Nothing good comes of having your status as capital snatched
from you by Delhi. As a Calcuttan I know the pain. Of course, my city’s had it
relatively easy when you consider the fate of Sasaram in Bihar. That’s where
Afghan warlord (what a useful phrase: right from Bihar in the 16th century to
the US invasion in the 21st) Sher Shah Suri had his capital, as ruler of Bengal
and Bihar, before he overthrew Humayun
and moved shop to the Purani Qila in Delhi. Unlike the Afghan warlords of today
though, Sher Shah was a pretty impressive ruler. He introduced the rupiya which was the predecessor of the
modern rupee. More interestingly, he introduced a small denomination coin
called the dam which probably gave
rise to the English phrase “I don’t give a damn”. The administrative set-up
introduced by him was so impressive that Akbar copied liberally from it and
Sher Shah’s ideas therefore ruled India for centuries after the man’s death.
Six hundred years later though, Sasaram is yet to get over
the rejection of being passed over for Delhi (that three hundred years later,
yet another empire would use Bengal and Bihar as stepping stones to capture
Delhi is something that we will get into—to use an Ayesha Jalal phrase, Bengal
has always been a “milch cow” for Delhi). The town is, to not put too fine a
point on it, in shambles. It’s congested, ugly, has no power or water and, most
egregiously, has no good food. All you get in restaurants is a really bad
Punjabi/Mughlai pastiche: Do-Pyazas, Mattar Mushrooms and Dal Tarkas. (I don’t
mind Punjabi but India’s self-destructive obsession with it baffles me.) The
only exception to this was the chai I found at a roadside stall quite by
chance. It was boiled just the right amount with not too much milk (the bane of
chai in small town India). And while it was too sweet for my comfort, a little
bit of cajoling and a small white lie (“I have diabetes”) later I had them
brewing me a fresh sugarless pot.
Sadly there is no place to enjoy that chai in comfort. The
town centre is a seething mass of chaos: Cars. Samosa shops. Banana vendors.
Autos. Children. Lorrys.
The bloody autos in Sasaram insist on putting in the
shrillest horns they can find and then blow them CONTINUOUSLY as they pass
through. In spite of all this effort though, they are pretty much blown out of
the water when a lorry passes through blowing its shrill horn CONTINUOUSLY.
The day I visited, just in case there it wasn’t chaotic
enough, there was an RJD politician berating Nitish Kumar for, interestingly,
being a casteist. “Doesn’t a poor child of a forward caste feel hungry”,
thundered the man on a very loud mic to make himself be heard over all the
noise. Shoe on other foot and all that I thought through my headache.
***
Unfortunately, going through the town square is a must in
order to visit Mr. Suri’s impressive tomb. Placed in the centre of an
artificial lake, the first thing that strikes you is its lack of ostentation.
Pretty is not a word you would use to describe the tomb. More like spartan,
rugged or muscular. If the Taj Mahal were Chitrangada Singh, pretty and
elegant, Suri’s Maqbara is more Schwarzenegger. The closest structure it
reminded me of are the tombs in the Lodhi Gardens in Delhi, the Sasaram tomb of
course being far more impressive and has far fewer rich Delhi-ites jogging
around it.
Made of sandstone, the tomb’s pretty big, around 150 feet
high. It stands on a square platform which leads down to the water in the form
of steps. The domed chamber itself is octagonal and has entrances on seven
sides the eighth being a Mehrab sort of wall niche.
The chamber is surrounded by a pillared verandah of sorts
decorated by the usual graffiti you find at monuments.
The abusive: Maadar
Chod, Gaand, Ch**th
The banal: Sasaram
The romantic: Rohan
hearts Pinki
The forever alone: Ayub
(whoever he is, hope he finds that special someone to carve his name along
with)
The most interesting piece of "graffiti" though is
a stone plaque put up by the British in 1882 which boastfully proclaims that
the tomb was repaired by the British Government.
The chamber houses a number of graves the largest being Sher
Shah’s. Interestingly, Suri’s grave has been mazaar-ified. There’s a rich red-rimmed green chadar spread over it which is in turn covered with small change
(the highest denomination note was a 20). The guard later explained that this
wasn’t because people weren’t generous but it was because it’s tough to keep an
eye on things all the time and some people have frisky fingers. There were also
a couple of chaadars on the wall in
case you wanted to do a bit of spreading yourself “all free of cost”, said the
guard in a tone which was to indicate he expected to be tipped.
While I’ve seen this happen elsewhere (Mehrauli and Hauz
Khas for example) the tomb of so un-religious a man being turned into a mazaar confused me. So I asked the guard,
Bindeshwar Singh, to explain. Tall and strapping with a handlebar moustache to
die for, he listened to my question, looked at me as if I was retarded and
asked me whether I wanted to put some money on the grave. I turned down this
invitation to tip a long dead emperor and asked him again. In what was becoming
a worrying trend he again replied with a question:
“Are you a Hindu or a Muslim?”
Not wanting to colour his answer, I prevaricated and mumbled
something unintelligible.
Cornered by my persistence and forced into answering Singh
told me: “See Saheb, it is very
simple. This man, Sher Shah was a man favoured by the fates. Uski taqdeer achhi thi. He was the most
powerful man in India. Did he or did he not become badshah of Hindustan? If so
what is wrong if people ask wishes of him. If he had so much power during his
lifetime maybe he can still spread some of it around.”
I nodded. This was sound logic; couldn't argue with it.
“Look at his pitaji’s tomb (Sher Shah’s father’s tomb is
located about a kilometre from his), would anyone do prarthana there? Of course they wouldn't. He was a nobody.”
(Bindeshwar was right. I visited Hasan Khan’s tomb after
that and it’s far from being treated as a religious place. In fact, children
were using the courtyard to play cricket.)
Turning down yet another offer to tip Sher Shah Suri and
impressed by Bindeshwar’s theory of the fundamental relationship between power
and religion I headed back to the city—I could hear the autos of Sasaram
beckoning shrilly to me.
A slightly edited version of this piece was first published on Kafila
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