Do people who come here ask you about the jinn?’ My question lingered in the air for a bit. I was in the courtyard of a medieval mosque. At nightfall, this monument is entrancing, with its white marble dazzling against the red sandstone and the medallions on the spandrels of its pishtaq (arched entrance) appearing as glaring white eyes.
‘That’s all they mostly ask…’ said the guard as he began to dig through his pockets, looking for a key upon my request. ‘But I have my guru’s blessings, nobody has harmed me! And see this, that very guru allows me to find everything.’ He triumphantly raised his hands and dangled the keys which would open the perpetually locked gate of the graveyard that hosts the supposedly ‘haunted’ tomb adjacent to the mosque.
I remember how strong the scent of the devil’s tree, Saptaparni, was that evening. This is the fragrance of October in Delhi, playing its part as the harbinger of winter. The intensity of the aroma was unsurprising since I was surrounded by trees as I made my way through the Mehrauli Archaeological Park. The moon was aglow, and so was the Qutb Minar, (Fig. 23) India’s tallest minaret that oversees this part of the city like a powerful ancestral force.
There have been times aplenty when I have been warned to not come to this park after sunset, not only because of its forested environs but also for the unseeable forces who are believed to inhabit it. ‘At least tie your hair…’ I am told by the flower-sellers who sit in rows across the narrow road outside one of the entrances to the park. My hair, if left untied, is an invitation for the menacing jinn to follow me, and not only that, they would also leave an imprint across my cheeks: ‘Beware…they will slap you!’
Jinn are ‘intermediary’ and complex beings who are made of smokeless fire, unlike humans, who are made of clay. In Islam, both humans and jinn are subject to the Revealed Law and will be held accountable for their actions on the Day of Judgement. Like humans, jinn are considered ‘responsible beings’ as they possess the freedom to choose how they lead their lives. However, they also have unique characteristics: shape-shifters, invisible entities, and magical trickery. While the jinn do possess these abilities, their power serves as a test, and they will face consequences if they misuse it to terrorise people.
But it is not that these jinn float and reside in the many niches that this historical park is dotted with. There is a particular place where they have found refuge, at the tomb and mosque of Jamali Kamboh—a Sufi, courtier, poet, emissary, and globe-trotter. But if you ever find yourself in Mehrauli and ask anyone about him, you would never hear his name being taken alone. It is always in companionship with Kamali, the identity that local lore has given to the mystery man that Jamali is buried next to.
Together, Jamali-Kamali are found in a single-storied mausoleum as magnificent as the meaning behind Jamali’s name: the one who inspires beauty. Resembling a gem-box, it is even protected like one since special permission is required to see it from the inside, though legends will also have you believe that it must also be kept that way so as to not provoke the wrath of the jinn. The monument that is always accessible in this complex is the mosque, also built by Jamali, and to its north is where his tomb lies, in a cemetery surrounded by other open-air graves.
But on that October evening, my request to be let inside had been granted. As the guard reached the graveyard’s gate, the locks clinked and clanked, and I wondered how I would make a rather frustrating character in a horror movie, much like those who are aware of the consequences and yet become responsible for incurring the curse of the Mummy. But I didn’t have to dwell on this thought for too long for by then, the gate had been opened, and I marched purposefully towards Jamali-Kamali.
A chained wooden door shields this square tomb. To get a glimpse of the interiors, one has to walk to its northern and eastern sides which boast beautiful sandstone jalis (latticed window screens). To its north I went, lured by the devil tree’s scent marrying the aroma of the incense sticks that had been lined right under the screen. The guard told me that somebody had come earlier to the tomb to pray and had lit those sticks. ‘But even when there are no agarbattis here, I still always get a whiff of them,’ he said.
I peeked in through the screen and there they were in their shiny graves, right next to one another—Jamali and Kamali. They rest under a domed ceiling that gleams with magnificent motifs and its edges sing the verses of Jamali. It appears as if these two spend their afterlife at peace under an ornate galaxy of red, white, and blue.
Having beheld its magic, it was puzzling. How does something so precious come to attain the reputation as one of the city’s most haunted sites? But there were more questions. About its uniqueness: how does such a pioneering sixteenth-century tomb, spanning the period between the decline and rise of two dynastic epochs, find itself in Delhi’s first city? About its multiple identities: how can this monument be a place of horrors and simultaneously a haven of sanctity and an oasis for lost histories? And inevitably, about its enigma, not only due to the jinn, but also because of Kamali: who really was this man, sometimes seen as Jamali’s pupil, at other times his friend, and often, his lover?
It is through the untangling of these various threads which tie Jamali-Kamali together that we may reach closer to understanding what makes this place so astonishing. And thus, the story can only begin at one place…
(Extracted from Ghosted: Delhi’s Haunted Monuments by Eric Chopra. Published by Speaking Tiger Books, 2025)
About the Book
Delhi is haunted—by its ghosts, its ruins, and its unending capacity for rebirth. In the shadow of medieval mosques and Mughal tombs, the past refuses to stay buried. Saints, Sultans, poets, and lovers—all linger in the city’s imagination, their stories shaping how we remember what once was.
In Ghosted, historian and storyteller Eric Chopra journeys through the capital’s most beguiling sites—Jamali-Kamali, Firoz Shah Kotla, Khooni Darwaza, the Mutiny Memorial, and Malcha Mahal—to unearth a Delhi that exists between worlds: a palimpsest where Sufis bless kings, jinn listen to grievances, and begums occupy dilapidated hunting lodges. What begins as a search for Delhi’s haunted monuments becomes a meditation on why we are drawn to the dead and how ghost stories become vessels of collective memory.
Blending archival research with folklore, myth, and reflection, Chopra paints an intimate portrait of a city forever in dialogue with its former selves. Through invasions and rebirths, he reveals that Delhi’s spirit resides not just in its monuments but in the unseen presences that linger among them.
Ghosted is a lyrical, haunting journey through the city’s spectral landscape— an invitation to listen to what its echoes tell us about memory and identity.
About the Author
Eric Chopra is a public historian, writer, media creator, podcaster, and the founder of Itihāsology, an inclusive platform dedicated to Indian history and art. He leads a range of heritage experiences at museums and monuments and designs history-musicals in which he performs as a storyteller. Chopra is the co-host of the For Old Times’ Sake podcast and Jaipur Literature Festival’s Jaipur Bytes podcast. He also writes and curates for numerous festivals and events focused on history, literature, and the performing arts.
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Sometimes, when my visitors to Rome, arriving in the sweltering month of July or August, voice over-zealous ambitions to ‘do’ Pompeii, I don’t have the heart to discourage them. But I beg off from accompanying them. I have nothing against Pompeii as such, but I am not sufficiently suicidal to relish the thought of trudging miles of arid ruins under a punishing sun for the twenty-third time!
It’s at this point, usually, that I try to sell what I call my ‘Lazy man’s Pompeii’: Ostia Antica. I could have called it the ‘Poor man’s Pompeii’ as well, but the riches of the ancient city can almost equal a Herculaneum to the imaginative tourist. And its biggest plus-point is that it is so much closer to Rome (as against Pompeii, about 200 kilometers away, towards Naples), and may I add, that much shadier!
Less than an hour away from Rome, Ostia Antica was founded in the fourth century B.C by King Arcus Martius (a historical persona of whom I readily admit to being shamelessly ignorant) it became Ancient Rome’s commercial and military port, and during Emperor Constantine’s time, it boasted a population of 100,000!
Ostia reminds me of another ancient city I once visited and loved: Fatehpur Sikri in India, the Mughal king Akbar’s doomed capital near Agra. The comparison to Akbar’s city is justified because, although Ostia is a remarkable example of historic Roman towns like Pompeii and Herculaneum, unlike them, it was not destroyed, rather, like Fatehpur Sikri, it was abandoned.
While the Mughal city was abandoned due to a lack of sustainable water supply, in the case of the Roman city, it was mosquitoes. Strange but true thatan epidemic of malaria drove out the inhabitants of this once flourishing port city. An odd quirk of history and biology that a puny anopheline community managed to drive out a powerful anthropical one, hundred times its size!
A quick reminder here: in talking about Ostia, we must make a clear distinction between Ostia Antica, the archeological site, and the present-day beach town of Ostia, a popular seaside resort within the municipality of Rome, further down.
The excavated areas of ancient Ostia abound in numerous ruins and reminders of a thriving commercial city of times past: public and private buildings, streets, defensive walls, and harbors.
I find the residential streets most fascinating because it brings to life a real world of ordinary people. Much has been written about Roman tenement-housing and remains of these buildings abound in Ostia.
Reconstructed models apparently reveal that a typical apartment block could be five-storeys high, and that the flats were probably quite functional, mostly reached from courtyards or from the street by stairs running between shops on the ground floors.
I think of all this as I stop at a crumbled courtyard here, touch a moth-eaten wall there, step over a threadbare threshold, or mount a mysterious flight of steps that end abruptly in mid-air, leading nowhere.
For me, it’s in this residential environment that I find the faint but persistent pulse of a bygone life. Visiting it on some empty afternoon, while I might be sitting on the broken steps of a roofless room, I can surmise the life of the ordinary man or woman who once lived here: I smell the fragrance of fresh baked bread in the gutted bakery next door; I hear the sound of children playing in the silent streets, or the hum of voices in the tavern with its dusty counter; and suddenly, the entire history of the humble populace seems to be whispered and echoed by the sea-spiked breeze among the pines and cypresses.
Let the Archeologist and Historian keep their details. To me the romance of a ruined city is not necessarily in the structures themselves, in the revealed or concealed splendor of its remains, it is in the mystique of its very presence, its undefined shape as a messenger from lost times, telling us stories of the long ago.
A dead city serves to remind us that it once existed, and that the past, although it is no more, is never completely wiped out, never obliterated from the collective memory of the world. In leaving behind its footprints, the spirit of the city has defied negation and accompanies me this afternoon.
And thus, I love to sit, under the peristyle of a vanished villa, absorbing the atmosphere of this long-deserted city, contemplating the history not just of this particular Roman town, but all the nameless cities of countless civilizations in the past. I wonder at the basic story it tells of our collective and individual engagement with Life, of the heroic audacity of the human spirit attempting, again and again, to build its sandcastles against the wind, trying to carve a permanent niche on the elusive surface of Time.
Whether the crumbling habitation is in Ostia Antica or Mohenjo-Daro, in Petra or Machu-Pichu, in Moinamoti or Fatehpur Sikri; each is a monument to the Spirit of Man, the builder of cities, the creamer of dreams.
[ Extracted from An Abiding City: Ruminations from Rome. Published by UPL (University Press Limited, Dhaka), 2002 ]
ABOUT THE BOOK
An Abiding City: Ruminations from Rome is a fresh look at Italy and Rome from the perspective of a long-time resident of non-Italian origin. Neeman Sobhan, living in Italy, since 1978 wrote for two decades a personal column in the Bangladesh English language daily, The Daily Star, spinning vignettes and sketches out of her daily encounters and reflections living in Rome. Here, in vivid prose and poetic detail are selections from her work.
Among some of the myriad themes in this collection of essays and poems: the charm of everyday Rome; the romance of history; the adventure of the expatriate’s eternal quest for home; the poetry of seasonal transformations; the mysteries of relationships; the kaleidoscope of life in general, and of one woman in particular, who within her journey through the Eternal City, shares with her readers her passage through life.
The writing is enhanced by ink sketches by Italian-American artist/writer Ginda Simpson.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Neeman Sobhan is a Bangladeshi-Italian fiction writer, poet, columnist. She writes in English, and her fiction and poetry have appeared in many anthologies and literary journals within the sub-continent. Till recently she taught English and Bengali at the University of Roma, La Sapienza.She lives in Rome with her husband. She has a collection of short stories, Piazza Bangladesh (2014) which has been recently translated to Italian; a volume of poetry, Calligraphy of Wet Leaves (2015) and a collection of her columns, An Abiding City: Ruminations from Rome (2002). Presently, she is finishing her first novel, and lives between her home in Rome and Dhaka.
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Fuller Road, the short and winding road in the middle of the University of Dhaka campus, is quite legendary, not only as far as the history of that institution is concerned, but also in the annals of Bangladesh. It must also be one of the most beautiful of Dhaka city’s roads, having till now mostly escaped the degradations other old roads of the city have been subjected to due to rampant urbanisation. It is steeped in history, but still looks as if it was built not that long ago. Undoubtedly, it has real character and a distinctive place in the city’s life.
Bampfylde Fuller[1] was the first Lieutenant Governor of the province of East Bengal and Assam but he held that position for less than a year. Fuller Road must have been named to acknowledge his indirect role in the creation of Dhaka’s university. A controversial administrator and a very opinionated man, he had quit his position in a huff after less than a year at his job. The Partition of Bengal had been revoked in 1912, and all Fuller left behind then in his brief stint seemingly was the beautiful Old High Court Building of the city (whose construction he had initiated) and the splendid, sprawling rain trees of the university he had apparently imported from Madagascar. Nevertheless, the naming of the road indicates that he was part of the historical current that would lead not only to the building of the University of Dhaka in 1921, but also to the Partition of India in 1947, and the birth of Bangladesh in 1971. Fuller Road is thus replete with history.
Enter it from Azimpur Road and you will see it flanked on one side by Salimullah Muslim (or SM) Hall, and on the other by Jagannath Hall. The former, of course, is named to honour Nawab Salimullah, one of the university’s founders, and someone who had donated a lot of land to the university. Built in 1930-1931, SM Hall is a splendid building, incorporating features not merely of Mughal architecture and gardens, but also of design elements of the colleges and halls that echo another venerable university, Oxford (one reason why the University of Dhaka was once called the “Oxford of the East”). Jagannath Hall comes with an overload of history as well. It, too, was originally modelled after the halls of the University of Oxford and was named after a zamindar of Savar who had contributed to the founding of Jagannath College, which had an organic connection with the university for a long time.
Fuller Road, in fact, is also steeped in the history of Bangladesh. If you enter it from its Azimpur Road entrance, you will see the Swadhinata Sangram, a group of sculptural busts by Shamim Sikder that commemorates the legendary names associated with the university and the birth of Bangladesh. If you care to enter the university staff quarters from either the left or right of the road, and if you then ask the guards to show you around, you will find the graves of intellectuals (or plaques honouring them). These were men martyred in 1971 due to the single-minded determination of the Pakistani army and its Bengali collaborators to eliminate dissident intellectuals who had worked for the birth of Bangladesh, thereby crippling the country at the moment of its birth.
If you exit the road on Nilkhet road, you will find a solemnly built commemorative area in another island, containing plaques listing university teachers, staff members, and students martyred in 1971. The sculptures and the plaques are testaments not only to the sheer bloody-mindedness of the Pakistani forces of yore but also to the major contribution made by the university’s people to Bangladesh’s independence. I grew up listening to snatches of the history of the University of Dhaka and Fuller Road that are relevant here.
One of my uncles, for instance, is still fond of retelling an incident when he escaped from the Pakistani police’s bloody assault on demonstrators protesting on February 21, 1952, against the imposition of Urdu as the sole national language of the nascent state by (West) Pakistani administrators and their cohorts. He had taken refuge at that time in the Fuller Road flat of an European Jewish academic, who was then a faculty member. A few of my teachers have either talked about or written about the movements that continued from that memorable incident till December 16, 1971, describing their involvement with the various other movements that led to the emergence of Bangladesh. They highlight, in the process, noteworthy moments in the road’s history and the roles its denizens played in our country’s pre-liberation stages, as well as the memorable transitional historical moments they had either witnessed or were part of.
As I move in from the Swadhinata Sangram island on the Azimpur Road entry point of Fuller Road nowadays, I can see only a few remnants of the natural beauty the road once boasted. Gone is the basketball court placed in a picturesque setting that SM Hall once possessed, or the lush green grass tennis court of the Hall that my uncle reminisced about. He played there before my time. For a long time, there were many statuesque and lovely trees on the SM Hall side of the road. However, the distinctive architectural features of the SM hall building still strikes me as very impressive.
On the other side, however, the first clear signs of the uglification of Fuller Road are visible in the drab features of the newly built extension of the Jagannath Hall complex. In addition to these two halls, Fuller Road is flanked on one side by the British Council and university staff quarters, and on the other by Udayan Bidyalaya (aka Udayan School/College), some faculty and staff quarters, the residences of one of the pro-vice chancellors and the treasurer, and the vice chancellor’s house. The two buildings of the pro-vice chancellor and the treasurer are pretty nondescript, as are the Udayan buildings, but the British Council setup is quite notable. I have written about the British Council’s transformation from an open access center for intellectual and cultural pursuits and my own memories of stimulating as well as adda[2]-filled days in anguished as well as indignant remembrance elsewhere, but let me just reiterate what I say in that piece briefly here: This new British Council is, indeed, sleekly designed and has state-of-the art security, but it is no longer the vibrant centre of intellectual exchange it once was, and is now mostly a place visited by those who can afford its wares of British education.
The Vice-chancellor’s residence, however, is undoubtedly still striking. If you have had the privilege of going inside, you must have been impressed by the building as well as the grounds, containing krishnachuras and jarul trees, which when flowering, make Fuller Road look vibrant and colourful—almost a garden in Dhaka city. Indeed, the rain trees, the krishnachuras and jaruls in bloom, one or two shirish and a solitary sonalu trees and (still) numerous mango trees play their part in making Fuller Road a distinctive floral phenomenon of the cityscape. Fuller Road is indeed as beautiful as you could expect any road to be in a bustling, bursting-at-its seam, and unsparingly chaotic city like Dhaka.
It is a road that also has many moods and that you can see in many lights—literally. I lived in Fuller Road for over two decades and frequented it for two more, and thus have had the privilege of viewing the road at different times of the day and on diverse occasions for at least four decades. When I now reflect on what I saw, I am struck by the immense variety of the experiences the road affords to those who live in it and even to passersby.
It was during my prolonged stay in Fuller Road that I got frequent glimpses of the wondrous place it once must have been. Even now, a nature-lover can take delight in its birds, for although the cacophonic crows still reign supreme amongst the bird population of the locality, throughout the day, and especially in the evening, you will see swiftly flying flocks of pigeons, tribes of parrots, and incomparably beautiful yellow-breasted holud pakhi[3]couples, in addition to the sad-looking, ubiquitous shaliks[4] and evening’s surrealistic bats.
When I first started living in Fuller Road, I would occasionally see snakes slithering by on monsoonal days; mongooses darting away at the sight of walkers is a not uncommon experience even now. Wild dogs roam in parts of Fuller Road at nights and early mornings. The foxes have disappeared, and I have seen a stray monkey only once or twice, but there is still enough flora and fauna around to make you feel an intimate connection with nature in this neighbourhood of the city. But of course, in addition to its nonhuman residents as well as its human ones, Fuller Road is now frequented mostly by people who find its free and open spaces appealing for different reasons at different times of the day.
Early in the morning or late in the evening, for instance, you will find men and women chatting away as they do their constitutionals; during the day students saunter across the road while vehicles fill the free and plentiful parking spaces; come evening lovers sit down discreetly in its dark spots, trying to be as close as possible and as far away as they can from prying eyes; with nightfall nouveau riche youths park faux sports and/or sleekly painted cars, trying to impress the girls who stroll across the road. Nowadays you will see with irritating frequency in evenings the parked motorcycles of busy-seeming student leaders. At night, Fuller Road can have a surrealistic feel to it—lit up but deserted, desolate as in some dreamscape, and as in a dreamscape, hauntingly familiar.
What surely makes Fuller Road truly distinctive, though, are the festival days that it hosts throughout the year, and the processions and parades that cross it throughout the year for one reason or the other. If you list them by the English calendar, you can begin with the new year when celebrations continue from the final hours of the dying year and end till the first nightfall of the new one. February is a truly distinctive month in the road—first Bashanta Utshob[5]and then Valentine’s Day see it fill up with young men and women in bright, warm colours and obviously romantic, flirtatious moods. Even solemn Ekushey[6]February, when night-long Fuller Road residents hear the doleful notes of the Ekushey song commemorating our language martyrs, and when from dawn to afternoon the road is closed to all vehicular traffic, switches to a festive mood by late afternoon, as those crisscrossing it seem bent on leaving the sad notes behind to celebrate all things Bengali. But the most exuberant display you can see in and around Fuller Road is during Pohela Boishakh[7], when the road turns into a conduit for festival-loving people flowing from fun-filled event to event. Eid days and Durga Pujas, and Saraswati pujas too witness suitably dressed young people walking across the road in obviously celebratory moods, lighting up themselves and the people around them, as they either stroll by or stand in pairs or groups here and there in the curving road’s embrace.
And the processions and parades? Suffice it to say that they are motivated not only by politics but this or that reason or cause. In the three Fuller Road flats I lived in for twenty or so years, I felt the kind of contentment and ease that I did not experience in the many neighbourhoods of Dhaka I had lived in before, or the Dhanmondi flat I live in now. Mango-filled trees exuding mango blossom scents, kamini flowers with overpowering fragrances, wide open spaces where children and boys play to their hearts’ content and neighbours greet each other familiarly throughout the day made my life on Fuller Road incomparably pleasing.
Towards the end of my Dhaka University career, I moved to a flat on the ninth floor of the newly constructed faculty apartment complex. There I saw what I had never seen before—monsoonal cloud formations, magnificent sunsets (I would not get up in time for sunrises!), the moon in its full glory, and star-studded nights. Heaven seemed to come closer and closer to me then. I truly seemed to have ascended to celestial heights! But paradise has to be lost sooner or later and can only be regained in this world by willing the mind to vision it from exilic places every now and then. But to have had some close to it moments in this life through Fuller Road is truly something to be thankful for!
From Public Domain
[1]Fuller (1854-1935) held the position from 16 October 1905 until he resigned on 20 August 1906 after which he relinquished the position to Lord Minto (1845-1914).
[6] Twenty-first February has been declared the mother tongue day by UNESCO. One of the reasons Bangladesh was formed was its insistence on Bengali being its mother tongue while Pakistan tried to impose Urdu as the national language.
[7] Pohela Boishakh (first day of the Bengali month of Boishakh) falls on 14th April in Bangladesh and is celebrated as the start of the Bengali New Year with a holiday and fanfare.
Time flows at an indolent pace. The mind floats in an empty space. Into that vast void, images drift. Over many eons, many have flit To the distant past. Arrogant conquerors sped fast. Pathans rode to satiate their greed. Then, Mughals wheeled Victories, whipping dust-storms, Flying flags for their throngs. These empires have left no trace On the vast void at which I gaze. Through ages, the serene sky Is with sunset and sunrise dyed. Now the might of Britons holds sway Penetrating new pathways With the power of steam And vehicles of fiery steel. With vigour, they spread Their dominions across the land’s breadth. I know their regime will also pass. Their empire will crumble at last. On the astral plane, despite their strength, Their army will not leave a single indent.
When I look around the Earth, An ocean ripples along its girth Heaving huge waves of humanity Through myriad paths, in myriad coveys, Over centuries as their daily needs are met In life and in death. Forever, they row, With their rudders tow, Work in fields, plant seeds, Their harvests reap. They work all the time, In towns or in wilds. Empires decline silencing bugles of war. People forget histories of battles fought. Stories of glory, angst and gore, Stay concealed in children’s lore. They struggle to work hard, In Punjab, Bombay and Gujarat, In Bengal, in Kalinga, all over the land, By the coastline and the riverbank. These stories of daily life hum Reverberating like drums; Joys, sorrows, day and night Resonate as hymns to our lives. Empires are ruined to ashes. Over eons, they toil as masses.
This poem has been translated by Mitali Chakravarty with editorial input by Sohana Manzoor
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Ratnottama Sengupta muses on acts of terror and translates a Bengali poem by Tarik Sujat which had come as a reaction to an act of terror. Click here to read.
Renee Melchert Thorpe recounts her mother’s migration story, hopping multiple countries, starting with colonial Calcutta and Darjeeling. Click here to read.
Paul Mirabile wanders into the realm of the supernatural dating back to the Potato Famine of Ireland in the 1800s. Clickhere to read.
Conversations
In conversation with eminent Singaporean poet and academic, Kirpal Singh, about how his family migrated to Malaya and subsequently Singapore more than 120 years ago. Click hereto read.
Recently, a realisation dawned – it has been over a year since I have watched an adaptation of a Jane Austen novel as a film or television series. My earliest memories of watching them go back to 1995, when the BBC’s version of Pride and Prejudice was released – I would watch the DVDs, or episodes on YouTube, with some enthusiasm. Over the years, I didn’t lose a chance to watch others: Sense and Sensibility, (film), Emma (BBC television series) Pride and Prejudice (film) and so many others. Looking at the comments on YouTube, it was evident that the Jane Austen adaptation fandom was large, and on a global scale. The seamless way in which the adaptations were consumed in so many Indian homes, including mine, puzzled me. I was familiar with the novels, as I had been a student of English literature in postcolonial departments in India, but that could not be true of so many others.
I fretted about the fact that my literary moorings were not so much in my own mother-tongues, but in English. Middle-class India was forgetting its own languages. English has crept in slowly, unnoticed. We could of course, think like Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian novelist, for whom writing about our own cultural contexts, our histories, landscapes, and memories in English, changes the texture of that language, and diminishes its colonizing weight. It is also the attitude, conscious or unconscious, of so many Indian writers in English. Curiously not many Indian producers have picked up on the idea of serializing the novels of these writers – either in English or in an Indian translation – which should be easy to do. It was the BBC that first produced an Indian novel – Vikram Seth’s novel, A Suitable Boy as a television series (for a global audience).
The Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o has a much more radical perspective than Achebe – that it is not enough for people in previously colonised cultures to write in English, nor to claim it as their own. The very process by which English was acquired was violent and repressive. “(So) wherever you look at modern colonialism, the acquisition of the language of the coloniser was based on the death of the languages of the colonised. So it is a war zone.” Unless previously colonised cultures begin to train to think in their mother tongues again, he says, we will never really be able to shake off the mantle of colonisation.
This is a compelling, if daunting prospect – the work of decolonizing our minds perhaps begins within the education system which, in India, shows little inclination to change – it continues to lie in the shadows of the Anglo-American system, as it has for centuries. I draw comfort from Achebe’s attitude to English, which is the reality of many Indians. I don’t have to give up on Austen. But how do we rescue ourselves, and Austen? A critical and self-aware engagement with Austen – both the novels and the adaptations – seems to be a good place to begin. Reading Austen is arduous for those not born into English: I could hear my mother tongues tiptoe away as I read her. Reading is a solitary activity that connects us with the worlds of others, through the imagination. Watching an adaptation, on the other hand, can be solitary, or not. The visual text communicates through the senses rather than the imagination, although it does not mean it is not involved here.
It was not difficult to identify signs of England’s colonial links in either Austen’s novels, or the adaptations. Distant colonies such as the Caribbean and India were mentioned not infrequently in the novels: much of the income of the vast estates owned by the gentry was obtained from the colonies. Watching BBC’s Pride and Prejudice – and not for the first time – I spotted the tea, drunk in fine cups, the cigars that the men smoked, the cotton print dresses that women wore. I mentioned to a friend that some of the fabrics looked like the double-shaded handloom weaves from Andhra Pradesh, or Tamil Nadu. She agreed. Sometimes, the dresses also had paisley designs – these hugely popular prints were adaptations of Mughal mango motifs on textile. We, the global audience, need to train our gaze to the material roots of the English imagination, and be critical of it, rather than unreflectively consume its creations. Scenes of opulent country manors would appear repeatedly in many of the adaptations, and it was hard not to notice a kind of nostalgia for the glories of Empire. So much of the popularity of the adaptations seemed to be the result of clever packaging of Regency era settings and countryside.
Even as the lavish settings seemed to engulf Austen’s ingenious stories at times, a great deal of effort went into modernizing them. When Colin Firth came striding out of the lake in dripping wet shirt in 1995, the scene seemed to set the tone for other serials and films to become more inventive – as long as it created a stir. Almost every adaptation slipped in new scenes to suit their own narrative. They brought about a kind of visual cohesiveness to the series or films. Informal and relaxed body language, and facial expressions, and the manner in which emotions were expressed were adopted – rather than the stiff, stylized ways of the past. What we watched on screen was a hybrid text. I had no problem with this, unlike many die-hard Jane-ites the world over, who are perhaps purists at heart. Modern informality is, after all, a sign that the boundaries of class have become less rigid.
When Austen’s world in the novel became too distant, and removed from my own, I would turn to the adaptations. They became relatable on screen. Besides, the adaptations were open to emotional expressiveness, where in the novels, emotions are sub-textual: I have lost count of the number of times I watched Elizabeth Bennett’s (Jennifer Ehle) fiery rejection of Darcy (Colin Firth) in Pride and Prejudice (1995, mini-series) or Elinor Dashwood (Emma Thomson) fall in love with Edward Ferras (Hugh Grant) in Sense and Sensibility (1995, film).
One of the main features of modernisation is the highlighting of the romantic plot. Love, is of course, central to Austen’s concerns, but on screen, it is difficult to see the larger moral order of which it was a part. Often, the biggest obstacle on the individual’s path to win over the object of their love is a moral flaw within themselves. Instead of Austen’s ironic, witty voice showing us the complexities of the individual, and of their interactions with society, we have to rely a lot on dialogue, and the point of view of the main character. Rather than the multiple layers of narrative in a novel, we have a linear effect in an adaptation. Everything is propelled towards a rather sentimental ‘happily ever after,’ which is not necessarily the point of a Jane Austen novel.
We do not – perhaps cannot – get to know the thoughts of Elizabeth Bennett or Elinor Dashwood on screen, independently of others. If emotions were more readily expressed on screen, we also had to contend with the loss of inner worlds, which a reader has access to. Action is all-important in an adaptation. The expression of physicality was thought to be enough to drive it, making up for our inability to know anything else. This seems to be the view of Andrew Davies, one of the most prolific adapters of Austen to the television screen. According to him, sexuality was already a major driver of the novels – his only task was to flesh it out. “Don’t be afraid (to represent) physicality… these are young people full of hormones and they are bursting with energy,” he says, when asked for pointers on adaptation.
In the novels, we also see how a character is separated from, or unable to communicate with the object of their love, until a morally satisfying solution is found. In Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Wickham’s true character had to be exposed, and Elizabeth could overcome her pride, and could accept that Mr. Darcy was right. In Emma, the eponymous heroine had much to learn in order to fully grow up: to be more self-aware and free from vanity, and realize she loved Mr. Knightley. Austen’s dislike of melodrama and writing that was overly invested in emotion is well-known. And so, it seems logical to think that she would not have liked mere ‘feel-good’ romanticism in the productions of her writings.
Morality as a force was more vivid on the page rather than the screen. It was arguably, an imaginatively constructed entity that was contemporaneous with the white man’s burden of colonization. Austen’s depictions of the world she lived in make her a ‘quintessentially English’ writer that is difficult for others to understand. But over the years, I learnt to understand her from my vantage point in post coloniality – the world is constituted of multiple identities and historical contexts, and being curious and open about others is a reasonable way of engaging with my own existential and sociological identities.
Austen was an insider to her world – she deferred to the fact that women were very dependent on male approval and protection in order to survive. Most of the women in her novels were teenagers when they began their rounds of courtship, and often subjected to severe scrutiny by the world at large. But her women also used wit and rationality to make themselves seen and heard. Elizabeth Bennett (Pride and Prejudice) and Emma Woodhouse, (Emma) for example, challenged the existing model of the ‘superior,’ rational man.
Within the psychological worlds of men and women, Austen sought to describe the play of feeling, will and reason. Post-feminist critiques of Austen have been critical of her acceptance of these opposites and their implied gendered roles. Many adaptations exist, such as Lost in Austen, Pride and Prejudice Zombies, that satirize and parody Austen to a degree that ‘faithful’ adaptations do not aspire to. The comparisons and defenses could go on.
After years of reading Austen, my sympathies have recently begun to shift, imperceptibly – from the ‘wild and rational’ women of Austen’s novels, as Mary Wollestonecraft might have described them, to the quiet and introspective ones – more precisely, to Anne of Persuasion. Austen’s final novel seems to have achieved an introspective appeal that the other novels lacked. Anne’s deeply reflective and melancholic acceptance of her situation – a single woman stranded amidst a family that often exploited her situation – is the culmination of all of Austen’s literary prowess, and she herself seems to be on new ground as she explored Anne’s silences. A little into the novel, when she meets Captain Wentworth after eight years, there is some halting dialogue, as Anne comes to terms with her lost love, perhaps for the millionth time. Through these silences and halting dialogues, Austen seems to be testing the waters of what it means to be deeply self-aware. I’ve also read the dialogues to be a way in which words could be used to establish equality between them. It is through friendship that an egalitarianism of sorts is reached, that grows only gradually in strength.
The 2007 film adaptation of Persuasion portrayed the silences and the hesitant relationship between Anne and Wentworth admirably. It is difficult to portray interior worlds effectively on screen, and Sally Hawkins played the brooding, inconsolable Anne sensitively, particularly in the early scenes. Rupert Penry-Jones was striking as the embittered Captain Wentworth, seeking love elsewhere. The tension in their silences was palpably thick.
The letter Wentworth writes to Anne — “I am half-agony, half hope” — is a study in vulnerability: he is the flawed man who has to let go of his own stubborn refusal to acknowledge his feelings. The letter also indicates the difficulty of speech between them; writing is his only recourse. Men’s points of view are rarely presented in the novels. The adaptations turned this around – nearly all of the men have moments of vulnerability. This is a major breakthrough in modernization. Women all over the globe suddenly came upon visible evidence formen’s struggles with their feelings. This single factor alone, may be the reason for the huge popularity of the adaptations – men suddenly, were human and relatable.
When I learnt in 2022 of Netflix’s release of a new version of Persuasion, I began to watch it excitedly. But only a few moments in, I was sorely disappointed. The character of Anne (played by Dakota Johnson) was nothing like Austen’s – she was talkative and answered back. The key shortcoming of the film was the loss of Anne’s interior world. When Anne and Wentworth (played by Cosmo Jarvis) meet, in the film, they engage in banter, from their very first meeting. Nothing much is left unsaid. The absence of speech between Anne and Wentworth, which gives rise to one of the main tensions of the novel, and the earlier adaptation, is completely missing. They have finished saying a lot to each other in the very beginning. We cannot help wishing they hadn’t. Many of the characters were changed beyond recognition, and the sense of many scenes changed.
We know, early on, what the end is going to be. Austen plays words out in the final letter not coldly, but without a trace of extra emotion — that Wentworth’s maudlin show of tears were not for her. Perhaps, that was the final straw that drove me away from the film. I have not gone back to watching a film or adaptation after that. Something within me had died.
References
Language is a ‘war zone’: Conversation with Ngugi wa Thiong’o, The Nation, Rohit Inani, March 9, 2018
Adapting Emma for the 21st century: An Emma no one will like; Laurie Kaplan, Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA) V.30, no.1, (Winter 2009)
How to adapt Jane Austen to the screen, with Andrew Davies: Guardian Culture, YouTube, 2018
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Deepa Onkar has degrees in English Literature from the Universities of Madras and Hyderabad, India. She was a teacher at Krishnamurti schools in Bangalore and Chennai, India, and a journalist at The Hindu. Her articles and poems have appeared in The Hindu, Punch magazine, The Bombay Literary Magazine, and The Lake, among others.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
‘Why does education in love not feature in today’s curriculum?’
— Mahasweta Devi, Our Santiniketan(Translated by Radha Chakravarty, 2022, Seagull Books)
As the world celebrates Valentine’s Day, one pauses to think how far commercialisation has seeped in over time that the very concept of a tender emotion was questioned by Tina Turner in a song called, “What’s love got to do with it” nearly four decades ago.
This was written even before Mahasweta Devi (1926-2016) published a nostalgic memoir of 1930’s Santiniketan in Bengali in 2001. She raised her pen to ask the very pertinent question that is quoted above. Why is education in love not a part of our curriculum anymore? She was reminiscing about her days in Santiniketan where children were brought up with rigorous academics while discipline was coloured with love and affection. They nurtured a love for nature in students too. This has become a rarity for many and perhaps needs to be revived as the Earth struggles to continue habitable for humankind. In the process of educating students to love and give, Santiniketan threw up many greats like the writer herself. We are delighted to host an excerpt from the start of Our Santiniketan translated beautifully by Radha Chakravarty.
Santiniketan was only the very visible part of a huge project taken on by Tagore (1861-1941). The other part now united with Santiniketan under the banner of Visva Bharati University is Sriniketan, a group of villages where Tagore experimented with raising consciousness and standards of villagers to integrate them into a larger world. He brought in new techniques in agriculture and crafts into the villages under this programme involving many prominent scientists, artists and humanists. And the project has blossomed. Did you know Tagore thought of himself as an NGO and his ‘life work’ he felt was developing villages (Sriniketan) and educating young minds to build a world where borders of knowledge, poverty and ignorance could be smoothened?
He wrote: “I alone cannot take responsibility for the whole of India. But even if two or three villages can be freed from the shackles of helplessness and ignorance, an ideal for the whole of India would be established.
“Fulfill this ideal in a few villages only, and I will say that these few villages are my India. And only if that is done, will India be truly ours.”
All this can be found in a book called A History of Sriniketan (Niyogi Books), written by Uma Das Gupta, a major authority on Tagore who moved from Oxford to Santiniketan and made Tagore’s work in these two institutions her own life’s work. We have featured her and her book in our interview/review section.
Raised out of such ashes of poverty that Tagore sought to dispel, are youngsters from the village of Nithari, where ceaseless efforts by volunteers of organisations like Saksham and pandies’ has given a new lease for life to those who have been exposed to violations, violence, divides, poverty and deprivation. One of them, Sharad Kumar, now studying to be an engineer, kicks off our new section called Pandies’ Corner with his story in Hindustani translated by a volunteer, Grace M Sukanya. His story learns from history and shows rather than tells.
A similar approach to view the present through lenses focussed on the past at a much grander scale has been taken by Shazi Zaman, an author and journalist, who has stepped into the Anglophone world with the transcreation of his own novel from Hindi to English, Akbar, A Novel of History (Speaking Tiger Books). He has brought to the fore how in days when sectarian violence based on religions killed, Akbar (1542-1605) tried to create a new path that would lead to peace so that he could rule over an empire united by administration and not broken by contentious religious animosities which often led to wars. In his interview, he tells us of the relevance of the Great Mughal in a period of history that was torn by divides, divisions so deep that they continue to smoulder to this day and date. That history repeats itself is evident though our living standards seem to improve over time. Bhaskar Parichha’s review of Growing up Jewish in India: Synagogues, Customs, and Communities from the Bene Israel to the Art of Siona Benjamin, edited by Ori Z. Soltes, also reinforces these divides and amalgamations in the modern context. The other books that have been reviewed include The Best of Travel Writing of Dom Moraes: Under Something of a Cloudby Indrashish Banerjee, and Gracy Samjetsabam has introduced us to an intriguing murder mystery in Masala and Murder by Patrick Lyons.
Translations have thrown up interesting colours this time with a Tamil story by a Sahitya Akademi winning writer, S Ramakrishnan, translated on our pages by B Chandramouli, one from Korean by Ihlwha Choi and of course a transcreation of Tagore’s songs where he sings of the meeting of horizons. A beautiful poem by eminent Balochi poet Atta Shad (1939-1997) has been translated by Fazal Baloch. We are again privileged to host an original translation of Jibananda Das(1899-1954) by Professor Fakrul Alam. We also managed to get permission to share some of Professor Alam’s fabulous translations of Jibananada Das from UPL (United Press Limited) and are starting it out by excerpting two of his poems on Banalata Sen, which were till now restricted to readership who only had access to the hardcopy. Rakibul Hasan Khan has given us an essay on these translations. An interesting essay on Satyajit Ray (1921-1992) by Rebanata Gupta and personalised tribute to the first Booker Prize winner from New Zealand, Keri Hulme (1947-2021), by Keith Lyons, who had many non-literary encounters with the sequestered author, add to the richness of our oeuvre.
Ratnottama Sengupta has also paid a moving tribute to the music legend, Lata Mangeshkar, who died at the age of 92 on 6th February, 2022. The choral symphony of multiple voices that hums through the paean recreating the larger than life presence of Lata reinforces that her lilting voice will stay embedded in many hearts and lives forever. Her perfect honing of musical skills delivered with the right emotions make her an epitome of human excellence. She gave the best of herself to the world.
Wrapped in more dry humour is Devraj Singh Kalsinarrative on why he does not want pets. Meredith Stephens, on the contrary loves pets and sails the seas of West Australia with her camera, words, seals and dolphins. Luke PG Draper also speaks for animals — for the intrusion of pollutants that harm creatures like whales in his short story. Hop all over the world with Ravi Shankar breaking nightly fasts with food from different cultures. More colour is brought in by Suzanne Kamata who starts a new column, Notes from Japan — introducing us to Japanese sensation, Masaki Nakagawa, who has sung his way to hearts with Lativian songs that he loves, so much so that he got to perform at the Japanese coronation and has pictures with the Latvian President.
The time has come to let you discover the mysterious pieces that have not been mentioned here in the February edition — and there are many.
Before I wind up till the next month, I would like to thank our fabulous team who make this journal possible. Keith Lyons has now become part of that team and has graciously joined our editorial board. Sohana Manzoor and Sybil Pretious deserve a special kudos for their fabulous artwork. Our grateful, heartfelt thanks to all our wonderful contributors and readers who keep the journal alive.
In Conversation with Shazi Zaman, author of Akbar: A Novel of History, published by Speaking Tiger Books
“I profess the religion of love, and whatever direction
Its steed may take, Love is my religion and my faith.”
— Ibn-i-Arabi (1165-1240), Akbar: A Novel of History by Shazi Zaman
These lines were written by a mystic from Spain who influenced Emperor Akbar (1542-1605), a ruler who impacted the world with his broad outlook. Based on such ideology as preached by Ibn-i-Arabi more than three hundred years before him, with an urge to transcend differences and unite a world torn by strife, the great Mughal founded his own system of beliefs. He had few followers. But Akbar chose to be secular and not to impose his beliefs on courtiers, many of whom continued to follow the pre-existing religions. He tried to find tolerance in the hearts of practitioners of different faiths so that they would respect each other’s beliefs and live in harmony, allowing him to rule impartially.
Akbar is reported to have said: “We perceive that there are varying customs and beliefs of varying religious paths. For the teachings of the Hindus, the Muslims, the Parsis, the Jews and the Christians are all different. But the followers of each religion regard the institutions of their own religion as better than those of any other. Not only so, but they strive to convert the rest to their own way of belief. If these refuse to be converted, they not only despise them, but also regard them for this very reason as their enemies. And this causes me to feel many serious doubts. Wherefore I desire that on appointed days the books of all the religious laws be brought forward, and that the doctors meet together and hold discussions, so that I may hear them, and that each one may determine which is the truest and the mightiest religion.” Of such discussions and ideals was born Akbar’s new faith, Din-i-ilahi.
Was it exactly like this? Were these Akbar’s exact words?
They have been put in perspective by an author and a journalist who has written a novel based on his research on the grand Mughal, Shazi Zaman. He tells us in the interview why he opted to create a man out of Akbar rather than a historical emperor based only on facts. He has even mentioned that Akbar might have been dyslexic in the introduction. But Zaman’s admiration for the character he has recreated for us overflows and floods the reader with enthusiasm for this legendary Mughal. Akbar is depicted as a man who was far ahead of his times. He talked of syncretism and secularism in a world where even factions within the same religion were killing each other.
Akbar by Shazi Zaman in Hindi
The novel was first written and published in Hindi in 2017 by the bilingual Zaman, who started his three-decade-long career in broadcast journalism at Doordarshan and has since, worked with several media organisations. Zaman trans created his Hindi novel on Akbar to English to reach out to a broader audience. The whole experience has been a heady one for Zaman as the interview shows but for the reader what is it like? To start with one felt like the Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s court, except one was flitting around in the Indian subcontinent of the sixteenth century, with a few incursions to the Middle-East, but mostly within India. Transported to a different age, it takes a while to get one’s bearings. Once that is established, the novel is a compelling read.
The first part deals with Akbar’s developmental years and the second part with his spiritual outlook which helped him create an empire with many colours of people and religions. This is a novel that has been written differently from other historical novels, like Aruna Chakravarti’sJorasanko (2013), for the simple reason that it belongs to a different time and ethos which was farther from our own or Tagore’s times. Akbar has a larger tapestry of people across a broader canvas than Jorasanko and it takes time to grasp the complexities of relationships and interactions. The other recent non-fiction which springs to the mind while reading Akbar is Avik Chanda’sDara Shukoh: The Man Who would be King (2019) about the great grandson of the emperor who lived from 1615-1659. Again, this was a narrative closer to our times and was not a novel, but a creative non-fiction based strongly on history. While Dara’s character painted by Chanda showed weaknesses like an inability to respect the nobility or plan wars, Akbar painted by Zaman is kind but a man of action who ruled and intended to rule well. A leader — one has to remember — is not always the most popular man. Nor was Akbar with his eccentricities and erudition despite his inability to read — the book does tell us why he did not learn to read and how he educated himself. Most of the novel is a work of passion based on extensive research over two decades. As Henry Kissinger had said at a much later date, “The task of the leader is to get their people from where they are to where they have not been.” And the Akbar recreated by Zaman does just that.
Shazi Zaman
Zaman who had been with the ABP (Anand Bazar Patrika) News Network as their Group Editor, was on the governing bodies of the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune, and the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Delhi. He has worked with Aaj Tak, Zee News, Star News and also with the BBC World Service, London. He has served as the Director, Video Services of the Press Trust of India. Akbar is his third novel. He has authored two novels in Hindi earlier. In Akbar: A Novel of History (2021), Zaman with his journalistic background and his love for literature inherited from his novelist father, Khwaja Badiuzzaman, has done the mammoth task of astutely bringing to life a character who might have been a perfect solution to the leadership crisis that many are facing in the current day.
If you are still wondering how close this novel comes to the Bollywood movie called Jodha Akbar (2008), the major things in common were the grand Mughal’s sense of justice and his ability to tame wild elephants! For a deeper understanding of both the emperor and the book, in this exclusive, Zaman tells us what went into the making of this novel and his journey.
Why did you choose to write of Akbar?
One has to have a bit of Akbar inside oneself to write on him—and to read about him as well. Writing on Akbar was not a conscious decision. By the time I realised that I was going to write a novel of history on Akbar, my sub-conscious was miles ahead. Of course his personality had attributes that appealed to me consciously and sub-consciously, especially his belief in primacy of ‘aql’ (reason) over ‘naql’ (blind imitation of tradition) and his ability to question all orthodoxies.
Do you think Akbar is relevant in the current context?
I believe that his message is so ennobling that it transcends the boundaries of space and time. Across ages and across geographies, and within a geography by various groups and communities, his memory has been kept alive.
There was a book a few years ago called Dara Shukoh: The Man who would be King. Would you say he would be more relevant for our times than Akbar or is Akbar a better choice?
It is difficult to give them a comparative score. Dara could have been a very worthy successor to Akbar. And his initiatives and writings are really inspiring. Robustness of ideas and your resolve to push them are tested when faced with exigencies of statecraft. Sadly, Dara did not get that chance and Akbar did. I find that Akbar could navigate but sometimes be audacious to the extent that his courtier poet-musician Tansen had to caution, ‘dheere dheere dheere man, dheere hi sab kachhu hoye (Slowly, slowly, slowly, all happens at a slow pace)’.How would Dara have navigated while on throne is an unanswered question in Indian history. Having said this, his defeat in the battle of succession should not undermine the originality of his initiatives.
Why did you choose to write this in a novel form? Dara Shukoh was a non-fiction. Have you introduced fiction into this?
History largely tells us what happened. Most often it does not tell us of the state of mind that brought people to the point where we find them take momentous decisions. I think momentous events or actions are rooted in mental journeys. And these journeys are seldom documented. When Akbar faced a mental crisis—‘haalat-i-ajeeb’ (a strange state) as a contemporary called it— in the summer of 1578 on the banks of the river Jhelum, one wants to map what was happening in his mind and what had brought him to that point.
What lay behind the agitation of this man who was one of the mightiest emperors of the world, who had never lost a battle and was at the peak of his power ? Were there some forces testing his patience ? Or as he stood at a place linked to the history of his forefathers, did he wonder about the trauma they had faced ? Or when he dealt a physical blow to a top cleric of yester years, there must have been a mental journey preceding this act. One can try and go into a person’s mind by closely studying his actions and utterances as also that of people and texts that influence him. We all know that people often mean much more than what they choose to say and sometimes, they say one thing and mean the other.
A close examination of this maze can give a glimpse of what was happening inside the great mind. As you try to create a period piece around his state of mind you mine information from all available sources—textual, aural, visual, architectural. For me fidelity to known facts is essential even in historical fiction. But there does come a point when the trail goes cold. Even the best documentary evidence might be insufficient in finding all the pieces of the period piece. For example, we do not know what Akbar was wearing the night he experienced the ‘haalat-i-ajeeb‘ but we have a Mughal miniature in all likelihood of the next morning when Akbar takes an unexpected decision about the great game. Now, it has come down to us that he appeared wearing last night’s clothes. So we know what he was probably wearing at the time he was in ‘haalat-i-ajeeb’ of the previous day. Or we do not know the details of the carpet of the room where he lay dying. Nobody recorded that. Thankfully, some details have come down to us of carpets of those times. I have chosen to use them. After exhausting all means of finding the right pieces of this period piece, I have exercised my imagination. So this is fiction very much rooted in history. If I have been able to do what I had intended, you would feel you have read his mind as also feel that you are actually standing backstage in the Akbarian arena.
In the debate I often encounter about the element of history in historical fiction, perhaps we miss a basic point. Most fiction has history in it. Some have history that is known. Some have history that is personal or unique to the author. It is only when known history figures in your work that the issue of reality versus fiction surfaces. Otherwise, this mingling is not questioned.
What was the kind of research you did? How long did it take you to research and write this book? Tell us about its evolution.
The idea had been simmering under the surface since early years. As I have mentioned in my preface, a childhood incident imprinted Akbar on my mind. During my school days, a member of the education department of the government made a surprise inspection and gave a short introduction to Akbar’s life and his relevance to our times. It left a mark. I was especially blessed to have teachers who stoked my interest. I shall be eternally grateful to my teacher Muhammad Amin–Amin Saheb as he was called at St.Stephen’s College (Delhi University) — to have brought history to life in classroom and sessions outside classroom. Amin Saheb taught us Akbar’s ‘sulh-i-kul’ , which he said stands not for tolerance or co-existence because even these terms denote some separation. He said, Akbar’s ‘sulh-i-kul’ meant harmony. Amin Saheb taught us about Akbar’s desire to build bridges and his respect for diversity. Many like me graduated from the university but never left his class. I feel privileged that for quarter of a century after leaving College I continued to sit at his feet and learn about Akbar. A good teacher teaches and also shows the path to further learning.
My interest in Mughal miniatures took me to various museums within the country and abroad and of course to places like Fatehpur Sikri–a city that Akbar created with a purpose– very often. Over decades I have gathered in my personal collection most of what has been written about Akbar and almost all books published on his art and architecture. I can say that all published Mughal miniatures reside in my study now. So Akbar was a character I had been breathing much before it became the idea of a novel. However, for a period spread over two decades I did consciously try to piece together a story.
How did you create the character of Akbar ?
Akbar was not merely a historical figure. He was also acutely conscious that he was making history. And as a person conscious of this, he left ample footprints.
When you try to get into a person’s mind you piece together all he saw and read (or in case of Akbar, was read to) and experienced; all he interacted with; all he surrounded himself with; all he spoke and wanted to be spoken, read and spread; and all that he created. Foremost, of course, is Akbarnama which was a monumental image building exercise entrusted to a close and trusted courtier, Abul Fazl. Abul Fazl knew what went on in Akbar’s mind. This work is rich in details and is a comprehensive history of Akbar and his forefathers. Akbar also commissioned others who knew his forefathers to write histories that would help Abul Fazl in his work. Akbarnama is an official account. It was vetted by Akbar and tells us how Akbar wanted to be seen by his contemporaries and by future generations. It is extremely useful in giving us the image the emperor aimed to project.
Then there were many others who wrote their histories during his reign. But it is the history called Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh by a disgruntled cleric, Mulla Abdul Qadir Badayuni, which was written secretly that gives us an unofficial perspective. I am grateful to the anonymous author of the historic Rajasthani work, Dalpat Vilas, for giving an informal and unique access into the emperor’s mind. Anybody studying Akbar feels especially grateful for the elaborate atelier —tasveer khana — as it was called — that the emperor established. Paintings made under his direction and patronage give us a vivid picture of what he thought was worth projecting. If you look closely, Mughal miniatures of his time often have a story and even a back story that gives you an indication of the emperor’s mind.
Akbar built at a huge scale and many of his buildings still stand tall and the stones speak even now of why he gave them the shape that he did. Then of course are works related to his ancestors like Baburnama which Akbar was fond of and later, of his son’s Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri. Akbar’s public contact and communication was prolific. We might well have seen him if we were living in that age. He travelled and interacted widely.
Almost every morning of his half a century long reign he appeared at the balcony so that the subjects could see him. Even those who did not see him felt his presence. Banarsidas, a trader of his time, who also wrote a chronicle, notes the widespread alarm amongst common people when the emperor fell ill. Letters Jalaluddin Muhammad Akbar wrote to Uzbek and Persian kings, the emperor of Spain and Portugal, to nobles and others have been handed down to us. His interactions with religious persons find mention in Vaishnavite, Jain and Mahdawi literature. The letters that Jesuits at his court were writing to their superiors are useful for their perspective as also for the ‘unofficial’ details. Then there were personalities Akbar drew to his court who were poets, warriors, administrators and diplomats who were themselves eminent enough to be written about, or were writers themselves. I closely studied them.
Abdur Rahim Khan-i-khanan was like a son to Akbar and wrote poetry that is timeless in its appeal. Tansen, an eminent poet and musician at his court wrote ‘takhat baitho Mahabali ishvar hoye avtar (the mighty Emperor sits on the throne as incarnation of God)’, which is how Akbar would have wanted to be described. Works written on Raja Mansingh like Mancharit and Mancharitra Raso helped me understand a mighty noble, who again was like a son—‘farzand’—to Akbar. Akbar himself is believed to have been a poet and pieces of poetry deemed to be his have come down to us. His memory resonates even now in folk songs.
In terms of material evidence of personal effects, we have an armour of Akbar which was helpful in ascertaining his approximate height. Of course, this was achieved with the help of experts. Not all that one gathered necessarily went into this work but I tried to gather as much as I could so as to know how Akbar lived, ate, slept, worked, played, deliberated, relaxed, fought and thought and what was the world he inhabited, and also what was the kind of world he wanted to inhabit.
I must say that I tried to access original sources in Persian, Sanskrit and other languages with the help of experts, in addition to what I could read myself in English, Hindi and Urdu.
In your introduction you have said Akbar might have been dyslexic or bipolar. Why? What made you think he might have been dyslexic or bipolar? Could it not be that as a child he was not just into books and therefore did not learn to read?
There has been some academic work on some of the issues Akbar faced. I think his behaviour on the full moon night of the year 1578 on the banks of the river Jhelum and on occasions before that definitely call for more investigations in that direction, though one is conscious that the emperor himself is not available for close examination. As for dyslexia specifically, one can say that the man loved books. He commissioned and collected them at a huge scale but he did not read them. They were read out to him. Historical sources indicate that he could not read or write. Though I have seen copies of his handwriting, they seem laboured. It would be a fair assumption that he was dyslexic. I think he was a great visual learner. That is why no Mughal emperor before or after had as big a tasveer khana as him.
You have repeated this phrase thrice in the book. ‘Hindus should eat beef, Muslims should eat pork, and if not this, fry a sheep in the pan. If it turns into pork, Hindus and Muslims should have it together. If it turns into beef, Hindus and Muslims should have it together. If it becomes pork, Muslims should have it. If it becomes beef, Hindus should have it. A divine miracle would thus happen.’ Why?
More than one account reveal puzzling behaviour and utterances of the emperor. This forced one person to say that this was ‘haalat-i-ajeeb’. Nobody at that time could fully understand his state or his words. I feel that it was reflective of his anguish over religious disputes and religious orthodoxy. An emperor who had never lost a contest was getting impatient. In moments of mental crisis it is possible for a person to say things which have layers of meaning. One has to peep underneath the words to fathom the anguish of a sensitive mind. This was one such utterance.
What is the most endearing quality you found in Akbar? And why?
It is difficult to pinpoint one in a person who embodied numerous qualities. His belief in giving precedence to ‘aql’ (reason) over ‘naql’ (blind adherence to tradition). His spirit of enquiry and his desire to provide space for differing thoughts. He believed—“It is my duty to have good understanding with all men. If they walk in the way of God’s will, interference with them would be in itself reprehensible; and if otherwise, they are under the malady of ignorance and deserve my compassion.”
There is an incident mentioned in the book. The Jesuits who came with the intention of converting Akbar finally despaired because he would give them ample space and ample attention but stop short of conversion. So one evening, they came and sought leave since their embassy had failed in its purpose. Jalaluddin Muhammad Akbar replied, “…how can you say that the time you have spent with us has been profitless, seeing that formerly the Muslims had so much credit in my land that if any had dared to say that Jesus Christ was the true God, he would straightway have been put to death; whereas you are now able to say this, and to preach the same in all security ?”
You wrote the novel first in Hindi and then trans created it to English. Why? What is the difference between the Hindi and the English versions?
The novel Akbar naturally came to my mind in Hindi, a language the emperor would have been comfortable with had he been alive. Having said this, I am grateful to my publishers, Rajkamal and Speaking Tiger, for initiating the idea of an English version. And I did immediately see the need to take Akbar to a wider audience because the novel has an idiom and language rooted in Hindustan but Akbarian thought and vision have an appeal that is wider than the regions he ruled. So the challenge was to take the text, sub-text and the idiom to an English audience. The challenge was also to make Akbar’s 16th century intelligible to 21st century English-speaking world. I have tried my best with help of editors at Speaking Tiger to make it a work English speakers would be at home with. I am sure they would be able to savour the milieu, the plot and the sensibility of 16th century Hindustan in their preferred language. A good translation should in fact be a trans creation and should read like it has been written in the same language.
You have two novels in Hindi. Do you plan to translate those too to English? Why? Why not write directly in English?
I believe that no thought is completely translatable into words and no words are completely translatable into another set of words. Thus the word transcreation. The first two novels Premgali Ati Sankri (The Narrow Alley of Love) and Jism Jism Ke Log (Various Bodies) have intense conversation between characters which is rooted in their shared understanding of an idiom. Translation is desirable and relatable because stories strike a chord across space but works have texts, sub-text and idiom. The problem and the challenge lies in taking the sub-text and the idiom into another language. That is why trans creation requires a deep understanding of the text, the sub-text and the idiom of the original work as also of the sensibilities of the audience for whom you are trans creating. Having said this, I would be happy to translate the first two novels for an English readership. The theme would strike a chord, the idiom would need some fine work.
Will you shuttle between English and Hindi in the future? Are you planning more books?
Shuttling between Hindi and English is an interesting thought. I am already seized by an idea that came to my mind as an English text. It is germinating. As for more books, I have already sent a Hindi novelet for publication which could be thematically seen as third in series after Premgali Ati Sankri and Jism Jism Ke Log. While telling stories to my children, and making them up as I went along, I created a short novel for children which awaits publication. I am also in the process of writing another novel in the genre of historical fiction.
Thank you for your time.
This is an online interview conducted on behalf of Borderless Journal by Mitali Chakravarty.
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