Out of Obscurity

Published in Time Out Delhi, 2008. 

Trisha Gupta shows you around four alternatives to the big Delhi tourist staples.



Begampur Masjid

If you’re curious about the masjid-i-jamis that preceded Shahjahan’s glorious Jama Masjid, this is a wonderful surprise. This massive fourteenth-century stone mosque may be bare of ornamentation – characteristic of the Tughlaq era in which it was built – but it is magnificent. Now somewhat hemmed in by the urban villages of Begumpur and Kalu Sarai (themselves circumscribed by Sarvodaya Enclave and Sarvapriya Vihar), this was once the centre of the Tughlaq city of Jahanpanah. Look for one of the staircases that still lead all the way up to the roof. Even on a pleasant day, you’ll only have a couple of kite flyers for company.


From Aurobindo Marg, take the left turn towards Sarvodaya Enclave. Keep going until you reach Begumpur Village. Park your car before you enter the village. The masjid is a two-minute walk away. Visit before sunset. Free.


Zafar Mahal

A getaway for the bored residents of the Red Fort, the pretty Zafar Mahal was the part-time residence of the late Mughals. Many of these rulers were great believers in the powers of the Sufi saint Qutubuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki, and so they built this little palace next to his dargah in Mehrauli. Go through the lovely arched gateway and seat yourself in the pillared dalan upstairs to play at being emperor. Also visit the charming Moti Masjid and the now sadly derelict-looking graves. Those buried here include Bahadur Shah I, the luckless Shah Alam II (who was blinded by the Rohillas), his son Akbar Shah and prince Mirza Fakhru (son of Bahadur Shah II, better known as Zafar). Zafar, who had once reconstructed the mahal to allow elephants to enter, could never be buried in his intended grave (the empty one here), because he died in exile in Burma.

Starting at Adham Khan’s tomb (next to Mehrauli bus stand), walk down the main street towards Bakhtiyar Kaki’s dargah. Remove your shoes and carry them with you through the dargah. Open sunrise to sunset. If closed, ask around for the gatekeeper: he’s usually nearby, “just getting a cup of tea”. Free.



Teen Murti House

Visitors to Delhi are usually taken off to see the Rashtrapati Bhavan, only to be left standing admiringly outside the beautiful wrought iron gates. (Unless, of course, you’ve had the foresight to book ahead. To arrange a tour, call 2301-5321.) Console yourself (and your deprived guests) by going off to see Teen Murti House, where you can happily traipse through the lovely lawns and wander through most of the interior. Originally called Flagstaff House, this rather grand 1930s building was designed to serve as the residence of the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces by Robert Tor Russell, then head of the PWD’s architects department. Nehru moved in in 1948, and it remained his home until his death in 1964. The building now serves as a museum to Nehru. As official residences go, we’d choose to live there over Rashtrapati Bhavan any day.
Teen Murti. Tue-Sun, 10am-5pm. Free.

Mutiny Memorial

We like India Gate, really, but it’s more for the atmosphere of revelry – the unselfconscious takeover of this imposing imperial monument by picnicking families and shutterbug tourists. The fact that this 138ft high War Memorial Arch was meant to honour Indian soldiers who died in the First World War seems to barely register.

For a more sombre taste of Raj-style commemoration, visit the Mutiny Memorial up on Rani Jhansi Road, just west of Delhi University. This 1863 structure is now endowed with a small plaque (to inform you that these guys were fighting on the “wrong side”, so to speak, during 1857). The Mutiny Memorial is a great example of “High Victorian Gothic” – the nineteenth-century revival of a medieval architectural style that emphasised heavy detailing, strong vertical lines, and pointed arches to give a sense of height. Climb up the steps for a great view of the city.

Rani Jhansi Road, south of Hindu Rao Hospital. Open sunrise to sunset. Free.

Time Out Delhi Vol 2 Issue 16 (October 31 - November 13, 2008)

(Reproduced in Mint, Dec 5, 2008.)

Queen of the Rails

FAVOURITE THINGS: THE FAIRY QUEEN

Trisha Gupta finds the grand old lady of Indian Railways can still set hearts aflutter.

In 1837, Victor Hugo wrote a mournful letter to a friend about how going anywhere by train made it impossible to actually see the countryside you were travelling through: “The flowers by the side of the road are no longer flowers but flecks, or rather streaks, of red and white; there are no longer any points, everything becomes a streak…”.

But we human beings are quick to adapt. By 1885, the steam-fuelled journey that Hugo found so impossibly fast had already become a certified way of looking at the landscape. Robert Louis Stevenson immortalized the experience of seeing the countryside unfurl as a succession of tableaux, in his ‘From a Railway Carriage’, a poem whose tempo perfectly reproduces the steady rhythm of the train itself:
“…Here is a child who clambers and scrambles,
All by himself and gathering brambles;
Here is a tramp who stands and gazes;
And here is the green for stringing the daisies!
Here is a cart runaway in the road
Lumping along with man and load;
And here is a mill, and there is a river:
Each a glimpse and gone forever!”

By the time I took the Fairy Queen from Delhi Cantonment to Alwar in 2002, this steam locomotive (of Hugo and Stevenson vintage) felt impossibly slow. But slowness, of course, was what I had come in search of. Standing out on the engine, next to the driver and his coal-shovelling assistants, I could see everything we passed with a clarity that no Rajdhani journey had ever provided: the vivid yellow of a girl’s odhni, the piles of onions being sorted by the roadside, even faces in the curious crowds that gathered to see our quaint contraption trundle by.

Built in 1855, the Queen was probably fast enough in the 50+ years she ran on the Howrah-Raniganj line of the Eastern Indian Railway. In 1971 she became the first exhibit of the National Rail Museum, in whose grassy environs she stayed happily parked until 1996, when she was dragged out of retirement and given a successful makeover by the Perambur workshop of the Southern Railway. The little green engine now tows a 60-seater passenger car on a seven-hour 143 km journey from Delhi to Alwar, every weekend from October to March. As the world’s oldest functioning locomotive (certified by the Guinness Book of World Records), the Queen is now “a living legend, much older than the Titanic”, which (gushes the website hopefully) “could attract visitors… like the Taj Mahal or Eiffel Tower”.

When she’s not chugging along devouring vast quantities of coal (250 kg per km), you can find the Queen back at the Rail Museum, where her now gleaming exterior seems almost out of place amidst the general air of 1970s torpor, the peeling black and white photos of Khrushchev’s visit to Chittaranjan. Then you read the faded orange sign that begins, “We must innovate. We must constantly improve. Today’s… powerful and sleek locomotives hurtle along the countryside faster than ever before…”. You can almost hear the Queen chuckle.

Published in Outlook Traveller magazine, October 2008

Split screen: Jashn-e-Azadi

Independence is both motive and metaphor in Sanjay Kak’s documentary Jashn-e-Azadi, says Trisha Gupta.

“Freedom’s terrible thirst” is how poet Agha Shahid Ali referred to it in his collection, The Country without a Post Office. But to many Kashmiris, the wave that has swept through the state over the past 18 long years is the “tehreek”, or struggle. The many meanings of azadi in Kashmir are the subject of Sanjay Kak’s new documentary, Jashn-e-Azadi, which treads a lot of visual ground already made familiar to us by the media.

Huge crowds attend the funerals of militant leaders, their cries resounding even through the grainy audio of the original VCR recordings. “Ham kya chahte hain? Azadi! Le ke rahenge, azadi!” But then the camera goes behind the rhetoric, where the TV crews rarely venture. Teary-eyed mothers show smiling photographs of their now-dead sons to members of the J&K Coalition of Civil Society who are doing a survey of deaths and disappearances: 60,000 killed, at least 10,000 disappeared. “An old man searches for his son’s grave in the snow-covered Martyrs’ Graveyard. A sign behind him reads, “When slaves are martyred, they are relived of their pain.”

The footage highlights the extent to which the idea of martyrdom dominates the Kashmiri psyche. “While researching the film, I realised that the Arabic word shahid also means ‘to bear witness’,” said Kak. “And so everyone in Kashmir is a possible shaheed, a martyr to the moment.”

The film opens with grainy shots of shooting in the streets, but we move almost instantaneously from gunshots to the almost soundless stupor of Lal Chowk, Srinagar’s central square, on August 15. The Indian flag goes up, as a group of soldiers parades. There is not a single local in sight. “For more than a decade such sullen acts of protest have marked August 15 in Kashmir,” Kak said. “In India, the real contours of the conflict in Kashmir are invariably buried under the facile depiction of an innocent population, trapped between the terrorist’s gun and the army’s boot. But there are no innocents in Kashmir. No one is merely a bystander.”

Sections labeled “Tourist Summer”, “Tourist Winter” and “Pilgrims” expose the Indian government’s misplaced belief that the mere arrival of “mainstream Indians” will bring about the “integration” of Kashmir. Kak manages to capture something of the valley’s serene beauty – although here too, he is ever aware of the larger context of domination. In one brilliant shot, Ranjan Palit’s camera lingers on a verdant landscape, as you listen to the gentle music of the rabab. Then, the camera moves upwards to reveal that the scene you’ve been admiring is actually the view through the eyes of a soldier.

In one scene, the film shows Zarif Ahmed Zarif sitting in a Srinagar garden, reading his poem “Yoot matsar kyah?”(What frenzy is this?). Piarey Hatash, a poet who also happens to be one of the few Kashmiri pandits still living in the state, recites his poem “Loss” to the filmmaker over the phone from Jammu. “Poetry is perhaps the only art form in Kashmir that has not only survived but is actually thriving,” said Kak. “Kashmir has always had a strong tradition of poetry; but in the last 20 years, other genres of writing – journalism, for example, or even conventional fiction – have come to be so tightly controlled, and poetry has become the chosen form of expression.”

The film was shot between 2004 and 2006. Kak also used news footage and video recordings. “Someone dropped off a packet of VHS tapes at the place where I used to work in Srinagar. I don’t know who shot the footage, so I credit it to ‘anonymous Kashmiri cameramen’.” Was it difficult to get permission to shoot, get people to talk? “There are no real interviews in the film,” said Kak. “I really believe that in Kashmir, people cannot tell the truth. They will only tell you what they think you want to hear. So I decided that I would just go to places where I could go easily and listen to what people were saying.”

When Kak asked the Army PR department for a letter of permission, he was told he couldn’t have a letter, but that he should keep the PR people informed about where he wanted to go and they would call up that division “to arrange things”. As Kak said, “I realised that I couldn’t film the army without them being aware of it well in advance. That’s why I met surrendered militants and went to all the army sadbhavana camps. I thought I might as well film them as they wanted it, presenting their best side – maybe that will tell me something new.”

Published in Time Out Mumbai, 2007

Super trouper: Arvind Gaur

Arvind Gaur tells Trisha Gupta what keeps Delhi’s most prolific theatre group going.

Once upon a time, Arvind Gaur used to study electronic engineering. He left it to join Navbharat Times, where he wrote a culture column. “You could say watching and writing about plays is how my training started. I used to do theatre too, mostly with activist groups. I did plays with the Delhi Public Library. The first street play I did was with Zakir Husain College, it was called Videshi Aaya.”Gaur started conducting theatre workshops with children, but he still needed a job. So he joined PTI TV, where he helped produce the popular show Tana-Bana. But all this was before he started Asmita in 1993. Since then, theatre has been his passion as well as his bread and butter.

Gaur has directed all of Asmita’s plays – and the group has 52 productions to its credit. Six of these – Moteram ka Satyagraha, 30 Days in September, Log-Baag, Rakt Kalyan, Court Martial and Operation Three Star – are being staged as part of Asmita’s summer festival. Does he never act? “I was never much of an actor. I have acted once or twice – usually under compulsion,” he grinned.

“Asmita’s first show was a performance of Bhisham Sahni’s award-winning play Hanush in the Sahitya Kala Parishad youth festival. But on the eve of the first proper public performance at Shri Ram Centre, the main actor backed out. Forty other actors were involved, and we had booked the hall. We made a supporting actor do the main role instead, and I took on the supporting role. The two of us – or at least I – did the play with the script in hand! That was the first and last time I acted in an Asmita play.”

It was this unfortunate experience that triggered Gaur’s decision that Asmita plays would have only in-house actors. “We take whoever comes to us, regardless of experience. But we put them through an intensive programme of theatre workshops. Our actors are divided into three tiers: senior actors, with the greatest level of experience; mid-level actors, with some experience; and finally, people who are more or less newcomers to theatre.” In productions with a small cast, only senior Asmita actors get to be on stage. The larger the cast, the more likely it is that second-tier actors might get a role. “We also have in-house productions, in which all parts are played by junior actors, and the whole group gives them feedback.”

While old-timers like Jaimini Srivastava and Deepak Kochani continue to be associated with the group, Asmita has also been a training ground for younger actors. “In our 1995 production of Tughlaq, with Jaimini Kumar in the title role, a young chap called Deepak Dobriyal played a soldier. You would have seen him recently in Omkara, as Kareena’s rejected bridegroom.” Dobriyal was with Asmita for several years, as was Kangana Ranaut (of Gangster fame). Does this migration of actors from Delhi theatre to Bombay cinema bother him? “Not at all. I think this generation is more target-oriented. They may use theatre as a stepping stone to cinema or TV, but if theatre doesn’t provide people a living, how can you blame them? Also, it’s the theatre-walas who have changed the quality of acting in our films. It’s a symbiotic relationship.” Though distressed at the monopolisation of government funds by a small group of nationally-acclaimed directors, Gaur remains optimistic about the future of Delhi theatre. “Nowadays, there is a lot more emphasis on theatre-training. Asmita has a lot to do with this. Many of our actors have formed their own groups.”

But in an era when so many Hindi groups seem to be turning to comedy to get the crowds in, how has Asmita managed to survive financially, doing mostly “serious” plays? “I have nothing against comedy – in fact I think it’s the most difficult thing to do well. Moteram ka Satyagraha is very funny. But somehow my sensibility is such that even when I try to do comedy – like Chekhov’s stories in Log-Baag – the play somehow transforms itself into something darker,” Gaur said ruefully. “Financially, we manage because all our actors contribute to the running of the group, the rent for our rehearsal space, etc. For the actual shows, we get some money when we’re invited to perform in other cities. And I am constantly conducting workshops – for colleges, at the Habitat Centre and elsewhere. That money goes into Asmita’s coffers. Thankfully, the audience has supported us.”

Although Asmita under Gaur’s direction does only what he calls “socially and politically relevant theatre”, Gaur has no illusions about theatre’s revolutionary potential. “Revolution is not so easy to bring. Ab tak kranti jo hai woh JNU se nikalkar Munirka tak nahi pahunchi. But we try to bring about a dialogue with the audience.” Asmita’s shows of Final Solutions, Mahesh Dattani’s play about communal conflict, and 30 Days in September – a play about child sexual abuse, also written by Dattani – are often followed by animated discussions between the actors and the audience. “After a recent show of 30 Days, three people came out and said that after watching the play, they felt able to speak about their experience of abuse for the first time. That gives us a feeling of achievement.”

Published in Time Out Delhi, May 2007

Film Review - Dasvidaniya

The Joker Returns

TRISHA GUPTA

FILM » DASVIDANIYA
DIRECTOR » SHASHANT SHAH
STARRING » VINAY PATHAK, RANVIR SHOREY, RAJAT KAPOOR, NEHA DHUPIA

WITH DASVIDANIYA, THE Russian word for goodbye (or ‘till we meet again’) makes its second appearance in Hindi cinema — this time in a starring role. Still remembered for its significant bit role in Raj Kapoor’s Mera Naam Joker, the use of the word in Shashant Shah’s film nudges the viewer gently towards a host of associations — the Indo-Russian connection as cemented by Hindi films, the clown who makes people laugh while himself desperately unhappy.

Vinay Pathak’s Amar Kaul, a 37-year-old accounts manager with a ridiculous katori-haircut, who lives with his senile, TV-obsessed mother (the wonderful Sarita Joshi), has never had a love life, and mutely suffers the daily indignities inflicted by his gross and gluttonous boss (Saurabh Shukla), is already a version of the sad joker. When it turns out that his ulcer is actually an advanced stomach cancer, the film threatens to keel over into full-blown weepie territory. But quietly well-executed performances and a charmingly straightforward script keep the film in a suitably low key.

Amar (whose very name provides the possibility of pathos) does have a moment of revelation, but he doesn’t become a new person overnight. He just replaces his dreary things-to-do list with a ‘things-to-do (before I die)’ list, substituting ‘repair geyser’ with ‘learn guitar’. His plodding but determined pursuit of these everyman desires — buying a shiny red car, travelling abroad, telling his childhood crush he loves her — make up the rest of the film. There’s nothing earthshattering or unpredictable about these episodes, but moving moments abound. Noteworthy are a dumb charades sequence with Neha Dhupia (again drawing on the joker/mime association) and the car-buying episode (Purbi Joshi’s lovely as the salesperson). And, instead of Raj Kapoor’s teary romance with a Russian ballerina, we get a short-but-sweet encounter between Indian tourist and Russian hooker, ironically — but perfectly — set to “Pal bhar ke liye koi hamein pyar kar le”.

Perhaps the cinematic references are overdone a little, what with Pathak asking his guitar teacher to teach him the title song from Kal Ho Na Ho, and his estranged brother (Gaurav Gera) being introduced with a parody of the Mere paas Maa hai dialogue. The conversations-with-self routine grates, with our endearingly boring protagonist sharing screen space with a winking, backslapping, long-haired version of himself. But to stress these things is to deny an honest film its due.

Published in Tehelka Magazine, Vol 5, Issue 47, Dated Nov 29, 2008

Palatial Patiala: Hotel Review

CHECKOUT
To see the article with accompanying photographs, click here.

The maharajas of Patiala, it seems, had rather a lot of money on their hands, and were given to the construction of opulent buildings. Patiala, therefore, has a lot of palaces. The oldest of these is the Qila Mubarak, a stunning 18th-century fort-palace that forms the core of the old city. Then there are the Moti Bagh palaces, Old and New, built respectively by Narender Singh (reigned 1845-62) and Yadavindra Singh, who acceded to the throne in 1938 only to join newly independent India in 1948. The Baradari Palace, latest addition to the Neemrana group’s chain of heritage hotels, is perhaps the least flamboyant of Patiala’s regal residences. A colonnaded colonial building constructed in 1876 as a new home for the then-ruler Rajinder Singh, it’s centred round a Mughal-style baradari—a pavilion with 12 arches which gives its name to the surrounding garden and to the neighbourhood.

We’ve been told there’ll be no trouble getting there if we just ask for Rajinder Kothi—it’s world-famous in Patiala. But we run through three rickshaw-walas and a couple of auto guys before we find someone who knows what we’re talking about. And then, too, it’s mention of the adjacent Baradari Garden (once royal repository of rare trees, now haunt of walkers, microphone-aided yoga classes and sellers of wheatgerm juice) that gets us to the hotel. After a tasty dinner of aloo-gobhi, paneer and chicken curry in the awe-inspiring darbar hall, I abandon late-night exploration plans in favour of the also awe-inspiring comforts of my suite: No. 15, otherwise known as Maharaja Bhupinder Singh.

The next day, talking to H.S. Gill, the mild-mannered engineer who worked on the building’s restoration, I realise why no one recognises the name Rajinder Kothi in present-day Patiala. The royals moved out soon after Independence, after which the palace has been home to the Shahi Mehmandari (the state guesthouse), Punjabi University, and from 1972 to 2006, the Punjab State Archives.

Years as a government office must have taken their toll, so it seems incredible when Mr Gill tells me that the Baradari’s wooden staircases, with their graceful banisters, and the prettily-carved wooden terrace railings, are all original. “It took a long time to scrape off all the layers of paint,” he smiles. Certainly not original, though, are the over-bright prints of Punjabi village scenes and maharajas, masquerading as paintings throughout the hotel. There’s also a slight problem with the restoration of the darbar hall, which now serves as the dining room. Most of the ceiling’s central portion, which had been eaten away, has been painted over in a stark white. Which is fine, except that the painter’s brushstrokes seem to have ranged indiscriminately across portions of the bejewelled red and blue borders. But this slapdash artwork is somewhat compensated for by the period furniture and the carefully chosen fabrics—from bedside rugs to table linen—characteristic of Neemrana properties. The rooms are luxurious without being cluttered, their relative emptiness allowing the eye to absorb details like the wood louvred ceilings and the arched doors with their old brass latches.

Wandering around the building, I discover that its original front entrance is now the back. A gloriously sunlit pillared patio, laid out as an informal dining area, looks out over the Baradari Garden, which itself has long been parcelled off for the benefit of the Patiala public. Having duly admired several gorgeously plumed pheasants in the garden’s aviary portion, I wander about the town’s grander palaces all afternoon. In the darbar hall of the Qila Mubarak, under an enormous gilt-edged mirror, I come upon a decrepit marble-topped table almost exactly like the one on which my toast was laid out that morning.

Back at the Baradari, I’m told that the room I’m staying in is part of the section that formed Maharaja Rajinder’s private quarters. As I lounge on one of the lovely terraces on a thoughtfully provided Bombay Fornicator, dawdling over my second cup of tea, I’m pretty sure I’m channelling something of his spirit.

Trisha Gupta

THE INFORMATION
LOCATION Near Baradari Garden, Patiala, Punjab
ACCOMMODATION 6 rooms, 11 suites
TARIFF Rs 3,000 (rooms), Rs 5,000 (suites)
CONTACT 011-46661666, www.neemranahotels.com

Published in Outlook Traveller magazine Nov 2008