The woman and her family have waited almost too long. The invaders are just outside their city and terrified residents have been escaping the plundering violence of this new threat for days. Now with no hope of reprieve, in the gloaming of a perfect summer’s evening, the woman leaves this fabled and historic city of her birth, never to return. The family escapes with desperate and frenzied haste and finds refuge in a nearby country that has had a long history of refugee migration.
It is a new country for the woman, with a different language and new customs and strange food but she finds a quantum of happiness, for a while. Then one day, her husband sickens and dies, leaving her with two small children. As a single mother, she struggles to raise her children, with fierce honour and a faultless belief in god. Some days there is no food at all and it is a fine line between faith and despair. But the mother tells her children stories of strong, fiery women who have long prospered in the land of her birth. In this new country, too, there is a woman leader, even though she is Muslim, and the mother is surprised at the proprietary pride she feels in this foreign woman’s glory.
The children grow up in the village of Uchchin, a raucous and blustery neighbourhood in the centre of the city. When he grows up, the boy tires of the incessant commotion and the debauchery and constant displays of power and greed of the area and moves to a distant, untouched suburb near a densely flowing river. But he returns to visit his mother without fail, every Wednesday, till she dies suddenly, worn out by her ravaged heart.
Old, familiar stories
The story is familiar, even pedestrian, and strangely du jour , but it played out its ragged loops 800 years ago. The refugee woman is Bibi Zulaikha, the invader is Chinghiz Khan, the leader is Raziya Sultan of the Delhi Sultanate, and the son is Nizamuddin Auliya, one of the greatest Sufi saints of South Asia. The village he grew up in is today called Adhchini, in southern Delhi, and is now a warren of shops and cycle repair stands and cages with hopeless birds dreaming of the wide sky. Behind the ruckus of shops is the Dargah of Bibi Zulaikha, also known as Mai Sahiba, who was buried where she lived in her home in Uchchin. It is peaceful and calm, with cool marble floors, but every Wednesday, on the day her son used to visit her, women come calling on Mai Sahiba, for legend has it she cannot bear the suffering of women and grants them all their wishes.
Ghiyaspur, the leafy suburb that Nizamuddin moved to looking for respite from the intrigue of the Sultanate court, is based in Mehrauli near Qutab Minar. It is today the colony of Nizamuddin and the Yamuna river has long since deserted these dusty banks. Nizamuddin became a Sufi mystic of the Chistiya order and gathered a huge following even in his lifetime. After he died, his Dargah in the nearby Nizamuddin basti became a lodestone to which kings and emperors clustered, vying to be buried as close to the sainted presence as possible. Humayun and Muhammad Shah Rangeela are some of the more famous names buried near this Sufi saint.
Marigold showers
But on a balmy day in early February, Nizamuddin Dargah is fizzing with an altogether unusual exuberance. There are yellow mustard spikes and marigold flowers in gleaming, fragrant heaps in bamboo baskets lying nonchalantly on the floor of the courtyard. Yellow bunting snaps in the cool breeze and all the devotees and Dargah attendants are wearing yellow turbans or yellow scarves around their necks.
Suddenly, a riotous group of qawwals arrives, carrying a golden chador and in a breathless rush of shouted lyrics, marigold petals and swishing cloth they disappear into the inner sanctum of the shrine, where they are never usually allowed. The qawwals repeat this process at all the main shrines of the Dargah, including that of Nizamuddin Auliya’s most devoted and beloved disciple, the poet Amir Khusro.
The origins of this strangely pastoral tradition are linked to the Basant Panchami traditions of North India. The story goes that Nizamuddin Auliya, who was unmarried himself, was deeply attached to his sister’s son, Khwaja Nuh. But the child died young and Nizamuddin was devastated by the loss. Amir Khusro couldn’t bear to see his master so afflicted and brought low, and tried desperately to make him smile again.
Walking outside Nizamuddin’s house near the Khwaja’s chilla-khanaq one day, Amir Khusro saw a group of village women walk by, dressed in bright yellow clothes and carrying mustard flowers and singing and clapping with guileless abandon. They were celebrating spring, they explained to the puzzled Amir Khusro, and were on their way to the temple where they would delight their god with song and dance. Enchanted by the story, Amir Khusro dressed up in a yellow sari, bedecked himself with mustard flowers, and appeared before Nizamuddin Auliya singing lusty songs in praise of spring. The saint saw his favourite disciple in the yellow sari and was startled out of his torpor. He smiled, and ever since, Basant Panchami has been celebrated thus at the Dargah of Nizamuddin.
For most North Indians, Bengalis especially, Basant Panchami is the birthday of Goddess Saraswati, the austere goddess of knowledge and the arts. Unusual among the cacophony of divine beings in the Indian pantheon, Saraswati likes neither bright colours nor jewellery. Her white sari and elegant swan are irreproachable and imperturbable. The hoarse, full-throated songs of the qawwals in the dusty, dirty Delhi night seem far removed from the icy splendour of Saraswati.
But the goddess is also the knowledge that helps us make sense of the chaos that surround us. She gives a name to the thing that the refugee woman taught her mystic son. The same thing that Nizamuddin then saw in his poet-disciple’s eyes and that made him smile. The thing that the qawwals today sing with perfect longing: love.
Author of Heroines , the writer is in a love-hate relationship with Delhi, haunted by its blood-soaked past, and its Sufi saints.
