10 May 1857 CLICK POSTER TO ENLARGE

Turban Tales & Crescent Moons

A rebellious son chafing for control. A drunken father lost in the arms of his latest wife. A helpless land watches as a power struggle unfolds.

Although he was the third in line he was the best. There was no doubt for his brothers were a bunch of drunkards. The eldest, the gentle one beloved of his people, had succumbed to a bout of diarrhoea…that had been the official report. The truth had been carefully guarded and the father mollified by his lovely wife. Her aunt was after all the empress who wielded her charms over her drunken husband.

‘For a few kebabs and a cup of wine I have sold the crown of Hindustan.’ The words were often on the emperor’s lips.

But now the empress had turned against him. The brother that was second in line assumed the duties of the heir and chased him across the country. With his wife and his children he fled to Udaipur. The maharana was a friend and offered him rooms in his palace. But he preferred a place of his own. An island in a lake was taken over and the maharana’s unfinished summer palace modified.

A dome was raised above which glittered a crescent. Carpets from Turkey were strewn on the floors and jasper, cornelian and agate adorned the walls.

The prince and the maharana exchanged turbans taking the oath of brothers in blood.


He left after a few months and after about an year took his place upon the throne of Hindustan as Emperor Shah Jahan. His turban remains even today in Udaipur.

The maharana’s son added the finishing touches to his father’s summer palace but left the crescent moon atop the dome undisturbed.

The silver anklet

Children played on the ramparts. A foreign soldier took aim. It was the silver anklet that had helped him choose his target.

For he had come from across the Indus seeking vengeance.

Roshan Ali had come to India to spread the light. He had struggled and struggled with the people of the land and in a fit of rage had dipped his hand into a pot of curds meant for the king.

The king was unable to forgive him and ordered the offending fingers be slashed off. The bleeding fingers rose into the air and flew to west. They were recognized in Mecca and an army was launched. The missionary would have to be avenged.

The fort though it fell was recovered soon enough but Manik Rai Chauhan’s infant son had lost his life.

The silver anklet was to blame.

Never would a son this race ever sport one of them again.

The pass of Bundi.

Her brother arranged for her the best match possible – the overlord of all the Rajputs had accepted her hand. She made her way to the rawala of Chittaurgarh her head held high.


Her brother had come visiting. She spent the day cooking for the two men in her life and now she sat punkha in hand supervising as the food was served.

But her husband seemed distracted. Could it be that he coveted her brother’s new wife?

Later during a private moment her grief burst out.

‘You played with your food and Soojo? He ate like a tiger.’

Her husband got up and left.

They had left. Gone hunting together. It was too late. Had they but told her before leaving she would have wept and pleaded and lain down on the floor.

How could they have ignored the curse?

Bad news travels fast. It came before the sun could set. Her brother and her husband were dead. The queens of Chittaurgarh rose as one to join their husband on his pyre.

But in death Sooja Bai returned to the valley of her forefathers. Her ashes were laid to rest in the pass that looked upon the fortress and town of Bundi.

Probashis and Independence

The Probashi Bengali community in Delhi was a little one. Everybody knew everybody more so when a wedding was being celebrated. Brides came all the way from Bengal or from other probashi communities. They brought with them the flavours and the sartorial styles of the lands they had left behind.

My maternal grandmother came from Bengal to marry my Dal-Bati-Churma eating grandfather. His childhood, you see, had been spent in the arid Sambhar Didwana region of Rajasthan. He was a true-blue Bengali but Rajasthan had not failed to leave its mark. They made a pair, the two of them: my grandfather, towering and benign at his six-feet-one-inch and my grandmother at a proud four-feet-eight.

It was perhaps in the year that India became independent or the very next one that they went to attend the celebrations at Rashtrapati Bhavan. But of course nobody that day would dress in anything but traditional wear. Ladies draped their sari pallus over their heads in the manner of the day and were escorted by elegantly attired husbands who had discarded the European garb that had become synonymous with office wear.

Stewards bore trays of little cakes and sandwiches and poured out steaming cups of tea. The finest china and silverware had been put out for the guests. Afternoon tea on the lawns. The scene had remained frozen in time. Only the actors had changed.

A steward plucked at his elbow. ‘Mr Shyama Prasad Mukherjee wishes to meet you.’

My grandfather hurried to his side. This was the son of the famous judge Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee.

A broad smile split his face into two. ‘So good to meet a fellow Bengali.’

‘But how did you know?’

‘Arre Moshai. Your sleeves gave you away. No one but a true Bengali would wear his kurta with sleeves as loose as these.’

Shyama Prasad Mukherjee held up his own arm.

Strange Truth

The identity of the Hindu prince who had precipitated the First Battle of Panipat?


He was the grandest of all Hindu princes of his time...and it is the likeness of his descendant that has been reproduced.

The First Battle of Panipat

On the plains of Panipat the prize of India was up for grabs.

700 bullock drawn carts lashed together by chains formed a barrier in front of the army. Sufficient gaps had been left in between to let the cavalry charge through.

On the other side stood 100,000 men with 100 elephants.

The Timurid was sadly outnumbered but he had brought with him a new fangled weapon that was just coming into use in Turkey and Europe. And this was not his first time in India. He had tested its power earlier at Bajaur.

‘You are a born general.’ The emissary had stood before him, his head held low. He had brought with him gifts such as none had seen before. There were plates of jewels, not just rubies and turquoises that had been seen before in Badakshan, nor the heavy chunky Turki jewellery of the times but pearls and cornelians heaped over glittering diamonds, delicate filigree and brightly plumaged birds.

‘Sultan Ibrahim Lodi, he is nothing but an Afghan…he is young…careless in his movements, marches without orders, halts and retires without method and is enraged without foresight.’

The emissary’s eyes had not moved from his feet.

‘My master has vowed to march upon Agra if you will march upon Delhi.’

For the first time Babur had caught a glimpse of luminous eyes even though the head continued to be held low.

The battle began at half-past nine in the morning. The decisive moment came by late afternoon. The cavalry wheeled furiously around the enemy flanks delivering a charge in its rear.

The events of that first milestone of Indian history – 326 BC – were being repeated. The day would be counted as the second milestone in Indian history.

The sun went down touching the sky with a million tints of orange, scarlet and gold.

Sultan Ibrahim Lodi lay dead amongst 15000 of his men.

‘By the grace and mercy of Almighty God,’ said Babur aloud; ‘this day has been made easy for me.’

Babur marched into Delhi. His son Humayun was despatched to Gwalior whose prince’s body lay beside Ibrahim’s.

As for Agra? There was no news.

The most powerful of the Hindu princes of India had failed to keep his word.

He was exhausted but there was not a moment to be lost.

Babur marched upon Agra.

18 April 1930 CLICK POSTER TO ENLARGE

Probashi - the Diaspora

We are a family of probashi bangalis – the diaspora. Zealously we guard the Bengali culture inherited from our grandparents and great-grandparents who were among the last of the generations that had lived upon that red earth of Bengal. Even as I tucked into a plate of fish and vegetable stew, I listened with awe to the tales of a little girl who used the loose weave of the end of her sari to fish for shrimps amongst the paddy standing knee deep in the flooded field.

She was my grandmother, who had been forced by my grandfather’s British employers to move to Delhi with her brood of children. India, for her, was made up of three distinct sets of people – to Bengal’s north lived the Punjabis and to the south the Madrasis. She spoke no other language and through sheer goodwill and persistence had succeeded in teaching the gardener and the vegetable vendor Bengali. The fishmongers were never a problem – for they all spoke near fluent Bengali.

Our horizons were widening. Reluctantly the two of us had acknowledged that our Kashmiri neighbours were not Punjabis and that one could not get away by labelling those that could not be immediately typecast as Hindustanis. Were we Hindustanis? No. My six-year-old brain firmly denied it. Well then, Indian? There I was ready to concede.

‘If you lifted your aanchal quickly enough you were sure to catch a handful.’ She waved her handheld fan over my food shooing the flies away. The story had a cooling effect…wading through the water…and the green that stretched for miles.

The summer sun beat down upon the courtyard. It was her courtyard. She had to have a courtyard, she had insisted as my grandfather drew up plans for the house; a courtyard like the ones they had in Bengal or else it would be too stifling. It let in the sun and the rain and chilled us to the bone in the winters for no room in the house could be entered without passing through the courtyard first.

‘They are so tiny that rubbing them together in a bowl of water would remove the shells. A pinch of turmeric and salt and they would turn into crisp golden curls with the help of a little mustard oil. And the fragrance…such a fragrance. With a little steamed rice…a dusting of red chillie flakes…it was a feast for a king’

‘Go on now.’ Her tale came to an abrupt end. ‘You’ve finished eating. What more do you want?’

Rabindranath CLICK POSTER TO ENLARGE

14 April 2008

Shubho Poila Baisakh...On this auspicious occasion of the first day of the month of Baisakh let me wish you a very Bengali shubho noboborsho and a happy new year. The Tamils are going home for Bishu.Punjab is dancing to the tunes of the Bhangra while celebrating Baisakhi. India is looking forward to a new year. But Bengalis all over the world are looking for the next celebration...the twenty fifth of Baisakh on 8 May 2008...the birth anniversary of the nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore.

Waves CLICK POSTER TO ENLARGE