The Comic City

by Gautam Pemmaraju

Mudder ho gaya” (there’s been a murder), announces the young man who has hitched a ride with us at Langar Hauz, from the back seat of the car. “Four men chopped some guy down with swords. Just earlier. On the street. Everyone was watching”, he continues on in the typically idiosyncratic local Urdu dialect of the city. The comic cadences of this ‘contaminated’ tongue have for long elicited much laughter across the nation, particularly due to the antics of the late great Hindi film comic Mehmood. It is no laughing matter but it is certainly ironic and indeed, even emblematic, that as we pass the scene of the crime secured by ten policeman just moments later, a lone motorcyclist merrily rides on through this poor fortification and straight over the street chalk markings of where the dead man lay felled. The cops look momentarily bemused and a plain-clothed senior cop yells at his subordinates as they, literally and proverbially, eat dust kicked up by the passing bike. The young hitchhiker echoes my inner thoughts but a short few seconds later: “That’s how it is; that’s a true Hyderabadi”. Charminar

It is about 11 AM and we are driving through the narrow streets of the dense, labyrinthine, and at one time, profoundly troubled neighbourhood of Tappachabutra in Old Hyderabad. I learn later through TV news that an old rivalry led to that mornings’ street slaughter. The victim, a 40-year-old small businessman, was hacked to death in front of bystanders by four young men. It was an act of revenge allegedly; the dead man had done time for killing the gang leader’s father over fifteen years ago.

The archetypal Hyderabadi of urban lore heeds no one and instead takes great pride in his defiance of all authority. He is quick to temper and it is difficult to ascertain what he takes offense to, since his fickle mind is driven by an expansive culture of protocol and theatricality – oftentimes expressed through silly or sentimental shairi. He always carries a small knife, an ustra or a jambiya, is surrounded by lackeys who although seem to cater to his every whim, are in actuality, crafty parasites. If not sitting indolently at old Irani cafes or dimly lit grubby bars, spouting street wisdom, plotting either a retributive attack on his nemesis or a cunning scheme to win the affections of a girl who unambiguously finds him revolting, this broad caricature is mirrored in college canteen conversations, stand-up comedy acts and plays, and regional feature films. It is reflected in the rickshaw drivers, who perplexingly, seem always to rebuff passengers, looking away in utter disdain when asked if free.

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Sovereign Bonds (And A Million Pound Question)

by Gautam Pemmaraju

Two weeks ago, India and Pakistan commemorated their 64th year of independence, and two weeks from now, 13th September will mark Operation Polo – the 1948 military action against independent Hyderabad by Indian armed forces deposing the defiant princely ruler, The Nizam, who had refused to accede to the newly formed Union of India.

37 I am reminded here of a most curious tale, the core of which remains a tripartite dispute that persists till date.

As Indian troops advanced on Hyderabad, the beleaguered independent militia of the Razakars put up a futile and foolhardy resistance while the Hyderabad State Force under the command of Major General Syed Ahmed El Edroos fell back. At the very same time, a delegation of the embattled state’s representatives, including the then finance and foreign minister Moin Nawaz Jung, were in Paris, desperately petitioning the UN Security Council in the hope of a cease-fire resolution. It was during this period, as the House of Asaf Jah, the dynasty that had ruled for seven generations, was about to fall, that Mir Nawaz Jung, the Agent General of Hyderabad stationed in London met Habib Ibramim Rahimtoola in the presence of Pakistan’s foreign minister Sir Mohammed Zafarullah Khan, at the latter’s house in Hampstead. The Hyderabad representative requested the Pakistani High Commissioner to accept a bank transfer of over a million pounds from an account in National Westminster Bank in his name.

As Mir Laik Ali, the last Dewan or Prime Minister of independent Hyderabad, writes in his account The Tragedy of Hyderabad (Karachi, 1962), the Security Council was to meet formally on the 20th of September 1948, but Sir Alexander Cadogan had agreed on “an urgent meeting” given the “rapidly deteriorating situation in Hyderabad”. In an archival film clip, Cadogan is seen opening the meeting by speaking of the two items on the agenda before the council: “one, the adoption of the agenda and two, communications from the government of Hyderabad to the security council”.

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Some Accounting For Taste (Food, Faith & Syncretism in the Deccan)

by Gautam Pemmaraju

Charminar_hyderabad_india_photo One fairly nondescript morning a few years ago I found myself headed to Barkas in the old city of Hyderabad to meet my friend, Saleh Ahmed bin Abdat, the Public Relations Officer (PRO) of Al-Jamaitul Yemenia bil Hind, which administers affairs related the migrant community of Yemen, particularly the Hadramaut province of Southern Yemen. As part of an ongoing project, I have been speaking to members of the community for several years now. Barkas, close to the scorpion-shaped Falaknuma Palace, is a corruption of the English word barracks, for it was here that cadre of the Irregular Arab Forces of the princely ruler of Hyderabad, the Nizam, were housed. It was 7 AM and we were scheduled for a shoot with Sheikh Ba’wazir Ba’shaiba, a 76-year-old local resident, who had recently returned from his first ever trip to the land of his ancestors. The septuagenarian, as part of the last ruling Nizam Mir Osman Ali Khan’s personal staff, had tended to the erstwhile autocrat of the independent state of Hyderabad till his dying breath. The Sheikh was a Khanazad – one of the many wards adopted by the Nizam to keep him company in his palace at King Kothi. We were late to arrive and consequently missed what was to be a delicious start to the day – a saucerful of Harees, the Turkish/Arabic originator of the more popular Haleem, a thickish, pulpy stew (or porridge) of wheat, goat meat or lamb, and spices.

In his foreword to Lila Zaouali’s Medieval Cuisine of the Islamic World, Charles Perry points to the oldest surviving Arabic cookbook, Kitab al-tabikh, compiled in the 10th century by the scribe Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq. The Nabataeans, as the Aramaic-speaking Christians of Iraq and Syria were known, he informs us, contributed significantly to the Arab repertoire of dishes (and terms used to describe them). Perry points out that the pioneering scribe Ibn Sayyar devotes an entire chapter to stews called nabatiyyat, and it is here we see a mention of Harisa, a Nabataean dish: “whole grain stewed with meat until done, and then beaten to a smooth, savory paste.” Interestingly, in this illuminating foreword, Perry also mentions that there is no proscription against meat at all in Islam and ‘this surely explains why meatless dishes were called muzawwaj (“counterfeit”)’.

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PLAYING BY THE BOOK (*MSTRRC)

by Gautam Pemmaraju

Allauddin Khilji1 did not vacation in France. The Turko-Afghan marauder and conqueror did not say to 250px-Sultan-Allahudeen-Gherzai himself on one hot Delhi summer at the end of the 13th century, after having marched into the city with his uncle Jalaluddin’s head at the end of a lance, that the tropical heat, the sweeping ‘loo’ blowing across from the western deserts of Southern Baluchistan to the Thar, was too much to bear. And that he would rather bugger off to the more pleasant and purportedly more glamorous (even then?2) climes of Southern France. Via Paris of course, having first taken in the sights.

But I wrote that he did. I claimed, in my 7th class history final exam, that the heat-stricken ruler set off for some well deserved R&R and frolicked, as men of such regal stature are apt to do, with some fine local lasses – one massaged his troubled brow, one fed him grapes, and others fanned him. A few days later, post our Maths final as we played makeshift cricket with thick plywood clamp boards and a red rubber ball, I was called into a higher class (their exams were longer) by our history teacher Mr. Imdad Ali – popularly known as petloo on account of his distended, overhanging belly. He asked after my parents, if there was to be a family holiday, and how I had fared on the history exam. I had cracked it of course. The margins were straight, broad and drawn in red ink, I had spaced out my words cleanly, my handwriting was fairly legible, it even had an distinctive appeal I thought, and importantly, I had written more answer sheets than anyone else in my class. As the older boys sniggered in the prescient knowledge of my humiliation, I began to get a sneaky suspicion that something was amiss. He ruffled my hair, pinched my cheeks, told the class of how good a student I was, of my passion for cricket, and then asked in faux concern: “But baba, when did Allauddin Khilji go to France?”

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