[Reader-list] Arka's piece on Khusrao and Nizamuddin

[Chintan Girish Modi]

>From http://www.openspaceindia.org/articles/item/725.html

*The Bazaar of the Heart*

By Arka Mukhopadhyay

A journey into the courtyard of memory, where for the past seven centuries
the *Qawwali *has been the bridge between Amir Khusrao and Nizamuddin Aulia

*nami danam che manzil bood shab jaye ki man boodam*
*baharsu raqs-e-bismil bood shab jaye ki man boodam*

The first time I visited the shrine of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya in Delhi was
on an early morning in summer.  I was supposed to go with friends who knew
the place well, but I reached early and decided to go in ahead of them. I
had perhaps expected a walled compound of tall minarets and stately domes,
like the Jama Masjid in the northern part of the city. But there was nothing
of the sort -- the tarred road changed almost imperceptibly into a
labyrinthine paved walkway lined on either side by eateries and shops
selling flowers, *chaddars*, CDs and other paraphernalia. I remember
stumbling along this walkway, feeling a little dazed from the constant
verbal assault of the shopkeepers on either side of me, hounding me to buy
this or that, or leave my shoes in their safekeeping, until I suddenly found
myself in the courtyard of the Beloved of God -- *Mehboob-e-Ilaahi- -* for
so they call the man who has bestowed his enigma upon this place.

It is a walk that I have taken hundreds of times since then, like a personal
ritual that affirms itself by its very immutability. Those of us who are in
the performing arts -- we are forever seeking newness. What is old is also
staid, is dying or already dead. In theatre, which is my domain, we are
always looking for fresh, contemporary articulations of old texts -- newer
experiments with space, new languages of the body, new metaphors. And this
is as it should be, for otherwise a thing loses its vitality, its inner
stream of life, and becomes a mere corpse. Yet there are human actions --
the steps of Kalaripayattu, a gesture of Kutiyattam, the choreography of a
Santhali dance -- these things find flight liberation within structure. By
their very precision, their repeatability, they continuously re-affirm their
vitality, continuously renew that inner life stream. What sets these two
dimensions apart? What connects them? That which seems a paradox -- is it
really so?  Or is that which I call new, merely a yearning to re-connect,
re-member (as opposed to dismember) a connection with something that is so
old, so ancient, that it is almost (but not entirely) forgotten?

*pari paikar nigaar-e sarw qadde laala rukhsaare*
*sarapa aafat-e-dil bood shab jaye ki man boodam*
*Khuda khud meer-e majlis bood andar laamakan Khusrau;*
*Muhammad shamm-e mehfil bood shab jaay ki man boodam.*

What is this place, amidst the urban sprawl of present-day Delhi, with its
shops selling cheap VCDs of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, its illegal money
changers and travel agents? Its rosaries, basket upon basket of roses,
rose-coloured slabs of meat, skull caps, *ittar*? Its impossibly narrow
bylanes with their dark, angular corners and sudden turns, with offal strewn
about and the crumbling multi-storied tenements on either side almost
leaning into each other overhead? The little shops at every conceivable
corner selling sickly-sweet tumblers of tea at all hours of day and night?
More than anything else, this place is a marketplace. Here you won’t find
any of the verticality, the clinical coldness of that modern-day temple --
the shopping mall, where everything has a fixed, labelled price tag which
brooks no argument. In this horizontal marketplace, stories and insults are
exchanged, it’s still possible to bargain, to hear the other person breathe,
and things are bought and sold according to an ancient ledger book of
commerce, kept in a dialect of camel trains and trade winds. In this
marketplace you remember that even before the days of the Prophet (PBUH),
Mecca was a caravan town with the Ka’abah as its warm stone heart, where the
hagglings over silk and salt under the midday sun gave way to evening-song,
the lashing of glances and the ululating voices of storytellers which drew
the desert djinns closer to the human circle around the fires. Here is the
bazaar of the heart, and here, in its centre, is the courtyard of memory.

*Navishta bardar-e-jannat bakhatt-e-sabz-o-jaleel*
*shafi-e-roz-e-qayamat Muhammed-e-Arabi*
*Ali Imam-e-manasto manam ghulam-e-Ali*
*Hazaar jaan-e-girami fida ba naam-e-Ali*

On one side of the courtyard lies the tomb of  the Sheikh, and on the other,
that of his *murid, *Hazrat Amir Khusrao -- poet, musician, diplomat,
warrior, linguist, saint, and somewhere in the crowd of all those epithets,
also a lover -- an *ashiq*. In between them, forever separating and forever
uniting master and disciple, Lover and Beloved, lies the courtyard of memory
where for the past seven centuries music, in the form of *Qawwali, *has been
the bridge between Khusrao and Nizam, bringing the one eternally close to
the other. No Keatsian frozen immortality, this, but a living, breathing,
dynamic bridge over the river of humanity that has been flowing between them
for all these centuries, through all the ebb and flow of history. The songs
piped here are forever new, yes, but forever old, also. For Qawwali, a genre
fashioned by Hazrat Amir Khusrao, derives its name from ‘Qaul’, which means,
the words of another (specifically those of the Prophet of Islam), and a
Qawwal is one who utters old words of memory, the words of others,
remembering them through his breath, renewing them on his tongue. He gives
up his own self, becomes only a medium, a container for the endless flow of
stories, a conduit through which words flow from lips long stilled, to ears
that are still listening, hearts that are still beating. It is this act of
telling the story, of immersing in it, that is called Qawwali. This then, is
music as memory-making.

Admittedly, it is a bit of an acquired taste. Though based on the same *raga
* syestem as Hindustani classical music, the form has a unique, earthy
structure that to some ears can sound raucous, maybe even cacophonous. Songs
are like places, perhaps -- some are ancient forests, some windswept
mountain peaks, while some are dark alcoves for quiet contemplation.
Qawwali, then, is a marketplace --  a *bazaar, *with the pulse of
give-and-take, call and answer. Delicate slivers of sound are what the
Qawwals trade in, bargaining with each other over shape and texture,
bringing out the inner luminescence of a phrase, by turning it round and
round, from one tongue to another, much as caravan traders might hold up
this precious jewel or that exotic rug for the buyers’ inspection. Like the
bazaar, the music has its little alleyways and deviations, hidden passages
of magic. But always, always, there is the straight path that returns to the
heart of the music, a swirling, spiralling, upward motion that leads to the
courtyard of the Beloved.

*mohe apni hee rang mein rang de nizaam*
*tu saahib mora, main toree ghulaam*

It is said the Hazrat Amir Khusrao formed the first ever group of Qawwals in
the world, comprising a few youngsters he had personally trained -- the *qawwal
bachchein.* A direct blood-descendant of one of these youngsters was Ustad
Tanras Khan, the court-musician of Bahadur Shah Zafar II, and founder of
what is known as the Delhi Gharana. Today, his mantle rests on the frail,
octogenarian shoulders of Ustaad Meraaj Ahmad Nizaami, four generations down
from the Mughal court musician. Ustaad Meraaj lives in a one-room shack
somewhere inside the labyrinth, with three of his sons who have also
followed in his footsteps. Your first impression of the Ustaad might be that
of a slightly dotty old man, perched in a cot while the family goes about
its daily business of living within the cramped confines of the room. His
eyes don’t see too well, or perhaps they don’t see the inconsequential, the
mundane that’s around him, fixed as they are on the unseen. The reins of his
family are slipping through his twitching fingers -- he is no longer the one
in charge, though they defer to him. He tries to keep a tab on what’s going
on, from his corner -- his voice is quavering and can sound a little
petulant, somewhat like a child’s who’s figured out that things are being
kept from him. Now and then, you can hear him unabashedly break wind. Yet
when they take him, even now, to concerts, a different, remembered body
emerges. The eyes are now sharp, focussed, the voice still a little wobbly
but precise, showering quicksilver bursts of repartee, in a mixture of
Hindustani, stylised Urdu and classical Persian. Old stories crowd into his
head, the long-stilled voices begin to whisper. Memory speaks, the notes
swirls upwards -- he is now a Performer.

*Arka Mukhopadhyay is a writer, theatre person and Sufi-practitioner,
currently based in New Delhi. *