Among those who thought nostalgia was the last resort of sulking writers was the great Dr Samuel Johnson but that did not prevent Charles Lamb and R.L. Stevenson, among others, from indulging in it, especially when the latter was pining for the Scottish Highlands in the distant Pacific Island of Samoa, where he died while convalescing.
A young scribe in Delhi still learning the ropes was advised by his editor not to get overwhelmed by nostalgia while writing his stories but concentrate on the present, quoting the Pharaoh Tutankhamun, “I have seen Yesterday and know Tomorrow”, meaning that he did not really know today and what it held in store. Even so nostalgic associations with Delhi while pushing the age of 80 makes one fall back on memories every so often mundane places and events acquire a halo of sorts when viewed over the years. Where ISBT Kashmere Gate is now situated used to be the playing field of St. Stephen’s College. Others too exercised there when the students were not around. Among them Dharmendra who, waiting for the afternoon show to start in Ritz Cinema, passed the time doing push-ups on the grassy field. He still thinks nostalgically about it even after becoming a veteran actor. This was also the very place where Kishorie Pehalwan did his dand-baithak (push-ups and sit-ups). Once he got up two hours after midnight, thinking it was 4 a.m. and beating his thighs, as all wrestlers do before taking on an opponent, real or imagined, began his workout. Just then the nearby temple going struck 2 a.m. Surprised, he hastily moved to put on his clothes kept under a bargad (banyan) tree and was shocked to see a giant-sized pehalwan standing there. “Never beat your thighs (tal thokna mana hai) at this ungodly hour as it’s a challenge to me or you will come to grief,” said the apparition and disappeared. The dazed Kishorie never defied the dikat which he assumed came from Monkey God Hanuman himself.
Inspiring walks
In nearby Nicholson Park, now badly cut to one-fourth its size, painter J. Swaminathan usually went for a ramble, unless friends took him to Qudsia Bagh. He got most of his inspiration at these places. Similarly, Nirad C. Chaudhuri would walk up to Maidens Hotel every evening and then walk back to his house in Kashmere Gate, close to the Bengali Club, rehearsing dialogues for his books. One followed him sometimes while on the way to PTI for evening duty and was amazed that the small man in a three-piece suit, with a walking stick, was talking to himself all the time in English and least bothered about the stares of passers-by. Incidentally, the St. Stephen’s field was used by the Bengali Club to hold a performance of one of Rabindranath Tagore’s plays when the poet visited the club long ago.
There was an eccentric school mistress who, after retirement, would sit near the grave of William Fraser in St James’s Church compound and read the English translation of the Persian memoirs of the church builder, Col James Skinner, a lifelong friend of Fraser’s and devastated by his assassination in 1835. When she felt hungry she would walk across the road for a lunch of chhole-bhature at Mithan Lal’s shop. She found it rather hot for her Anglo-Indian palate and hurried for a pastry at Carlton’s. Quite close to this joint was London Stores where the best suits in town were tailored and almost next to it C.Lal’s, the chemist shop patronised by the whole Civil Lines crowd. Once John Rosemeyer, teacher of a school in Ludlow Castle Road, left his fiancee outside the shop and went in to buy something personal. He found two lady customers standing there and came back with a flushed face. The fiancee asked what happened and then, pushing him aside ventured in, sought pen and paper and scribbled, “A packet of French letters, please”. The counter clerk looked up in surprise after reading it and handed over the packet to her. The couple are now doting grandparents in Australia.
Further up on the opposite side of C.Lal’s was a butcher’s shop where Eric Heatherley used to go to buy mutton mince and hear tales or the “Mutiny” from the Shekhji, whose grandfather had witnessed the recapture of Delhi by the British. The Kauria Bridge leading to Kashmere Gate from Old Delhi Station was the haunt of pickpockets and pimps of G.B. Raod. A cinema near Edward Park in the Jama Masjid area (where Dharmendra watched the film Badal ) had a Seth as manager who was very fond of girls but unable to do much with them because of old age. Beyond was a peepul tree shading the fish market (removed during the Emergency) from which drops of blood used to sometimes fall at night. Ahead of it stayed M.F. Husain in Naaz Hotel, surveying the area’s night scene for his paintings, while in Urdu Bazar, Mir Mushtaq Ahmed, first CEO of Delhi, looked down from the balcony of his house for a masseur who could help put him to sleep, insomniac as he was. In nearby Chawri Bazar lived Ruskin Bond’s fond “Bhabiji”, forever trying to find a match for a confirmed bachelor like him. “Wallowing in nostalgia again?” past editor S.N.S. would probably have said but then so is anybody in love with “Alam Mein Intikhab” Delhi!
