Delhi chronicler rues how Capital treats its treasures

“Every corner of Old Delhi has treasures in terms of heritage. Mir Taqi Mir’s couplet sums it up beautifully: Koochey nahi dilli ke, auraaq-e-musawwir hain; Jo shakl nazar aayi, tasveer nazar aayi (These are not Delhi’s bylanes, these are an artist’s canvas; Every sight I see looks like a painting.) If it was in another country, there would be cobbled streets and entry tickets. But here, the treasures have been mismanaged to the extent that no one knows about them.”

Saif Mahmood

, the writer of ‘Beloved Delhi: A Mughal City and Her Greatest Poets, said on Saturday as he described the dilapidated state of the grave of Sheikh Ibrahim Zauq, the poet laureate of the Mughal court. “There’s a garbage dump next to the grave,” he said.

Mahmood referred to the famous couplet by Bahadur Shah Zafar – Kitna hai badnaseeb Zafar, dafn ke liye do gaj zameen bhi na mili ku-e-yaar mein – and retorted that even if Zafar had taken the do-gaj zameen for his burial, seeing the present state of the city, he would have probably committed suicide. The writer was critical of the renaming of roads named after Mughal emperors and the handing over of the maintenance of the Red Fort to a private company. “It is saddening to see such disdain for our heritage,” he said.

Urdu is going extinct from the dialect of common people in Delhi today but there was a time when great poets like Mirza Ghalib and Mir enlivened the city with their couplets in the language. “Mir was 12 or 13 years old when he came to Delhi from Agra. For a long time, he was under the patronage of noble man so life was good. But when that ended, he would sit on the stairs of Jama Masjid and recite couplets in appreciation of tourists who gave him money. He would recite couplets to the dhaba wala who in turn would give him food. Mir made the Urdu couplets his currency, turning it into a barter system of sorts,” Mahmood said. Today people identify Urdu with clichéd words like mohabbat (love) and ibadat (prayer) that are used in songs but Urdu is much beyond that, he added. “Feminism, communism, socialism – all types of isms are there in Urdu,” the writer said.

The revolt of 1857 changed Delhi forever, and the Partition in 1947 was the landmark event that led to the decline of the language. “After Partition, Pakistan adopted Urdu as its official language and, to many, it became synonymous with Islam which is such a travesty of the great language,” Mahmood said, adding further that “Mazhabon ki zubaan ho sakti hai, zubaan ka koi mazhab nahi hota.

But Mahmood remains hopeful and calls himself an optimist as he quotes Mir: “Dil va Dilli dono agar hai kharab; Pa kuch lutf is ujde Ghar mein bhi hain._(Both heart and Delhi May have been worn out, but some little pleasures still remain in this ruined house).”