noo yawk. delhi. elsewhere. multiverses. history.fiction.madness.love. random.poetry.prose.musings. occasional photographs.
posted by Anand at 6:22 am
posted by Anand at 9:05 am
This is a translation of the opening page and a half of Urdu writer Intizar Hussain's literary memoir of Delhi, “Dilli Tha Jiska Naam”, published by Sang-e-Meel Publishers, Lahore, 2003.
No settlement shows its [true] self easily. And then Delhi is a settlement about which Mir had warned us that it's not any other town, this is Delhi. You and I are in a small numbered queue, the queue of those who have swallowed so much of the dust of Delhi's street and alleys that we have become the stones of Delhi's roads, but even to us, how much of its selfhood has this city shown? It has hidden away far more than it has ever shown. So know this attempt of mine as merely a useless fancy. To tell the truth, it's just one of Delhi's evenings which has made me crazy, obsessed. This melancholy monsoon evening revealed itself to me for the space of a breath, and then vanished. To relate it again is not my intention. When was I able to tell of it before? I am merely gesturing towards it.
This was an evening two or three years after Partition. I had reached Delhi after a lot of effort. When we set foot in that celebrated passage that is called the dargah of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya, the two times were meeting[1]. But the crowds that were usually present, with the scraping of shoulder against shoulder, were missing. Outside the dargah, the usual crowd around the shops selling roses, incense and candles was also nowhere to be seen. Silence had spread its encampment. From some direction a group of three qawwals appeared, harmoniums around their necks. They put the harmoniums down, and began singing immediately –
In every house sadness has spread, Shabbir has gone and left Madina.
We listened to them for a little while and then came outside. We being me and my old friends Rewati and Singh, whose guest I was. Rewati said, Did you know that Ghalib's mazaar is here as well? Let's go there as well, and so we got off the narrow path and started walking amidst tall grass. Janamashtami had passed, and the grass had grown green and tall from the showers of [the months of] Sawan and Bhadon. In the middle of this grass a ruined platform came into view. Around it was a tumbledown enclosure wall. Inside, three graves in a ruinous condition. One of them was Ghalib's grave. I read the fatiha. Then we started walking through the tall grass again. Silence was all around. Only a peacock's call coming from afar broke this silence. After which the silence deepened even further. A couplet of Amir Khusrau's which I had just read at his tomb started whirling in my head –
The fair one sleeps upon the bed, her hair veiling her face
Khusrau leave for your own home, it is dark now in this country.
After this I had to wait for thirty years to go to Delhi. Then somehow an opportunity to make a trip to this settlement presented itself. One trip. Then a second trip. Then a third trip. On every trip I made sure I visited the street of Nizamuddin Auliya. But now the whole map of the place had changed. Crowds. Shoulder scraping against shoulder. In every shop heap after heap of rose petals. Pushing and shoving to cross the threshold of the shrine to reach the tombs. And oh, the platform with Ghalib's grave vanished. The grass extinct. Now there was a wide platform of marble here. Beautiful filigree screens all around it. Inside, a grave made of marble. Right next to it, an imposing Ghalib Hall. On every visit the crowds seemed denser than the last time. And every time I badly missed that monsoon evening and that ruined grave falling apart amidst the tall grass. Oh Lord, where did that evening go and hide and where did that grave disappear to? Where should I look for it?
posted by Anand at 9:58 am
Aaj rang hai ri ma, rang hai ri. Mere mehboob ke ghar rang hai ri…
There is colour in the beloved’s house today. These lines are attributed to Hazrat Amir Khusrau Dehlavi. Some say it is a song about Holi. Some say it describes his first meeting with Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya. Perhaps it is about both. But what was the rang of the mehboob ka ghar? What colours did Khusrau and Nizamuddin (and everyone else) live amidst in fourteenth century Delhi? Much of what remains from the 14th century (and later) is dark and somber and unadorned now. But so much of Khusrau’s Hindavi poetry is about colour and brightness. Jag ujiyaro, jagat ujiyaro. This is the poetry of a bright, lit up,world. Surely it was not all metaphysical, metaphorical?
More here
posted by Anand at 3:55 pm
S’adat Yar Khan “Rangin” (1755-1835), true to his takhallus or nom-de-plume, was a “Colorful” character; “A mercenary, a horse trader, and a poet (Kidwai & Vanita 2000, 221),” he lived and worked and traveled extensively in late-Mughal India. He could also be said to be the first ethnographer-poet, preceding Val Daniel by about two hundred years. He gave the name Rekhti to a genre of poetry that purports to be “women’s speech”, and dwells on women’s lives and concerns (Vanita 2004, 12). While similar poetry had been written before him (Naim 2001, 5), Rangin not only names but also invents, as it were, a new genre of poetry; which is an almost obsessive ethnographic documentation of women’s speech, rituals, beliefs, emotions and sexual practices, written with tenderness, sarcasm, irony and occasionally undisguised wickedness. His introduction to his Rekhti Divan [collection of poetry] describes a decidedly participant observatory approach. In the days of his youth, he declares, he used to spend a lot of time with khangis [married women from respectable households who surreptitiously practiced prostitution], and he used to pay almost voyeuristic attention to them and “pay close attention to the speech of the eloquent ones in that community.” [tamashbini khangiyon ki hi karta tha aur is qaum meN har ek fasih taqrir par dhyan dharta tha]. And due to this, he got much information about their idioms, language and phrases [un ki istilahoN, zabaan aur muhavaroN se bahut si khabar hui], which he then merely set in verse. He then gives the reason for including the Farhang-e Muhavarat-e Begamat, the Glossary of Ladies’ Idioms, in the preface to his book – his friends could not understand what he was writing, for there were words and phrases that they could not comprehend [lekin divan meN lughat aur muhavarat aise aise nazm hu’e the jo aksar yaroN se samjhe na jate]. And so, “Inevitably in this preface this slave has written descriptions of these subtle words in such a fashion that their meaning does not escape those who see and read this book.” [Nachareh jo daqiqi alfaz the in ko bande ne is dibacheh meN taur shar’a kar ke likh diya ke kisi lafz ke m’ani paRhne aur dekhne waloN se reh na ja’eN.]
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