Read Online A Place Within by M.G. Vassanji - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: M.G. Vassanji
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places, and here I always return, before heading back to Canada. I am unsettled by nature, and yet I am a creature of habit. I abhor changes and moving, yet I long to get away. My continual returning to India through Delhi reflects perhaps, in some convoluted way, this dual nature.
Bombay, which was the traditional landing place for my people and synonymous with India in my childhood, and the setting of many a popular film and song, has an infectious rhythm and colour; it is a city cluttered with life and a pleasure to walk in; much is written about it. Delhi, on the other hand, more open and expansive, is not the stuff of movies; it is both older and newer, has been so for at least a thousand years. And the more recent newer Delhi has all the character of a suburban sprawl. But Delhi in its traditional sense, said the right way, evokes the mystique of history, and old poetry, reminders of empires rising and falling; it carries images of wars and marauding armies, echoes dimly with the clash of steel, the roll of cannon, the thunder of horses. It was the seatof the so-called Muslim rule in India and, recently, of a modern right-wing nationalist government drawing much rhetorical strength, if not the poison of communal hatred, from allusions to that rule. Not only were the last Mughals defeated here by the British, the last emperor exiled ignominiously to faraway Burma and his family destined to live in poverty, but thousands of Muslims fled Delhi during the partition of India (called, simply, “Partition,” all its horrors implied), headed for the newly formed nation of Pakistan. Hindus travelled the opposite way, bringing the bitterness of exile and loss and violence with them into the new developments of Delhi. Up to half a million Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs are said to have perished in the slaughter that accompanied Partition. Every monument here therefore gives pause for thought, a squirm of the mind: How does one respond? Does that put a label on one? Isn’t there a neutral, intellectual, dispassionate way to respond to the history? Delhi, for me, always raises questions. Once, upon telling a taxi driver to take me to the Mughal emperor Humayun’s tomb, a grand monument amidst a splendid garden, all of it recently renovated, he lied, “Why go there, there’s nothing there but an empty roundabout.” Immediately I craned my neck to identify the telltale markers of his faith in the stickers on his dashboard, the hangings on his mirror. And felt guilty afterwards for my suspicion.
Within the area now called Delhi, many an old Delhi (the canonical number is seven) rose and fell into neglect and ruin, a monument to a ruler’s ambition, a lesson in the transience of empire and dynasty. The heroes of the great Indian epic the Mahabharata , the five Pandava brothers, are thought to have held court here, some three thousand years ago, in a city they had built called Indraprastha. The city is described in great detail in the Mahabharata , as grand and wonderful, with “well-planned streets, magnificent white buildings,pavilions, pleasure hillocks, ponds, lakes, and tanks [reservoirs]. It was surrounded by beautiful gardens where trees of many kinds blossomed and bore fruit and where the air resounded with the call of peacocks and cuckoos…. From here Yudhisthira [the eldest of the Pandavas] ruled over his realm, cultivating among his subjects dharma (righteousness), artha (material well-being), and kama (the satisfaction of sensual pleasure).” Among the magnificent buildings was a great hall which had golden pillars and was studded with precious stones. The details seem fantastical, but that might well be poetic licence. Did the descriptions have a basis in fact? Apparently not. A covered archaeological dig at Purana Qila, the Old Fort, is perhaps the site of ancient Indraprastha. Archaeologists who have dug at this site and at others connected with or mentioned in the epic have indeed found ancient artifacts—shards
Bombay, which was the traditional landing place for my people and synonymous with India in my childhood, and the setting of many a popular film and song, has an infectious rhythm and colour; it is a city cluttered with life and a pleasure to walk in; much is written about it. Delhi, on the other hand, more open and expansive, is not the stuff of movies; it is both older and newer, has been so for at least a thousand years. And the more recent newer Delhi has all the character of a suburban sprawl. But Delhi in its traditional sense, said the right way, evokes the mystique of history, and old poetry, reminders of empires rising and falling; it carries images of wars and marauding armies, echoes dimly with the clash of steel, the roll of cannon, the thunder of horses. It was the seatof the so-called Muslim rule in India and, recently, of a modern right-wing nationalist government drawing much rhetorical strength, if not the poison of communal hatred, from allusions to that rule. Not only were the last Mughals defeated here by the British, the last emperor exiled ignominiously to faraway Burma and his family destined to live in poverty, but thousands of Muslims fled Delhi during the partition of India (called, simply, “Partition,” all its horrors implied), headed for the newly formed nation of Pakistan. Hindus travelled the opposite way, bringing the bitterness of exile and loss and violence with them into the new developments of Delhi. Up to half a million Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs are said to have perished in the slaughter that accompanied Partition. Every monument here therefore gives pause for thought, a squirm of the mind: How does one respond? Does that put a label on one? Isn’t there a neutral, intellectual, dispassionate way to respond to the history? Delhi, for me, always raises questions. Once, upon telling a taxi driver to take me to the Mughal emperor Humayun’s tomb, a grand monument amidst a splendid garden, all of it recently renovated, he lied, “Why go there, there’s nothing there but an empty roundabout.” Immediately I craned my neck to identify the telltale markers of his faith in the stickers on his dashboard, the hangings on his mirror. And felt guilty afterwards for my suspicion.
Within the area now called Delhi, many an old Delhi (the canonical number is seven) rose and fell into neglect and ruin, a monument to a ruler’s ambition, a lesson in the transience of empire and dynasty. The heroes of the great Indian epic the Mahabharata , the five Pandava brothers, are thought to have held court here, some three thousand years ago, in a city they had built called Indraprastha. The city is described in great detail in the Mahabharata , as grand and wonderful, with “well-planned streets, magnificent white buildings,pavilions, pleasure hillocks, ponds, lakes, and tanks [reservoirs]. It was surrounded by beautiful gardens where trees of many kinds blossomed and bore fruit and where the air resounded with the call of peacocks and cuckoos…. From here Yudhisthira [the eldest of the Pandavas] ruled over his realm, cultivating among his subjects dharma (righteousness), artha (material well-being), and kama (the satisfaction of sensual pleasure).” Among the magnificent buildings was a great hall which had golden pillars and was studded with precious stones. The details seem fantastical, but that might well be poetic licence. Did the descriptions have a basis in fact? Apparently not. A covered archaeological dig at Purana Qila, the Old Fort, is perhaps the site of ancient Indraprastha. Archaeologists who have dug at this site and at others connected with or mentioned in the epic have indeed found ancient artifacts—shards
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