While Hashmat Begum’s story gives
an insight into the life of an average resident of the walled city, it also
leaves many questions unanswered. And this, in turn, leads us to the other facets
of life in Delhi. Talking only about the lost charm of Old Delhi can never
complete the picture of the quintessential Dilliwallah. That focus must move to
the New Delhi that came up under the British rule. The earliest of British
residents lived in Shahjahanabad, in sprawling mansions, willingly and lovingly
opening themselves to the tastes and lifestyle of the city’s population. This
proximity was precisely what compounded the horrors of the 1857 mutiny as the
earliest of mutineers to have entered the city dragged its British inmates out
of their houses and vengefully butchered them in its streets. The British
forces returned to settle scores but the mutiny made them realize that it
wasn’t safe to live among the natives. The British decided to build the Civil
Lines, to the north of the walled city, which followed the European pattern of town
planning with wide and straight roads, lined by symmetrically shaped houses on
either sides. This was the birthplace of the cosmopolitan Delhi.
Civil Lines was succeeded by the British
capital of New Delhi. Designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and full of broad vistas
intersecting each other at right angles, the brand new capital was an
unprecedented example of the European idea of a city. The British rule created
the modern middle class in India, composed of families exposed to western
education and sensibilities. It was the salaried class that worked for the
government and those who were part of it were transferred from one location to
another, depending not on their personal ethnic preferences but the requirement
of the government apparatus. This migratory pattern of people in the services opened
Delhi to a new kind of residents – the bureaucrats. These government servants came
in hordes once Delhi became the capital of British India as they were required
to work in the different public offices that the city now housed. They were the
original bourgeoisie of modern Delhi. They were exposed to the western
cosmopolitan ideas and were forward looking. They had made western education
accessible to their children too, believing in letting the daughters have equal
opportunities as the sons.
One such daughter is Mrs. Padma Chander who is in her
eighties and lives in Sarvapriya Vihar. Her association with Delhi goes back a
long way. Mrs. Chander grew up in the city through the thirties and forties. Her
family lived in a flat in Connaught Place and she would walk to her school at
Panchkuian Road. Mrs. Chander’s father worked for the British army, in the
accounts department. After school, she joined the Isabel Thoburn College in
Lucknow for her bachelors. She returned to Delhi in 1946, after four years of
undergraduate studies, to pursue an MA in English Literature and joined the
Indraprastha College. Delhi was a lot safer back then, she remembers. The
hostel at Indraprastha used to be in a bungalow a little away from the college
and she never had a problem walking the distance, even in the night. The free
time was spent listening to radio or shopping and eating with friends in Old
Delhi. However, she never felt very happy in the Indraprastha hostel. Most of
her classmates were from Chandni Chowk and she didn’t have much in common with
them. There were no activities to get involved in after the classes, unlike Isabel
where the campus life was quite alive. She expressed her distress to a friend
called Joy Michael, a firebrand student from St. Stephen’s who went on to
become an internationally acclaimed theatre artist, who spoke to the
vice-chancellor and helped her move to the St. Stephen’s girls’ hostel near
Kashmere Gate, and here she felt more at
ease.
Mrs. Chander finished her MA in
1948. That was the time when Delhi was experiencing widespread communal strife
because of partition. Her family was warned against moving out with their
guards down. Their friends feared they might get targeted because they looked
like Muslims. It was a difficult phase. The Muslims in the neighborhood felt
very threatened. Most of the ones living in Connaught Place left. She remembers
this one Muslim man who was found, to their bewilderment, hiding in his flat for
over a month without much food and water because he feared getting attacked by
the Hindus living around him. She was sent to Bombay, away from the city’s
disturbances, where her parents lived and, then, she moved to Pune for a year to
pursue B.Ed. after which she returned to Delhi.
Her fondest memories are
associated with Connaught Place. The inner circle had fewer cars but lots of
tongas. Her brothers would often treat her at a restaurant called Davico’s,
located above Regal Cinemas. Vegetable vendors would frequent their neighborhood
and they lowered a stringed basket to take up the purchase. There used to be a
coffee shop at Janpath and if her brothers called them, their bearer would
bring the coffee all the way to their flat in the B Block, something hard to
imagine in today’s CP. She remembers that there were lots of open spaces in
Delhi and the civic amenities were in a great shape. There was place available
everywhere, in the buses and trams, in schools and colleges. There was no
hastiness about anything. Fashion, too, was very basic. Girls wore either
sarees or salwar-kameez and boys opted for shirts and kurtas.
After partition, the refugees
came in. While many came from rural Punjab, there were others from places like
Lahore and Rawalpindi. The latter were artistically inclined and tried to
recreate the cultural ambience of Punjab in Delhi. One such person was Late
Mrs. Shiela Bhatia, considered to be the grand dame of Punjabi opera and who
happened to be Mrs. Chander’s sister-in-law. Shiela ji, along with many others,
helped revive the theatre in Delhi. She remembers frequenting the Sapru House
on Barakhamba Road to watch plays. This predates the establishment of the
National School of Drama which made Mandi House Delhi’s cultural hub. In 1957,
she got married to eminent journalist and theatre critic Late Mr. Romesh
Chander.
Soon after their marriage, they
moved to Jaipur, where their children were born. Mr. Chander also worked for
the government and was sent to London, along with the family, for a six months
long training programe. After returning to India, he assisted in the launch of Doodarshan,
assuming the role of its first Director-General and, thus, ushering India into
a new era of information and communication. With this the family moved to Kaka
Nagar. Mr. Chander was the only person there who owned a television. The
family’s drawing room would witness an overflow of people who came to watch the
movie on Sunday afternoons. In fact, they moved to a ground floor flat to be
able to accommodate the crowd. By this time, Mrs. Chander had started teaching
at RS Junior Modern School. Television, she remembers, was a part of the school
curriculum. There were specific periods designated where children were taken to
watch educational content on television. The student-teacher ratio was as low as
1:25 which meant a more affectionate relationship shared between them.
Though highly inaccessible, television
had become a very important part of the public life. Many important events like
Nehru’s funeral was broadcasted live on it, Mr. Chander doing the commentary
for part of it. He lived in Kaka Nagar till up to his retirement after which
the family moved to Defence Colony. The later years saw Delhi changing like
never before. Something even as basic as transport became a problem. Life in the
early years was far more sedate, interspersed with picnics to the Qutb area,
where families would travel with a motorcade and the cooking arrangement.
Central Delhi itself was very
different. The northern and central ridges were covered in a thick jungle,
beyond the Gole market. Yamuna, too, was much cleaner. Mrs. Chander’s goes back
to her days as a student and, then, a teacher and recalls how different things
were in those days. Children loved and felt belongingness for their
surroundings, their home, parents, institutions and the city. Much of it has
changed and she blames it on the lack of good parenting. Another major change
in the demographics of the classroom has been that second, third and fourth
generation learners are all clubbed together and a difference in their approach
towards education reflects evenly across the classroom. She can’t point a finger
at any one particular trait that sets the Dilliwallah apart. She finds it
easier to do that for someone from Lucknow, who is more sophisticated, or
Tehzeeb-dar, or a South Indian who is quite particular about hygiene and
cleanliness. Maybe it is easier only for an outsider to tell as to what makes us
so different.
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