“Delhi people used to be very particular about beautiful language. They were fond of poetry and they had real poets. Delhi used to be about beautiful cuisine. It used to be gentle. It was about beautiful living. When the rains began, the shopkeepers shut their shops and went out to enjoy the weather in the open spaces in Mehrauli. They made time for good food. They loved pigeon racing and listening to the storytellers on the steps of the Jama Masjid. They had few marketing skills, which is why they died out. They believed in exquisiteness: they made carpets and furniture, they worked as bookbinders. In Urdu, we call it ‘saleeqa’, a refined sensibility.”
As Ghalib was, Sadia is greatly preoccupied by the uncultivated outsiders, those without any care for such a sensibility.
“The first blow to Delhi’s culture came with the British, and then with the influx of Punjabis who came in after Partition. The original people of Delhi did not know what hit them after 1947: they were completely rattled by the loudness, aggression and entrepreneurship of the migrant Punjabis. My parents were shocked: ‘Where have they come from, these people? Why are they so loud? What is this food they eat?’ They tried to preserve the pre-1947 culture. They constantly corrected our language. ‘We have a language,’ they used to say. ‘We have a refined language. We have to use it.’ Punjabis took all the land of the city, they killed its language and etiquette. They ate tandoori chicken and butter chicken. Butter chicken! Those were things that I only saw outside our house, never inside.
“Of course, later on I became more receptive to other cultures. But I am glad that I was brought up in the old Delhi culture, because it was a good culture. It was a culture of hospitality. Giving water to anyone who came to your door. Giving up your own room for your guests, feeding them well, giving them shawls to wrap themselves in.
“Partition devastated the city, damaging its ethos forever. Look at our fabulous monuments: apart from the five or six that have been identified as tourist spots, the rest are just falling down. They’re garbage dumps. Hardly anything of beauty has been made since Partition. Look at the five-star hotels. You need to be beautiful to create beauty, and I don’t think people have that inner beauty anymore. Now our city is about aggression, rage, inequality, corruption and personal gain. It’s about consumerism and shopping malls. There is little space to reflect and polish the heart. We have no beauty to leave to our children.”
The walls of this room are covered with paintings of Urdu calligraphy. Sadia’s teenage son practices music in the other room: medieval Sufi music that he updates on his guitar. Sadia speaks quickly, switching between Urdu and English, her sentences falling over each other because she has rehearsed them many times in her head.
“I used to enjoy going to parties, because people used to be more genuine. Today you have people looking over your shoulder, talking to you but wondering all the time who they need to give their card to. I don’t associate with networking culture. And real prejudices have come to the surface since 9/11. At first I thought I was being too sensitive, but I wasn’t. I saw it in people who were part of my own circle of friends. It’s difficult to meet them now because inside they have a deep bias against Muslims. They say truly bizarre things these days. They want to know why we can’t stop being so Muslim.”
Two of Sadia’s friends from Pakistan, a couple, are sitting in the room with us. The husband runs a company that makes facsimiles of Mughal jewellery, which are fashionable in Pakistani society. The craftsmen who can still make them are not in Pakistan, however, but in India, and he comes frequently to work with them.
“My friends went to a party last night,” says Sadia. “And some Punjabi woman met them — she was Punjabi, wasn’t she? — yes, and she said she was scared of Pakistanis and they said to her, ‘Why don’t you come to Pakistan?’ And she said, ‘No we’re too scared. Someone might let a bomb off in your house.’ And she started laughing. ‘And our husbands would never let us stay among Pakistani men!’ And I said how can anyone allow that type of conversation with a guest? I mean, it is most inelegant! If someone had said that in my house, I would have said, ‘I’m sorry, you cannot talk like that to my guest!’”
The friend adds,
“And her husband had even been to Pakistan! And he came back with stories of all the good things you can experience there!”
“Anyone who comes here from Pakistan has to hear these things,” says Sadia. “Before, at least, people kept such thoughts to themselves, but now they’re open about them. That’s why I don’t go out anymore. I can’t listen to people talking like that.
“Look at how Muslims live in this city. Look at all the young Muslims who are turned away whenever they try to rent an apartment. Did you know pizza companies don’t deliver to Muslim areas? I was at a friend’s house and I called to order a pizza, and the man said, ‘Madam, we don’t deliver in those areas.’ ‘What do you mean by those areas?’ I shouted at him.”
She addresses her friend from Lahore.
“What did that woman tell you at the party last night? She asked you if you wanted a ride home and you told her you were staying in Nizamuddin. And this woman — she’s a friend of theirs! — said, ‘Are you crazy? I can’t go to a Muslim area at eleven at night!’ Can you believe it? These are people who studied at the best schools. And they think it is unsafe to come to Nizamuddin. These are the people who live in Jor Bagh, who wear high fashion, drink wine and send their children to American universities. They want to believe they are secular but they are not. They say it constantly because it is their fantasy about themselves.”
Sadia is making a fuss over her Pakistani friends while they are here, showing them that in her house, at least, the old culture is still alive. They talk about the fabulous meals they have had with her. In a couple of days, an evening of Sufi music is to happen in her house. She invites me to come too: her son will play, and a young qawwali singer she has taken under her wing. There will be musicians from Iran.
“I have been so exhausted recently,” she says. “I wanted to have an evening to replenish my soul, with people I love around me, and with music and poetry.”
Nine 1911
I do not deny the glamour of the name of Delhi or the stories that cling about its dead and forgotten cities. But I venture to say this, that if we want to draw happy omens for the future the less we say about the history of Delhi the better. Modern Delhi is only 250 years old. It was only the capital of the Moguls in the expiring years of their régime, and it was only the capital of their collective rule for little more than 100 years. Of course, there were capitals there before it, but all have perished, one after another. We know that the whole environment of Delhi is a mass of deserted ruins and graves, and they present to the visitor, I think, the most solemn picture you can conceive of the mutability of human greatness… His Majesty’s Government will be on much surer ground if instead of saying anything about the dead capitals of the past they try to create a living capital in the future.
— Lord Curzon, former viceroy of India, speaking in the House of Lords in February 1912 against the British government’s recent decision to move the Indian capital from Calcutta to Delhi19