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impressions The
raconteur departs
impressions On my right, a girl
types away rather intensely and time-and-again she looks at the door of the
café, while on my left a young couple can’t decide on their weekend plans:
movie, dinner, shopping, or all. This is a typical Café Coffee Day (CCD)
scene at the Rajiv Chowk Metro Station, a place that is always abuzz with
youngsters regardless of whether they are travelling by Metro or not. Three days into my first
ever trip to Delhi and I too have also become a regular CCD guest. It was a
three-day ‘South Asian media briefing on climate change’ by the Centre
for Science and Environment that brought almost 90 Saarc journalists together
at the Gulmohar Hall, India Habitat Centre on Lodhi Road. After the end of
the workshop, I am putting up at a moderately decent Bloomrooms hotel in
Jangpura in Southern part of the city. Travelling through the city
by Metro is thus both a necessity and something I look forward to; my day
would be incomplete without a CCD yatra. In fact, if there is one thing that
I enjoyed most in Delhi, it was these Metro rides.
Outside is no different.
There are people who look like you and yet aren’t shy of showing affection
openly. No, the social order isn’t disrupted if your boyfriend holds your
hand or even hugs you. While pointing towards one such pair, my friend
Siddhant asks me, “How do dating couples act in Pakistan?” I try to
explain to him how we’re supposed to ‘act’ as couples. “And what
about the gestures, don’t they give everything away?” he asks. In public,
I tell him, such is our training that even a married couple would look like
siblings. Like most Pakistanis, I had
also seen and known my eastern neighbour India through Bollywood mostly.
Growing up in the 1990s, for me India was always a country which had love in
the air, where people sang and dance at the drop of a hat, in short
everything that Pakistan was not or could ever be. India also was the enemy
state. I am given a stern warning by some of my Indian friends that
purchasing a Sim might prove difficult for a Pakistani. It turns out that a
valid passport and photograph are good enough, even if happen to be a
Pakistani. Interestingly, a friend from Vernasi is rejected a New Delhi Sim
(yes that’s how the Sims work there) even after he shows his valid voter
ID. He gets furious and tells the teleco salesman, “You can give the Sim to
a Pakistani but not to your own citizen”. That becomes the joke for the
entire trip. Shopping and food remains
on top of the agenda. Starting from Chandni Chowk that I had romanticised
from Shah Rukh Khan’s KKKG, I am sure I’ll recognise the place until I
actually get there only to realise how wrong I am. Yes there is a Haldiram
(that I knew) but the actual Chandni Chowk’s romance lies in its chaos. It
is one of the oldest and busiest wholesale markets in North Delhi.
Chandni Chowk and the
surrounding areas are a hub of this activity, especially at this time of the
year. “Not many Delhi youngsters are interested in kite flying because they
waste all their time on th The Jama Masjid at the
beginning of the Chawri Bazaar Road in old Delhi on a Friday afternoon is
swarmed with worshippers and tourists. Interestingly, the Friday sermon is
being delivered on external loudspeakers and even if you aren’t part of the
congregation you must listen to the entire sermon. In Pakistan the government
has banned the use of external loudspeakers during Friday prayers. Or at
least officially. When I tell this to my friend, he replies rather
arrogantly: “India is a secular country, we have to respect the freedoms
given by the constitution.” Hauz Khas in South Delhi is
one of the posh neighbourhoods; the historic Hauz Khas Complex is centrally
located and has areas which are peaceful. This locality gives you the taste
of modern Delhi, with boutiques, art galleries, restaurants, cafes and all.
Kunzum Travel Café in the Hauz Khas Village is a unique space. A place where
travellers could meet and exchange travel stories. A café that offers free
coffee, cookies and wifi with a “pay what you like” sign also offers a
gallery space for photographers and artists. This theme café is close to our
local Pak Tea House, a space for the literati in yesteryear. Humayun’s Tomb in
Nizamuddin East where the famous song ‘Shukran Allah’ from Saif Ali Khan
and Kareena Kapoor starrer ‘Kurbaan’ is shot has recently been renovated
after six years of conservation work by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture. Qutub Minar, the tallest
minar in India, inscribed with Arabic inscriptions, is surrounded by several
other ancient and medieval structures and ruins, which are collectively known
as the Qutub Complex. Lodhi Gardens, Purana Qila, Nizamuddin Auliya’s
Dargah, Delhi Gate and Rashtpati Bhawan are must-see touristy places in the
city. Having been to Connaught
Place, Khan Market on Lodhi Road and Dilli Haat for shopping and eating the
finest Bengali cuisine at ‘Oh Calcutta!’ in Nehru Place, it is time to
return to the hotel. And what better companion could I find than Delhi Metro! The writer is a staff
member and she tweets @nailainayat
The
raconteur departs “My papers are
ready,” said Nawaz Ali Khoso without a shade of misgiving. “I will be
recalled any day now.” The simple delivery I first heard from my friend in
1999 was full of the joy of a life well and usefully lived. I heard it again
every time I met him thereafter. Now when I next go to
Nagarparker, Nawaz Ali Khoso will no longer be there to talk of the old days.
I will have to go to his grave to have my last words with him.I met this
wonderful teller of the most esoteric and interesting tales back in August
1998. Nagarparker, Nawaz Ali’s
home, resounded with the calls of peacocks as thick dark storm clouds raced
overhead leaving a cool dampness and a welcome chill in the air — a chill
even in August. I went seeking him because my friend Raheal Siddiqui had told
me of him. Of medium height, with a
craggy face and upturned moustaches; as he emerged from his home, he walked
tall despite his nearly seventy years of age. I said I wanted to hear tales
of Nagarparker of old. Nawaz Ali ducked back in to get his walking stick
before taking me by the hand and leading me into the heart of the old bazaar
of Nagar, as this magical, mystical desert town dwarfed by the Karoonjhar
Hills is known to its children. Back in the 1940s Nawaz Ali
had served in the local customs service. His beat ranged from Chachro to well
beyond Nagar in undivided India and he worked it on horseback — finished
goods from Kutch and Kathiawar or from Shikarpur going this way that had to
be taxed, he had told me. It was his work to see that none went through
without paying dues. I do not recall if he ever
told me how he built up his vast and utterly amazing repertoire of tales, but
there was nothing that Nawaz Ali did not know about his desert. When he told
the tale of Roopa Kohli, the brave general who defeated a Raj army in 1859,
the pride came through clear as day. And when the escapades of Lieutenant
George Tyrwhitt were narrated none of the feeling was lost. Nawaz Ali Khoso owned
everything that had ever transpired in his native Thar for he was the truest
son of the desert I have ever met. We walked and we walked
around the little town of Nagar, Nawaz Ali’s ferrule-tipped walking stick
making a steady tap-tap-tap on the flagstones of the old streets. From
Tyrwhitt, he segued to Marvi and Amar, the prince of Umarkot. I could almost
feel the waver of emotion in his voice even as my own eyes misted at his
heartfelt rendering of the tale told a thousand times. We sat on the steps of the
ruinous and abandoned Jain temple at the top of the street and Nawaz Ali
recalled for me the glory days of Nagar in pre-partition India. It was not a
little village marooned on the edge of a country; then it was a thriving
trading centre on the old route between upper Sindh and Kutch. This bazaar where we saw
only padlocked stores with caved in roofs was where the goldsmiths kept shop.
They were all Hindus who were forced to migrate about the time of the 1971
conflict. “The rich Hindus of Nagar
who gave colour to my desert town are now all gone; only the poor remain,”
said Nawaz Ali. If on all my outings I missed the annual festival of
Shivratri at the Sardhara temple in a quiet glen of the Karoonjhar, I know of
it almost first-hand from my friend’s description. I don’t seem to have
missed the minutest detail of the celebration without ever having been to the
temple. I was always struck by
Nawaz Ali’s complete lack of religious bias. On more occasions than this,
Nawaz Ali, himself a practicing Muslim, had shown himself to be a man without
religious prejudice. That was the essence of his Baloch culture. As he told me the story of
George Tyrwhitt he encouraged me to climb the Karoonjhar peak known to this
day as ‘Turwutt jo Thullo’ — Pedestal of Tyrwhitt. Though I would have
liked nothing better than to walk with Nawaz Ali in the red ravines of this
breathtakingly beautiful hill range, he declined. He was too old for the
short trek, he said but he sent his son as my guide. On another outing, Nawaz
Ali and I walked away from the village and there in a Karoonjhar ravine, by a
thorny flowering bush we sat. As the song of white-cheeked bulbuls leapt out
of the thickets, this good man told me that the name Karoonjhar signified
Black Sprinkling. The hills are fine quality
granite of pink colouring with a dash of black. I was surprised why this
simple yet evocative title and its meaning had missed Sindhi intellectuals
because as far as I know, it has never been sung. Borrowing my notebook, he
drew a rough sketch of the hills to give me a detailed description Karoonjhar
hydrology. He knew the number of waterways carrying down rainwater from the
weathered granite summits to the parched dunes around town. He knew of the
basins within and outside the folds of the Karoonjhar and was aware that the
large basin deep in the hills would be good to charge the aquifer. Nawaz Ali also suggested
that there were at least three sites suitable for dams to store the runoff.
All this could only have come from either an educated hydrologist or someone
who had walked every inch of the hills to see and understand the drainage. Now my friend Dr Khatau Mal
sends word from Mithi in the desert that the raconteur of Nagarparker is no
more with us. An era has ended in Nagar — nay, in the entire desert from
Nagar to the northernmost reach of its sand dunes in Sanghar district. Now no
one will sing Roopa Kohli and Marvi of the desert to raise goose bumps and
mist the eyes of the listener. My dear and revered friend, Nawaz Ali Khoso
who had so long known that his papers were ready, has finally been called up.
May his spirit dwell
forever in the lovely red ravines of the Karoonjhar that he so loved.
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As a journo friend puts it,
“Delhiites are proud of their Metro”. I’m sure they have sound reasons
— international standards, or that it has helped take the traffic load off
the roads, or even the ‘citizen service’ rhetoric. As for me, I had my
own innocent reason — freedom from the constant iteration of being a woman.
There aren’t eyes set constantly on you, you could dress the way you want
to, and you are one free person ready to go wherever you want.
Walking away from the chaos
of the bazaar, I look up at the sky and am amazed to find it packed with
colourful kites. My friends cannot understand my excitement. I realise that,
ever since the ban on kite flying was imposed in Punjab in 2005, it is the
first time I am seeing young boys on the rooftops flying kites doing
patangbaazi. After almost eight years.
e computer,” tells a kite seller. He is unhappy
the tradition is not being kept alive as it should be, but when I tell him
how on our side of Punjab there is now a generation that doesn’t even know
about Basant, he replies, “Arre phir tu hum he achay hai ge, bacho ki marzi
tu hai na.”
