Tales of the Open Road Read online

  But there were things I came to like about Delhi, even in summer. The smell of a hot Indian summer is one smell that can never be forgotten. It is not just the thirsty earth with its distinctive odour, but all other ingredients of a hot weather in the plains that go to make this season almost intolerable on the one hand and sweetly memorable on the other. For who can forget that summer brings the jasmine, whose sweet scent drifts past us on the evening breeze along with the stronger odours and scents of mango blossom, raat-ki-rani and cowdung smoke.

  Although I have spent most of my life in the hills. I grew up in some fairly hot places—humid Kathiawar ports, dusty old New Delhi, and the steamy Terai—and I am no stranger to prickly heat, mosquito bites, intermittent fever and dysentery and other hot-weather afflictions. Today’s residents of the capital complain of pollution and overcrowding, and I wouldn’t exchange my mountain perch for the pleasure of being fried crisp, but at least half of them have air conditioning, coolers, refrigerators and other means to keep the heat at bay. In 1940s’ Delhi you were lucky to have a small table fan, and that was effective only if the bhisti, or water-carrier, came around with his goatskin bag, splashing water on to the khas-khas matting draped from your door or window; otherwise the fan simply blew hot air at you. I was in Delhi in the early ’40s, living with my father, and I shall never forget the fragrant, refreshing smell of the wet khas-reed which cooled the rooms and verandas of New Delhi bungalows (the only high-rise building was the Qutab Minar).

  My father and I lived in a small RAF hutment on the fringe of the scrub jungle near Humayun’s tomb (a multi-storeyed hotel now occupies the site, and the jungle has been cleared to make way for the expensive residential area of Sunder Nagar). This was then furthest Delhi, where one could expect to find peacocks in the garden and a snake in the bathroom. The bhisti and the khas-khas helped us to survive that summer. As did the box-like wind-up gramophone on which I played endless records which had to be stored flat in order to prevent them from warping and assuming weird shapes in the heat.

  SILVER STREET, ’59

  One humid, uncomfortable September morning in 1959, I took the first bus into Chandni Chowk—Moonlight Square, or Silver Street. It set out from the historic Ajmere Gate, where old Delhi ends abruptly and ‘Government’ Delhi begins.

  The bus took us past the great wide stretch of the Ramlila Grounds, where, at this early hour, there was considerable activity: young men in shorts and singlets sprinted about the ground; others, well-oiled and massaged, wrestled on the grass. Some played volleyball; others stood facing the sun, praying. There were also a few, further away, studying books, mumbling to themselves, or making speeches to invisible audiences, while all around them men scrubbed their teeth with neem twigs, bathed at the public tap, tied dhotis and turbans and prepared for the business of the long day that lay ahead.

  Soon the sun would be up, government clerks would drink innumerable cups of tea (how like the English!), and the machinery of civilization and bureaucracy would run on as smoothly as ever.

  We drove past the great walls of the Red Fort, Shah Jahan’s palace, from the ramparts of which the Indian flag now fluttered in the breeze. Here Shah Jahan reigned in all the splendour of the Mughal Empire at the height of its power; and here an old Emperor, the last of the Mughals, lived in shabby poverty and wrote poetry, until the sepoys from Meerut made him a figurehead again.

  Chandni Chowk was still the heart of Delhi in the late 1950s, as many of the markets of South and Central Delhi that are now popular with shoppers had not yet come up. It throbbed with vitality—even more alive than before with the advent of the enterprising Punjabi after Partition. The old buildings and landmarks were still there, the lanes and alleys as tortuous as ever, getting narrower as you went along, on foot or cycle-rickshaw, until the sky was almost shut out. Many of the shops were mere holes in the wall (as indeed they still are) and their wares spilled out on the pavement and across the tramlines—toys, silks and cottons, glassware, china, furniture, carpets and perfumes.

  In front of the Municipal buildings the statue of Queen Victoria, which has since been removed, frowned upon the populace, as ugly as most statues, flecked with white pigeons’ droppings. The pigeons, hundreds of them, sat on the railings and telephone wires, their drowsy murmurings muted by the sounds of the street, the cries of vendors and tonga drivers and the rattle of the tram.

  The tram, now discontinued, was already a museumpiece. I do not think it had been replaced since it was first installed in the early twentieth century. It crawled along the crowded thoroughfare, clanging at an impatient five miles an hour, bursting at the seams with its load of people, while small children hung on by their toes and eyebrows.

  Neither the tram nor the rickshaws appeared to bother an ash-smeared ascetic who sat at the side of the road and cooked himself a meal, or a hefty villager with a lotus flower tattooed on his forearm who stood in the middle of the street, staring at the Sunehri Masjid.

  In the day of Shah Jahan, of course, Chandni Chowk would have been much wider and far less crowded. Historical records suggest that it was a wide avenue running from the Lahore Gate of the Red Fort to where the Fatehpuri Mosque still stands. In the middle of the avenue flowed a pleasant water-course. This channel from the West Jumna canal was built by Ali Mardan Khan to supply the palace with water; it gave the marketplace an attractive appearance, but in later years it was covered over, and nothing remains of it today.

  A remarkable lady known as Begum Samru once lived in Chandni Chowk; her former residence, already lost behind a bank and a cinema in the fifties, is now a market for electrical goods. Begum Samru was originally a Kashmiri dancing-girl, who married the French adventurer Walter Reinhardt, known as Samru, or Sombre, because of his swarthy complexion. He came to India in 1750, and became the leader of a band of sepoys and European deserters. He fought for the Bharatpur Raja, and for Najaf Khan of Delhi, and it was from the latter that he received a grant of the Pargana of Sardhana, fifty-two miles from Delhi.

  After Samru’s death, his Begum succeeded to his domains. She became a Roman Catholic and built a cathedral near Sardhana, which still stands. Among her many lovers were the French adventurer Le Vaissoult, who committed suicide, and the Irish adventurer George Thomas, who for a few glorious years held kingdoms of his own at Hansi, Jhajjar and Karnal. He had on one occasion to make a dash from Jhajjar to Sardhana to rescue the Begum from her mutinous soldiers, who had chained her between two guns, placing her astride one of them at midday, when it was almost red-hot. Thomas got her out of this predicament, as he did from many others. She was none the worse for it, though, and survived other stormy episodes, to live to a ripe old age.

  Chandni Chowk has often been called the richest street in Asia; it was not so long ago that great treasures were hidden away in the shops of curio dealers and jewellers. One of the most famous of these merchants was Messrs Kishan Chand and Sons, the firm that made the famous thousand-rupee ‘Peacock Gown’, which was worn by Lady Curzon at the Durbar Ball at the Delhi Fort in 1903, at which there were four thousand guests. Among the firm’s treasures was a large black marble table, brought from Agra, where it had once been in the possession of Emperor Akbar.

  Fifty, even thirty, years ago, you could strike up a conversation with any shop owner in Chandni Chowk, or a resident of the area trying to beat you to a rickshaw, and you would hear colourful legends about the place. In 2004, I was in the Silver Street again after more than thirty years, and confused by the crowds I asked for directions to Begum Samru’s Palace. Three of the four people I asked had not heard of the Begum. The fourth directed me to a spanking new fast-food outlet!

  WALKING THE STREETS OF NEW DELHI, ’71

  I settled down for good in Mussoorie in 1963, but of course I was to revisit Delhi many times, even spending a couple of winters there. On one of these visits, in 1971, I was staying at my friend Kamal’s house in Rajouri Garden, a Punjabi colony in West Delhi. Needless to say, there were no garde
ns, and hardly any trees, and I would often wander off and spend almost the entire day in search of less depressing sights. One day I walked all the way to Connaught Place—a distance of eight miles—and back. When I mentioned this over dinner at night, the family greeted me with a bewildered silence.

  Finally my friend’s mother, a practical Punjabi lady, asked: ‘How did you lose your money?’ She kept hers knotted in the end of her sari, and believed that people who kept their money in easily snatched handbags and wallets were asking for trouble.

  ‘I haven’t lost anything,’ I said.

  ‘Aren’t the buses running?’

  ‘Oh, the buses are running. One nearly ran over me.’

  ‘Then why did you walk?’

  The consensus of opinion was that I was a little mad. They have never heard of anyone in Delhi walking from choice. They preferred to wait long periods for overcrowded buses, even if the distance to be covered was only a furlong.

  But I was glad I had walked, though Delhi to me has always been one of the least attractive cities in which to walk about. There weren’t even a tenth of the vehicles in the city thirty years ago than there are today, but crossing roads could still be hazardous. Single- and double-decker buses (many emitting smokescreens of diesel fumes), wildly driven taxis, unpredictable scooter-rickshaws, slow-moving Ambassador and Fiat cars and even slower tongas, and thousands of wavering, wayward cyclists made for chaos on the streets. On the main roads, cyclists were frequently knocked over and killed.

  Setting out on my long walk that morning, I had realized that the pavement was meant for almost every purpose except walking. I was on the Najafgarh Road, heading in the general direction of central Delhi. It was a straight road, but this was no straight walk. To find a thirty-yard stretch of unoccupied pavement was most unlikely. In a territory where every square foot of land had a high price, why should so much good pavement go to waste?

  The first two wayside stalls belonged to sellers of lottery tickets. Theirs was a thriving business, perhaps much more than it is now, in the absence of television quizzes and game shows. All over Delhi, at almost every street corner, there was someone selling lottery tickets. The prizes were attractive enough. The owner of the winning ticket collected Rs 2,50,000—sometimes more—and there were a number of other prizes. And the income accruing to the state was also tremendous—so much so that almost every state in the country, including Delhi, had climbed on the lottery bandwagon. After all, it is easier than collecting taxes. No one, not even the street sweeper, grudged giving a rupee to the government if there was a chance in a million of his winning a fortune.

  Not surprisingly, it was the rich businessman who often went in for lottery tickets in a big way, sometimes buying up forty or fifty tickets at a time. It was usually they who struck gold, not the poor, who could rarely, if ever, afford a ticket.

  There was an extended family of Lohiawalas, a gypsy tribe of blacksmiths who had wandered into Delhi, camped on a pavement on Najafgarh Road, and were going about their ancient and traditional way of living. They were indifferent to the fast pace, the noise of traffic, the neon signs and Western clothes that surrounded them on all sides. Their bullock carts (in which they travelled and slept and had their babies and died) stood just off the pavement; these weree lined with old iron stamped with decorative patterns and studded with coloured stones.

  A charcoal fire had been made in a hole in the ground, and this was kept alive by a bellows worked by a wheel turned by an attractive woman wearing a black blouse and black skirt. This sombre attire was set off by heavy silver anklets and a pair of very lively eyes. Another pair of bellows had been fashioned out of goatskin. A man was beating out a strip of red-hot tin on his anvil. A boy was filling a bent bicycle-pump with sand (to keep it firm) before straightening it out with his hammer. The entire family, including bearded old men, wizened old women ready to take off on broomsticks, and naked grandchildren, was at work. Handsome people, these; and although they lived in dirt and squalor, they seemed quiet and dignified.

  A little farther along the road were some people making what appeared to be straw mats. These turned out to be roofs for the small shacks belonging to the Rajasthani labourers who lived on the other side of an open drain. The walls of these shacks were about four feet high, the rooms about six feet square. There was no sanitation; people used the drain. They bathed at a public tap. During the rains, water moved sluggishly along this drain, but now it was dry except for pools of stagnant, slimy water, a grey liquid tinged with green. It must have held treasures for anyone searching for biological specimens. (And indeed, the enterprising Delhiwala had not ignored this possibility, for further along, on Link Road, frogs were on sale to biology students.)

  At this side of the road lay a dead pony, knocked down at night by a speeding truck. A portion had been eaten away by dogs and jackals. It was now being pecked at by crows; when the birds tired of the stinking carcass they moved on to a nearby fruit stall. No one seemed to notice this, least of all the fruit vendors. Well-dressed people passed by without a glance at dead horse or open drain. Was it apathy, or was it that Delhi people—city people—were unobservant by nature? Did city life dull the perceptions? Were the giant cinema hoardings so overpowering, so dazzling, that everything else paled into insignificance beside them? (How much worse it must be now!)

  Some of the shack-dwellers had tried to make their homes attractive. They had whitewashed their walls, adorned them with crude but colourful drawings of birds and animals. But what a contrast there was between these humble homes and the elegant villas and bungalows of Kirti Nagar, Patel Road and Pusa Road, three prosperous areas of Delhi which lay on my route. A tenant had to pay anything from three to five hundred rupees a month for a tiny flat in one of those fine houses, and back then this was a princely sum.

  It took me two hours of foot-slogging to finally reach Connaught Place, which was still the premier shopping centre of New Delhi. I remembered it well from my childhood, in the war years, and in 1971 it hadn’t changed much. The milk bar I frequented as a boy was still there, although they did not sell milk any more; now it was espresso coffee and hamburgers. The Regal cinema had switched over to Hindi films. In its cellar was a discotheque. Shopfronts were more flashy, but service-lanes had not altered. And of course the faces and clothes were different. The British uniforms of the war years had given way to the uniforms of the hippies, who slouched about in beads and togas, unaccepted and even scorned by the local citizens. (Indians, and certainly the middle-class Punjabi, are not impressed by people who do not dress well!)

  I was tired and hungry, and I lunched at a dhaba, one of many lining the outer pavements round Connaught Place. Outside, on the road, a small crowd had gathered round a turbaned Pathan. For a moment I feared violence to this exotic stranger; then I realized that the crowd was merely curious, even in good humour. The Pathan was extolling the virtues of an aphrodisiac mixture which he was trying to sell. ‘Be happy!’ he cried. ‘And make your bulbul happy!’

  In spite of the family-planning hoarding directly behind him, he appeared to be doing good business.

  It was, after all, the marriage season.

  I was forcibly reminded of this on my way back to Rajouri garden in the evening. The roads in and out of every other residential area were blocked by shamianas put up for marriage receptions. This was illegal, but the fine was a small one, and when a father was spending thousands on his daughter’s wedding, he didn’t mind paying a fine of forty rupees.

  I found myself involved in a marriage procession on Pusa Road. It was impossible to get past the throng of people in the baraat, so I remained with them for some distance. If I chose to attend the reception, no one would turn me away. As most of the guests were seeing each other for the first time, it was possible for any well-dressed person to join the festivities. It was a colourful procession, headed by small urchin boys carrying gas lamps. After them came the bandwalas in red coats and white spats and Salvation Army caps, pl
aying an admixture of military marches and popular Hindi film tunes of the sixties. Then the bridegroom’s beautifully clothed friends and relatives. And finally the bridegroom, enthroned on top of a gaily caparisoned jeep.

  I took a side road finally and left the procession, but found my way blocked by another marriage party. This time a heavily built Sikh, slightly tipsy, embraced me as a long-lost brother. He seemed to know me. Quite possibly I knew him when he was a smooth-cheeked lad of fifteen; but now, disguised by a magnificent beard, he reminded me of no one I have ever known. But he wanted me to join his party, and so, to humour him, I accompanied him for about a hundred yards, when he suddenly forgot me and rushed at some other old acquaintance.

  I encountered another three processions, and four more shamianas, before I reached Rajouri Garden. I kept going by eating boiled eggs. These were sold on the roadside, sliced and served with pepper and salt on a piece of newspaper.

  I was almost home. It did not look as though anyone in Delhi slept at night, but I was ready for bed.

  But there was something I had to do first.

  The seller of lottery tickets had been staring hopefully at me, and I hated to disappoint him last thing at night. So I produced a rupee and bought a ticket; and, in doing so, I felt that I had finally identified myself with the good people of Delhi.

  STREET OF THE RED WELL

  The sun beat down on the sweltering city of Old Delhi. Not a breath of air stirred in the narrow, winding streets. The old walled city, over three hundred years old, had no open spaces, no fountains, no sidewalks, no shady avenues. I had chosen what was quite possibly the hottest day in May, the temperature over 45° Celsius, to go walking in search of—what? A story, perhaps an adventure. Or that was what I set out to do. The heat of the day had willed otherwise.