A half-open door to Delhi

August 19, 2013 09:23 pm | Updated 09:23 pm IST

DELHI BY HEART .-
RAZA RUMI

DELHI BY HEART .- RAZA RUMI

Divinity resides in every nook and cranny of Delhi. There are worshippers to be found under a peepul tree; inside a khanqah many men and women assemble for spiritual uplift. At sunrise, temples and mosques come alive, in the evening the river is worshipped. Ironic then, the city hailed in its earliest avatar as Indraprastha — Abode of Indra, the god of gods — was actually founded by the banks of Yamuna, sister of Yama, the King of Death. But then Yamuna compensated; once in a spate it threw up Shastras, the books of knowledge. Hence came about the Nigambodh Ghat — Knowledge Bank. And Delhi grew: Indraprastha, Siri, Tughalqabad, Firozabad and on to Shahjahanabad and beyond to Lutyens. Some 22 sufis in deep sleep here.

Often dubbed the city of tombs by the uncharitable, it moved Asadullah Khan Ghalib to proclaim, “The world is the body, Delhi its soul.” It is this “soul” that draws Pakistani traveller Raza Rumi in. At every step he opens a little window to the city, revealing a bit of himself too. Unsurprisingly, he starts his journey from Nizamuddin Auliya’s dargah and finds the place “incredibly enchanting”. “To me, Hazrat Nizamuddin’s compound is the ultimate metaphor of Delhi and its lost past,” he goes on to say, even slipping into nostalgia for Lahore and its Daata Durbar shrine. Recalling how Delhi’s primacy as the Sufi capital was unchallenged; how many term it as ‘Little Mecca’, he is clearly not short of praises. Quoting a mathnawi of Amir Khusrau, he writes, “Noble Delhi, shelter of religion and treasure. It is the Garden of Eden, may it last forever. A veritable earthly Paradise in all its qualities/May Allah protect it from calamities…” Sweeter words were seldom spoken about a city that has not been too far away from death and destruction — didn’t Nadir Shah not attack it on the day of Eid? Didn’t the Marathas, the Jats and the rest nibble away at the city? And was not the city reduced to a stretch of just a few kilometres even though its king was called Shah Alam, the Emperor of the Universe?

More pertinent things come a little later. As a Pakistani, Rumi is surprised to find The Haj Terminal on his arrival at the airport. Often surrounded with talks of ‘we’ and ‘they’ his surprise is understandable. What is a cause for concern is his apprehension about being alone in the city, alone in the crowd that accompanies him at most places in Delhi. He was in the land of the ‘other’, he wonders. How will the ‘other’ react? Inadvertently, he remembers Pakistani poet Neelma Naheed Durrani’s couplet, “I have come to see the city/Longing for which my elders left this world/In their graves, in Lahore’s Mominpura graveyard/My father and grandfather must be saying joyfully/Our daughter has gone to our city, Amritsar.”

At Nizamuddin, it is all peace and poetry. When he goes to the popular Gurdwara Bangla Sahib which used to be the bungalow of Raja Jai Singh of Amber, a noble at the court of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, the rational man in him comes to the fore. Here he opens another little window — that of inquisition. Questioning the popular story of Aurangzeb ordering Guru Tegh Bahadur’s execution, Rumi asks, “Did Raja Jai Singh know that his patron was to order the execution of the Guru?” Then settling his argument, he aptly recalls B.D. Pandey’s words. “Hazaaron saal ki yeh daastan; Aur yaad haiy unko sirf itna; Kay Aalamgir zaalim thha’ Hindukush thaa, sitamgar thha”. (All they remember of a long thousand years’ tale (is) that Aurangzeb was tyrannical, a cruel Hindu killer.”) Just to buttress his viewpoint, Rumi reminds us of the trauma of 1947 and 1984, reiterating that violence is part of the history of the entire South Asia and reinvention of the past is a shared attribute too.

Shared past

Yet again, he adds a note of substance by telling us that shared past is often erased in the Indian subcontinent. In Pakistan, they don’t talk of history the way they teach in New Delhi, in Bangladesh Pakistani past is erased. He shares popular poet Fehmida Riaz’s anguish with India. In her poem ‘Naya Bharat’ is the lament, “You turned out to be just like us; Similarly stupid, wallowing in the past, You have reached the same doorstep at last.”

His journey of the city continues with visits to tombs of Balban and others. He finds greater peace talking to musicians, singers and the rest. Fate crosses his path with that of Vidya Rao, whom he describes as a Dadra-Thumri singer who lives with a cat called Sufi that she found in Nizamuddin dargah. His surprise at Rao singing naat (hymns in praise of Prophet Mohammed) is barely concealed! Later, his touristy jaunt takes him to Shahjahanabad, the ‘city’ with 14 gates. His bookish image of the place is well removed from the ground reality. It is here that one realises Rumi is at his best talking of medieval ages, Sufis and shrines. When he seeks to open a window to the present he comes down to a moderate level. The sources don’t do him any favours; he even quotes individuals who have pretensions, no authenticity. He is deprived of the right to get a more nuanced picture of the city. More is the pity because for a good portion Rumi promises that all the little windows he opens will lead to a huge doorway. Finally, when the doorway arrives, the door is only partially opened. Delhi comes close, not close enough though. The soul lost in a mess of upstarts and wannabes. Remember the words of Nizamuddin: “Hunuz Dilli door dast”?

( Ziya Us Salam is a deputy editor with The Hindu in New Delhi )

Delhi by Heart: Raza Rumi; HarperCollins Publishers, A-53, Sector 57, Noida-201301. Rs. 399.

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