INSIGHTS

The other day a Hindu friend of mine asked me: Is not Ramazan the month during which Muslims indulge in great culinary extravaganza? (to be exact, his query in Kannada was: Idu mass nalli nive channage tintira, alla?) A fasting me was nonplussed, for, the ambience shared by two of us was full of sights, sounds and smells of food. Any counter plea was unlikely to bear any fruit. All that was there would have belied my refutation. The place was overflowing with stalls of cut fruits, a variety of sherbets, samosa kiosks encroaching on public space, awnings of restaurants held over slender poles obstructing traffic, side lanes choc a bloc with beggars and urchins counting their day's pickings.

Ramazan was meant to be a month for fasting and season for piety. But a look at the Muslim habitations across the country would suggest the opposite. Today, food and obsession with food has become the hallmark of Ramazan inasmuch as it has come to be construed as a month of feasting. Frenzied afternoon activity around bazaars, late night buzz and business by cafeterias in traditional Muslim mohallas, bands of youth under skull caps around street corners chatting over endless cups of tea is all that Ramazan offers. Loud azans and often taraweeh over amplifiers drown out soft intonation of the Quranic verses in homes.

Clearly, culture has come to dominate the spirit of Ramazan today. Saudi newspapers routinely report His Majesty's fiat to the administration to check if shops, (nay malls) are amply stocked with food items. No wonder why iftars took political colour in Delhi some time ago. Even on individual level, people amongst us tend to stuff their bellies with three meals during the short iftar-sehri interregnum. Taraweeh is alleged to be the great enabler for this gastronomic feat. Others try to guzzle up quality food to make up for the missed opportunity to eat.

Ramazan is not unique exception. We are a people bent upon turning all the rituals and etiquette at their head. The term Insha Allah has come to be used more as an evasive reply than confirmation of a promise. Muslim conclaves are notorious for starting late. The organizers would like to wait for those who do not turn up at the designated hour rather than respecting those who did. What a caricaturized Islam we are trying to follow!

Nek Chand is a humble man of grand fame and much grandiose achievement. I met him in Chandigarh inside his chamber in a corner of the Rock Garden, a fantasy land he has created by working day and night over the last 50 years.

Way back in 1950s, he was a road inspector in PWD and was posted in Chandigarh, the city envisioned by Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru and planned by famed architect Le Corbusier. In several senses, Rock Garden and Chandigarh have nothing in common. Chanbdigarh is linear, symmetrical and modular. Streets run straight and cut the city into neat rectangular sectors. Nek Chand's Rock Garden challenged the order held sacrosanct by modernism. It was curvilinear, labyrinthine, and high relief with hollows and projections represented by the rocks and the caves on a land that was invested with undulating characteristics on purpose.

Curiously, Nek Chand began his stealthily on a patch of land he knew, will not be included in the planned city. Chandigarh rose out of forests and farmlands. Humble genius Nek Chand Saini's Rock Garden took shape clandestinely, away from the public gaze, out of the rubble the city was rubbishing. He lived a double life—road inspector by day and artist and landscapist by night—for quite some years. Building the roads leading to Le City's Capitol during the day, he would pedal up to the site of what later came to be known as 'Rock Garden'.

Collecting every odd stone from the bed of the Ghaggar river, he would conceive a place for each of them. He would await trucks to offload the debris to disappear in the swirling dust to pick up choicest pieces of discarded pottery, sanitary ware, electric wires, handlebars and wheels of bicycles, bottles, and concrete.

Years went by. Nek Chand Saini kept weaving his fantasy into concrete on the flat land. Rows of columns of upturned mud pots, rough hewn rocks and cinders went into creating statuaries of armies of mythical wars, drummers, dancers, village belles and what not. When taken on a trip to the secret paradise on a Sunday afternoon, the chief architect of Chandigarh Administration (M. N. Sharma) had no heart to order a halt to the secret activity that seriously questioned modernity of the rising city.

Nearly five decades later, the Rock Garden almost nears its completion and has come to be held iconic of Chandigarh. Not alone this. Nek Chand has been commis-sioned for constructing its replicas in Berlin, Washington and Wisconsin (and latest to be taken up Mysore).

Even at 83, he is a Government servant. His visiting card reads 'Nek Chand, Creator and Director, Rock Garden'. A number of websites highlight his work. Coffee table books celebrate his garden. Art students have opted for Rock Garden as the subject of their Ph.D theses. Chandigarh railway station has two of his statues at its portals. Letter from around the world addressed to him can reach him by merely writing 'Rock Garden, Chandigarh'.

If you thought Urdu has lost its secular moorings, you may need to make amends. I did the same when I met Arun Singh Makhmoor from Jodhpur last month. Arun is a new generation poet who has taken to writing Urdu ghazals in Devanagri script. He was drawn to Urdu by the songs of Old Hindi films. 'Packed with rich imagery, the short bols lent flight to imagination. They had an ethereal quality. Temptation was irresistible', he told this scribe. He began composing his own couplets. A lot of them were published in Hindi magazines like Sarita, Navaneet and Mukta. Even Aajkal and Rajasthan Patrika carried a few ghazals and brought him laurels. Film producer G. P. Sippy sought a few of them for his films. But since he brooked no changes, they remained from being songs on the celluloid screen.

Khalil Gibran was another major influence on him. Infatuation cost him a few setbacks in studies. But once he joined the Dena Bank, there was no looking back. Urdu poetry claimed all the spare time at his disposal. Tasbeeh ke Danay was his first ghazal composition that came out recently. It was bilingual, with Urdu and Hindi couplets juxtaposed on each page. Yet another composition titled Aayeena e Zindgi came out a little later. Coming from a Rathore Kshatriya family, Makhmoor produces poetry laced with both philosophy and romance. Sample a few couplets from him:

Koi manzil hai na maqsad hai, jiye jate hain
Sookhe patte hain hawaon mein ude jate hain
(Neither any aim, nor any objective, we simply live on)
(Like the dried leaves we are buffeted by the winds)

Apni tasbeeh ka dana banade mujhko
Ungliyon hi se tere dil mein chale jatey hain
(Why not take me for a bead in your rosary)
(this way, your fingers will take me to your heart.)

In mein patthar se khuda banne ki taufique kahan
Jo badi shaan se zevar mein jaday jatey hain.
(How could those stones afford godhood)
(Those that sit elegantly in ornaments)