The Residency in lucknow is not only a museum of artefacts from the 1857 mutiny. It is also the house of djinns, says Eram Agha
No childhood is different — the inquisitive minds are invariably pampered by wonderful stories that linger for a lifetime. No matter what place you grow up in, there is always someone to tell you about the unseen world of magic and fantasy. The most recurring tale in my growing up years was that of the power of the djinns. Our domestic help, Shabbo, would gather the young brigade for a story session at the 100-year-old ‘Iqbal Manzil’ in lucknow.
Her tales had three main characters — humans, djinns and angels. Djinns, by definition, are neither ghosts nor angels but they send a chill down your spine. She would warn the girls, “When you grow up into pretty women, do not venture into an abandoned mosque alone wearing white clothes, overpowering fragrant of attar and flowers. Djinns love paak and pakeezah women and possess them.” Her words had such an impact that they restricted my bathing to once in three days for some time and kept me away from deserted domes and pigeon-ridden minarets. Blame the storyteller!
Then a time came for me to venture into that famed mosque of The Residency, which is considered to be the place where djinns pray. As I entered the mosque, I met the keeper or khadim, Abbas Hussain. After initial greetings, I gently asked about the presence of djinns in the mosque. He motioned me to silence and gestured we move away from the edifice torn by canons in 1857. “Please move ahead, they can hear us talk,” he said. “WhoIJ” I asked. He replied, “Buzurgvaar, (elderly). They are old, they have been here for ages, they are the worshippers of God, they are the djinns! I wouldn’t do or say anything to offend them. After all, I work for their convenience.”
He took me around the masjid and pointed to the area from where Begum Hazrat Mahal would enter the mosque and the platform where Wajid Ali Shah recited marsiyah, or dirges. You can’t miss the many small shapes carved in the walls — taakh. “A masjid with taakh will always have djinns, it is a kind of nameplate that hints their presence. Visitors light agarbatti and candles at the taakh to pay respect to the buzurgvaar,” he said. After offering my share of candles and prayers, I moved out to meet Rakesh Kumar Gupta, whom I had always remembered as a master storyteller.
“Have you ever been to Kudwar Ki BazaarIJ” he asked me after he heard of my experience. As I shook my head in the negative, he shared a story from his childhood. “I must have been eight when I set out to steal mangoes from the orchard belonging to an old man. My other friends were party to it. The meeting time was fixed at 3 am. The plan was to pluck some mangoes and run away,” he said. But no one turned up at night and he found himself alone at that unearthly hour sitting and waiting for his friends under the tree. And then, “I saw a marriage procession entering the abandoned Vahshiya ki masjid, or mosque of the fallen women. This was the mosque named after women who would dance and collect money to build mosques. The baraatis were all dressed in white and played harmonium. I have still not forgotten that smell of flowers, in fact I have never smelt something like that till now,” Gupta added.
His most astonishing revelation was that the sweeper woman, who cleans the mosque, gets paid in asharfi dating back to Raja Harsh even today. The next thing Gupta did was take my pen and paper and draw the map for reaching Kudwar Ki Bazaar for experiencing the real stories of India. “Go and meet the sweeper woman who finds an asharfi placed at the taakh after each day’s work,” he said, and warned, “Hope she didn’t sell it off for peanuts to support her family.”
Copyright: Exotica, the wellness and lifestyle magazine from The Pioneer Group, available in all rooms of select five-star hotel chains across the country