One evening last September, I found myself eating chocolate cheese sandwich in a giant outdoor food court complete with benches, vendor booths and hundreds of famished devourers. Fencing us in were old crumbling walls, bulbous domes, harem windows of mosques and tombs embellished with jalis — remnants of the Gujarati Sultans who once ruled the kingdom. We were in Manek Chowk, a square in old Ahmedabad that is a gold market by the day and a huge street food retreat by the night.
Most heritage buildings like Rani Ka Hazira surrounding this chowk are locked and you need to rattle on their gates till someone comes running with the key, amble around with you until you are ready to leave. Another nondescript rectangular domed building looms on the periphery, scraps of kite and local movie posters stuck on its veranda. A board says that the inscription on its pillar, written in Persian, was the creation of an Indo-Sufi Saint Yahya Maneri. A stone plaque outside the mazar says this majestic monument of Badshah Ka Hazira (built between 1411 and 1442) employed 10,000 artisans to adorn the beloved king, Ahmed Shah I, the founding father of Ahmedabad. Hundreds of such tombs can be found in the country but Badshah Ka Hazira, as the tomb is known, is one of its kind. It is perhaps the only one where generations of the local people have daily, and sometimes twice a day, been witness to city’s cross-cultural magnanimity.
Therein lies the crux of my story. While I wait amid the rowdy banter finishing my second sandwich, pineapple and cheese this time, a friend pulls me out of the crowd, down the Badshah Ka Hazira gate and up a rickety set of staircase. In a tube-lit room, two thin brothers in patloons sit before the drums and will soon begin their daily ritual, a 600-year-old tradition in the naubat-khana or the drum room. “ Baithye, jaldi shuru karenge ”, says Amir Banubhai, pointing to a mat placed at the other end of the room. He is warming his drums before a small coal pit. “During chomasa (months of monsoon), nagaras loosen up because of humidity. Heat helps tighten the drums,” he explains, hitting and rotating the drum while using a tanpura to tap the pegs of the tabla.
Amir Banubhai and Sheru Banubhai carry on the tradition their ancestors have spun around the tomb. In the time of the Sultans, drums were played to announce the opening and closing of the gates, estimated to be about 12-16 in number, enclosing 189 bastions and over 6,000 battlements within them. It was planned according to an Indo-Aryan tradition, though the Sultan was from Persia, to ensure security in the kingdom. For the last 600 years, his family has paid homage to Ahmed Shah by uninterruptedly and devotedly playing nagaras or drums and shehnai twice a day, around 8.00 a.m and 11.00 p.m.
Drums of different sizes are strewn around the room, a goblet-shaped drum making a crisp, iridescent sound. Its cousin, a darker-sounding one, is expensive, made by stretching animal skin over a thick copper bottom and placed over a circled piece of cloth called chuttha.
“These are as old as our first ancestors,” says Sherubhai, drumming his fingers to test the echo. “This is a difficult job, this tuning bit…” he mumbles. “My grandfather was a thin, small man, but had a lot of strength and knowledge. He told my father, ear training is of no use when there is no connection between your nerves and brain. You need to train your fingers to listen to the brain.”
The brothers often call upon Naresh, who ‘lives down the lane’, for repair work on the drums. “ Uske baap-dada bhi hamare nagare banate the ,” says Sherubhai.
A sheaf of papers is strung on an iron hook by a wall, some dating to late 19th century. These are old accounts maintained by his father for all the maintenance and repairs of the nagar khana . Who clears these bills? The government? “No, no the Sunni Muslim Waqf Committee, custodian of the tombs and the mosque, pays an honorarium of Rs.3,000 per month for our services. They used to reimburse my father but now we have to pay for the drum repairs from our own pockets.”
“We do jobs in workshops during the day. But during the playing hours, they let us go. They know this is very important work. See, actually, it is just family pride we do this for,” they chime, almost in unison. “We are like Jabbar Miya. Have you heard of him?” Sherubhai asks me. “He was the mujawar who passed away a few months ago. He kept the sacred 600-year-old lamp alight, dedicated to goddess Lakshmi. His sons carry on the legacy now.”
A little research later revealed that, according to popular lore, a sentry posted at the Teen Darwaza, a few blocks from Badshah Ka Hazira, had stopped Goddess Lakshmi from leaving without the consent of Sultan Ahmed Shah. People believe that the goddess of wealth is still there. A lamp was lit for the goddess by the secular Ahmed Shah to keep the revenue flowing into his city. “Ahmed Shah did a lot for the city, my father used to tell me”, he remarks. “He made a very sound, secular base for this city. Lot of us still pay homage to that lamp”, he adds, matter-of-factly. I’m glad he didn’t notice my brief surprise at a Mohammedan bowing his head at the altar of the goddess.
A clock on the walls of nagar khana has just struck 11. “Tour guides and tourists can be late sometimes, so we delay a bit,” whispers Sheru bhai, as a group of tourists walk in, his grin widening to reveal several mottled teeth. “Foreign people tip well so it is important for us to perform for them too,” he adds, cackling guiltlessly.
The brothers soon adjust their nagaras , gladly posing for the cameras before starting a complex rhythm, which seems more like a conversation than a musical performance. Accompanied by a plaintive shehnai, the sound consumes the room, echoing back from the stone walls of other tombs and buildings. It is a sound that would, at one point, signal the closing of the city gates. Gates that have no doors anymore, just a pair of brothers who honour a long-ago Sultan.
Published - April 11, 2015 03:50 pm IST
