The Exalted Citadel and the Royal Observatory

The Exalted Citadel and the Royal Observatory

Text, Drawings and Photographs © Anisha Shekhar Mukherji

October 2011

What makes a city? Its buildings and streets? Or is it the people who live in it? And how would you recognise a world heritage city?

In my understanding, what ultimately makes a city is its people. A city does not spring out of the landscape overnight. It is people who—literally and figuratively—construct the city over time, its monuments, its artifacts, its roads, its memories. And if the range and diversity of skills amongst the people that a city fosters, contribute to exceptionally high standards of art and science, to dynamic architectural and spatial articulations, to just and equitable systems—it becomes a living repository of accumulated knowledge that the entire world can learn from. In short, a world heritage city.

Is our city of Delhi then, a world heritage city?

I am going to demonstrate that it always has been one, through the examples of two unparalleled remnants from its history which also happen to be two of its most visible symbols, the Lal Quila and the Jantar Mantar. Created in the 17^th and 18th centuries respectively, during the days of the Mughal Empire, both these are unique in the history of the world. They have always given, and still give, Delhi an identity and values that set it apart from other cities of the world. I shall now briefly explain how and why this is so. My understanding is based upon long-standing research as well as my own work on the enunciation and development of an appropriate conservation philosophy for these two sites.

Many people are aware that Delhi was a centre of habitation even in Stone-age times. From early historic times, it has also housed not just ordinary urban settlements but the royal capitals of different rulers. These rulers of successive dynasties developed portions of land in the region of Delhi each with their distinct walls, forts and supporting fabric—creating over time its various cities. These cities—fragments of which we can see still see today—respected the topography and ecology of the region and coexisted with the earlier settlements even when they supplanted them. Rarely can there be found anywhere in the world, so many contiguous manifestations of the city form—shaped by, and resulting in, a unique density of human interaction—as in Delhi. Later Western visitors unfamiliar with its antiquity, compared it to the only other city they knew which had a similar density of grand ruins, calling it the Rome of Asia. To residents of Delhi from that time and earlier, familiar with its manifold references in tradition, song and history, it may have been more fitting to call Rome, ‘the Delhi of Europe’.

The imperial capital of Shahjahanabad, established in 1648 CE at the behest of the 5^th Mughal emperor, Shah Jahan, is a surpassing example of the historic tradition of cities of Delhi. And its crowning glory, christened 'The Exalted Citadel' at its founding, today more prosaically called the Red Fort - is the climax of the urban-design sensibilities of this tradition of the Delhi region. Devised as the perfect setting for the Emperor of the World, it is also the epitome of the eclectic experiments that set apart the architecture of the Mughal Empire. Inscribed within Shah Jahan’s sleeping chambers, the Khwabgah or the House of Dreams, is the wish that directed the founding of the Red Fort: that the Emperor 'In the royal palace with great magnificence, Ever be like the Sun in the Sky. May the palace of his good fortune touch the highest heaven.'

For years after its founding, the fame of 'the palace of his good fortune' attracted adventurers, kings, artists, and seekers of all hues from the far limits of the Mughal Empire and beyond. The symbolic and actual power of this imperial Fort and the beauty of its remaining fragments, earned it the epithet of the ‘The Most Magnificent Palace in the East, by the pioneering British historian-explorer James Fergusson, much after its heyday. And led King George and Queen Mary on their State Visit to India in the early 20^th century, to re-enact the rituals that characterised its original use, such as the ceremony of darshan, between the Mughal emperors in their riverside pavilions and their subjects assembled on the banks of the river.

Recorded in the writings of many travellers from the time of its establishment, the Red Fort was also the subject of the drawings of practically all the visiting European artists who, from the 18^th century onwards, descended on India in large numbers. Yet its huge size, and the complexity of its planning and use, made it impossible for any of these visitors to comprehend or access the Red Fort in its entirety or to completely and correctly depict it. In later years, its exquisite buildings, repeatedly plundered, were shorn of much of their decoration; and their formal designed setting was diluted with additional structures constructed in an inferior architectural style. But such was the potency of the Red Fort's original design, that even then it was impressive enough to be universally admired - by not only the inhabitants of the Mughal Empire for whom the Red Fort symbolised much more than its physical appearance, but also visitors from different cultures and regions.

Even the marauding British soldiers in the mid-nineteenth century,who roamed the Fort after its last Mughal ruler, Bahadur Shah Zafar was defeated and imprisoned, recollected with awe, ‘the vast size of this castellated palace with its towering embattled walls’, and its ‘gorgeous domes and minarets’[1]. Just a decade before the British plunder and sacking of the Fort, Lady Emily Bailey, the daughter of the powerful British Resident in Delhi, Sir Thomas Metcalfe, wrote of its ‘sublimely beautiful buildings’[2] which she saw after her return from England in 1848. In these panoramas, probably drawn around the same time the Red Fort’s proximity and response to the Yamuna river is clearly visible, as is its interface with the city and the vibrant multitude of activities and structures within. Photographs of the Fort from this time , also show the impeccable proportions of its spaces, and their stunningly intricate craftsmanship. We may do well to remind ourselves that these date from almost exactly two hundred years from the date when the Red Fort was inaugurated by Shah Jahan. At this time, the fortunes and power of the later Mughal rulers were vastly reduced; their resources and empire were a fraction of Shah Jahan’s. The Fort, when it was inhabited by Shah Jahan, thus, would have been many, many times more fascinating.

Just as it was the reputation of Delhi as the seat of royal capitals, which impelled Shah Jahan, three hundred and fifty years ago, to site his ambitious venture of building a new Fort and city here; it was the reputation of the material, artistic, and intellectual riches of the Red Fort, the foremost seat of the Mughal Empire, and of 'Darul-Khilafat Shahjahanabad, the abode of peace and prosperity', which in turn made it the centre of other unusual creations. Thus, about eighty years after the establishment of Shahjahanabad, Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh undertook to showcase in the capital of the famed Mughal Empire, what he recorded as a ‘...mighty task, which during a long period of time none of the powerful Rajahs had prosecuted; nor, among the tribes of Islam…since…more than three hundred years, had any one of the kings, …turned his attention to...'.[3] This mighty task, in the reign of Muhammad Shah, Shah Jahan’s great-great-grandson, was the daring experiment of the Jantar Mantar Observatory, a venture unusual not just in the subcontinent but also in the world. Today we see the Jantar Mantar, located as it is in the heart of New Delhi, differently from what it was in the 18^th century when it was situated on the outskirts of Shahjahanabad - the new Delhi of that time. Its foreground was taken over in the beginning of the 20^th century by the location of British Imperial New Delhi, which appropriated much of Jai Singh’s land, Jaisinghpura to make Connaught Place and the roads leading up to Parliament House. Today, the landscape has changed further with the skyline taken over by tall trees, and even taller buildings. While these interventions have reduced the area, the function, and even the perception of the Observatory, its fantastic forms are so discernibly different from all the famous pieces of architecture built before, during or after its time ―that it is still one of the most photographed of Delhi’s built heritage. It has inspired – and continues to inspire–all sorts of creations around the world, ranging from a structure ‘erected in the early 19^th century in the pleasure park at Neuilly near Paris’, [4] to the official logo of the IXth Asian Games held at Delhi in 1982, [5] to contemporary high-profile sculptural installations as well as urban street-art. Nearly all visitors to Delhi for the past three centuries have made it a point to see this ‘curious group of buildings’. Catalogues of drawings, paintings and photographs by many European artists who visited India in the 18^th , 19^th and 20^th centuries depict this. Captain Mundy, Aide-de-Campe to Lord Combermere, arriving in Delhi in February 1828, on tour with his commander-in-Chief, recorded his impressions of the Jantar Mantar as ‘...the gigantic astronomical observatory…[t]hese enormous instruments appear as though they had been manufactured by the Titans, in order to take a reconnaissance of the heavens, before they commenced their siege of Olympus.’ [6]

But the gigantic architectural effort of the Delhi Jantar Mantar— as indeed of the Red Fort and of the city's other historic components, were 'manufactured' not by the Titans, but by the skilled eyes and hands and the creative spirit of the populace that Delhi attracted and nurtured—a fact recognized even by invaders. So, when the Persian Nadir Shah sacked Delhi in 1739 CE, he not only took its fabled material treasures as booty, but also the hundreds of craftspeople who practiced their trades here. After this plunder, the city's celebrated poet, Meer Taqi Meer (1723-1810 CE), in his famous lament of the desolation of Delhi , extolled it as a place ‘where only the chosen lived of every trade’ and ‘once a select city in the world’,.[7]

Indraprastha, perhaps the oldest capital in the Delhi region, is described in the Mahabharata as ‘…the envy of all Bharata-varsha, for it was a prosperous city with fields and orchards and pastures and markets and river-ports...’ where ‘Priests, warriors, farmers, herdsmen and artisans from all over came to make this their new home.’[8] The willingness to accommodate different kinds of people, and the recognition of the value such people lent to the city, gave the past Delhis a sense of kinship beyond just their immediate boundaries. And the awareness that 'a prosperous city' is as much because of its 'fields, orchards, pastures' as 'its markets and river-ports', gave them a humane scale.

Thus, the Red Fort and the Jantar Mantar, though established on the initiative of royal patrons, were created as much to accommodate the requirements of ordinary people as of their famous patrons. So, for instance, the complex planning and the variety of the original spaces and structures within the Red Fort, (as may be seen in one of its most detailed representations, a map dating from the mid-1840s) were derived from the requirement to house and give access to a wide spectrum of people. Similarly, the very reason for the arresting size, form and location of the large masonry instruments of the Jantar Mantar was because Sawai Jai Singh wanted to popularize observational astronomy and make it accessible to ordinary people in the Mughal Empire. Even his decision to construct these immovable masonry instruments despite being familiar with the new invention of the telescope, was activated by this concern – quite contrary to recent claims that this was ‘a case of a headstrong monarch looking to construct huge and extravagant monuments for himself’[9]. Sawai Jai Singh explicitly states: 'Since the telescope is not readily available to an average man, we are going to base our rules of computation for naked eye observations only, which, in turn, are based on earlier texts.’[10] We owe the unique design of the Yantras at the Delhi Jantar Mantar– which were extremely complex to devise and construct, but whose use conversely was relatively simple even for non-experts (as recent programmes with schoolchildren and amateurs have demonstrated[11]) – to this fact.

The cultural, architectural, associational and artistic attributes of the celebrated original design of the Red Fort too, an icon of our city as also of our country―arise, as I hope to explain, out of similar human values. The ramparts of the Fort and its Lahore Gate with the Indian Flag atop from where the Prime Minister of India addresses the nation each Independence Day, are familiar to all of us in this country—even pre-school children. However, we little realise or appreciate that this view is actually the antithesis of the Fort’s design. The entrance to the Lahori Gate, in the reign of Shah Jahan was straight and open to view, not hidden by a wall or a mound, in keeping with the Mughal Emperor’s actual and metaphorical accessibility to his people—and this is of enormous significance in the original spatial and architectural relationship of the Red Fort and Shahjahanabad.

The isolation of the Fort from its city, which we inadvertently continue to perpetuate, was first begun by Shah Jahan’s son, Aurangzeb, who ordered the construction of a second line of gates at right angles to the Fort's main public Gateways, and introduced architectural and actual barriers between himself and the people of his city, and indeed his Empire. These were heightened many times over by the British who constructed more barricades in and around the Fort and swept away everything within 300 yards of its walls as a no-man zone. A photograph of the area from the top of Jama Masjid, shortly after this demolition by the British in 1860 following their victory over the last Mughal ruler, Bahadur Shah Zafar, shows the empty spaces around the Fort (1870, photo 2/3 (76) OIOC.BL). This radically changed the environs of the Fort and transformed it into an island severed of its connecting spatial and social links to Shahjahanabad—reversing the very basis of its establishment. Equally importantly, this also did away with the beauty and bounty of the public gardens, orchards and trees that yielded fruit, shade, and verdure to the Fort’s foreground and afforded a place of repose and relaxation to the people of Delhi. These public gardens and orchards are visible in maps and drawings from the 18^th and 19^th centuries[12], a record of the ‘...peculiar pleasure’ that a landscape of luxuriant and green foliage yields ‘in a hot and parched country,’ as noted by the mid-17^th century French traveler, Francois Bernier.[13] Within the Fort, too, its beautiful gardens along with more than eighty percent of its interior was completely effaced. In an onslaught even worse than that under Nadir Shah, the Fort was also looted of its valuable decorative effects, stripped of its gilded copper domes, of its inlay of precious stones, its delicately carved marble panels. The structures that were spared from demolition after the looting, were used as military prisons, canteens, refreshment rooms, mess lounge, and hospitals for the British army.[14]

The only extant part of its celebrated design which escaped the demolition by the British, is a miniscule number of original Mughal pavilions and gateways. Of immeasurable value, and representative of the creative heights that Delhi, as one of the foremost cities of the world, has historically fostered, they are highlighted in this redrawn version of the 1840s map made for my book, The Red Fort of Shahjahanabad. They embody the qualities that make the Red Fort not just an epitome of urban architectural patronage in Shah Jahan’s reign, but the culmination of the experiments in architectural forms and spaces in the earlier imperial Forts and cities of the Great Mughals. They also represent one of the finest examples of a sustainable way of planning, building, and living, that we can learn from and apply today, in our cities and towns.

The design of the Red Fort—the only urban Mughal palace complex of its kind to be planned and built together as a holistic venture with its city of Shahjahanabad—not only addressed all the problems of access, and overcrowding in Mughal cities and Forts such as in Lahore and Agra but also catered for future expansion in a setting befitting one of the richest and most cultured medieval empires in the world. It set the trend for domestic as well as ceremonial architecture all over the Mughal empire; and for subsequent and contemporary kingdoms in the sub-continent. The Fort and much of its city were ready in just 10 years. In itself this is a huge venture, as we can all appreciate especially when we compare this to contemporary construction. There are thus remarkable managerial and construction skills embodied in the method of planning and building of the Red Fort and Shahjahanabad, that invest them with a huge significance.

The Red Fort was therefore the grand finale to imperial Mughal forts, just as the Taj Mahal, Shah Jahan’s most famous act of patronage, was the grand finale to imperial Mughal tomb-gardens. In its original form, much of the Fort had the same quality of refined luxury as the Taj Mahal still does. Like the Taj, the Fort was crafted and built with perfect proportion and detail. When the Fort’s foundations were marked out on 29^th April 1639 CE, during the second decade of Shah Jahan‘s reign, its design was reportedly led by the master-architect Ustad Hamid and his brother Ustad Ahmed Lahori, who, some sources claim were associated with the building of the Taj Mahal. The same care that Shah Jahan expended on the mausoleum of his beloved wife, was used to craft his living areas and those of his family. Shah Jahan’s official court-histories record how he often made detours in his administrative or political visits, so that he could himself inspect the construction at the Fort. Fatehpur Sikri sandstone, the finest Makrana marble, glass imported from Allepi, and a range of semi-precious stones, gold and silver from all over the trade-centres associated with the Mughal empire, were used in its construction. Shah Jahan grandly celebrated the completion of his magnificent Fort and its city in 1648, barely two years after the completion of the Taj. The Red Fort and the Taj, along with many key buildings of Shahjahanabad were thus created at the peak of Shah Jahan’s patronage, a period universally recognized as one of the pinnacles of world art and architecture. They represent the highly evolved design consciousness of the Mughal emperor and his team of an imperial array of master-craftsmen, architects, masons, artists, overseers, trusted aides, and administrators.

The Fort was however simultaneously far more complex and intimate than even the Taj Mahal. Not just a tomb or a garden, or even a mere imperial residence, which is the ordinary western conception or definition of a palace, the Red Fort was composed of many kinds of buildings, gardens, spaces and functions, like a city within a city. It was designed to function simultaneously as a showpiece of the empire, the residence of the imperial household, an administrative centre, a recreational node, as well as a cultural focus for Shahjahanabad. To put this into context, we can compare it to the Escorial, one of the largest palaces in Europe, constructed in the reign of Philip II in the mountains above Madrid in 1563, about eighty years before the Fort. Its size at 204 metres by 162 metres (670 feet by 530 feet), made it closer than most other Renaissance royal buildings to the scale of a small city. Yet it was five times smaller in area than just the inner palace of the Red Fort!?[15]

The Red Fort thus contained palace pavilions, imperial gardens and art objects to cater to the daily needs of the Emperor, his queens and his daughters, as well as administration halls, courts of justice and formal halls of audience. Additionally, it also housed more prosaic functions such as offices, retail markets, mosques, kitchens, elephant and horse stables, orchards, living quarters for the resident soldiers, maids and attendants who worked within the Fort, and karakhanas and workshops for skilled craftspeople who made objects specifically for imperial use. Kings, noblemen, petitioners, soldiers, ambassadors, stone-setters, jewellers, maids, weavers, even the poorest of the poor residents, came to work, to seek justice or to pay audience to the Emperor as part of the daily ceremonial custom at Shah Jahan’s court. The true significance and the scale of these activities can be appreciated when we realise that this is akin to it being a combination of the Rashtrapati Bhawan, North and South Blocks, Parliament House, Supreme Court, Secretariat, Cantonment, Crafts Museum, etc.

Despite the huge flow of traffic, daily, of visitors-great and small, from within the city and beyond the boundaries of the empire – nobody got into each other's way within this mini-city. This was possible because of the Fort's ingenious design in which it accommodated public, semi-public, semi-private and private spaces. The public ceremonial areas were clearly and centrally positioned, marked out by straight axes, with formal courtyards that increased in size and magnificence, a succession of compelling gateways which no visitor could miss or ignore. On the other hand, the private areas, whether those of the Emperor and his family or of his attendant work-force, were located such that they were practically invisible. Shah Jahan’s living areas were atop the river-side wall, furthest from the Lahori and Delhi Gates of the city. Instead of being conventional huge towering vertical complexes, they were single-storeyed pavilions, their imperial status signaled not by size but by their proportion, refinement and detailing. His private entrance to the Fort was also from the banks on the river, which in those days was an important means of transportation and as a space for recreation. In fact the siting of functions throughout Shahjahanabad celebrated the presence of the river, something which should give us pause for thought today. The Fort’s imperial pavilions were not only located to afford stunning views across and cool breezes from the river; they were equally part of a grand spectacle from the river, their privacy unimpaired behind intricate marble jalis. These river-views were continued in the large havelis of noblemen and Princes, public and private gardens, and ghats, all of which lined the length of the Yamuna.

In contrast, the living and working areas of the craftspeople and attendants were located between the Fort’s Main Gates and its towering outer walls adjacent to the city. They were densely built around twisting streets, resembling parts of Shahjahanabad; and positioned in such a way that they were shielded from the view of state visitors and even of the Emperor and could thus develop freely as independent territories. This can be more clearly understood through these plans developed to clarify the different domains of use and areas of movement of the main categories of people within the Fort - the Emperor, a nobleman, a Mughal queen, and an ordinary inhabitant of the city. The Fort was thus a microcosm of the Mughal way of life–not merely the Imperial Mughal way of life.[16]

In the design of the Fort, open space was fashioned such that it was used as an extension of built space—and built structures were devised to shade or enclose open space, so that they could together be used effectively in all seasons. Each sub-area within the Fort had its own courtyards bounded by gateways and continuous arcades that provided shaded areas to work, sit or walk in, as also privacy from the other spaces adjacent to them. As the Fort’s original design shows, the proportion of open spaces in it is far greater than the amount of built structures. A large amount of these open spaces were gardens, designed to provide pleasant and cool spaces, beautiful to see as well as to provide fruit and vegetables for the kitchens; they are described by contemporary historians of Shah Jahan as being planted with, ‘...fruitful trees of diverse kinds...interlaced with each other in such a way that they sky is not anywhere visible from under them’.[17]

The open courtyards and gardens also had the advantage of flexiblity. If there were larger crowds on special occasions, such as on the Fort’s inauguration ceremonies or at Shah Jahan’s birthday celebrations or during festivals, more area could be covered easily and quickly by spreading canopies and qanats in these courts. It was also because of these open areas sited in between built areas, that many of Shah Jahan’s original pavilions could stay virtually unobstructed and untouched, despite a greatly increasing population in the Fort during the times of his descendants. The later Mughal rulers got more structures built around the boundaries of the main courts and gardens or within many of the less visible ones.

The built spaces too, whether the grand entrance gateways or the Emperor’s own pavilions, were multifunctional in use. All the buildings that the Emperor stayed or worked in were not enclosed buildings but pavilions, a series of verandahs, which could be hung with carpets and covered with qanats, or left open to let the river-breezes in.The palaces of the Emperor and his family as well as their grand entrance sequences which were a succession of forecourts and gateways were all multifunctional in use–they could equally be used for people to gather, for administrative work, for court ceremonial, as well as circulation spaces. So, the Lahori and Delhi gateways contained living quarters for soldiers, the Naqqar Khana Gateway not only provided a regulated entrance but also contained chambers for musicians; the Emperor’s Hall of Private Audience from where he dispensed justice also doubled up as a reception on the occasion of private celebrations. Actively and almost continuously used as an imperial Mughal Fort for almost two thirds of its life—the multifarious activities within the Fort continued to work practically as they were originally designed, without intruding on each other.

Thus while the different layers of history which have left their mark on the Fort, undoubtedly make it a site of great interest, it is nonetheless, the value of its original design which invest it with an overriding significance in terms of world and Indian heritage. From its conception, to its ingenious construction and detailing to its continued efficient functioning, the Red Fort is unrivalled anywhere in the world. It embodies important lessons for everyone –architectural and art historians, contemporary designers and their clients, administrators, planners, leaders. What are these?

First, that despite being the favoured residence and the prized patronage of arguably the richest ruler in the medieval world, the Red Fort was planned and detailed to be socially inclusive–It was designed not just as a residence of a monarch but as a miniature city with all the positive opportunities for economic, social and cultural interaction that a city affords. Everyone, even the poorest of the inhabitants was a stake-holder in the Fort. Visually, and spatially too there was no bar between the direct axis linking Shah Jahan to his people–instead of the ramparts and barbicans that block the Fort from the city today, originally a bridge lead straight from the Chandni Chowk to the Lahori Gate, and further to the Emperor’s Throne of Justice in the Diwan-i-Am Secondly, that the Fort’s design was ecologically and environmentally considerate–there was no unnecessary wastage of resources-instead of the stretches of high-maintenance lawns that pass for gardens today, the Fort’s vast gardens were essentially orchards; they worked as productive areas as well as places of pleasure, entertainment and repose; they moderated the micro-climate and used only the optimum amount of precious water. Even the water in the fountains used to cool and decorate the Fort’s pavilions and its gardens, or in the imperial bathing chambers was recycled–either for irrigation, or for watering animals, or for cooling the public parts of the Fort.

Thirdly, the Fort’s design was an example of further development of the traditional indigenous courtyard typology; where not only were the proportions of the built and open spaces of the highest order but where utilization of space was maximized despite constructing a minimum number of built structures.

And finally, the Fort’s design displayed those qualities which make design truly great, where no element is superfluous or extraneous. None of its structures and spaces was designed as simply utilitarian or purely decorative. Each component of its design—whether the form or detail of its gardens, pavilions, forecourts, gateways or colonnades was practical, useful and beautiful; the form, structure and decoration in them could not be separated from each other. The location and orientation of the buildings, gardens and courtyards that housed different activities, as well as their size, height and overall proportions, had ecological, functional, and aesthetic reasons. They were designed not only to impress a viewer or a user but also to be practical, easy to maintain and to be lived in during the different seasons.

The Red Fort, symbolizes and exemplifies above all, a celebration of life–in its establishment, in the ceremonies that marked the Emperor’s sojourn in it, in the artists, painters, poets and singers that it patronized, in its gardens and in its trees that made life beautiful and pleasant even in the sweltering summers of Delhi. The complex multiple spatial uses of the Fort and its environs, and the bustling inclusive activity in them, and the manner in which they transformed at different times of the day and year, were a development of – as well as an influence on - the efficient and overlapping uses of built and open space in the Indian tradition, and the value that the administration and built form of this imperial city placed on the activities of common people.

The intriguing architectural forms and detailing of the Delhi Jantar Mantar, the first in the series of the five Jantar Mantar observatories located in other cities, are also a direct outcome as well as a continuation and representation of these inclusive attributes of the Indian tradition, which elevate its value beyond their physical form and function, unique though these may be. Though many of the masonry instruments in the Delhi Jantar Mantar, originally titled simply 'Jantra' or 'the Instrument', are essentially new inventions of Sawai Jai Singh and his builders, they were inspired by, and devised after exhaustively studying existing prevalent instruments - not just limited to Sawai Jai Singh's Hindu inheritance, but also from other schools of astronomy from different cultures and regions.[18] Jai Singh, conscientious in acknowledging his sources as well as confident of his original contributions, clearly writes of the initial instruments at the Delhi Observatory ‘such as had been constructed at Samarcand agreeably to the Mussalman books’ as well as of ‘instruments of his own invention’.[19] The construction of the Delhi Jantar Mantar represents therefore, not only the will and energy of Sawai Jai Singh involved in each stage of the ambitious venture of this extraordinary observatory, but also the centuries old practical and theoretical tradition of Indian astronomy and architecture, that Sawai Jai Singh inherited, as well as the knowledge of astronomy from around the world that he gathered and analysed. These were translated into the instruments of the Jantar mantar by the efforts of the expert state-astronomers, mathematicians, gurus, and master-masons that Sawai Jai Singh patronised and honoured.

The Jantar Mantar also represents a method of astronomy, which is now no longer conventionally followed. Even when it was built, it was extremely unusual, the last notable observatory of this scale having been built in Samarkand in 1424 AD by Mirza Ulugh Beg, grandson of the mighty Mongol warrior Timur Leng from whom the Mughal emperors also traced their ancestry. There were no surviving examples of large instruments even at that time—either in India, despite an ancient and accurate system of astronomy, or elsewhere in the world.[20] Of the original extant range of instruments devised and built for the Observatory between the years 1721- and 1724, the three main ones—the Samrat Yantra, the Jai Prakash Yantra, and the Rama Yantra—are all inventions and innovations of Jai Singh and his advisors, and represent the spirit of enquiry and innovation which distinguishes true scientific endeavours. These were all built for the first time in the Delhi Jantar Mantar—a daring intellectual exercise and as a remarkable architectural feat—giving it an immeasurable scientific and historic value. The last masonry instrument to be built at the Delhi Jantar Mantar, the Misra Yantra which dates from the 1750s, is unique to it; like the Harrappan script it still evades complete understanding, and represents a challenge to our ingenuity.

These Yantras, designed to accurately measure solar time,(especially at sunrise, sunset or noon—important times for daily religious rites) or to accurately measure positions of celestial objects (especially at the juncture of seasons and the solstices—important times in the yearly religious rites), are also important in that they represent a continuation of the oldest traditions of observational astronomy in India, which can be traced far-back to the requirement for such rituals in Vedic times. A temple dedicated to the child Bhairon, the Bal Bhairon Mandir, which still exists and is positioned on the east-west axis in line with the earlier entrance of the Observatory and its most important Yantra, the Samrat, is part of this holistic link between the spiritual, the creative and the scientific aspects of the Indian tradition.

Apart from being important for Jai Singh’s personal ritual practices as well as that of his traditional inheritance, the Delhi Jantar Mantar also had a wider use and involvement with all the people of the Mughal Empire including its Emperor. A revised set of astronomical tables was prepared primarily on the basis of recordings made at the Delhi Jantar Mantar continuously over a period of seven years. Dedicated to, and named after the reigning Mughal Emperor Muhammad Shah, the Zij-i-Muhammad Shahi was presented to him with ceremony, and used throughout the Mughal Empire, to formulate the yearly calendars used to plan important religious, political and administrative events as well as social, agricultural and cultural activities. The information in the Zij, the numerical tables and accompanying explanations to measure time and to compute planetary and stellar positions, was also utilized in the Pancangs, the traditional Hindu calendars listing different festivals, seasons, positions of the moons, eclipses and other such information. In the larger cultural context, such ritual worship of gods and ancestors and celebration of festivals in accordance with planetary events, were in turn used to predict seasonal weather changes relevant in day-to-day life. Even till much after Jai Singh’s time, the knowledge of astronomy was put to practical use, not only for marking time and seasonal changes, but also for accurate foretelling of natural calamities.[21] Additionally with the observations made with the help of these instruments, Jai Singh and his astronomers were also able to discern errors in existing tables such as the Tabulae Astronomicae of the French astronomer, Phillip de la Hire. As Jai Singh himself writes in the conclusion to the Zij compiled sometime between 1728 to 1732, ‘with the help of our own new instruments, we have observed five well-known satellites and other heavenly bodies; we have revealed a number of new data’. The Jantar Mantar generated knowledge of the larger world, the universe in fact, and made this knowledge accessible and useful to a huge section of populace, beyond the boundaries of the city it was situated in.

Thus, instead of seeing the Delhi Jantar Mantar merely as a collection of archaeological remains, it must be appreciated for its immense relevance as an educational, scientific and cultural resource for India and the world. Unlike the later Jantar Mantars, the instruments of the Delhi Observatory contain much of their original built components. And even though the Observatory has not been used for purposes of astronomy for more than two hundred years and most of the calibrations made by Jai Singh’s master-masons have been lost—due to weathering, replacement or imperfect maintenance, it is still possible to revive the function of its Yantras.

The standard reference so far for the Jantar Mantar, published in 1918 and written by George R. Kaye, terms its Yantras ‘archaeological remains’, their primary worth deriving from their association as ‘noble monuments of a remarkable personality’. This has undoubtedly influenced its conservation for the past hundred years as an urban garden in the tradition of an English landscape. Rather than as a medieval Indian observatory; its Yantras presented as a collection of ‘architectural follies’ amidst a plantation of tall palm trees rather than as precise instruments of astronomy. However, as Dr. Rathnasree, the Director of the Delhi Nehru Planetarium, has said: 300 years after they were built—they are still the easiest access...of doing celestial co-ordinate measurements’. They can be effectively used to measure local solar time, observe stars and calculate positions of celestial objects. No other instruments anywhere in the world can demonstrate the movement of the earth and the planets with such clarity as these Yantras. No other instruments are so easily accessible to an ordinary person. They are particularly suited not just to observe the skies, but also to demonstrate principles of spherical trigonometry, physics, mathematics and geography. The readings with them, once the principle is understood, can be done very rapidly even by a schoolchild.

Their conservation, as that of our city's other historic structures – in a continuation of the original spirit of their construction and use – has an implication thus not just on their repair and maintenance but also on their beneficial use by communities living around them, and indeed by all the people of our world. Ironically, today this awareness seems to evade our collective imagination. From tourist brochures to government signages, we repress and reduce Delhi’s long and complex history into a mere ‘postcard’ image—an empty stage set viewed from the outside, focused on a limited period, and completely excluded from its people and the context of its urbanity. My most telling metaphor for Delhi is that of an onion—multi-layered, veined and coloured with many shades. The hidden vapours of the pasts that lie within its layers, rise unbidden to sting you into an awareness of a different time—but they are being forcibly prised apart and scattered into forlorn stray wisps even as we speak. All but a few prominent fragments of the wealth of our city's diverse historic spaces as well as its colourful historic traditions, have disappeared under the guise of ‘development’. Even the architectural landmarks we extol, are dwarfed or hidden behind purdahs of railings, walls, offices, malls, flyovers and highways, so that they cannot literally be approached—forget about being understood or appreciated. And so, let me say that Delhi is a world-heritage city in acute danger of losing its heritage, and the very human-skills which produced this heritage.

The most recent instance is that of the temporary traditional Flower Markets in Chandni Chowk, Mehrauli and Connaught Place, which vividly preserved and celebrated our spatial heritage of using urban space in multiple, efficient and sustainable ways. The marigold flower-market on the pavements of Khari Baoli, echoes the memory of the many-layered activities recorded in the mid-18^th century in 'The Chandni chouk, the fruit market, the Daribah Bazaar, and the buildings around the Masjid-i-Jama'?[22] The reputation of Delhi, as recorded by travelers from other parts of the subcontinent, such as Dargah Quli Khan from Hyderabad, who visited Delhi with his patron, Nizam Asaf Jah I, during Emperor Mohammad Shah's rule (1720-48 CE), was as much due to the sights and sounds in its streets and forecourts, its aromatic baghs and orchards; its canals and trees - as in its grand edifices. His recollections of Delhi are alive with dancers, story-tellers, astrologers, doctors, jugglers.[23] Cities like Jaipur and Mysore recognise the economic, cultural and social value that such vibrant activities and historic street-markets lend to their cities, and their attractiveness for visitors[24]—but we relocate these to huge centralized wholesale markets in Ghazipur on the outskirts of the New Delhi in a continuation of the model of development we have been following in Delhi since the past 100 years.

Such a development only works with a colonial scale investment of resources, and negates the very qualities inherent in the shaping of our historic city, manifest most brilliantly perhaps in the building of the Red Fort and the Jantar Mantar. It instead continues one strand of Delhi’s history, ‘the bungalow ’ first introduced in the Civil Lines and then used to build British Imperial New Delhi; which unfortunately has never been “urban” by design and has always been a collection of “villas” with trees in their gardens. It is also a theme of separation—between different parts of the city; between the street and the building; between older structures and contemporary ones; between traditional building practices and current mechanized ones. The isolation this has wrought, rings Delhi into wastelands of empty roads and desolate greens, pushed out further and further to satisfy the diet of developers and maneuverable only on the backs of machines, denying basic living services in the historic parts of our cities, and reducing them to ghettos.[25] Engulfed by the expanding modern Delhi, yet discounted as significant partners in its development, these are ironically often given the official status of ‘urban villages’. The last time that the heritage of Delhi underwent such large-scale interventions, was probably when the British mowed down and refashioned so many parts of it after the Great War of 1857, both to gain control as well as to alter the memory of its inhabitants.

As far back as 1987, the fact that historic cities ‘…are being threatened, physically degraded, damaged or even destroyed, by the impact of the urban development that follows industrialisation in societies everywhere’, as well as the belief that: ‘…to be most effective, the conservation of historic…urban areas should be an integral part of coherent policies of economic and social development and of urban and regional planning at every level’, has been enunciated and publicized in the Washington Charter for the Conservation of Historic Towns and Urban Areas. If we wish to conserve Delhi's heritage, which we must, we need to do more than get it declared a world-heritage city. We need to forge a living identity with its complex history. To take cognisance of the greater levels of social interaction, safety, and climatic comfort in our historic architecture[26]; to derive lessons from them in building newer parts of our city; to provide economic and social conditions where we simultaneously accommodate our past creations, as well as the positive spirit and the human skills that that gave rise to them. If merely declaring and receiving world-heritage status was enough, we would not have countenanced the conversion of Shah Jahan’s private river-side entrance to the Red Fort, into a crude sunken pit next to a standard municipal garden - reducing the sublime to the ridiculous. We would not develop swathes of gated, fenced and manicured, water-guzzling lawns in a reiteration of its devastating ‘colonial intervention’. We would not contemplate the ‘restoration’ of its parts, as communicated in the newspaper report printed in The Hindustan Times of 2nd February 2009, into an evocation of a colonial Victorian market. In another hundred years from now, this refashioning may well be mistaken as the work of Shah Jahan’s builders, and with reason lead to the conclusion that its title of the ‘Most Magnificent Palace in the East’ is more fancy than fact.

We can still realise the promise of the different cities of Delhi and its unparalleled heritage - contained together, yet growing and green—but only when we re-look at the linked diverse human past of our immediate and larger worlds. And when we restore the same qualities of inclusiveness, of concern for people, for the environment, for material and human resources—as Shah Jahan and Sawai Jai Singh and their builders did. When we envision and define a 'world-class' city that has space to nurture and harness the skills of our diverse and rich traditions—instead of promoting a uniform and elite society derived from the western world. When we truly include instead of disregarding the citizens of Delhi and this country—poor and rich alike, professionals and laypeople. It is only then that we can communicate, conserve and continue the attributes of Delhi that make it part of the heritage of the world.

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[1] Griffiths, The Siege of Delhi, p. 193; as quoted in The Red Fort of Shahjahanabad, Anisha Shekhar Mukherji, O.U.P. India, 2003, p.199

[2] M. M. Kaye, 1998, The Golden Calm, p. 168

[3] Introduction to the Zij-i-Muhammad Shahi

[4] Penelope Chetwode, Architectural Review, London, 1935. p. 59

[5] The multi-sport event held every four years among athletes from all over Asia started at New Delhi in 1951

[6] The Journal of a Tour in India, Captain G. Mundy, p. 56.

[7] Dilli jo ek shahar tha aalam mein intakhaab; rahtey the muntakhib hi jahan rozgaar ke, Eng.Trans. S. Kalidas with Sohail Hashmi, The Hindu, February 6, 2011

[8] Jaya, An Illustrated Retelling of the Mahabharata, Devdutt Pattanaik, p. 114, Penguin Books 2010.

[9] A. Volwahsen, Cosmic Architecture in India, p. 103, p. 111

[10] ZMS, Ms. Add. 14373, Dept. of Oriental Manuscripts, The British Library, London f.189, as quoted in

V. N. Sharma, Sawai Jai Singh and his Astronomy, p. 243

[11] Conducted since 2004 by the Delhi Nehru Planetarium, the Science Popularization Association of Communicators and Educators (SPACE), and the Delhi Amateur Astronomers Association.

[12] See for instance the 18^th century map of the Fort (Add. Or 1790, OIOC, BL), the mid-19^th century map of Shahjahanabad (X/1659; OIOC, BL); ASI 1904 map; reproduced in The Red Fort of Shahjahanabad, Anisha Shekhar Mukherji, O.U.P. India, 2003, pp.7 and 105.

[13] Francois Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire, p. 285

[14] For a comprehensive account of the manner in which the British used, abused and transformed the Red Fort and Shahjahanabad, refer to Chapter 7, ‘Assault’, pp.189-211, in The Red Fort of Shahjahanabad, Anisha Shekhar Mukherji, O.U.P. India, 2003

[15] The Red Fort of Shahjahanabad, Anisha Shekhar Mukherji, O.U.P. India, 2003, p. 26.

[16] For a detailed spatial analysis of the Red Fort, see The Red Fort of Shahjahanabad, Anisha Shekhar Mukherji, OUP 2003

[17] Ibid., p.148

[18] V. N. Sharma, pp. 85-6?

[19] Introduction to the Zij-i-Muhammad Shahi,

[20] Even in medieval times, and in the reigns of rulers with an interest in this science, as for instance the 14th century Tughlak ruler, Firoz Shah at Delhi, the range of instruments essentially consisted of astrolabes, a sundial and possibly a clepsydra for telling the time.

[21] A letter, written by Colonel Pearse in the late 18^th century, four decades after Sawai Jai Singh’s demise, records how he received in Bengal the prediction of three comets and an earthquake some three months before the earthquake desolated extensive regions around Lahore; ‘On the Sixth Satellite of Saturn’, Letter from Col. T. D. Pearse to Secretary, Royal Society London, dated Madras 22 September 1783; p.111 in Dharampal, Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century, Collected Writings.

[22] Tazkira of Anand Ram Mukhlis', Eng. trans. eds. H. M. Elliot and J. Dowson, The History of India By its Own Historians, The Muhammadan Period (Vol.VIII), p. 88, Kitab Mahal Pvt. Ltd. 1969.

[23] Muraqqa-i-Delhi, The Mughal Capital in Muhammad Shah's Time, Dargah Quli Khan, pp. 21–5, Eng. trans. Chander Shekhar, and Shama Mitra Chenoy, Deputy Publication, New Delhi, 1989.

[24] .See Red Earth - Walk – Flower Markets of Delhi, redearthindia.com; www.thegendaphoolproject.com.

[25] See for details, Finding Delhi, Loss and Renewal in the Megacity, Ed. Bharati Chaturvedi, Penguin Books India, 2010

[26] ‘Jama Masjid is safest, Dwarka most crime-hit’, Dwaipayan Ghosh, TNN, Sunday Times, November 23, 2008


Images © Anisha Shekhar Mukherji; Text © Anisha Shekhar Mukherji

Damned If You Do? Damned If You Don’t.

On Negotiating Democracy in 21^st Century India

We were taught in school that we are an independent democratic republic; that this is a great leap forward from the days of old when kings ruled at whim and subjected the poor to misery and starvation; that our country with the mighty Himalayas crowning its beautiful form was almost a continent – a self-contained, ancient, and bountiful land of diverse people and languages. This was the prescribed content in History, Civics and Geography, and we believed it.

During and after my post-graduate research on the historic Red Fort of Shahjahanabad, I read of the weekly durbars for the poor in the court of Shah Jahan - arguably one of the richest rulers of the medieval world, and ostensibly a self-indulgent aesthete. The poorest inhabitants of Shahjahanabad and the Mughal Empire could walk in right to the courtyard of the Diwan-i-Am-o-Khass within ‘The Most Magnificent Palace in the East’, for audience with their Emperor and seek redressal of their woes. This was in feudal times.

In present-day India, such concern seems surprising, especially since we value foreign relations more than the lives of our people. When the Prime Minister of India claims that the country does not have the wherewithal to distribute excess food to its starving millions - that there is no option but to let it rot - yet finds the resources to give huge sums of money to bail out other countries from economic collapse, it is not easy to make sense of the truths of history and geography and democracy.

In the name of the new god of democratic progress, the poor must acquiesce unquestioningly as their forests, fields and waters are poisoned to make way for factories, power-plants or cities. They must rejoice if they find their names in the list of the compensated few resettled miles away from their own lands; celebrate if they get a job as a factory-hand or a labourer. And resign themselves in any case to sermons, excuses, insults and beatings. For those of us who have been spared such a fate in this birth, there are smaller everyday indignities, which belie our childhood myths of a free, glorious and independent society.

Democracy and freedom in India today is essentially for some powerful people, by some powerful people, and of some powerful people. Free to bestow all the money of the country in the banks of other countries; to morph India into a giant urban fiasco; to dispense justice and reform – or not. With such unmitigated freedom, there is little time and certainly no space to set aside for ordinary citizens, not even in the capital city of independent India. The one little stretch of road, named after the Jantar Mantar – the Observatory established on the initiative of another of our feudal ancestors in pre-democratic times – designated as a token site of protest, is also not available if too many people have the temerity to gather there.

Most politicians and political analysts say such peaceful protests by civil society constitute a threat to the democratic process, even if it is for a purpose that no one can fault – to demand punishment for the corrupt and justice for the wronged; that these are tantamount to holding our legislators, politicians and administrators to ransom; that they disrupt traffic and our economy. So what is ‘civil society’ to do? Continue to put its trust in elected representatives who have repeatedly failed to live up to their promises? Hope that self-realization will come to the mighty? Miracles do happen and most of us still believe in miracles or we would not survive our gross governance. Wait with the proverbial patience of the meek and the underprivileged? But then, three generations is already a pretty long wait.

Now that even the tradition of non-violent protest propagated most famously by the Father of the Nation, is unacceptable in our democracy, does it mean that it encourages its people to do the opposite? To take to violent protest? It would seem not. That would make such protestors enemies of the state, even if they are Indians. And enemies of the state must be exterminated, as our ministers declare. No wonder that for so long the Indian public has been accused of being uncaring beyond their immediate selves and families.

So is there another way to participate in governance, besides being one of those elected representatives who are above the law? How can we negotiate democracy in the 21^st century? As some Indians with integrity and will have shown us, it is by making the powers-that-be realize that they cannot fool “all the people all the time”. That they will not be allowed to utterly efface, mine, dam, and level all the mountains and rivers sacred in memory and tradition; and to continue to shelter the corrupt. That democracy is about majority opinion.

As yet another 15^th August approaches, as Anna Hazare and Arvind Kejriwal among many others unite in expressing our determination for a free and fair country, it is time to tell our new rulers that we, the people of India, are the majority and we have an opinion. They would do well to open their eyes to this reality – and to read the cautionary words of an illustrious Indian whose 150^th birth anniversary we officially celebrate with such fanfare this year:

‘Politicians calculate upon the number of mailed hands that are kept on the sword hilts: they do not possess the third eye to see the great invisible hand that clasps in silence the hand of the helpless and waits its time.’[1]

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[1] ‘The Modern Age’, p.541, The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore, Volume Two; Edited by Sisir Kumar Das, Sahitya Akademi, 1996; This Edition 2008

Doves on the Landing

Doves on the landing, squirrels on the parapet…and other such sights

I cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be called an industrious gardener. Indeed, I cannot be called a gardener at all. I don’t particularly like examining the soil and its contents at close quarters. But, the combination of a family affinity for plants, a childhood spent in green cantonments, and a dislike of combining vegetable and fruit peels with the rest of the garbage, means that our terrace garden is always full of plants. Some of these elude recognition not only by rank amateurs of my kind, but also the malis who profess to know more and who, occasionally deign to climb up to our third-floor flat to disapprovingly survey the mad profusion in our pots.

The more direct of them, tell me outright, that I simply must not grow more than one plant in a pot. Snehanshu, who likes method in all things, and expends much effort in buying and hauling pedigreed chandni, bel, juhi and other such lovelies up the long flight of stairs, heartily concurs. But there’s the rub. I don’t actually plant anything. The nearest I have got to deliberately planting, is when I pushed in the seed of a particularly sweet mango in one of my seemingly unoccupied pots. And nothing has emerged as yet. But then, like Contrary Mary, How does my garden grow?

I attribute it essentially to luck and laziness. Since I do not have a compost heap, I liberally distribute tea leaves, apricot shells, fruit and vegetable peels and other such things in all my pots. And nature does the rest. So, we are constantly being surprised by new vegetation. The four pomegranates which are now taller than me, sprung up themselves. I have also, in various stages of growth among the bougainvilleas, hibiscus, champas and lilies, three jamuns, two chikoos, lots of musk-melon plants, beans, pumpkin, and one tenacious green which has been variously identified as bathua, jakhia, and a wild non-edible. This summer, we had an exciting time tracking tomatoes as they changed from yellow flowers to green to yellow to orange to red fruits. All in all, we harvested about 70 tiny ones, and they were a great attraction to the children in the neighbourhood, and very sweet to eat. They grew themselves in pots designated for statelier plants, who have now reasserted themselves. I myself think, it’s a more efficient use of space, though this arrangement cannot strictly be called tidy.

The birds and beasts, at least, seem to like my casual scattering of seeds – and crumbs. The regulars in our terrace are a rakish bulbul with a particularly endearing tousle-head and his family, three polite doves (who incidentally were born and grew up on the old deer-antlers on our landing, and have merely moved further in, I suppose), many nameless blue-rock pigeons (I understand that is the attractive name they go under) who ponderously upset whatever they can, and one vociferous crow. On occasion, we have also been privileged by the visit of blue sunbirds, brown sparrows, bright green parrots, and once even a family of little weaver-birds who built their nest in one of our larger plants. And then there are of course, the squirrels, baby lizards, moths, butterflies and wasps who have adopted our terrace, and like the Camel with the Arab, now believe that our rooms are as much theirs as the terrace.

So altogether, it’s a full house.

Plain Tales from Doon - Third Instalment

Some Further Exchanges Between Garhwalis and Kumaonis…Telephonic and Otherwise

My father, belying Onial Mausaji’s general pronouncements on the differences between the Kumaonis and the Garhwalis, fits in quite contentedly with the vagaries of the Ghyldiyals. His military training may have something to do with it. But it seems to me that his motto of “Quick march”, (without any attendant fear of where he is marching to!) is only partly due to his life in the army. For it seems to have been his creed even before he joined the NDA. As a fairly little boy, Papa was once on his way home with Bhawani Chacha - his slightly younger brother – when he spied a ladder-seesaw contraption. It was hanging from a tree, part of an obstacle course for training soldiers. Before Papa could finish his very natural investigations into its possibilities, Chacha’s hold gave way. From his position half-way up the swaying rope-ladder, Papa found himself whizzing through the sky. Landing a great distance away with a nasty cut over his bleeding lip, he needed the imperative attention of several surgical stitches. That, he explained disarmingly, was the reason for his attractive lop-sided smile.

Since, neither that experience nor others that followed have ever shaken Papa’s impatient fascination for the new and the curious, he continues to have varied and exciting experiences. His nonchalent optimism rivals and occasionally complements Mummy’s characteristic concern for cleanliness, to produce some interesting situations. One recurring object that he never ceases to tire experimenting with, is the cell phone. His cell-phones retire sooner rather than later under the pressure of his random punches or their outdated technology – depending on Mummy’s interpretation or his. While drawn to their mysterious charms, Papa resolutely refuses to take them seriously – or indeed take at all, whether on his daily walks or his round of golf. Conversely, when he is in the vicinity of his phone, it is generally switched off. So, the family knows better than to call him on his cell phone – which is just as well. He also changes the phone companies he patronises, adding greatly to the custom and confidence of salespersons.

Once, we all went to visit Deepa Chachi - Bhawani Chacha’s wife - after her knee replacement surgery. She was at my cousins’ house, 25 kilometers away from ours, a fair distance in the NCR. We all sat without worrying, since my father, as the more frequent visitor to that house, had assured us that he would direct us. As we neared our destination, he casually said that he did not know the house number, but that was all right. He remembered the route perfectly.

After we had circled the colony a couple of times, Snehanshu at the wheel tersely requested that we call up my cousins’ so that we could check the sign-boards announcing the house numbers. Mummy dug out Papa’s phone from her handbag and handed it to him in the front passenger seat. A couple of hasty tries later, Papa declared there was no answer. Luckily, I had in the meantime, managed to get through from my phone. We drove up, amidst my parents’ animated discussion on the proper way to use cell-phones and directions.

Halfway home in the evening, at the conclusion of an afternoon of much conversation, tea and dosas, Papa suddenly enquired, “Aruna, have you got my phone?”

“No,” answered my mother. “You took it from me just before we reached. Remember when you tried to call - but couldn’t - for directions to the house? What did you do with it?”

“I kept it in my pocket…and then on the table next to where I was sitting. I thought you would have picked it up,” remarked Papa in an imperceptibly aggrieved tone. “Never mind if you didn’t. It is safe enough there.”

After a minute, he added “Just call and check. It is there of course, but just let them know”.

I called again. My cousin Vimal, promised to look for it. He found it almost immediately, reposing quietly on the table, and asked if he should come down to give it to us. We were nearly at Noida, and considering my father’s frequency of using the phone, I firmly declined to let him come so far on a smoggy winter’s evening. Anyway, as Papa reminded us, Bhawani Chacha was going back to DehraDun in a few days time. He could carry it there with him, from where Papa could easily collect it since he was planning to visit DehraDun as well.

We all agreed that this was the best thing to do. Almost immediately, he thought of another idea. Arvind Bhai, Papa’s sister’s son, who also lived in Noida, was planning to visit Deepa Chachi the next day. “Arvind can get it back. He is just a few kilometers away and we can arrange to pick it up.”

I duly called up both sets of cousins to inform them of the handing and taking over of the bag. “You can switch off the phone,” I told Vimal. “No, I’ll keep it on – that way Tauji will have a record of his missed calls.”

“Don’t bother”, I told him. “He doesn’t”.

He obviously did not believe me. In due course, the phone came back, still switched on, just in time for my parents’ forthcoming visit to Dehra Dun. I advised my father to keep it handy, and answer phones, to enable coordination of station-dropping and picking. “Don’t worry, I have it with me,” he said brightly. “Yes, the charger too.”

I finally tracked my elusive parents in one of the numerous houses at Dehra Dun the next day, after many phone calls to the houses of aunts and uncles from where they had just left or were just expected to reach. “Why don’t you switch on your phone,” I demanded, justly irritated. “Oh you know, the battery had drained off, and I found the charger I was carrying did not fit,” was the equable answer.

Two days later, we arrived at DehraDun as planned. “Of course, I don’t really need it now that you all are here and we will travel back together,” Papa said, after he had thanked us profusely for restoring his charger to him, retrieved from its hideout inside the cabinet in his study. “Your mother, as usual, must have tidied it away - you know she can’t bear to see anything lying around”.

“Indeed? You must have got mixed up with the charger of one of those innumerable phones that you persist in buying.” Mummy countered.

And they steadfastly stuck to their individual explanations.

© Anisha Shekhar Mukherji

More Plain Tales from Doon

The enumeration of the eccentricities of the Ghyldiyals was received rather enthusiastically by those in the family who were ‘half-and half’. Most of the full-blooded Garhwalis reacted by a studied silence or by retrieving superior anecdotes from their own store of tales worth telling. My father, from his Kumaoni vantage point of an objective onlooker, was the most appreciative.

“But you haven’t written about our Ghyldiyal”? he encouraged hopefully.

Our Ghyldiyal, is of course my mother, Aruna - or ‘Urhna’ as she complained her mother-in-law, my Dadi, insisted on calling her. The youngest of Nani’s three daughters, the family traits are not immediately apparent in Mummy. Her brief and acute comments bear little resemblance to Saroj Mausi’s detailed drifts from corruption to Chaucer. Or to Guni Mausi’s enigmatic utterances, darting between gardening lore, unusual recipes, child-rearing, and much else. Mummy’s adamant adherence to a clockwork schedule, come rain or shine, is also rather different from the untrammeled space and time-cycles of her elder sisters.

It takes the privilege of proximity to realize that in Mummy, the Ghyldiyal connection manifests itself more in deed, rather than in word (though she has not entirely escaped the particular family feat of carrying on a conversation quite independent of the listener’s response). Having apparently inherited all her seven siblings’ share of my grandmother’s legendary order and neatness, as well as the clan’s ‘do-it-yourself’ motto, she is akin to an extraordinarily efficient whirlwind. You have only to say something. Like Maggi Noodles, Mummy has already done it in what seems like 2 minutes. You need not say it either - and she will still have done it.

“Chotti didi bahut jaldi karti hain”, Nani spluttered with laughter as she remembered the resigned comment of a harassed family servant in her father’s house years ago. My mother, all of perhaps nine years old, had passed through the room on her way out to play. With an already characteristic quickness of eye and hand, in the short interval that the servant returned with some matching thread, she had tidied away the special buttons lying around, destined for the coat of Pandit Haridutt Shastri. This was Nani’s father, the head of the household, the Rajguru of Tehri Garhwal, and from all accounts a stately and stern personage. Then with a useful ‘out of sight-out of mind’ philosophy, she forgot where she had put them, or even that she had put them away.

Mummy’s energetic efforts at ensuring neatness in her neighbourhood often leave me at a loss too. Within the space of the half-hour that it takes me to pick up my daughter from school, I return to a sparkling and unfamiliar kitchen bereft of its usual merry mix of organic dals, herbal teas, powdered orange-peels, and dried neem leaves. Mummy - instead of reading the many interesting books that I have pointed out for her edification and entertainment, or admiring the squirrels on my terrace – has been ‘clearing up’. The empty bottles and jars which jam my cupboards (owing to my reluctance to add them to the garbage heap, and my ambition of someday using them to make interesting ‘bottle-walls’) are now suitably stuffed with useful things – or packed outside to be thrown. The kitchen is wonderfully clean, but it takes me rather longer than usual to find what I need. And since our notions of necessities don’t really match, where and when I find them is often a surprise.

Such as the one I got on a damp morning several years ago. My brother and I were about to resume our progress on Delhi’s roads, after unsuccessfully sheltering under a bougainvilla bush during a brief burst of rain. It took me an instant to realize the identity of the blue bundle, with which Vivek was briskly mopping up the seat of his mud-spattered motor-cycle. By then, it was too late. Dust and grease stains had joined together to render my much cherished T-Shirt emblazoned with the memories of NASA – National Association of Students of Architecture - unfit for wear. Which, it always had been, according to my disdainful parent. I feebly drew attention to it, whereupon Vivek turned surprised. “Oh is it something you use? Mummy gave it to me to clean my bike.”

I therefore, like the rest of her family, regard my mother’s skills with admiration tinged with trepidation. One of her self-imposed tasks is to bring some order into her busy sisters’ houses whenever she is visiting Dehradun. The methods she uses to transform an untidy room into a marvel of neatness at lightning speed, are direct but effective. The results are a bit like a conjuring trick. She simply bundles unsightly things into bags, under beds, and inside cupboards. From where, as my cousin Manishi giggles, they roll out when least expected.

Naturally enough, it is in combination with her sisters that Mummy manages to make most of her memorable moves. As on a visit to DehraDun a summer ago. We were at Saroj Mausi’s digesting a lunch of delicious Garhwali dishes accompanied by her quintessential turns of speech. It was then that Guni Mausi called up in a state. She could not find her phone anywhere – either in her own house or in the one across the lichi trees where Nani stayed with my younger uncle’s family. Had any of us seen it? We diligently scoured Saroj Mausis’s overflowing house to no avail. Sometime later I heard a low buzzing in the background. Recollecting my frustration at getting through to Saroj Mausi on the phone, I firmly directed her attention to it. But, both hers and Onial Mausaji’s phones were lying decorously silent on the table.

“It is coming from Sarojdi’s bag,” observed Mummy. We fished out Mausi’s black capacious bag, which she contrives to fill, like Mary Poppins, with an array of surprising articles. After some delving, we discovered a phone, ringing insistently. A visibly astonished Saroj Mausi, expressing wonder at this Mystery of a Strange Phone, tentatively answered it. “Hallo? Who??”

Audibly excited tones carried to us. “Your phone?”, said Saroj Mausi. “But how did it come inside my bag?”

Almost immediately, an indignant Guni Mausi arrived in person down the two short lanes and little length of road that separated her house and Saroj Mausi’s. “Everyone knows how absent-minded you are - but to put my phone in your bag and to not remember it even when I ask whether you’ve seen it, is really the limit”!

They were still trying to reach a satisfactory explanation, when Mummy who had been exclaiming with us over the discovery, was struck by a possibility.

“Sarojdi, I put a phone inside your bag in Guni’s house. I spotted it on the divan when I was tidying up at the time that the maid was sweeping the floor.” she explained.

“Since you say it isn’t yours,” she added wisely, “then it must have been Guni’s.”

“Though really, I did not expect Guni to be as careless as you.” By the time her sisters could collect their answers and their bags, Mummy was on her way out of the room, pausing to point out thoughtfully in passing - “Just as well that I kept it away safely. What if the poor maid had been tempted to take it?”

Images © Anisha Shekhar Mukherji; Text © Anisha Shekhar Mukherji

Holding Fast with Anna Hazare

A volunteer meeting was organized by ‘India Against Corruption’ on the 27^th of March 2010.

We’d come to know about this campaign spearheaded by Anna Hazare, through SMSes forwarded to us - which we were asked to send on to others if we supported the causes espoused in the campaign.

As we arrived for the meeting, slightly apprehensive about being half an hour late and not knowing what to expect, the sight of four college students walking up to the gate, and of two ladies who alighted from an auto-rickshaw looking for the same address, reassured us.

We walked into the premises, our architectural training as usual manifesting itself in a quick appraisal of the building. Clad in buff and red sandstone, its proportions were pleasant; the entrance doorway to the building was clearly marked out without being intimidating; the windows in reflective glass, past the side entrance that we were directed to, were neat and rhythmic. The fact that the meeting was being held here and not in the supercilious glass-boxes that pass for so much of contemporary architecture, seemed to us appropriate.

Our pace unconsciously quickened, as walking past the building and up the stairs, we heard the sound of someone speaking forcefully. Kiran Bedi? On the first floor, in a packed conference hall, we saw it was a young girl, head covered in a green chunni, kurta and jean-clad. We stood at the back, wondering how much of the discussion we’d already missed, indescribably glad that there were so many people there that we had to stand.

The energy and enthusiasm in the room was something we have never experienced. It became evident that we had come at the end of the first part of the meeting in which people had been talking about what they had personally gone through, the menace of corruption, the absolute necessity of doing something – letting off steam and gathering momentum as it were. Now it was time for ideas about how to do that something.

“Idealogy ki bahut baat ho gayee, ab ideas ki baat karein”, as the girl – who one of the older gentlemen present called ‘a Lakshmibai of today’ – said.

And ideas poured in– both for and against jamming the roads of Delhi and the NCR akin to the Jat Campaigners, to forming human chains, doing street-plays, fasting at homes, at Jantar Mantar, distributing pamphlets, speaking to people in buses, metros, local trains, resident associations, sending chain-emails, door-to-door campaigns. From an autorickshaw driver, from retired army officers and ex-servicemen groups, from a librarian, from college students, union leaders, Art of Living practitioners, teachers, even serving government officials - not just from Delhi and around but from Haryana, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Maharashtra. And it seemed to us, that this was truly another Freedom Struggle. The will of the people there; the complete commitment and confidence with which the young leaders channelized the concentrated and sometimes divergent outburst of feelings; the fact that so many people of such diverse backgrounds had gathered there as Indians who cared enough about what was happening to their country, is something that will always remain with us.

We fasted on the 5^th of April. And again on the 7^th. It was not easy, and we can better appreciate what it must be for Anna Hazare to go on a continuous fast while being in the public eye. We feel blessed that we have at least one person like him who can give direction and inspiration to us when so many of our so-called leaders and public figures do nothing but shame us and the idea of our nation. We hope to be able to go to the Jantar Mantar Road to express our solidarity with Anna Hazare and with the extraordinary courage and unity of so many Indians there and elsewhere in the country, who give us reason to be proud and hopeful for today and tomorrow.