Last emperor

Did you know that Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal king of Delhi, had 49 children? How did he remember their faces or names? Besides being a good poet, he extended patronage to many great poets like Zauq and Ghalib, both of whom were named poet laureate and Momin. He was an ace archer and horseman. When the mutineers from Meerut entered Delhi on May 11, 1857, he was not sure whether he wanted to support them. One version which he endorsed later at his trial in the Red Fort is that he was against the rising and did his best to distance himself from it. Another is that he was overjoyed, and got up from his gold throne to once more pronounce himself the Emperor of India. He sent orders to rajas and nawabs to send troops to fight the British usurpers. During the five months that this mini-war of independence lasted, he banned cow slaughter. There were no Hindu-Muslim riots, and the only communal tension was between Hindus and Jains.

Did you know that while the mutiny lasted, there was extensive looting of property all over the city and little attention was paid to the British closing in on the city? It was only after Bakht Khan arrived and took charge of defence preparations that some law and order was restored and real confrontation with the British organized. Bakht Khan fought till he realized that the battle was lost, and disappeared. The British were never able to capture him. In the last days, citizens of Delhi, including women, fought the British in every locality they tried to seize, but lost.

Did you know that for some months after the mutiny was quelled, Sikh cavalry occupied Jama Masjid? There were no calls for prayer and no Muslim was allowed to enter the grand mosque. I wonder if Imam Bukhari, the official imam of Jama Masjid, is aware of this.

Did you know that while the majority of Muslims fled the city when the British reoccupied it, some notables stayed — among whom was the poet, Asadullah Khan Ghalib, in his haveli in Gali Qasim Jaan? He had congratulated the British when they had defeated the Sikhs and annexed their kingdom in 1849. However, not only he and his family but also the entire mohalla were guarded by Sikh troops of the Maharaja of Patiala.

I learnt some of this and much more after reading the manuscript of Mahmood Farooqui’s book, Besieged: Voices from Delhi 1857. Mahmood Farooqui was a Rhodes scholar and is now a filmmaker. He often stages street plays as a part of dastangoi, the dying art of storytelling that he is trying to revive. He helped William Dalrymple with his Urdu translation. In turn, Dalrymple told him of the wealth of untapped material on the mutiny of 1857 lying in the National Archives which no one had looked into. So Farooqui started exploring it to complete the book, giving a daily account of the events in Delhi in 1857 till Bahadur Shah Zafar’s death in Rangoon in 1862.

Pen and scalpel

Mrs Charanjit Singh (chairperson of Hotel Le Meridien) gave me an autographed copy of H.S. Rissam’s The Scalpel: Game Beneath, and said, “He is a good friend, write something about his novel.” I asked her, “What do the initials, H.S., of his name stand for?” “I don’t know,” she replied, “I’ll find out and let you know.” Then she flew off to the United States of America to attend her nephew’s wedding and to see the Niagara Falls for the third time.

A few days later, came Sadia Dehlvi and insisted, “You better write something about Dr Rissam’s novel; you may have heard about his expertise as a heart specialist. You may visit him one day.” “What does H.S. stand for?” I asked. “I don’t know, but I’ll find out and let you know,” she replied. She never did.

I wrote a postcard to Rissam and asked him to send me his personal biodata, including his full name. He sent me a sheaf of clippings of favourable reviews from over a dozen papers, and an official biodata, without telling me what H.S. stood for. In desperation, I sent him a second postcard spelling out exactly what I wanted to know about him. This time he answered all my questions, explained the initials, and sent another sheaf of clippings about his book.

Harbhajan Singh Rissam is a Kashmiri Sikh. His parents fled from Poonch when tribals, aided by the Pakistani army, raided Poonch in 1947 in an attempt to annexe Kashmir. He was born in Jammu in August 1951. He did his MBBS from the Government Medical College, Amritsar, and has an MD in cardiology from the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education & Research, Chandigarh. Thereafter he travelled round the globe, visiting universities and heart institutes. Today he is the head of the Max Devki Devi Heart & Vascular Institute, New Delhi.

Alongside his medical work, Rissam cultivated his interest in literature, reading fiction and poetry. It was in a suburb of Paris that he started writing his novel — The Scalpel. It takes you into the world of Mafia gangs, jihadis, terrorists and cold-blooded killers. It remains to be seen which instrument he uses with greater skill, the scalpel or the pen.

P.S.: Don’t part with the novel after you have read it. The author-doctor promises to give you a 20 per cent discount if you go to the Max Heart Institute for treatment, provided you can show the receptionist a copy of the novel. However, if you have parted with it, borrow one to show and you will get the same benefit. The doctor will never know.