Roundabout | Dilli ‘O’ Dilli visited by Punjab storytellers
Khushwant Singh gives an inside view in the piece ‘The Builders’ including the role of his contractor father Sardar Sobha Singh
Born and brought up in the fledgling city of Chandigarh, the greatest childhood joy was a five-hour drive in a bus flying on the old Ambala road to the wonderland called Dilli so different and buzzing from our city of squares and roundabouts designed so meticulously by Le Corbusier. To tell the truth that excitement never quite ended and continues even now in the senior citizen times. A trip vivid in my mind still was with my middle-aged parents when I was just about four and the youngest of eight siblings in those pre family planning times. The reason for the sojourn being that relationship between our parents was strained with building too large a house, to replicate the lost Lahore home post-retirement by commuting pension, taking loans and getting cheated by new-world contractors. My dashing captain brother, who was their only working child, suggested the old man and woman needed a holiday and I being the baby accompanied them. Well, Delhi held my four-year eyes in wonder in the year 1959 with a tonga ride, grandeur of the Red Fort, and staying in a hotel with a winding staircase and embossed tiles on the walls and pampering by my mother’s younger brother who was the manager of this destination called ‘The Royal Hotel’ in old Delhi.
Basti & Durbar
Delhi was etched in the heart as a wonderous city as compared to the ‘green hedges and white beards’ of the early scantily populated city of ours largely of retired people. Delhi poet Devendra Satyarthy had defined it as “Harian jharhian te chitian darhian” and added in another wise one on our city beautiful, “Kal de jamme Chandigarh da ki itihas, Miss Das?” Well now this city of ours has its own character and history. But it was with the same excitement of a four-year old that I rushed early morning in a shared cab and a long metro ride from Dilli’s Jahangirpuri to attend the launch of a collection of stories edited by Rakhshanda Jalil, a prolific creator of books and published by Ravi Singh of Speaking Tiger Books. Titled ‘Basti & Durbar: Delhi-New Delhi’ it is indeed a delightful collection of the city in across five languages, including English, Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi and Malyalam. Jalil says thus of the book: “This book is a collaborative effort in every sense of the word. What eventually found place between its covers are my efforts combined with efforts of Ravi Singh and Nageez Mollah of Speaking Tiger Books.” She further quotes Delhi’s pre-eminnent historian Percival Spear, who said, “Full understanding is available to no one. For those who seek there are rewarding glimpses...but always Dilli dur ast, the Delhi of full knowledge is far off.”
Builders, tongawala & whose story?
What makes the anthology particularly interesting to the North Indian readers is the inclusion of vibrant tales from writers of Punjab. Partition of India in 1947 brought many of the Lahore writers to the Capital, like Amrita Pritam, Krishna Sobti, Bhisham Sahni, Ajeet Cour, Kartar Singh Duggal and others. But long before hailing back to the when the British crushed the first war of Independence in 1857, the city was reduced to ruin and marked only by graves of Hindu and Muslim revolutionaries and no one would touch them. Then came the enterprising Sikhs from west Punjab to build Lutyen’s New Delhi. Khushwant Singh gives an inside view in the piece ‘The Builders’ including the role of his contractor father Sardar Sobha Singh. Known for his declaration of ‘with malice to one and all’ the writer says of his father: “My father was a man of foresight with a knack of making money.” The rest of course is history.
Other Punjabi fare is a touching tale by Kartar Singh Duggal in ‘Majha Nahi Moya’ (Majha is not dead) of the honour of a tongawala who would not compromise his values and honour, more so in case of a white skinned man, even if it meant him and his dear horse going hungry. ‘Gango’s Son’, another touching tale comes from Bhisham Sahni, about a pregnant woman working at a construction site in the Capital, translated from Hindi with finesse by Jerry Pinto. Jalil herself translates a story by Gulzar ‘Whose Story’ set in the Sabzi Mandi area where the legendary poet grew up as a refugee boy. Indeed a collection that has much to offer!
One cannot but add a parting couplet by Bashir Badr: “Purani Dilli dil Ki basti hai, jo bhi guzra usi ne looti hai..”
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