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DOWN MEMORY LANE
Tales of another world
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Folklore R.V. Smith gathers stories about the supernatural from the alleys and parks of the Capital
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Spread out on the grass and on the boundary walls of the parks near Jama Masjid were huge nets, under which reclined groups of fishermen, while their meal was being cooked over a fire under a tree. There was little that was modern in their manner of
dressing, and with their rough beards, they could well have passed off as ordinary fisherfolk at the time when Peter and the sons of Zebedee cast their nets into the Sea of Galilee.
It was a misty night some 20 years ago, and a friend found their talk interesting enough to make him loiter longer then he intended. Much of the conversation was about the Yamuna. They spoke of the river fondly as men who knew its every mood, the shallows and the deeps. There were apparently certain stretches which they avoided, and it was about what happened on a forbidden stretch that they were talking.
Phanne Khan, who was hardly 20, and his equally young friends, had cast their net there that day and soon they appeared to have made a good catch, for the net was heavy. But when they started pulling it out it seemed as though they were pulling in the serpent who they believed lived in the deep. The boat was about to capsize when Moosa Khan from another boat asked them to cut the net. They did that — and blood flowed onto the water.
It was hard to believe but looking at their earnest faces in the dark, the friend did not doubt their story. By the time the tale ended, the nets had been mended and the meal was ready. The friend’s appetite for more stories was, however, not satisfied.
The costumes of Bahadur Shah Zafar and Zinat Mahal in the Red Fort museum may or may not be in the best state of preservation, but a sizable majority in the old quarter of the city does not blame the Archaeological Department for it. So, the friend was convinced when one dark night he made his way to the shrine of Bhure Shah, which stands in the shadow of the Fort, and joined a motley group in a discussion of things long forgotten.
Haunting spirits
The aroma of agarbattis, a flickering hurricane lantern and weird shadows, all contrived to lull the senses into a willing suspension of reality. The conversation bordered on the supernatural and the uncanny and everybody had yarns — the djinns who buy sweetmeats every night, the headless Englishman who haunts a deserted road, the banshee who wails under the stars,
Sayyid Baba who dispenses strange gifts to his devotees and the ghosts of little children who seduce passers-by and beg to be taken up and carried.
A chink in the ghostly narration gave an opportunity to ask what the beats of the royal ghosts of Delhi were like. Silence fell over the assembly and the friend was almost in despair for having broached the subject, when, to his great relief, a bearded man named a whole posse of royal personages who visited their one-time abodes to convince themselves that “all was well.”
Every Thursday night, he assured him, a ghostly procession led by the last Moghul king and his beautiful consort went round the Fort.
What did the Emperor and Empress look like? There was an embarrassing silence which was broken again by the bearded intermediary. According to mystic lore, all those who died for a good cause retained their youth in the other life, he pointed out, and the two Moghuls were no exceptions.
The king was a little above average height with broad shoulders, unusually long arms and rather short legs. The Queen was tall, , graceful as a cypress tree, with long raven-coloured hair.
She had a narrow waist and her small feet were fitted in sandals adorned with pearls, which glittered in the moonlight. The king always wore loose pyjamas and the queen invariably was spotted in a gold-laced gharara, with a golden cummerband, which almost touched the ground and rustled in the breeze.
The narrations continued until a police whistle reminded the friend that it was time to go.
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