By Ahmed Ali
First published by Hogarth Press, London 1940.
Delhi inspired many poets who were in love with the city in times both good and bad, both in its flourish and ruins. "Humne maana ki dakkan mein hai bahut qadre sukhan; Kaun jaaye Zauq par Dilli ki galiyan chhod kar” (We hear that poetry is greatly valued in Deccan these days but, Zauq, who could bear to leave behind the alleyways of Delhi). If the bewitching words of Zauq, the court poet of Bahadur Shah, were not enough to manifest his love for Delhi, perhaps what Ghalib said might be the final word on the city: "Ik roz apni rooh se poocha, ki Dilli kya hai, to yun jawab main keh gaye, yeh duniya mano jism hai aur Dilli uski jaan (I asked my soul, ‘What is Delhi?’ It replied: ‘The world is the body, Delhi its soul').
These poetic sighs, as it were, were meant for Shahjahanabad, the seventh city of Delhi. Built in 1639 by Shah Jahan, who shifted the Mughal capital from Agra to the new place, it remained the capital of the Mughal Empire until its fall in 1857. Once the pride of the Orient, Shahjahanabad gradually lost its glory after the failure of the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and the ascendency of the British Raj. The syncretic Hindustani culture - sophisticated and robust - that grew within the walled city slowly crumbled and finally destroyed beyond recognition by the time Lutyens' Delhi, being the eighth city, came into being after the Delhi Durbar in 1911.
The best impression of the decay of a whole culture may not, however, be found in the words of the great poets of the time. William Darlymple, probably Delhi's most famous chronicler alive, says that the best depiction of the city that was destroyed in 1947 can be found not in photographs or the jaded memories of the survivors, but in this slim novel by Ahmed Ali. First published in 1940 with the help and support of E. M. Forster and Virginia Woolf, most of the copies of Twilight in Delhi were destroyed in the warehouse of Hogarth Press during German air raids in Britain. There was no reprint, and the book was overlooked first during the Second World War, then in the holocaust of India's partition.
Meanwhile, as the quirks of fate had it, Ahmed Ali - who was a serving diplomat in China under the imperial government of India - was prohibited to come back to India when the subcontinent was divided into two. Thus Delhi's most distinguished chronicler was debarred from entering the city and he was forced to relocate to Karachi. Many decades later the Oxford University Press came up with the paperback edition of Ahmed Ali's book after which it began to receive the recognition it deserved. The 1994 edition of the book carries a bitterly powerful introduction by the writer chronicling the chain of events surrounding the publication of book and his becoming a persona non grata in the city he loved and longed. Ahmed Ali passed away the same year.
The novel follows the fortunes of a traditional Muslim family living in the walled city. The protagonist Mir Nihal is the family's patriarch who disapproves of his son Ashgar's courtship of a low-born Muslim named Bilqeece. As the love of Ashgar and Bilqeece blossoms (and then decays), Darlymple rightly points out that "the whole dying world of Shahjahanabad is evoked: the pigeon-fliers and the poets, the alchemists and the Sufis, the beggars and the tradesmen".
As an avid visitor of some of the old city's narrow by-lanes and alleys, I could quickly relate to many of the book's descriptions. Sample this walk home of Mir Nihal:
"So he came straight down Chandni Chowk, towards the Clock Tower to go through Balli Maran, the nearest way home. As he passed the Clock Tower, he saw a number of camel carts wind their way, creaking, groaning, moving slowly like snails, from the Company Gardens to Khari Baoli, the grain market. When he reached the Kucha Pundit, he bought a pice worth of unripe mangoes to have them roasted in the oven and have fresh sherbet made".
The book is brimful of episodes that vividly depict the culture of the place, one that was born and nourished within the city walls and was lying demolished at the turn of British ascendency in Delhi. Mir Nihal is a typical feudal gentleman of the time and his hobbies testified. Besides pigeon-flying he was fond of alchemy and medicine. Despite having a devoted wife in Begam Nihal, he's also having a young mistress Babban Jaan under his employ. For, it was such times that even prostitutes had substantial roles in social life: "The prostitutes were of two kinds, the cultured ones and whores. The cultured ones were patronized by the rich and the well-to-do. Young men were sent to them to learn manners and the art of polite conversation; and the older people came to enjoy their dancing, music, and their company in general".
The novel is largely forgotten even in the city it immortalized. But, as William Darlymple says, "Twilight in Delhi is not only a very fine novel, it's also an irreplaceable record of the vanquished life and culture of pre-war Delhi". Having read the novel, I fully agree with Darlymple but for whose effusive praise for Ahmed Ali's book in City of Djinns, I would not have come to know of it.
(The reviewer Ajay Kumar Singh is a Joint Secretary rank Officer in the Government of Jharkhand.)
