’’A labyrinth, a city of palaces, an open gutter, a landscape of domes, an anarchy, a press of people, a choke of fumes, a whiff of spices.’’
The story of Delhi is about survival - time and again, Delhi was ransacked and razed to nothing, yet it rose again, for which legend gives due to the invisible Djinns that have made Delhi their residence and protect it, and the curse that whoever rebuilt it would lose the city. The flavor of myth overshadows all aspects, past and present, making Delhi seem as fabulous as the Baghdad of Arabian Nights.
WD (William Dalrymple) peels back the layers of Delhi’s history, in a travelogue/memoir that goes back in time, from the 1984 riots to the Indraprastha, the mythical city of Pandavas.
The forces that shaped Delhi over a 1000 years and beyond, leave tokens scattered around, some prominently visible as tourist landmarks. Yet others are unmarked ruins, their significance escaping passers-by. Still others are masked by conversion to govt. offices and hospitals. It is curious how many such exist undiscovered, leaving the city a still-fresh archaeological dig site. The thrill of a hunt catches us, as WD wades through musty libraries and ancient documents, and locates a hidden blocked pathway-Was this a secret tunnel from the Red Fort, leading to the river for a getaway in times of danger?
The other hunt is more mystical - WD gives a descriptive account of the sufi faith, and the famed ’whirling dervish’, the sufi in a trance. He also goes in search of the fascinating origins of the tale of a mysterious Djinn called Khwaja Khizr, savior of sufis (and others) in trouble, finding the same mentioned in texts across centuries all the way back to the epic Gilgamesh (of the Sumerians, dated 2600 B.C.). There is also another thread where he pursues archaeological proof of whether the Mahabharatha was myth or actual history.
The claustrophobia and ruined grandeur of Old Delhi, and the modern city of tree-lined avenues of Lutyens’ New Delhi (its architect) are as different from each other as their human remnants. Anglo_indians left over from the Raj, unable to reconcile to changing times, alienated from fellow Indians and excluded by Britain; old colonial types, pickled at around 1948, speaking in permanently time-warped British accents and preserving English rituals grafted to a tropical setting; the eunuchs speaking courtly Urdu of a bygone Mughal period; the sadhus of Nigambodh Ghats, dating to the earliest period of Delhi’s history. And the newest - modern Punjabis, immigrants of Partition times and driving commerce.
WD weaves his historical narrative with accounts of his Delhi household - Mrs. Puri, his practical minded thrifty landlady, Balwinder Singh the amorous Sikh taxi driver, the mali, the sweeper, the cook. Gentle comic effect flows from WD’s unfamiliarity as he learns to make sense of Delhi life, as seen through idiosyncratic expressions and aspirations of these particular Delhi denizens. Delhi’s politicos and the society types appear in very brief descriptions elsewhere.
While we occasionally still whine about the colonial influence on our culture, the reverse India Effect on the former ruler is deeper. WD, fresh from Britain’s Raj nostalgia of the 1980s, came to India expecting a similar amount of harking back to the period here, and was staggered by how much of that baggage has been shed, and how little it is remembered. It was a golden time for Britain, remembered unsurprisingly with positive feelings, unlikely to be reciprocated here. His astonishment reminds me of an old British expat in Vietnam greeting me with ’’You’re from the Empire, aren’t you?’’ and my (obvious) lack of understanding of fellow-feeling this was meant to create. WD observes that to the modern Indian, the age of the British Empire is as remote in influence as the Roman Empire to the modern Briton. An account of William Fraser, in the period of early British pioneers who adopted local customs and went native, takes up a big chunk and is interesting for the same India Effect. This is stuff you would not find in other books, and WD is able to go into great detail, as Fraser was an ancestor of his wife.
Delhi’s history has two predominant faces to it - the wild frontier feel, during the times of early Muslim invaders from the North and the early British presence, with its opportunities of rapid advancement, and violent ends. The second is the decay, self-indulgence and cultivated debauchery of late Mughal empire. The Twilight Period seems the lowest point, between the two massacres and sackings of Delhi, one by Nadir Shah of Persia (when he made off with the fabled Peacock Throne) and the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, after which the British destroyed a number of irreplaceable monuments in a petty display of vengeful spirit. Power shifts however were never easy or civilized at any time- the intrigues of the royal family during the Shahjahan-Aurangzeb period are colorful and gossipy.
Violence is no stranger, and extreme violence on a mass scale seems to visit with cyclical regularity. Tyrannical rulers like Tughlaq, massacres by invaders like Nadir Shah, the Partition (the largest forced mass migration in history) that changed the demographics of Delhi completely, the Sepoy Mutiny, the 1984 riots after the death of Mrs. Gandhi. What does living on thin ice constantly, in such extreme hazard to life and property do to human beings. Does life return to its primitive essentials, or turn escapist? With the fear of losing all in the next riot, strangely there is more clinging to materialism, not less.
The vestiges of Mughal era - bird fights, urdu calligraphy and the strange culture of using eunuchs as watchdogs, and their ambivalent status (considered talismans of good luck, but excluded from normal society and a curse if born to a family) make for interesting reading. Eunuchs are not specific to Delhi, but WD couldn’t resist including it, I suppose, Delhi being his first taste of India.
In a typical western habit, Delhi’s variegated weather inspires a good deal of lush embroidered descriptions of coppery skies, dust talcumed greenery, and the enervating heat of the summer (’’The heat assaulted you like a mugger the moment you stepped out of the air-conditioning’’), and the bone-cracking chill of gray shroud-like winters ( ’’Winter lay curled like a cobra across the land’’). Each chapter deals with a period in Delhi’s history, in tandem with a season of Delhi weather.
A long vacation...
WD’s is the perfect vacation-it was long enough to get a multi-layered impression, and it had a permanent outcome (this book). From 1989, he and his wife Olivia spent four years in Delhi, researching the book. Any writing deficiencies or simplicities of approach must be charitably overlooked - WD was very young when he wrote this. He wrote his first book In Xanadu, at the tender age of 22.
Mapping Nostalgia
WD manages to evoke nostalgia for a city that you may never live in - the last time I got a standout impression of Delhi was in the film Chashm-e-Baddoor. A remarkable effect - the map of Delhi is now vividly in mind, though on my first visit long ago, I couldn’t keep the landmarks, routes and names straight. Seeing it now with all the historical evocations, its hard to forget.