Delhi is one of those world cities that has extended its existence beyond the land on which it stands, the river off which it feeds, the maps on which it?s plotted. It has, since time immemorial, been destroyed and resurrected in the hearts and minds of its inhabitants and beyond. So when an 87-year-old Pakistani gentleman, in fact a retired Brigadier of the Pakistani army, calls himself a ?pukka Dilliwala?, it hardly fails to ring a bell.
Abdul Rahman Siddiqi was all of 23 when he had to make that morbidly haunting choice of moving to Pakistan over staying on in Delhi at the time of the partition. Siddiqi, at that time, was working as a junior sub-editor with the Delhi bureau of Dawn. Almost 65 years later, as we sat in the large living room of a bungalow he was staying in on his recent visit to the Indian capital, one can?t help but notice the thin line partitioning the lens of his bifocals. They?re much like those few sketchy lines that were good enough to partition the heart of subcontinent, the views of its people and all that they saw.
He quickly casts a spell over his visitors with a warm demeanour, as if he never left. ?Excuse me for I?m wearing a plain kurta pyjama. You know in Pakistan there are kurtas with collars that are usually worn. But I never took a liking to them. I still wear the collarless ones, like the ones I wore through my childhood in this city.? Siddiqi?s book Smoke without fire: Portraits of pre-partition Delhi was released amidst much fanfare at the Chandni Chowk town hall, around the corner which he once called home?he actually still calls it home. ?These are my emotive memories. Not nostalgia particularly. Of course because of the time it?s about, it has that element of history. But it?s not historic writing. It?s a personal story set in the wonderful city of Delhi, without much exaggeration or glorification. It is Delhi as I saw it, as I knew it. I?ve tried my best not to let nostalgia get the better of me.?. Siddiqi?s father was a wealthy and successful lawyer, and also the first elected municipal commissioner of Delhi. Siddiqi prides himself as one of the last of the vanishing breed of vintage Dilliwalas. He went to Delhi College (now Zakir Husain College) and then to St Stephen?s College.
The book itself is on a three-way see-saw between a personal memoir, the vivid little geographies of old Delhi, and a political history of perhaps the most traumatic 20th century period for the subcontinent. The writing is sharp, realistic and unapologetic. Full of anecdotes and incidents, the otherwise linear narrative has few dull moments. Of course it?s sprinkled with an Urdu couplet here and there, from the glorious literary past of this city with which many a poet was terminally in love. It begins thus: ?Ek chhappar hai shahar Dilli ka/Jaise rouza ho Sheikh Chilli ka? (This city of Delhi is either like a thatched cottage or the mausoleum of Sheikh Chilli, the proverbial braggart). It befittingly ends with Dagh Dehlavi?s ?Jawab kahe ka tha/Lajawab thi Dilli/Magar jo khiyal se dekha/To khawab thi Dilli? (Delhi was without a peer indeed. On sober reflection, however, it was all but real: a dream only).
Beyond the city itself, the story is that of its Muslim inhabitants, their trials and tribulations through an extremely turbulent time. Siddiqi, who was a ?Muslim Leaguer and in principle supported the idea of Pakistan? writes: ?I came back home absolutely crestfallen. India was free and we, as would-be Pakistanis, were aliens in our own land?our own beloved Delhi.? In fact his belief, and that of most in his mohalla was that in spite of two nations being formed, they would be able to comfortably live in the city of their ancestors. We can only begin to imagine that dilemma for scores of Abdul Rehman Siddiqis. Between home and assurances of a safe haven, between community and livelihood, between heart and mind. Today the faultlines might be clear enough, but there was a time, as Siddiqi recalls, when nationality wasn?t something you were born with, but had to choose, and it was an extremely painful choice. He presents a case against Jinnah for the ghoulishly bloody partition, as he also does against Nehru and Gandhi, although both are portrayed with respect in the book.
On the literary front, what?s missing is a strong thread to pull together the various chapters of this story. But maybe such judgement can be ignored in exchange for the matter presented. It?s certainly different from the tonnes of material written about Delhi.
All in all, flipping through Smoke without fire gives the reader a disconcerting sense of loss, of the old city as well as those who had to leave it. ?It became a most baffling and paradoxical situation: one and the same newspaper (Dawn) appearing from the capitals of two countries, born out of implacable hatreds… Still intact was the legend on the masthead ?Founded by Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah?. It looked too odd and out of place. Quaid-i-Azam, who? And whose?? Dawn couldn?t be published from Delhi for long, and that made Siddiqi realise that he had to leave.
So on October 9, 1947, Siddiqi said goodbye to Delhi, as he boarded a flight to Pakistan from Safdarjung airport. He writes, ?From my window seat I had a good view of the Red Fort and Jama Masjid. I was too overwrought to have any definite feeling: I did not quite know if I was more relieved to get away from the troubled city in one piece or grieved over leaving the city where I had been born and brought up. It might have been a dream; but only the sort of endless dream the dead alone could dream.? But somewhere he never left. Nothing could take his Dilli out of him. The city still lingers within him, and one is reminded of a couplet by poet Zauq. ?In dinon garche dakkan mein hai badi qadr-e-sukhan/Kaun jaaye ?Zauq? par Dilli ki galiyaan chhod kar? (These days there is increased recognition of literature in Deccan, but who, Zauq, would leave the lanes of Delhi).
Smoke Without Fire: Portraits Of Pre-Partition Delhi
Abdul Rahman Siddiqi
Aakar Books
Rs. 695
