Accounts of Love, Loss and Betrayal in Nineteenth-Century Delhi

Translator: Rana Safvi (from Urdu)

Hachette India

247 pages; Rs 399

Early in Dilli ka Aakhri Deedar (translated as The Last Glimpse of Dilli), Syed Wazir Hasan Dehlvi writes: “Delli was never a city of just bricks and stones.” He adds that though the monuments of the city, such as Jama Masjid and the Red Fort, remained standing, its soul was dead. Written soon after the troubles of 1857-58, this narrative indulges in exquisite nostalgia for a lost city, its once-rich culture and society laid waste by the ravages of time. “Now, only a glimpse of that culture is to be found either in books, or on the lips of elders,” Dehlvi explains. “I want to hear these stories from them and laugh and weep with them.”

Readers will have enough opportunities to laugh and cry at the delectable recollections in the four short prose narratives included in this book. These are: 1. Dehlvi’s narrative I have mentioned earlier; 2. Bazm-e-Aakhir (The Last Assembly) by Munshi Faizuddin; 3. Qila-e-Mu’alla ki Jhalkiya’n (Glimpses of the Exalted Fort) by Arsh Taimuri; and 4. Begamat ke Aansu (Tears of the Begums), collected by Hasan Nizami. Ms Safvi is no stranger to the mid-19th century or the chequered history of this city. The books she has translated already include Dastan-e-Ghadar by Zahir Dehlvi (an eye-witness account of the 1857 war), and Asar-us-Sanadid, an account of the monuments of Delhi written by Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and published right before the troubles.

“Life in Delhi had an élan of its own and every day was a celebration,” she writes in the translator’s note at the beginning of the book. “The Emperor (Bahadur Shah) would participate in Hindu and Muslim festivals. There were literary and cultural soirées in the mansions of the noblemen, while dastangos sat on the steps of the Jama Masjid and enthralled audiences.” Explaining the reason for translating this book, Ms Safvi writes: “Almost every story or record of events in this volume has been written independent of the other. But each story corroborates and reinforces the common thread of syncretism that runs through its companions, indicating that it was the norm and not an exception.”

This claim is corroborated by all the narratives. “Hindus and Muslims lived as brothers,” writes Dehlvi. Faizuddin describes the life in the fort in great detail, listing Islamic festivals such as Eid, Ramzan, and the birth of the Prophet, as well as Hindu ones such as Saloni (Rakhi), Dusshera and Diwali, and Navroz, the Parsi new year. One of the most interesting festivals in the Mughal calendar, described in this volume is Phoolwaalo’n ki Sair, when the Mughal Emperor would leave the Red Fort and travel to Mehrauli across the city. (It has been revived recently and is held in November.) In the translator’s note at the beginning of the book, Ms Safvi writes: “The palace and the city had a syncretic culture — the Ganga-Jamuni — in which the quotidian life of the two different communities co-mingled and created an amalgam of …[a] pluralistic way of life.” In our undoubtedly divisive times, this is as much a political endeavour as a literary one, and there is much need for the wide circulation of such stories.

The four books are also populated with a list of interesting characters. Of course there is Bahadur Shah II, the emperor and his family, many of whom were killed by the British after the war, and others reduced to penury. One daughter of the exiled emperor, Gauhar Begum, became a beggar and then was hired as a cook at a household in the city; a son, Zafar Sultan, became a cart driver. There are numerous other characters as well — musicians Shah Nasir Wazir, Mirza Kale, Mirza Gauhar as well as calligraphers, Mir Panjakash Saiyyed Khush Navez Mohd Jaan Aga Saheb, Ahmed Jan, Imamuddin and Badruddin. “Who is Badruddin?” asks a listener to the story. The same one, replies the narrator, who was asked to the Queen of England to make a seal. We also meet Tanras Khan, the musician who established the Hindustani gharana.

The many different professions reflect the hurly-burly of a busy town. The descriptions of festivities and feasts, music and mushairahs, are, however, tinged with a note of sorrow. For a reader, the experience is that of travelling in a time machine or being pitch-forked into a different era, the colours of which are slowly fading. The characters in these books, lost in their mirth, their loves and their heartbreaks, are unaware of the fate that awaits them. The reader, however, does not have any such claims to innocence. All the four translated writers in this volume write that they hope to preserve a bit of the lost city. The pre-1857 Delhi might be an Atlantis lost in the ocean of obscurity and forgetfulness, but these narratives make it immortal. Ms Safvi performs the essential task of a translator — of finding a larger audience for these.

https://www.business-standard.com/article/beyond-business/lost-city-118110700003_1.html

Sent from my iPhone

POORNIMA NARAYANAN 22 July, 2018

In The Print India

Forgotten Cities of Delhi blends the historical facts behind each ‘hidden-in-plain-sight’ structure with anecdotes, legend and Sufi couplets.

Na Sikandar hai na Dara hai na Qaiser na Jam

Be-mahal khaak mein hain qasr banane waale

(Neither Alexander, nor Darius, nor Caesar or Jamshed remain

The builders of palaces under the open skies in dust) are lain

– Barq Mirza Raza

A passionate new book detailing Delhi’s ancient but forgotten forts, tombs, baolis is an obvious labour of love. But the real magic happens when you read finely curated Sufi couplets along with the descriptions of the historical structures.

Historian and translator Rana Safvi’s The Forgotten Cities of Delhi is a handy addition to the popular literature on the capital’s richly layered, 1,500-year history.

The tombs, forts, baolis, walls, and shrines of Delhi’s ancient cities, where kings, poets, and mystics walked are now silent and often careworn witnesses to traffic and manic ‘development’.

Sections divided on the geography map these ancient cities now spread across modern India’s capital, with each segment listing a large number of surviving structures. The Forgotten Cities blends the historical facts behind each listed structure with anecdotes and legend. There are detailed, yet simple explanations of the architectural styles and traditions that prevailed during each historical period, starting with the Tomar dynasty in the 10th century, through the Muslim-rule era of the Khiljis, Tughlaqs, and Lodis and on to three centuries of Mughal domination – a vast canvas.

Adding charm to the descriptions of various historical structures are finely curated Sufi couplets. Be it the one quoted above on Firoz Shah Kotla or another that appears to foretell the fate of the once impressive Khirki Masjid:

Woh masjid ghar na ban jaaye kisi ka

Namaaze’n band hain khaali padi hai

(Alas! That mosque may become someone’s residence

No longer are prayers held there, what echoes there is silence)

– Sardar Asif

But The Forgotten Cities isn’t merely a nostalgic ode to the national capital’s past. Safvi’s straight-bat style, part documentary and part plea for the preservation of Delhi’s legacy points to the general apathy of the powers that be and its citizenry towards this priceless heritage.

UNESCO honours be damned, centuries old structures have been swallowed up by deathly dull stacks of concrete. Elsewhere, the palaces of former kings now offer dingy shelter to feckless youths who gamble and smoke up with happy abandon in these lost spaces.

This sad state of affairs notwithstanding, Safvi’s own adventurous spirit and her concise documentation of innumerable, lesser-known heritage structures make for inspired reading. And a call for action, too. There’s a nice, ‘carry along’ feel to the book. So, on a sunny weekend, tuck a copy in your backpack, lace up those walking shoes and set out to discover Delhi’s historical treasures. They’re hiding in plain sight.

Poornima Narayanan is a Delhi-based freelance writer and editor.

https://theprint.in/pageturner/book-bites/delhis-forgotten-cities-find-a-new-chronicler/86464/

JULY 21, 2018

The Hindu

A historian brings alive the landscape of old Delhi by recounting oral traditions around monuments and their prevalent narratives

DhūñD ujDe hue logoñ meñ vafā ke motī

ye khazāne tujhe mumkin hai kharāboñ meñ mileñ

Look for the pearls of fidelity among uprooted folk

It is possible you find these treasures amidst ruins

– Faraz Ahmed “Faraz”

It is only appropriate to begin the review of Rana Safvi’s remarkable book, The Forgotten Cities of Delhi, with a sh‘er, because her book is so full of poetry. Her entry on each monument she covers, and there are several hundred of them, is prefaced by a couplet or a stanza, mostly in Urdu, many by the best of contemporary Urdu poets. If this seems unusual for a book on the monuments of Delhi, this is because it is. Most of the extensive literature in English on the monuments of Delhi tends towards the prosaic, drawing on Western (specifically British) antiquarian traditions of looking at monuments from a visual, art-historical perspective, as objects of a tourist’s gaze. Safvi’s book, on the other hand, draws on the Urdu tradition of writing about the material remains of Delhi’s past, especially on Bashiruddin Ahmad’s remarkable Waqiat-e Dar-ul-Hukumat Delhi.

Recording a destruction

Bashiruddin Ahmad’s magisterial book was written and published almost exactly a century ago, in 1919, when the landscape of Delhi was being transformed rapidly — and undemocratically, with much public unrest — by the construction of British New Delhi. In the face of this destruction, Bashiruddin Ahmad wrote a book very different in content and spirit than Sir Syed Ahmad Khan’s famous Asar-us-Sanadid.

Not only did his three volumes cover far more buildings, documenting everything for posterity before it vanished, the spirit in which they were written about was very different. Bashiruddin Ahmad liberally used Persian and Urdu poetry to frame his descriptions of the monuments he wrote about, thus foregrounding an emotional connection to the monuments he was describing, enlivening these monuments for the reader.

Rana Safvi does the same, though her selections of poetry are quite different. And like in Bashiruddin Ahmad’s book, the landscape of historical Delhi that she describes is one that is alive.

Writing about the Tohfewala Gumbad in Deer Park, for instance, Safvi notes, “I visited it soon after Holi and there was colour on the graves. It’s the custom of the locals to go and offer colour at mazars as they consider them peers, patron saints.” The book is full of moments like this, moments in which the continuing significance of these monuments for the local communities around them is plainly stated. Safvi also recounts many oral traditions around several of these monuments, histories prevalent among local communities, which do not appear in any other comparable work on the monuments of Delhi. This approach to these monuments as living spaces can also be found in Syed Mohammad Qasim’s lovely photographs, which liberally illustrate this book. In many of these photos we see the monuments not in isolation, but foregrounded by the people, animals, and everyday objects whose lives are intertwined with these buildings. And like Bashiruddin Ahmad, Safvi does not shy away from writing of Delhi’s historical landscape as also a sacred landscape, a landscape of continuing devotion at temples, mosques and dargahs. In several places in the book, Safvi shares her own spiritual relation to the historical landscape of Delhi. For instance, when writing about the Dargah of Bibi Fatima Sam in Kakanagar, “It is said that Bibi always answers the prayers of a mother and I go there often to pray, especially for my children.”

An act of devotion

To write about the historical landscape of Delhi as also a landscape of devotion is a radical act, especially given how “secular” conservation policies have dominated the ASI’s approach to Delhi’s landscape, and worship has been actively prevented in many of Delhi’s historical mosques and tombs after Partition. This secular conservation paradigm has not only not succeeded in preserving this historical landscape — hundreds of monuments have disappeared or been encroached upon in Delhi since independence — it has also led to growing public apathy about built heritage.

In the book, Safvi doggedly traces many historical monuments which have been encroached upon and turned into toilets and trash heaps, especially in some of the “urban villages” of south Delhi. I cannot imagine such a fate happening to these monuments if they were still considered sacred spaces. Safvi’s book is an invitation for us to change the public conservation about conservation and Delhi’s built heritage.

Given the importance of this book and its achievements, I would argue for a better organisation and layout for future editions of the book, particularly the sequence in which buildings are presented. The section on Siri, for instance, encompasses buildings which range chronologically from the 13th century to the 16th, and geographically from Adhchini (near Mehrauli) to Kaka Nagar (near Mathura Road and the Purana Qila). This is a huge area, and there seems to be no clear principle as to why the monuments are organised in this particular order. Bashiruddin Ahmed wrote his book imagined as guiding the viewer through a series of expeditions with Shahjahanabad serving as a central point of reference.

In contemporary Delhi, of course, such a unitary centre is hard to imagine. A map or a series of maps would have been extraordinarily helpful in helping readers locate themselves in this altered geography.

The Forgotten Cities of Delhi; Rana Safvi, HarperCollins, ₹799.

https://www.thehindu.com/books/books-reviews/the-forgotten-cities-of-delhi-review-poetry-among-the-ruins/article24482705.ece

This is the book that lovers of Urdu literature needed, to understand its history

An anthology of poetry and prose that offers a panoramic view of more than 100 years of writing.

by  Rana Safvi

Published Sep 09, 2017 · 06:30 pm

Manisha Yadav

“Kya kahiye kya rakhein hain hum tujhse, yaar khvaahish
Yak jaan, sad tamanna – yak dil hazaar khvaahish”

“My love, I cannot tell the tale of all the things I want from you.

A hundred longings fill my soul, a thousand yearnings throng my heart.”

— Mir Taqi Mir

Of late there has been a renewed interest in Urdu thanks to the internet. Although many (at least in India) are not conversant with the Urdu script, thanks to ghazals and Hindi film songs most understand and appreciate Urdu poetry written in Roman or Devnagari.

Many books of Urdu poetry were written in Roman and Devnagari with the meanings of the tough words given in footnotes, and some books even giving English translations. A generation of Urdu poetry lovers grew up on those. Now of course it’s all available on the net on various blogs and websites. Saadat Hasan Manto and Ismat Chughtai have also been transliterated in Devnagari or translated into English and become very popular.

However, not many reader friendly books have been written on Urdu poetry and prose. Many masterly academic papers remained in the realms of academia and did not percolate down to non-academic readers. So while we hear Ghulam Ali, Jagjit Singh and Mehdi Hasan often, we may not really understand the symbolism that is such an integral part of their songs. For this, we need reader-friendly books written for just such an audience.

An Urdu syllabus

Even though I have grown up hearing many of these stories and verses I found A Thousand Yearnings to be an entire course curriculum on Urdu poetry and prose. Of course there are gaps, but then teachers can’t do all the work, and once pointed in the right direction, we have to do our homework too.

Ralph Russell, who headed the Urdu department at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London for thirty years, is one such teacher. He has written many books on Ghalib and Urdu literature and, as the cover blurb by Shamsur Rehman Faruqi says, “[Ralph Russell] is easily the best Urdu scholar in the west.”

Russell, along with Marion Molteno, his student and friend, arranged his extensive notes, that were published as two separate books. The first, The Pursuit of Urdu Literature: A Select History, was published in 1993, followed by Hidden In The Lute: An Anthology Of Two Centuries Of Urdu Literature, in 1995. I found the titles of the two editions very poetic, with Hidden in the Lute being after a verse by Ghalib.

The book under review, A Thousand Yearnings – named after a verse by Mir – is an edited version of Hidden in the Lute. Molteno describes how Russell helped her discover Urdu and found in her the “ideal audience” – the kind of person who would be interested in Urdu literature but could do it only through translations.

That is the USP of the book. It talks to an audience which, though interested in the writings of the era that began in the 19th century and ended in the 20th century with the beginning of the Progressive Writers Movement, does not understand all the cultural and literary nuances. Russell explains those nuances.

The book starts with seven short stories, with the translator explaining the evolution of short stories in Urdu literature. It’s interesting that he has included Premchand’s “A Wife’s Complaint”, written in Urdu as “Shikva Shikayat”. Today many are unaware that Premchand started writing in Urdu, switching to Hindi later because it was commercially more viable.

These are Russell’s personal selection and some of them, especially Chughtai’s sketch of her brother Azim Beg Chughtai in “Hellbound” (“Dozakhi”) are very unusual and intriguing. Some, like Rashid Jahan’s “Behind The Veil” (“Parde Ke Peeche”) and Manto’s “Kali Shalwar” are very popular. The translations are fluid and impeccable.

Of course, the stories of Manto and Chugtai were a no-no in genteel houses, so I read them very recently. Fifty years ago when my aunt and sister, who were interested in improving their Urdu reading skills, went to a bookshop in Lucknow and asked for a Chughtai novel, they were told, “Bibi, girls from sharif (genteel) families don’t read such books.”

Abashed, they came back empty handed. In fact the most suitable Urdu book for young Muslim ladies was supposed to be “Bahisti Zevar” by Maulana Ashraf Aki Thanvi, a regressive book by today’s standards that was a guide to religion and the religious duties of Muslim girls. It was gifted to young brides as a bible by which to conduct their lives.

Legends and love stories

Having grown up hearing stories of Sheikh Chilli, Mullah Dopiaza and folklore, I was enthralled by the popular literature section, as most of its contents were new to me.

Urdu poetry has many references to prophets and saints and their miracles. So the explanations from famous men will come in handy for the lay reader. I don’t know from which source Russell took the story of Adam and Eve because it is at variance to the one in the Quran, where both share the blame of temptation and are supposed to have erred together. Unlike western literature, Eve alone was not held responsible for the original sin. I suppose, as in all things, patriarchy throws its shadow on Urdu literature as well, where Eve tempts Adam with wine to eat the grain of wheat, which she has already consumed.

It is the section on “Love Poetry” that intoxicates one’s senses with the beauty of Urdu poetry. It’s a master class on it, in fact, detailing the nuances of mystic poetry, the challenge to orthodoxy, the humanist values of a ghazal, and the images and allusions it contains.

Those who enjoy Ghalib and Mir – and I must confess the latter is my favorite – will love the comparison Russell draws between their love poetries, with wonderful translations. With beautiful examples Russell proves how Mir was a committed lover whose love could be classified as junoon (madness), but Ghalib held back. He had reservations, was unwilling to commit whole-heartedly, and his love was just love, not madness.

While Mir writes:

“Guzar jaan se aur dar kuchh nahin
Rah e ishq mein phir khatar kuchh nahin”

“Just sacrifice your life and fear is banished

Go on your way; all danger will have vanished”

Ghalib writes:

“Yehi hai aazmaana to sataana kis ko kehte hain?
Adu ke ho liye jab tum to mera imtihaan kyon ho?”

“If this is testing, can you tell me, what would persecution be?

If it was to him you gave your heart; what would you want with testing me?”

I am no expert on Urdu poetry but I have always felt that Ghalib held back something: his poetry was often aimed at the intellect and not the heart. Given this, I feel the chapter on Ghalib’s personal philosophy is very apt as it explains much of his writings for the lay reader. One valuable espect of the book is the section on the lives of poets, as well as the one with Ghalib’s letters, which offer insights into their life and times.

Most books on Urdu poetry and prose tend to ignore the change that came after the failed war of independence in 1857. Russell describes Sir Saiyyad Ahmed Khan, the Aligarh Movement, and the satirical poetry of Akbar Ilahbadi in the political and cultural atmosphere of that era.

For some reason he has left out the hugely popular people’s poet Nazir Akbarabadi (1735–1830) whose verses give a glimpse of the people and their lives in that era. Russell also leaves out another very popular Urdu poet, Sir Mohammad Iqbal, popularly known as the shayer e mashriq or poet of the east, as he feels that Iqbal’s appeal was only to Muslims.

Today, when we have so many issues of blasphemy and religious feelings are easily hurt, Iqbal’s Shikwa and Jawab e Shikwa should be made compulsory reading. Apart from this, Iqbal had a body of socialist poetry as well as secular verses on Ram and on Guru Nanak, while his Tarana e Hind is still sung in schools. His Naya Shivala is an ode to syncretism.

The book, which also includes selections from Farhatullah Beg’s Dilli ka Aakhiri Mushaira and Rusva’s novel Umrao Jaan Ada, is truly worth reading as it traces the history and evolution of Urdu poetry and prose, using a rich variety of selections to capture the particular milieu of the era.

A Thousand Yearnings: A Book of Urdu Poetry and Prose, Translated and introduced by Ralph Russell, Edited and with a foreword by Marion Molteno, Speaking Tiger Books.

•

Stories in stone

In search of Delhi’s first city, Mehrauli

Built of red and buff sandstone, Qutub Minar has five storeys and four balconies. (Photo: Saumya Khandelwal/HT)

---

http://m.hindustantimes.com/books/in-search-of-delhi-s-first-city-mehrauli/story-cdPyi97lpOCtVx4l5RZNLM.html