Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | Friday Review | Young World | Property Plus | Quest | Folio |

Our own Mona Lisa tales

R.V. Smith tracks the Kashmiri pandits and zeroes in on a Mona Lisa who held many a heart in thrall

Haksar Haveli in Bazar Sitaram, Old Delhi, was the place where Kamla Kaul was married to Jawaharlal Nehru. It was the centre of cultural activities where mushairas, qawwalis and classical music programmes were held. No doubt it was the bastion of the Kashmiri pandits and one of the few places where the community thrived after many of its members left Delhi in the wake of the Mutiny of 1857.

This was history repeating itself because the first Kashmiri families had come to Agra during the reign of Akbar. The emperor was greatly impressed by them because of their intellectual and cultural achievement. As such he did not think it fit to recruit them into the imperial forces lest their inherent talent be wasted. Their women made wives for his courtiers, as they were very pretty, says chronicler Manucci.

During the time of Shah Jahan the Kashmiris trooped back to Delhi to lend lustre to the emperor's new capital of Shahjahanabad. They lived close to the Red Fort, in Chandni Chowk and nearby areas, because they were mostly connected with the royal court. Nehru's grandfather too!

Few indeed are aware of the fact that a parallel Kashmiri locality came up in the Chilint area of Agra and the close by mohalla of Maithan, where Motilal Nehru was born after the exodus of 1857.

Besides the Nehrus

Besides the Nehrus, there were many other families of note.

Among them were the Kunzrus, Dars, Takrus, Kauls, Zutshis, Katjus and of course, the Rainas. Some of them became lawyers, others politicians, while the Takrus set up the first newspaper agency in the city. A.N. Takru had been on the staff of "The Leader" in Allahabad and worked with Rama Rao and the great C.Y. Chintamani.

The Kashmiri Bazar is justly famous as the original trading centre of the Kashmiris. It became the fancy market, complete with dancing girls, after the Pandits packed up and left for Delhi.

Pandit Ayodhyanath Kunzru was a man of great vision who established Agra College, a big educational institution now. His sons and grandsons distinguished themselves. Pandit Rajnath Kunzru (great grandfather of noted writer Hari Kunzru) was the grand old man of Agra for several years and used to be addressed as "Bare Bhai" by Jawaharlal Nehru. His brother was the famous Hridyanath Kunzru.

The Dars were leading lawyers and some of them members of the diplomatic service. The Rainas were equally distinguished. Among the younger lot Kishan Raina formed part of the "Panja", the five-student group, which included Sarphata Munna and other stalwarts of 1945-46, who lorded it over the campus and worsted the Tommies during brawls at the tambola and dance clubs in the cantonments graced by nawalizadas like Farooq Mian.

Tragic end

Kishan became a good lawyer afterwards but died young. What was even more tragic was the death of his sister in the rambling house. She spent her free hours gazing out of the window of the roadside room and boys who passed that way always referred to her as "Mona Lisa" because she had that sort of face. One night the room collapsed in heavy rain, killing the girl. For many years after that it lay just like that, but one missed the pretty face at the window and instead saw the pile of rubble and rafters, which had come crashing down on "Mona Lisa".

Sometimes her mother would look wistfully out of the window, her wrinkled face wreathed in sorrow. The old father always stood stick-in-hand at the gate, a furrowed brow the only sign of his anguish. And then the Rainas moved out of that house to live with the Dars in the nearby lane from where Kishan used to catch a rickshaw for the civil courts. But the old man would still come and stand at the gate and sometimes cast rueful glances at the ruined room.

When Kishan died after a heart attack, his parents could not stand the agony. They succumbed soon after. Now when one passes by Chillint (so named because most of the buildings in the areas were of chilli-eent or small chiselled bricks) one sees no sign of that house or of the other huge structures, which were pulled down when the B.P. Oil Mill market came up. The Rainas' house was on the other side of the road a replica of the one they had once owned in Shahjahanabad.

Now it has made way for a banquet hall and little do people passing by know that a young life was extinguished there on a stormy night 45 years ago. That girl would have been a grandmother now, but lives in memory as a teenager who, like Mona Lisa, will never grow old. Delhi's hereditary gift to the city of the Taj?

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail