennings would be conducting the early morning service in the hush of St. James Church. Soon the courts to one side of the graveyard would come to life too: the two chief magistrates, John Ross Hutchinson and Charles Le Bas, would already be in their offices, as would their assiduous assistant, Arthur Galloway, and the Sadr Amin Mufti Sadruddin, often known by his pen-name Azurda. At the same time, riding in through Kashmere Gate, Theo Metcalfe, the other joint magistrate, would be
heading late towards his day's work, regretting that he had not prepared his briefs as thoroughly as he might have, and that he had not been up as early as his father, who had already conducted half his day's business, besides taking a swim, organising the household and reading the papers. George Wagentrieber would be up too. Having kissed his wife Elizabeth goodbye, he would now, like Theo, be heading down from the Civil Lines to the Kashmiri Gate offices of the Delhi Gazette, to begin his day of writing and proofreading the latest issue.

Painting by Canadian artist and writer Michael Kluckner (michaelkluckner.com) 

Among the people of Delhi, the poor woke long before the rich. As the sun rose, and as the British were returning from their morning rides and preparing for breakfast, up near the shrine of Qadam Sharif, the first bird catchers were laying their nets and baiting them with millet, to catch the early birds out for their morning feed. Past them on the dusty road came the sellers of fruit and vegetables, some on bullock carts, most trudging on foot, streaming in from the villages of the Doab down the Alipore road, bringing their goods to the new suburb of Sabzi Mandi just outside the Kabul Gate, to the north-west of the city.

"Puja" painting by English artist Jon Duplock, 2009 (jonduplock.com/) 

At the Raj Ghat, the earlier-rising Hindu faithful - at this time of day women in their cotton saris far outnumbering the men - were streaming out to perform their pujas and have their morning bathe in the waters of the holy Yamuna before the crowds gathered and the dhobis appeared. Only the pandits kept them company this early in the morning: in small shrines lining the banks of the river up to Nigambodh Ghat, where according to Delhi legend the Vedas emerged from the waters, the bells were ringing now for the morning Brahm Yagya, celebrating the creating and re-creating of the world over and over again, morning after morning. As the differently pitched bells sounded against the Sanskrit chants, so in the dark of the inner sanctum the camphor lamps circled the images of Vishnu and the marigold-strewn black stone Shiva lingams.
From deep inside the city - from the Maszid Kashmiri Katra in the south to Fatehpuri Maszid in the west, to the great Jama Maszid itself and on through to the elegant riverside minarets of the Zinat-ul-Masajid - the last cries of the dawn Azan could now be heard, each call slightly out of time with the one before it, so that the successive cries of spiritual longing and assertion came to the listener on the riverbank in a series of rolling waves. In the silence that followed the end of the call to prayer, the songs of the first Delhi birds could suddenly be heard: the argumentative chuckle of the babblers, the sharp clatter of the mynahs, the alternating clucking and squealing of the rosy parakeets, the angry exclamation of the brain fever bird, and from deep inside the canopy of the fruit trees in Zafar's gardens at Raushanara Bagh and Tis Hazari, the woody hot-weather echo of the koel.
(To be continued..)

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

About the sketches and paintings
The paintings I have used in this post are by two artists - Michael Kluckner and Jon Duplock. 
Michael is a Canadian artist and writer while Jon is an English artist. Both of them have painted / sketched India in their different styles. Both have gracefully allowed me to use these images. 
For more details, you could visit their websites mentioned below their works.

Delhi - Those Times and Lives - 1

In my post The Last Mughal, I had promised that I would serialize the portions of this book by William Dalrymple, depicting the daily lives of the Dilliwalas of those times - Indians and English.
This is the first in the series - Enjoy!

(Painting - Delhi Gate; taken from the Wikipedia)

During the early 1850s, it sometimes seemed as if the British and the Mughals lived not only in different mental worlds, but almost in different time zones.
The British were the first up: in the cantonments to the north of the Delhi civil lines, the bugle sounded at 3.30 a.m., a time when the poetic mushairas of the Mughals were still in full flow in the Red Fort, and while in the kothis of the courtesans in Chauri Bazar the dancing and ghazal singing were drawing to a close, and the girls were progressing to the more intimate stage of their duties. As the Mughal poets and courtesans raised their different tempos, sleepy, yawning Englishmen like Captain Robert Tytler, a fifty year old veteran of the 38th Native Infantry, or Lieutenant Harry Gambier, an eighteen-year-old Etonian newly arrived in India, would be sitting up in bed as their servants attempted to shave them and pull on their master's stockings. A long session of drill in the cantonment parade ground lay ahead.
Two hours later, by the time the sun was beginning to rise over the Yamuna, and the poets, the courtesans and their patrons were all heading back to bed to sleep off their long nights, not only the soldiers but also the British civilians would be up and about and taking their exercise. A woman like Harriet Tytler, the brisk and no-nonsense wife of Robert, or the English community's great beauty, the lovely young Annie Forrest, to whom Harry Gambier was already writing politely admiring letter, would have been back from their morning rides round the cantonment: in order to protect a lady's complexion, it was considered advisable to ride much after sunrise.
By six, Harriet would be busy supervising her large staff of servants in her screen-darkened bungalow. The first task was preparing for the enormous breakfast without which no English-man in Victorian India would consider starting his day: at the very least a selection of 'crumbled chops, brain cutlets, beef rissoles, devilled kidneys, whole spatchcocks, duck stews, Irish stews, mutton hashes, brawn of sheep's heads and trotters, not to mention an assortment of Indian dishes such as jhal-frazie, prawn do-piaza, chicken malai and beef Hussainee. Added to the list were a number of Anglo-Indian concoctions such as kidney toast Madras style, Madras fritters, and leftover meat minced and refried with ginger and chillies. Then of course there was the ultimate Anglo-Indian breakfast dish of kedgeree, a perennial favourite, even though in Delhi it was considered most inadvisable to eat fish in high summer*.
(*From the footnote: Overeating remained a leitmotif of British life in India right up to 1947. As late as 1926 Aldous Huxley was astonished by the sheer amount of food the imperial British were capable of consuming: 'Five meals a day - two breakfasts, luncheon, afternoon tea and dinner - are standard throughout India. A sixth is often added in the big towns where there are theatres and dances to justify late supper. The Indian who eats at most two meals a day, sometimes only one - too often none - is compelled to acknowledge his inferiority...The Indians are impressed by our gastronomic prowess. Our prestige is bound up with overeating. For the sake of empire the truly patriotic will sacrifice his liver and his colon, will pave the way for future apoplexies and cancers of the intestine...)

To be continued

The Last Mughal

After the White Mughals and City of Djinns, the third book by William Dalrymple, which I have just finished reading, is The Last Mughal. And yet again, I have been rewarded with a thoroughly satiating, enjoyable & of course, hugely informative, read. It is painstakingly researched history served akin to an interesting story – complete with a thrilling plot, fleshed out characters, detailed atmosphere and background, and an end full of pathos.  

The Last Mughal is a heart-rending account of the historical events in Delhi during 1857, when emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar of the once mighty Mughal emperor made one last attempt to reclaim its fast fading glory from the British, by riding on the crest of Uprising of the Indian sepoys employed with the East India Company.

In absence of a strong leadership and a cohesive and sustained attack, however, the initiative of the rebels was soon lost, leading to the British company giving a final death blow to the Mughal empire. Bahadur Shah Zafar was deported with his family like an ordinary criminal to another British colony Rangoon, where he died unknown some years later. It was after this that the British became the undisputed masters of the whole of India for the next century or so. Interestingly, let me also put, it seems the idea of India actually took a shape after this.  

The Last Mughal is as much a story of the city of Delhi as it is of Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal emperor.  The renowned author Khushwant Singh is right when he says in his appreciation of the book that it would “bring tears to the eyes of every true Dilliwallah”.

William Dalrymple has this rare ability (for a historian, that is) of bringing empathy to not only the human characters but also to the city, as an organic being, a living pulsating whole of people. With  insightful interpretations of volumnious notes, and riding on a beautiful language, he has created the Delhi of yore as also the detailed sequence of events beautifully. 

There are two Delhis, in fact. One is the Mughal Delhi of Lal Qila, Ballimaran, Paharganj et al, engrossed in its mushairas, mehfils, kabootarbaazi, bazaars and the like. The other is English Delhi, a sort of a little English town the Company were trying to recreate in and around the Metcalfe House, Ludlow Castle, Civil Lines, Flagstaff Tower etc, with their chhota haaziri and Sunday Mass and breakfasts. And both of them, although living side-by-side, are miles apart in their living styles. (Chapter 3 "An Uneasy Equilibrium" consists such a beautiful juxtaposition of their daily lives, which I would like to serialise for your reading pleasure sometime soon).  

Along with all this empathy, Dalrymple succeeds in maintaining a complete objectivity as a historian towards all the principal casts of characters, which puts lots of things in perspective.

While strongly recommending this book, I would go so far as to say that it is time the "dry-as-dust" history books in our educational curriculum were replaced with such elegant narrative history, so that an entire generation could understand its historical coordinates more meaningfully.

White Mughals & Hyderabad

It was in May that I was reading White Mughals by Willian Dalrymple, when a lovely coincidence resulted in my visit to Hyderabad during that time.

White Mughals, though technically classified as a history book, is essentially a true & moving love story between an English resident James William Kirkpatrick and a Hyderabadi noble woman Kahirunnissa, set in Hyderabad of 18^th century. Kirkpatrick took to Islam to marry this woman.

Keeping this love story in the foreground, Dalrymple has explored and evidenced the inter-cultural and inter-racial mingling of an improbably large number of British people with the Indians at that time.

Having considered the English as mostly colonial masters and India-haters, I was really surprised to learn that there were actually a large number of Englishmen who not only did not hate India, but loved this country so much that they embraced the Indian culture in totality– dress, cuisine, lifestyles – everything. The rare photos reproduced of the Englishmen including the protagonist show them all decked up in Indian finery, complete with hookahs et al. A large number of them had Indian wives. Many of them spoke fluent Persian and Hindustani, got their palms hennaed and even nursed the ubiquitous Indian symbol - moustache.

For a historian, Dalrymple has an excellent narrative style. Considering that he does not have the luxury of a fictional plot, the story he has pieced together from the available sources including private letters is truly a compelling one, and I could feel the passion of the main characters.

Another surprise protagonist which emerges from the story is the city of Hyderabad. Dalrymple has been able to create a lively approximation of Hyderabad of yore. The painstaking research, though digressive sometimes, sparkles through each and every page.

(Image Courtesy: FlytoHyderabad.com)

When I first visited Hyderabad around 7 years back, I was pleasantly surprised to find a clean, energetic city with wide roads (it was during the reign of Chandrababu Naidu) in place of a stinking city which some people had warned it to be. There is however a more important thing about the city which I felt - it seems to present a delightful confluence of North and South Indian cultures, as symbolised by the language (ready understanding and acceptability of Hindi in this southern state) and food (delicious cuisine which is able to satiate even a North Indian palate).

This time, however, I long to see beyond the present, and explore the forgotten monuments like the British Residency, Begum's Garden, Raymond's Tomb etc, and visualise the past in places like Banjara Hills. But whenever I do this, I am sure I will be armed with this gem of a tome.