This is a labour of love, and one that transports us back to the past, to 18th- and 19th-century Delhi. We are drawn into the world of the dizzyingly beautiful and free-spirited Wazir Khanam, mother of the famous poet Dagh Dehlavi, who courts an Englishman, a nawab and a Mughal prince. The tumultuous life and times of Khanam mirror what is happening around her, the stunning rise and decline of Muslim culture, brought about by colonial rule, and also partly by the lackadaisical attitude of the 1850s? Mughals, so poignantly portrayed in Premchand?s Shatranj Ke Khiladi.
The social milieu makes Khanam who she is, a patron of the arts, a lover of miniature painting and other craft, a follower of music and poetry. She was born sometime around 1811, the third and youngest daughter of Muhammad Yusuf, a gold jewellery maker. By 1829-30, she was ?attached? to Nawab Shamshuddin Ahmad Khan, ruler of Firozepur Jhirka and Loharu. Before this, she had been ?attached? to Edward Marston Blake, an Englishman and father of her two children. Though this is a fictional account of her life, Khanam is a historical character.
This is as much her story as it is that of her ancestors who wandered from a village near Kishangarh to the deserts of Rajputana to the life-saving valley of Kashmir and finally on to Delhi. Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, celebrated critic, poet and writer, who first wrote the novel in Urdu, Kai Chand the Sar-e-asman, in 2006, and translated it into English, gives us a sweeping view of a culture now lost and, thus, a sense of where we come from, our customs, rituals, passions and the places we hail from.
The lyrical descriptions of Kashmir are simply unforgettable?this from Urfi, the poet of the Great Mughal: ?The anguished soul, burnt out with pain,/Even if it were a bird, roasted to a kebab/ If it went to Kashmir, its wings and feathers/Would be renewed; let there be no doubt about it.? Old Delhi, too, comes alive in these pages: ?Early October 1830: In these times, homes, even stately homes, could be established as easily as they could be destroyed. The city of Delhi in particular had always seen sky-kissing mansions erected and peopled with dwellers in months, if not in weeks.? This was a time when Delhi?s Chandni Chowk, with its ?hum and bustle of life?, the lights and flowering shrubs on both sides of Saadat Khan?s canal and through the length of the Chowk were filled with people indulging in poetry and gossip.
There?s always poetry. When Khanam?s great grandfather Muhammad Yahya passes away, his wife Bashirunnisa took to her bed after the 40th day mourning ceremonies, and never recovered. As she breathes her last, she whispers, ?For how long can you go on asking/About life, about death?/The sun entered through a crack in the wall, and went away.?
When Khanam courts her lovers, poetry overflows. ?By visiting me for a few short moments,/You disrupted my taste for being alone,? she is reminded of Mir Hasan?s poems when she is lost in the thoughts of Nawab Shamsuddin Ahmad. At other times, Mirza Ghalib?s verses come to her mind when she needs them most or the ghazals of Hafiz or famous lines from the pen of Mir Taqi Mir. She is acutely aware of her powers to charm men, but she is schooled in a culture that does not allow her to cross a boundary. She is witty, humorous, full of life and the exchanges during her numerous courtships are delightful. And yet she faces tragedy at every turn. Three of the four men she wooed and loved died prematurely, and they were all unnatural deaths. Blake died in a riot in Jaipur, Agha Mirza Turab Ali was killed by thugs and Nawab Shamsuddin Ahmad Khan was hanged in public.
The person who delivered her from being mistress to wife, Mirza Fathul Mulk Shah Bahadur, also died suddenly in 1856 when the last of the Mughals were relinquishing power to the British. When she is being charmed by Mirza Fathul, she wonders: ??is the story of my life to be only a story of loss and search? ?.? She had heard about certain kind of people: they could begin well, but could not finish. ?Am I then, one of those? But are we capable of ever bringing something to a conclusion?? When she is forced to leave Delhi?she had to face the machinations of a host of jealous relatives her whole life because of the way she chose to live?her head is bent, and her body fully wrapped in a chador, and she is able to see nothing. Faruqi brings alive a bygone era, replete with characters who believed in living for pleasure, for the arts, for poetry, music, and how they were invariably heading for doomsday, as the British tightened their hold over them.
Sudipta Datta is a freelancer