63. Delhi – Then Back To The Road

Ajmer's battered 'Two and a Half Day's Mosque' and t he dry hills behind.
62. Six Hundred Kilometers on Thirty-Six Rupees
June 2, 2022
By the north window of the Khwabgah a painting shows smashed idols A beardless youth (upper left) with a nimbus indicates an idol
64. Fatehpur Sikri And Agra- Mughal Murals
August 4, 2022
 
Beyond Delhi, taking tea at a roadside stall. photo Indian Tourism Development Corp.

Beyond Delhi, taking tea at a roadside stall. photo Indian Tourism Development Corp.

 
 
T he Hero bike that carried me into Delhi in the winter of 1973 had changed little in the weeks since I bought it. A simple black gearless machine like every other cycle in India. It was always difficult to find, particularly in central Delhi when I left it at a cycle stand. That was easily put right with small tins of yellow, red and orange paint. Helped by my friends’ daughters, Bubbles and Chhotu, I painted it, adding floral designs then my name in English and Hindi on the crossbar. That was a revelation. My first name, rendered in the Latin script, is always mispronounced, that script being poorly phonetic. Devnagari, the Hindi script, is excellent: what you write is what you say. A little child could read out my first name correctly. So could the boy on the cycle-stand at Connaught Place. Aged fifteen or so, from birth he lacked arms but not ability and guts. He ran a flourishing business, shifting those bikes, gripping them using his chin against his chest. I forget his name but wish him happiness.

After a month in Delhi, spending, not earning, I wrote to Hero Cycles suggesting an article to plug their cycles. It wouldn’t be hard to give them a good review. The company’s response was total silence, but a friend, Uma was editing the Indian Tourism Development Corporation’s monthly magazine, ‘Yatri’. She was interested in publishing an unusual travel feature: that was how I started earning by writing. She even commissioned someone to photograph me ‘on the road’, the only images I have of that journey.

 
 
The river Yamuna passing the ghats at Mathura

The river Yamuna passing the ghats at Mathura

 
 

Leaving in early February, my goal was Calcutta. Uma had recommended two small towns, Datia and Orchha, vaguely on the route. She hadn’t been to either but heard that both were interesting so I included them and set off southwards. Free of the suburbs, at a small town, Palwal I was given milk, toast and butter spread far thicker than one should, all a generous gift from the local milk collection centre. Much revived, by late afternoon I was negotiating a cheerful crowd in Hodal, where an annual wrestling competition was coming to its end. Powerful men pushed one another into the dust until the victor’s wrist was grasped and raised into the air above his diminished opponent. As the crowd thinned, I sought for somewhere to stay and was seized by a bumptious student, who promised me food, a visit to the theatre, as he led me to a dharamshala. It was all hot air. He left his companion to fulfil the promises which, since he was clearly less well-off, embarrassed both him and me since neither could retreat from the invitation without causing offence. The companion, altogether a nicer character, asked if I could direct him towards work in Delhi. Unemployment seemed ubiquitous.

 
 
Bullock cart wheels being renewed

Bullock cart wheels being renewed

 
 

I started next day with hot milk and sweet jelabis. Much of the traffic consisted of hired cars carrying foreign tourists towards Agra city and the Taj. As I took tea in a roadside shack an elderly couple of Americans pulled up at a plusher place across the road. Out of thin air a snake charmer appeared, then a man with a couple of shabbily-clad performing monkeys. Some fruit barrows joined them, but the couple disappeared into the air-conditioned safety. Onwards, in holy Mathura I found a pleasant, clean room – dearer than usual but still… I only had a 100 rupee note to pay the six rupees; that was often a problem outside big cities. The manager returned 94 grubby little rupee notes, promised me tens then had to be harried to produce them.

Mathura was once an important sculptural centre, but it was Wednesday, the museum’s day of rest. Never mind – there was a puncture and other things put right on the bike. The repair shop promised quick service while I wandered through the bright, busy bazaars full of holy pictures and plaster Krishnas. A kite flew over, bearing a large branch; noisy parrakeets were also building. Beside the ghats, the Yamuna river slid slow and low. A monkey chewed thoughtfully at an abandoned marigold garland. There were preparing for weddings – an auspicious day, perhaps. I sat on a bending bench, eating aloo tikya (potato cakes), as a pair of dogs launched into a vicious battle too close to my legs. The stall-holder dispersed them with a jug of cold water. Someone was playing a flute. Looking up, I saw it was an improbable uniformed soldier. Mathura is Krishna’s city. He is bansuriwala, the flute player. Rough flutes sold everywhere; kids blew tunelessly, none with his mastery of the instrument.

 
 
Dawn at The Bharatpur Bird Sanctuary, as it then was.

Dawn at The Bharatpur Bird Sanctuary, as it then was.

 
 

The bike repairer took time, but next morning the museum yielded a wondrous snake god, a beautiful Buddha, face framed in a delicate nimbus and a tiny fasting Buddha akin to the famous skeletal one in Lahore. Passing boys bore the ‘tuning fork’ of Vishnu on the forehead and an old fellow waved a trident. I left towards Bharatpur, the road particularly rough. A kindly bus-driver stopped and, slinging the bike on the roof, carried me ten kilometres, putting me down near beside a man repairing cart wheels, heating the iron rims to cool tightly in place.Wobbling through a herd of thin cattle, past a boy, a white kerchief round his head and a bright yellow flower in each ear, crouching on a white milestone, I entered Bharatpur. This was not a familiar Rajasthan, few bright-coloured turbans and the women’s clothes unremarkable. Small kids shouted ‘bandur’ or, showing education, ‘monkey’, snatched my sleeve then ran, swerved their bikes in my direction then turned away. Losing my temper was an unwise option, entertaining the whole street so I found the refuge in a dharamshala, coming out later to explore.

 
 
The marble tomb of Shaikh Salim Chishti, who forecast the birth of emperor Akbar's son. His descendants still live nearby.

The marble tomb of Shaikh Salim Chishti, who forecast the birth of emperor Akbar's son. His descendants still live nearby.

 
 

It had been windy all day, dust in the air, and by late afternoon a white, undazzling sun began to fall. The fattening half-crescent moon would not be full for the Taj. A wedding band came down the street to a song from the film ‘Shor’, dissonantly passing a group of women singing bhajans, temple-bound. A teacher asked where he could get certain books with no interest in the answer: his display of limited knowledge.The next two days passed largely in the peace of the famous bird sanctuary, the wind gone, the water motionless amongst sometimes-skeletal trees. Every Indian bird that favours water seemed present – ducks geese, rare white Siberian cranes, weird snakebirds. The cycle proved an ideal way to trace them. A man with a spade on his shoulder asked for a cigarette. Then, after a surfeit of wildlife and accompanied much of the way by a small boy on a large cycle, I went on to enter Fatehpur Sikri, great Akbar’s late 16th century carved sandstone capital, built then abandoned. Emperors can afford such profligacy - and look at the gift he made to tourism! The place had smartened since a visit in 1965.

 
 
Fatehpur Sikri's Hathi Pol (Elephant Gate) was once guarded by a pair of pachyderms. The iconoclastic emperor, Aurangzeb, beheaded both.

Fatehpur Sikri's Hathi Pol (Elephant Gate) was once guarded by a pair of pachyderms. The iconoclastic emperor, Aurangzeb, beheaded both.

 
 

In the mosque’s great square stands the white marble filigree tomb of Salim. There a man with a tabla, another with a harmonium poured their hearts out in qawwali, that great Indian gift to Islam, sung praise to the Unknown. Salim foretold the birth of Akbar’s first son – only a 50:50 guess – and the child bore his name until abandoning it for his regnal ‘Jahangir’ - ‘seizer of the world’. Those two emperors saw the zenith of the Mughal dynasty, wise, tolerant men who never forgot that their realm was populated by a majority who didn’t bear their faith. Akbar thought, questioned and under Jahangir Mughal art, borrowing from Persia, China and Europe, reached its full glory. Here, the last Great Mughal, puritan and iconoclast, Aurangzeb destroyed the murals and beheaded the great elephants guarding the Elephant Gate. Their bodies remain.

 

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