Maarfat Dilli (Excerpt)

God knows who that fortunate, clever creature was – monarch, sultan, king, emperor, prince, maharajah, saint, ascetic, sufi, mendicant, or some ancestor of the Kauravas and Pandavas – who first set foot on this soil at the edge of the Jamuna river, looked around in four directions and at some auspicious moment, quietly made up their minds that no matter what, this vital, attractive piece of earth was where they’d build a city. A city whose green, lamplit heart would remain aflutter for centuries, alive and inhabited forever. A city to whose north and south and east and west new settlements would keep springing up and slowly blossoming, with the splendour and gaiety of one Delhi laying the foundation of the next…

Ladies and gentlemen, history is witness that Delhi has never been short of either flesh-and-blood excitements or decrepit ruins. Battling and defeating enemy upon enemy in the by-lanes of history, winning and losing, Delhi gradually grew so grand that even soldiers here settled down as citizens. The city itself acquired the magnificent persona of some warrior chieftain.

On the vast channel that is India, Delhi is like the Mahabharat on television: a series running successfully for centuries. And the city is powerful enough to have added to the narrative, episode upon episode. Intrepid fighters from all manner of places have helped build up the capital’s historical capital. Every city built upon this site has made sacrifices and earned its laurels: settling neighbourhoods as it saw fit and embracing the seasons here for centuries. One might say that Delhi knows full well the value of its ruins – as if every ancient stone had been engraved in layers of gold that came shining out of this very earth.

When the British decided to make Calcutta the capital of India, a poet from Shahjahanabad – the Delhi of the day – got miffed and composed the following lines:

The very identity
Of this city
Has been erased by the foreigners!

Witnessing their city being unfavourably compared with Calcutta, the residents of Delhi would have roundly abused the firangis.

Dilliwallas have always been known for the sharpness of their gazes, for their conversational marksmanship – because that’s what they have been obsessed with.

Look upon Delhi’s pleasures
with longing in your glance;
It’s a garden of culture
by the Yamuna’s banks

Another time, watching the weakening winds of rulership that flowed from the Red Fort, one Delhi denizen delivered the following taunt:

Now Shah Alam
From Delhi to Palam^[1]

The gentleman in question didn’t just rhyme Alam with Palam; he apparently had the gift of seeing into the future, to know somehow that of the 310 villages that would be incorporated into Delhi in the next century, it was Palam that would become the site – and name – of the city’s international airport.

But this is talk of old times. Now that distance from the world is no longer really distance, nor proximity real closeness, caravan upon caravan travels towards Delhi – but Delhi is still far away.

Is Delhi really far away?

It is.

From where, though?

From Kabul, Kandahar, Baghdad, Tashkent, Samarkand, Ghazni, Jamrud, Peshawar and Lahore, how far is Delhi really?

If you fly, it’s right next door! It was far away in the days when armies invaded on horseback, when revenue collectors and soldiers alike crossed rivers and mountain passes on foot.

This ancient city of dreams, which countless people have counted as their final destination, is hardly going to let itself be enclosed in a single fist, just for protection. Ladies and gentlemen, Delhi has laid herself out as a challenge – can anyone dare digest her? Even rulers hesitate: who knows how many Delhis are buried in her own soil! So learned that only she can write missives to herself! She growls loud enough to scare anyone off. She’s never been coy about lies, and never smiled at the truth. In this business of centuries, she has managed to extract something or other. Truthfully, Delhi demands the loan of your soul and doesn’t pause for breath until she’s scrubbed it clean. Her love runs along a path all her own. The weight of time here breaks many things down; it creates new eras. To be honest, Delhi herself is history and she herself is geography.

Once upon a time, it was said that Delhi lay along the Jamuna river. Now, sahib, it’s the reverse. It’s the Jamuna that lies tied to Delhi’s banks. Dry in parts and wet in others, with dams in some places and fields in others. Of course, most fields have been absorbed into the buildings of Delhi. Those lands are now the floors under our feet. Our breath mingles with Delhi’s scorching winds and cool breezes. Our past and our future both lie in the city’s grip.

So that Delhi I was talking about before, it’s not really far away. Night and day, it is the city we see constantly. In newspapers, on Doordarshan, it’s always Delhi. And why not, after all, it’s the capital of a country as big as India. It’s the seat of power, the darul khalafah.

It’s worth remembering one thing: Delhi’s water doesn’t flow around anyone. It’s heavy water. If you’re too much of a lightweight, you’re done for. That’s why people who arrive from other places have to do all sorts of things to embellish their image. The first condition of living here is to make it seem like you’re a big deal, right from the start. Do you get it? Every step you take needs to suggest the extent of property you might own. Let there be such extravagance in your gait that it feels like you’re just back from buying the Red Fort. No no, I’m not joking, you have the right, sahib! If you’ve fallen in love with it and decided you absolutely must shoot and act in a film there, who can stop you?

But who’s going to write to the commanding officer of the Red Fort? (God only knows when you’d get permission anyway, if you did.) A far better bet: just get the paperwork done and become the owner, Delhi-style – benami, with the help of a broker or two. If the needle of suspicion ever comes around to you, just say you’re nobody, that no authority vests in you, and that permission came from the very top.

There’s an oft-told tale among Dilliwalas: if the Honourable Emperor (May He Stay Safe) wants an egg, Delhi’s populace will take that as an excuse to digest all the city’s roosters and all the city’s hens. Then, via the city’s police commissioner, a single egg will be presented to His Majesty on a tray of gold, saying: “This, huzoor, is an egg laid by the finest hen in all of Delhi, do taste it.”

So Lala, worry not – you can just show up at Raj Ghat in leisurely fashion. It’s not like you’ll have any big fat worries left anyway. You just lay yourself out there, in that line of national leaders. The government will keep raising you higher; the public will keep singing the Ramdhun. By then you’ll have ascended to the realm of Allah. There’ll be reason.

Here in Delhi, though, you’ll stick around as a relic. For at least a year or two, you’ll even be remembered. And why not? After all, you worked hard – earned a pile, made a name, did your family proud. You weren’t one of us penniless types, who just sit around eating what we can get off a government ration card. To do what you’ll have done took courage, sahib. In fact, it took planning, organisation, and luck – tarkeeb, tarteeb and takdeer – and those three can come together only in Delhi.

If that weren’t the case, people from all corners of the country wouldn’t be making their way here, establishing one royal canopy after another. Dear God, all those rich princelings, political movers and shakers from all the state capitals: Delhi’s practically inundated with them. How can she absorb this flood?

Crowds of nobodies come to Delhi from every direction and they work very hard to become shiny somebodies. But as a wit once said, it takes only a tiny scratch for the whole plating to come off, and for people to explode into laughter. In such matters, Delhi can be quite heartless. Sometimes it’s one person being cut down, sometimes another. It might involve taking a side swipe at someone extra straight, or a horizontal swipe against the crooked. Both think they’re the cat’s whiskers. In truth, though, the only special people in Delhi are bureaucrats – every other category of the populace sprouts like weeds, numbering in lakhs. It was to help these lakhs of Delhi’s denizens to enter and exit freely that the city wall was torn down, and divided into several parts.

How can I even begin to tell you the state of my heart when I saw the stretch from Turkman Gate to Dilli Darwaza demolished? In those days, we lived on that very Circular Road, where now the Zakir Husain College building is coming up. There were rumours aplenty that many had laid hands on treasure. Our cook Peter Kundanlal did indeed once show up with a coin minted in the reign of the empress Victoria; he said he’d found it in a mound of earth. Well, he was known for his sleight of hand. And yet, this is Delhi: in these ruins, one can grab or grow anything.

Earlier, Delhi’s prison didn’t used to be in Tihar; it was located where the Maulana Azad Medical College now is. The hostel rooms stand on that particular spot [where the prison once stood]. In the days when the old jail building was being broken down, we lived on Mir Dard Road. Mir Dard was a famous Sufi pir from Delhi. The Irwin Hospital road then ran peacefully past the Dilli Darwaza and crossed into Daryaganj. There were just a few cars, the rest were tangas.

Look at that six-point intersection now. Left, right, back or front, tarmac roads leap out at you. One must compliment Delhi’s horticulture department for having adorned the capital of Hindustan with such gorgeously verdant trees. I take great pride in my city’s greenery, friends. In comparison, even the real gems inlaid in the marble of the Diwan-e-Khas and Diwan-e-Aam lack a certain lustre. Laburnum, neem, gulmohar, jamun, tamarind, keekar, kaner and who knows what else – with branches trimmed just so, flourishing leaves, a thicket of trees and atop their canopies, the din of birds. One layer of sound is thin and high, the second loud and slow. It is as if each tree had brought the most talkative voters out of their respective circles and set them up in their nests, one on each branch. And why shouldn’t they? It’s got to be done. How else will elections be won? Here’s what I know – if the trees were to register their voters and those night shelter nests of theirs, then despite the popularity of that family planning slogan, ‘Ek ke baad do, aur do ke baad kabhi nahi’ [‘One, then two, and then never again’], the graph of Delhi’s population will certainly rise in the census. Think of it, once upon a time, Delhi’s inhabitants numbered three lakhs.

So, yes. If the jamun trees decide to befriend the tamarind trees, a new minority will spring up on the map of Delhi. And what will happen in such a circumstance? Will the DDA, unsettled by their noise and demands, arrange to create yet another resettlement colony, or settle them in Bharatpur? Who knows, the birds of Delhi’s trees might get so intimate with their Siberian guests that their strength doubles… Birds can love, too, can’t they? So what if they’re winged creatures. They’re no less than anyone else in romance or independence – even if unlikely to be borrowing legs from us humans anytime soon, or getting their feathers plucked out…

No really, if these Dilliwala connoisseurs ever grow intent on revolt, what are any of us going to do? Lop off the branches of their trees, or force them to pick out pearls in Dariba?

No, sahib, what’s more likely is that thousands and thousands of Old Delhi pigeons will die fighting for their urban identity, beak to beak. They’re a stubborn race. If no solution is found to save them, things will get ugly. The luxury-loving nouveau riche of Delhi will certainly suffer injuries at their hands – I mean, beaks.

The newly arrived might not even survive the old-fashioned pandemonium. Chu-chu-chu-khukhu-khoont-khoont… Takh-takh, ooo-ooo, choo-cha, kat-kat, chee-chee… how is all this going to make sense to ears that have gotten used to Western music, or our high classical music?

Abutting the Theatre Communication building, there used to be two tall, happy, large-leafed trees that could challenge the Regal building in height and size. Who knows how they fell victim to the harshness of the Delhi police. Caused a public riot in Connaught Place. Quite a bit of drama. Flock upon flock of parrots and their colourful cousins gathered. I don’t know who got hit, but the rioters got spread out.

Straight ahead of the Gol Dakkhana, the setting sun preened in a deep blue sky, a bowl of scarlet light. Looking at it, for a little while, the world disappeared from in front of my eyes. There were trees, there were birds. Sky, sun. Then a shock. Not since that moment have I ever heard the din of so many wings aflutter. It made the police band playing in Connaught Place’s central park sound like a budgerigar in a drum-chamber.

I made a great effort to understand exactly what tournament was in progress… Was there a competition to switch political camps here, too? Suddenly a deep, aching call shook me to my soul. An African bird! No, what bird was it? Not the one that says ‘dukh dukh’ in the afternoons… This was a black British sparrow, male. I have a picture. Remember Mr. Samuel, the Shimla one? A big picture of a male sparrow used to hang in his shop. It even wore a pair of spectacles. With a white frame. I once asked my uncle: a bird wearing spectacles, what was that about?

My Maamu laughed and said, seems like Mr. Sparrow’s been working in the secretariat; sat with his files for a long while, his eyesight’s weakening.

That day, that became the topic at the dinner table.

At the Bholi Bhatiyarin picnic, I’d seen a Neelkanth, an Indian roller. Over the lake were flocks and flocks of Eurasian teals. If you were to fire a pellet gun, they’d flap and fall down just from the noise. Those fly across from Alwar. Meanwhile, on the Ajitgarh mound there were peacocks and peahens, dancing away.

I took yet another leap. I always did want to be the one who spoke best! So there was a contest to climb the steps of Jantar Mantar. I knew coming down, I’d be looking at my feet, not the stairs… otherwise I’d tumble right down from that height. Anyway, I still had five or seven steps to climb when I caught sight of a cheel^[2] perched on the top step.

My audience grew suspicious. ‘Did you just look at it from far away, or did you manage to go speak to it?’

 I dug my heels in. The cheel had been ready to take off… I was certain it was going to make the flight to Greece. Yes of course, Greece: country of my origins, the place from which my ancestors came to Hindustan. I salaamed twice – once to the kite, and the second time for Greece.

‘You must have wished it farewell. Did you?’

As I apologised for leaving the table, I said with all the attitude I could muster, ‘I’m not such a great idiot as you seem to think.’

The next day I was rewarded with books about Alexander and Garibaldi. I had a regular ritual – two or three times a week, I’d spend an hour or so at Bhavnani’s bookshop in Connaught Place. The books I actually bought were few and far between. But if anything struck my fancy as I browsed, I’d start reading it then and there. I’d remember the page at which I stopped reading, and return to it on my next visit. It was an exceedingly snooty, pretentious Connaught Place bookshop, but no one there ever looked at me in a way that would make me hesitate to return. That miracle was the doing of Bhavnani sahib senior. Both his appearance and attire marked Bhavnani sahib out as a distinguished man. Elegant, you’d say in English. Ambassadorial looking, tall, fair-skinned, with beautifully sculpted features. He wore the best-tailored suits in the whole of Connaught Place. I can still remember some of his ties, and his shirt cuffs and collars: so perfectly starched!

One never got a chance to buy many books. A portfolio of Kanu Desai’s paintings – Shree Lekha, Rup Rekha or Mirabai, priced at a mere Rs. 5 – this was my standard gift for a friend’s birthday. Chughtai’s paintings, in hard cover, priced at Rs. 45 – even for a wedding, that book was what we presented, not money or clothes. Bhavnani’s had a whole array of colourful ribbons. When it came to gift-wrapping the book, I’d fuss an awful lot – but I was always reassured.

Once in a while, when I had a bit of money in my pocket, I’d pick out novels. All This and Heaven, Too, Rebecca, Hungry Hill, Strait is the Gate, Jean Christophe: Bhavnani Senior always looked at my selection and gave his silent consent.

Years later, when Bhavnani’s downed its shutters and ‘The Host’ restaurant came up in its place, I felt terrible. Then I consoled myself with the thought that Bhavnani Senior was – from any angle – the sort of personality after whom families fall into decline. If I had ever had the opportunity to meet him, he would have been amazed that a customer of his wrote books in Hindi. I never saw a single Hindi book at Bhavnani’s. Today’s state of things is much the same as those days. For a very brief while, I saw Zindaginama displayed at Galgotia’s^[3]. That’s many years ago now. In those days Dharamdas Dhoomimal was our stationery shop. Paper, ink, all manner of colourful sheets, paperweights, pins, clips, tags and file covers – these would incite a desire for proximity. Fountain pens with many-hued feathers had a place in my heart for months. I must have bought dozens of them. They were priced at just a rupee each. Dharamdas Dhoomimal’s was where I first saw the Ajanta Paintings folio brought out for the Publications Division by the Saraswati Press, Calcutta. Price: Rs. 10. Once in a while a Hindi journal or magazine might make an appearance at the Amrit Book Depot, below Central Court. (We got magazines like Vishal Bharat, Sudha, Madhuri, Maya and the Modern Review from the circulating library at the Secretariat, and I’d wait eagerly for them.) It was probably there, one evening, that I bought a copy of Prateek. It was in the same period that I wrote ‘Sikka Badal Gaya’ and mailed it off to “The Editor, Prateek”. The editor of Prateek was Sachchidanand Hiranand Vatsyayan.^[4]

Rajkamal used to be in the same block as the old Hindustan Times building. It was the only shop for Hindi books in the whole of New Delhi; if one was passing by, one would always look in. It was here that I had the good fortune of glimpsing some of the faces associated with the books I was then reading. Some works were to my taste and some not, but that didn’t lessen my interest in the writers.

Ladies and gentlemen, little did I know then that these very faces would, for an era to come, become like family to me; part of my personal literary landscape, a community proper.

Jainendra, Agyeya, Sumitrananandan Pant, Balkrishna Sharma Naveen, Upendranath Ashk, Udayshankar Bhatt, Gopal Prasad Vyas, Vishnu Prabhakar, Satyavati Malik, Bhagwati Charan Varma, Narendra Sharma, Vachaspati Pathak, Yash Pal Jain, Dr. Motichand, Devendra Satyarthi – all these were people I saw on different evenings at Rajkamal in Connaught Place.

My friends, please don’t be shocked if I tell you that meeting Agyeya at home one evening was what made my mind up: I’d make sure I became a writer! I wouldn’t have minded even if Agyeya had treated me like a newbie. But he spoke to me as an equal! He asked seriously, how many stories have you written thus far? I didn’t find it odd, or hesitate. Just one, I replied, ‘Sikka Badal Gaya’, and I’ve sent it to Prateek. Agyeya smiled, a little.

In the days of Pragati Prakashan, I was turning into the road where Purushottam Das Tandon^[5] lived when I ran into Vatsyayan and Pran Nagpal^[6]. Pran sahib enthusiastically invited me over for tea the following evening.

Ladies and gentlemen, that was a memorable evening. We chatted for a while. We had tea. After an hour or so, I got up to leave. Vatsyayan ji handed me a copy of the latest issue of Prateek. All he said was, “Do take a look.”

Pran Nagpal was observing my manner with a mix of humour and mischievousness. When we emerged into the verandah, he said, “Your story is good.” I thanked him and said in a stern voice, “I am thankful that you did not attach a ‘very’ to that good.” I had the feeling that he was making fun of me a little bit. I got home. It was only five minutes away. The houses on Ferozeshah Road as well as those on Telegraph Lane used to open onto Electric Lane. Without opening or looking at the magazine, I placed it on my desk and went off to dinner.

Before sleeping, in leisurely fashion, I opened the Prateek. I started from the first page. When I got to ‘Sikka Badal Gaya’, I identified my name. I read my own name to myself several times – how old-fashioned, how conservative it was! Only a smidgeon of freshness in the ‘Sobti’. Ladies and gentlemen, I suppose I did make some use of the things I thought about that night. The matter of my name was one I kept aside. And when it came to the matter of my ill-fated face, I said to myself – when the responsibility for the making of something lies not with you, but with your parents, even if you want to change it, it’s not like you can borrow another one for a few hours! Even Delhi’s renowned shamiyana-wallas don’t keep a supply of those! Stop worrying about that, read the story. Then I looked at my name again, and felt new waves wash over me… It wasn’t such a bad name, I thought. Anyway, it was what it was. And yes, the title of the story had come out well.

It would be wrong to keep a secret from all of you. I kept the Prateek issue back on my desk and lay there for a long time, leaning back against my pillows. In the glow of my table lamp, I kept looking up at the ceiling. Never in my life would I be a greater writer than I was that night. And nor would I ever strike such an artistic pose again to lie back in! The following evening, I felt a great fondness for my published story. I set off for Wenger’s. On the twilit evening, the green island at the Windsor Place roundabout felt a little like a dream. Naveen ji’s house was in front of me. I paused for a moment – should I go meet him? Then before I made myself say anything else, I headed off in the direction of Queensway.

Next to the Imperial Hotel, in front of the Masonic Lodge, there was a crowd of refugees. I looked away, and walked quickly towards the block that contained Hamilton House. In the big hall at Wenger’s, I got my favourite table. At the piano was Mr. Sebastian. He saw me and recognised me. I wrote my request on a chit and had it sent across to him. The tune played and the hall filled with claps, I was thrilled. Mr. Sebastian used to walk with a limp. If he walked past you in the middle of the hall, people would turn to look at him with fascination. His gleaming shoes added a unique effect to his personality. When I rose after my tea, Mr. Sebastian was chatting at the next table. He turned towards me and asked in a friendly fashion, “Is there some good news? You’re looking happy.” I looked at him, astonished. Each person has a specific sort of training that makes them different from everyone else. I laughed and nodded: “You’re not wrong. I do have a small reason to be happy.”

My friends, I would learn at my own cost that there is no difference between small and large joys, especially if you treat the small joys as large ones.

NOTES:

^[1] Shah Alam II was the last of the Mughal dynasty to be recognised as Emperor of Hindustan. Losing to the East India Company at the Battle of Buxar in 1764 turned him into a pensioner of the British. The wisecrack depends also on the fact that the name “Shah Alam” translates to “Ruler of the World”.

^[2] ‘Cheel’ translates officially to ‘eagle’. In Delhi, however, the word is colloquially used for the black kite still commonly seen in the city.

^[3] Zindaginama was an acclaimed 1979 Hindi novel by Krishna Sobti which won the Sahitya Akademi award. ED Galgotia and Sons was a family-run Delhi bookshop, a Connaught Place landmark. Opened in 1933, it went out of business in 2015.

^[4] The full name of the legendary Hindi writer and editor ‘Agyeya’.

^[5] A very senior leader of the Indian National Congress at the time

^[6] Nagpal was close to Agyeya. Together with another friend called Balwant Sehgal, he helped publish some issues of Prateek as well as Agyeya’s epoch-making novel Nadi ke Dweep.