Delhi Lens: Monuments: Nawaab ka Masjid, Chawdi Bazaar, Old Delhi

Tiny matchbox shops line both sides of a congested road. A mêlée of pedestrians, cycle rickshaws, two-wheelers and a few tempos are a cause for constant traffic jams. A lot of the buildings are crumbling and dilapidated. There’s a mess of electrical wires overhead. Everywhere you look there is chaos.

And then suddenly, while looking up at that jumble of old buildings, you spot a delightful color combination – terracotta and blue. You pause, raise your camera to your eyes, zoom in, and see a beautiful carved wall. You click a picture, but keep staring at that building as a sea of humanity passes you by, gazing upwards, awestruck, spellbound.

Until the shopkeeper – where your husband, oblivious to your delightful find, is busy buying wood working tools to fuel his hobby – moved by your stillness and your interest in photography, tells you that the building you’re staring at is a masjid. So while he pulls out the tools and makes the bill for your husband, both of you cross the road and climb up a flight of stairs to reach the mosque.

Your husband, who is ahead of you, suddenly turns towards you at the head of the stairs and says “Namaaz is going on, let’s go.” But before you can even process this disappointing news, another man sticks his head out and says “Oh no problem, please come in. Feel free to take pictures. And take off your shoes before you step into the courtyard.”

So you walk on up, give your husband a cheeky grin, and freeze.

Close up of a carved block of stone at the masjid

The masjid is far more beautiful than you had imagined. And, as the shopkeeper said, it’s unique. Because unlike any stone façade you have seen anywhere in the world, this mosque isn’t made of carved stone. It’s made of embossed stone. Yes, it means that the flowers and vines are not cut into the stone; instead, the stone around the shapes has been cut and smoothed away.

The entire mosque is made of red sandstone. Well preserved. Neat and clean. There’s no air of religious fervor here – instead, there’s a quiet spirituality. You can forget about the crowd just one flight of stairs down. The seething humanity, the chaos, the pollution, all of it just melts away. It’s a place where you feel connected with the divine…the universe…yourself…

The masjid itself is 200 years old. Or 500. It depends on who you ask. No one seems to know exactly when it was built. All they know is that it definitely dates from British times. There’s an “English flower” carved on the entryway to prove it. They say the flower isn’t to be found anywhere in India, though they cannot tell you its name. When you ask a gentleman who has just finished his prayers what the name of the masjid is, he shrugs and tells you he is not a regular here.

The “English flower” carved at the entry to the mosque

You finally meet the caretaker, who tells you that the masjid is called Nawab ka Masjid – and you think that is a fitting name. He shows you around the place, showing you entire pillars and walls constructed of one piece of stone. He invites you inside and shows you around. Like all mosques, there are no figures or idols here, just a blank wall with a marble chair pointing towards Mecca. But the pillars are beautifully carved. The atmosphere within is serene. And you come away knowing that you have seen something unique…a structure that will live on in your heart for years to come.

Book review: The Other Side of the Table by Madhumita Mukherjee

Circa 1990.
A world drawn and woven with words.
A bond punctuated by absence and distance…
Two continents. Two cities. Two people.
And letters. Hundreds of them.
Over years. Across oceans. Between hearts.

I was delighted, and a little apprehensive, when I read the back cover. Delighted because three of my favorite books are epistolary works – May Sarton’s Journal of a Solitude; Helene Hanff’s 84, Charring Cross Road; and Mary Ann Shaffer’s The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Apprehensive because I am generally wary of Indian authors, even though there are some excellent novels out there – Indu Suderasan’s brilliant Taj trilogy comes immediately to mind. But then, there are also disasters, like I, Rama or How About A Sin Tonight. And telling a story through letters isn’t the easiest thing to do.

The Other Side of the Table tells the story of Abhi, who is training to become a neurosurgeon in London, and Uma, who has just entered medical college in Calcutta. They write to one another about medicine and life, love and friends, about travels and family, and things that are close to their hearts and about nothing at all. Each letter reveals a tantalizing glimpse into their lives.

We learn that Abhi lost his parents in a car accident when he was very young; that he’s known Uma since he was a child living in Calcutta; that since he’s gone to London, he feels that there’s nothing to tie him to India, except his friendship with Uma.

…I have not gone back to India ever since I came here. What do I go back to? Whom do I come home to? Dadu and Didu are gone. Come to think of it, there is no one there for me but you. You are my only link to India, a continuum from my youth.

We learn that Uma has dreams and ambitions, which she isn’t willing to sacrifice just because they aren’t conventional; that she’s spirited and fiery and unafraid of speaking her mind no matter what the consequences.

“Don’t be ridiculous Uma,” Dr. Bose said without preamble. “Girls don’t do surgery. What is this all about?”
…I heard myself say, “With or without interruptions, I hope to become a very good kind of surgeon, sir.”
“You think it is easy.” His lips curled with sarcasm.
“No, sir. I think it can be done, and I think I can do it.”

Mukherjee scoffed at my apprehensions with the first letter itself. She uses beautiful language without falling into the trap that most Indian authors find themselves in – that of convoluted sentences and big words. Just read this wonderful description of Abhi’s impression of the human gut:

…the glistening, frilly, vulgar and voluptuous beauty of the gut.

This is a beautiful story of dreams and love and loss. Each letter peels back the layers of Abhi’s and Uma’s lives, laying bare their innermost thoughts and desires. Each letter gives us a glimpse of their personalities, their little quirks, finely breathing life into the two protagonists, until you feel like you’ve known them all your life. She crafts a story that will make you laugh with them and cry with them. One in which your heart contracts with sorrow and then, a few letters on, surges with joy.

Part of me wanted to devour the book in one sitting, the other part wanted to stretch out the experience. I took the middle ground – I read the book in two days, and then, once it was over, I started it all over again, so I could savor it one letter at a time.

Highly recommended if you enjoy epistolary novels. If, like me, you are generally wary of Indian authors, pick this book up – I promise you won’t regret it!

Mumbai Diaries: Kala Ghoda Art Festival 2013

I heard about the Kala Ghoda Art Festival, which is held from the first Saturday in February till the next Sunday since the last 15 years, only last year! At the time, I decided that I would visit Mumbai for the next event, and sure enough, I made my way to the city for the 2013 edition of the festival.

I have to say that it was an interesting experience. There were some lovely public art installations, and of course others that left me cold.

Some of the installations were quintessentially Mumbai. Like this one:

Dhanda, which means “business”, depicts the Mumbaikar’s search for business opportunities and the difficulties that people face to earn their daily bread. The letters of the word look like high-rise buildings, with the small letter “d” representing the BSE building. The hustle and bustle of Mumbai’s lifestyle is depicted through the use of contemporary warli art.

And the Dabbawala:

Mumabi’s dabbawalas (lunch box carriers) are the heart and soul of the city. About 5,000-odd dabbawalas have been in action for over 125 years, delivering nearly 2,00,000 lunches every day. This installation, showing the dabbawala carrying Mumbai on his head, is an ode to this almost always uninterrupted service.

Other installations were quirky, like this awesome Vespa, depicting the Italian scooter as the bug from which it drew its design inspiration…

…and these cool spectacles, a fun way to illustrate Mumbai as the city of dreams.

There were some thought provoking installations, like Sanyyam. Shaped like a tortoise, its appendages have been replaced with human sensory organs like the eyes, ears, hand, foot, nose and lips. It serves as a reminder for us to be aware of and in control of our senses.

And The Shelter Tree – a commentary on the social evils – mainly against women – that most people turn a blind eye to. What I liked about it was that the “leaves” on the trees were grey and infected, which people could replace with a green paper leaf and take a pledge to be the change.

In addition to the public art installations, there are a number of workshops that are held every day. I managed to attend just one – a workshop on stain glass painting, conducted by Mamta Vora. She showed us some interesting techniques to create faux stain glass, and one that took everyone’s breath away – marbling a glass. At that moment, my friend and I decided we had to do a cooking and craft weekend sometime soon. And we already have some fun crafty and DIY ideas that we want to try!

We wanted to attend a cooking workshop by Pooja Dhingra from Le 15 Patisserie, but sadly, despite reaching the venue 30 minutes early as mentioned on the site, they ran out of space and we were unable to attend it.

There are also plays and music, heritage walks and art stalls and paintings. It’s hard to be able to do everything that you want to over a weekend, partly because of the huge crowd that descends on Kala Ghoda, but it is a festival that you should attend at least once.

You might also like:
Mumbai Diaries: Exploring Colaba and Fort

Year-end Wrap-Up: Top 5 books of 2012

2012 was a stellar year for me in terms of reading and all things book-related. I read over 60 books this year, across a variety of genres. I came across some brilliant writers, and some not so brilliant ones. I was approached by Random House India to participate in their book bloggers program, under which they send me books to read and review. And I joined a cool Twitter book-chat – TSBC.

So, what better way to kick-off this year-end wrap-up than by sharing with you my 10 favorite reads from the year? Without further ado, here they are!

Nobody Can Love You More by Mayank Austin Soofi
If you want to read just one book this year, make it this one. It’s a poignant look at the lives of Delhi’s sex workers. Set in GB Road (Delhi’s red light district), written after Soofi spent over three years visiting the area and the kothas to get an insight into their life, the book is almost like reading his personal diary with his thoughts, dialogue, and his drive to know more about the women who live here. From the first word, this book will hook you, draw you into the world of GB Road, and make you care about the lives and troubles that the women of these kothas face.

Cover via Amazon

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer, Annie Barrows
In a year marked by 60 books, this one stands out for its novel format. After all, not too many books are written in the form of letters – of course, there is the excellent 84 Charring Cross Road. But this book, I think, has a slight edge. Why? Because it’s difficult to write an entire novel in the form of fictional letters and still explore some of the darker aspects of war and the horrors of concentration camps, and to create characters that you come to love and understand. (You can read the full review here)

Cover of The Feast of Roses: A Novel

Feast of Roses by Indu Suderasan
Set in Mughal India, this is the story of Emperor Jahangir’s love for his twentieth wife, Mehrunnisa (better known as Empress Nur Jahan). From the time she enters his harem, she fits none of the established norms of womanhood in seventeenth-century India. She is the first woman the emperor marries for love, eventually transferring his powers of sovereignty to her. She goes on to gain much more power than any Empress before or after her, and all of it despite remaining behind the veil. It is a compelling read as it brings to life an unexplored period in fiction, with a lot of attention paid to period details and descriptions of various cultural ceremonies that distinguished court life in royal India.

Cover of The Shadow of the Wind

Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
I think it’s fitting that in a list of top 10 books features one where a bookstore and library play a central role in the narrative. Specifically, it’s the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, from where young Daniel Sempere picks up a book called The Shadow of the Wind by Julián Carax. He stays up all night reading the book, completely engrossed, and then tries to find other books by the same author. But there are none. All he uncovers are stories of a strange man calling himself Laín Coubert, after a character in the book who happens to be the Devil, who has been buying Carax’s books for decades only to burn them. As he works to uncover the puzzle, he unravels a beautiful, doomed love story that has been buried in the depths of oblivion. What makes this book a must-read is Zafon’s masterful plotting, the slow unwinding of the mystery and his extraordinary control over language.

The Wildings by Nilanjana Roy
I think I can safely say that this is the best book I’ve read that is told not from the perspective of humans, but from that of cats! In this stunning, richly imagined debut, Roy weaves a yarn about the trials and travails of Nizzamuddin’s street cats. The entire novel is written from their perspective, in their voice and language, is done so well done that you’d be forgiven for thinking that a cat learnt how to write and spun this yarn for us humans! (You can read the full review here)

Now, it’s your turn. Which were your favorite books this year?

Book review: Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

Midnight’s Children (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Midnight’s Children tells the story of “Saleem Sinai, later variously called Snotnose, Stainface, Baldy, Buddha and even Piece-of-the-Moon,” who was born on 15 August 1947 at the stroke of midnight – at the same hour that India won her independence. It is a story that first chronicles 32 years of his grandparents’ and parents’ lives, before focusing on Saleem’s life in Bombay, Pakistan and Bengal. It is also a novel about India; tracing her journey from the heights of independence (infancy) to her ordinary adulthood, culminating with Indira Gandhi’s Emergency rule.

But this bland description doesn’t do justice to Rushdie’s sweeping novel. It says nothing about his magical prose, about the explosion of colors and smells and sights and sounds. So let me tell you a little more about Snotnose.

Born at midnight, at the precise moment of India’s independence, Saleem was “mysteriously handcuffed to history…thanks to the occult tyrannies of those blandly saluting clocks.” His birth was celebrated with fireworks. His picture was printed in the newspaper. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru sent him a letter saying “We shall be watching over your life with the closest attention; it will be, in a sense, the mirror of our own.” He grew up with a sense of his own importance. He grew up wondering about his purpose. And in his quest for a quiet place in which to think, he found himself retreating to his mother’s laundry hamper. Where one day he discovered his gift for telepathy. From the age of nine, he could enter into other lives at will. And finally, he found all the other magically gifted midnight children scattered across India. At the age of 10 he set up a Midnight’s Children Conference, where he hoped the children could come together to discuss the fate of the nation. But like all 10-year olds, they were overtaken by petty squabbles and dissonance.

As you read Saleem’s story, the “chutnification of history” and “the pickling of time”, you can see parallels with India. Allegorical though they may be, some of them are only hinted at, but they are there. The signs of the potential that India could achieve at birth, the quest for purpose, the slow, inevitable decline to mediocrity. Of course, a lot of events take place because of Saleem. After all, the reason for the Indo-Pakistan war was the annihilation of the Sinnai family!

What more can I say about Stainface? He’s pompous, arrogant, self-centered, grandiose, and somehow loveable. As the narrator of this audacious novel he is absolutely brilliant. He jumps around from one time period to another. When he makes his tall claims, his companion Padma tries to ground him to reality, but of course, he refuses to be so grounded.

In this sweeping canvas of a story, Rushdie brings in the details of a miniaturist. The places and times are captured down to the last detail. Like the Pioneer Café, where Saleem’s mother meets her first husband Nadir Khan.

“…with filmi playback music blaring out from the cheap radio by the cash till, a long narrow greeny room lit by flickering neon, a forbidding world in which broken-toothed men sat at reccine-covered tables with crumpled cards and expressionless eyes.”

The characters, even the minor bit players, are finely detailed. No player, or event, has been tacked on as an afterthought just because an “India novel” would be incomplete without it. There is a lot of history, even though the timelines may not always be right, because Saleem admits that “Memory has its own special kind. It selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates, minimizes, glorifies, and vilifies also; but in the end it creates its own reality, its heterogeneous but usually coherent version of events…”

In the hands of an inept writer, it would have been an impossible book to read. But Rushdie’s fine art of storytelling turns it into a rich and magical tapestry. Saleem (and through him, since this is magic realism, India) “have begun to crack all over like an old jug–that my poor body, singular, unlovely, buffeted by too much history, subjected to drainage above and drainage below, mutilated by doors, brained by spittoons, has started coming apart at the seams. In short, I am literally disintegrating, slowly for the moment, although there are signs of an acceleration.”

But it does end on a note of hope. Although Saleem, who holds the dream of India within himself, believes he will “eventually crumble into (approximately) six hundred and thirty million particles of anonymous, and necessarily, oblivious dust” as national unity seems like an unachievable dream, he does leave the reader with a sliver of hope. His son Adam, gifted with “elephant ears”, is also inexorably tied to India. In him lies the future of the nation. And who knows what feats he might achieve.

Having read the book, I am now all the more eager to watch the movie, which is slated to release in December 2012. Since Rushdie has been closely involved in the movie making process, I have high hopes from it! Overall, I think this is an excellent book, and I highly, highly recommend it.

Disclaimer: I got a copy of this book from Random House India, but the review and opinions expressed are my own.