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DOWN MEMORY LANE

The moonlight effect!

Moonlight can play tricks; why else would Delhi’s monuments look different these days? One may visit the Red Fort, Jama Masjid, Humayun’s Tomb and the Qutab Minar at night and come away with a totally different impression. The moonlight h ides the scars of the centuries and clothes these monuments in an all-pervasive brilliance which even the noonday sun cannot impart.

See the Jama Masjid when the moon is up and you will feel the difference. The minarets and the dome seem to waft in the turquoise sky and establish rapport with things ethereal. Nearby the walls of the fort look less formidable; and if you happen to enter the precincts of the citadel, the centuries seem to fall off and you feel as though you were walking in the palaces with the very people who built them. They seem less solitary and more communicative.

The Red Fort at night retains much of the awe of the Moghul days. The Army barracks loom large, adding to the eerie atmosphere. Here within the walls of the fort were murdered many royal personages. And stories of royal ghosts and enchanted castles come trooping to the mind as one walks inside the halls in darkness, inducing the kind of fear one might experience while crossing a cemetery alone at dead of night.

It is only when one comes out of the fort that one realises what a difference lights can make to a city like Delhi, whose historical monuments one so bravely passes by in the daytime. The sound and light spectacle at the fort is a “must see” for all tourists. However, besides fighting the mosquitoes, which invade the lawns of Diwan-e-Khas late in the evening the audience has to strain its ears to catch the finer accents of the Moghul Durbar. No more does one hear the peal of thunder which brought fresh showers and cooled the mangoes at the court of Bahadur Shah Zafar during the monsoon season in the Sawan Bhadon pleasure pavilion. Gone is the beat of kettle-drums and gone too are the war cries of the Sikhs and the Marathas along with the clanking chains which ended the reigns of the puppet kings in the dungeons of the fort.

In their place one has to put up with a “new voice for Nadir Shah, which lacks its earlier ferocity, a shorter trial for Bahadur Shah, the entry of the British into the fort minus the earlier tuneful march, and a reference to the royal baths and the Nehar-e-Bahisht without the sound of gurgling water, which made the Stream of Paradise come alive on summer evenings. The opium eaters and hungry princesses asking for food, the women weeping in the zenana following the depredations of Ghulam Qadir Rohilla and other pungent sidelights of the show have been sacrificed merely for the sake of change. Perhaps another revision is called for to make son et lumiere attractive again. Now 25 year later the Fort has been renovated and along with the restored Shahi Hammams or royal baths, it attracts more visitors than probably ever before. The costumes of Bahadur Shah Zafar and Zinat Mahal are back after repairs and show off to advantage in their new glass cases in the historic Mumtaz Mahal which houses the museum.

On display nearby are the poison plates, presented by the Chinese emperor to his Moghul counterpart for testing of the royal food which, however, look deadly; so do the weapons from the medieval armoury. Aurangzeb’s sword shows the sweep of his authority, but Shah Jehan’s is artistic and slim like a rapier and as keen as a sudden flash of lightning. The dagger presented to Humayun by the Shah of Persia is delicate and yet has a crafty look about it, but it contrasts well with the huge sword of a Moghul general which seems to have The Executioner written all over it. However, it is a pity the sarcophagus which lay outside, couldn’t find place inside the museum.

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