Much has been written about Phool Walonki- Sair, the recently concluded festival of flowers and communal harmony, organised by the Anjuman Sair-e- Gul Feronsha, but a description of the first Sair is hard to come by, except for some sketchy material. In 1812 Mirza Jahangir fired at the British Resident, Archibald Seton, after his claim as heir apparent to Akbar Shah II was rejected, and was subsequently exiled to Allahabad.
On his return to Delhi (for good conduct), his mother, Queen Mumtaz Mahal II, in perpetuation of a vow, decided to offer floral chadars and pankhas at the shrine of Hazrat Qutubuddin Bakhtiar Kaki and the Yog Maya mandir in Mehrauli. One remembers Muslim Khan, who had been a karanda of the Nawab of Jhajjar, describing the first Sair, as witnessed by his grandfather, Maqbool Khan (1798-1882).
The whole of Delhi was decorated like a bride, he said. There was feasting and dancing throughout the night preceding the festival in the Walled City. The chadars and pankhas were made both in Chandni Chowk and in Matia Mahal, with many of the flower-sellers and their families continuing to work on them from evening to morning.
In the middle of the night Malini, a girl helping her parents in making garlands, eloped with her lover, causing a big uproar. When day dawned, some of the revellers were fast asleep after the merry-making, but children in large numbers were out in the streets, dancing in glee. The Shehnais were being played in front of Begum Bagh, whose ruins formed the backdrop, as there was no Town Hall there (it was built 53 years later).
Akbar Shah and his harem had already proceeded to Mehrauli but the begums, led by Mumtaz Mahal, left only late in the forenoon in decorated carriages and bullock carts.
Following them on horseback, and later in a buggy, was Mirza Jahangir, still in his teens, a handsome young man, who was the cynosure of not only the women of the harem but of the whole city. He wore fashionable clothes and, though he aped their manners, did not like the British one bit. As a matter of fact, he had said “Lu lu hai bey” to taunt Seton before firing at him from atop a palace in the Red Fort. Some of his brothers accompanied him but not the eldest (by a different mother) Abu Zafar, who later came to the throne as Bahadur Shah Zafar.
Mumtaz Mahal did not like the elder prince, nor for that matter did his father, who, at the instigation of his beloved queen, had charged him with being gay, and also of having tried to seduce one of the emperor’s wives. Following the princes, on bullock carts and on foot, were the common people, headed by the shehnai players and flowers sellers carrying the pankhas. Young women did not form part of the procession but children and old women were there in thelas (push-carts) and other carriages.
It took a long time for the procession to reach Mehrauli, past the shrine of Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia, where obeisance was also paid. At the dargah of Qutub Sahib, the chadars brought by the king and his party and those by the flower sellers were presented (pankha shaving already been sent to the temple) with due reverence. Soon after the royal party withdrew to an old mahal, where Mumtaz Mahal and other ladies joined them. They passed the night there and the next day, and after a week returned to Delhi. But the merry-making continued for five more days.
Incidentally, Mirza Jahangir was sent back to Allahabad for continued misbehaviour and he drank himself to death their at the age of 21. His body was brought to Delhi and he was buried in a mausoleum in Nizamuddin, much to the grief of Mumtaz Mahal and his grandmother, Qudsia Begum II. Muslim Khan, who was born in 1880 and died in 1960, ironically did not live to see the revival of the festival, (discontinued on British orders in 1942) by Jawahar Lal Nehru in 1961 with the help of Yogeshwar Dayal. He had moved to Bulandshahr after his second marriage to a girl 20 years younger than his wife, who had died in child-birth.
Memories of Muslim Khan and his friend, Sahil Brehlvi were revived when one browsed through the old Delhi Gazetteer, which referred to the festival as Pankha Mela, “in which pankhas are carried to the Hindu temple of Jog Maya on Wednesday and on Thursday to the shrine of Kutubdin, for the maintenance of which a tolerant government allows a jagir of Rs 2,000 a year”. How “tolerant” the then government was is a moot point. Yogeshwar Dayal died some years ago but his family, headed by Usha Kumar, is still associated with Phool Walon-ki-Sair. Floral pankhas are offered to the Lt-Governor of Delhi and the Chief Minister and after that the shehnai is played in Chandni Chowk to make people aware that the Sair is around the corner.
Delhiwallahs have always loved the flowers that grow in the city. No wonder the flower- sellers of Delhi exude a charm of their own. When the day is spent they sit selling the seasonal flowers which attract the eye and give an all-pervading feeling of freshness. In summer it is the motia, chameli, raat-ki-rani and the chandni flowers, that fall like moonlight in the quiet of the night as though some lover was showering his emotions on the beloved.
It looks as though the world of flowers is far removed from the one where we encounter heavy traffic and rush for daily bread, which causes every man, woman and child to sweat it out and makes one wonder if Wordsworth was right when he heard the “still sad music of humanity”. Perhaps the music is there when the mind wills and that’s when one’s at ease, not hurrying about but loitering.
The row of flowers-sellers in Chitti Qabar and Chandni Chowk are two places worth visiting on an evening. Pause here a while and eye the blooms on sale ~ white, red, pink, purple or yellow. Think of the gardeners, who tended them with love, the dew drops that opened the flower petals every morning and the butterflies that settled on them, or the bees and the birds that befriended these givers of perfume and happiness. Buy a few from the girl, a veritable flower herself, the one who sits with her hair open, needling the Motias into garlands, each containing a huge rose. She has spent a lot of time on each but would willingly sell them to you rather than allow the flowers to dry up and die.
In Chandni Chowk once Mughal princesses came from the Red Fort to buy “gajras” for their hairdo. Modern women do the same. But in those days flowers did not cost as much as they do now, for they were aplenty. Eunuchs accompanied those medieval damsels, but if they had to meet their lovers at the flower-sellers’ they did so with many a subterfuge thrown in for the purpose. The lovers were not all noblemen ~ humbler souls too were favoured. Times have changed but not the flowers.
In Chitin Qabar on a Thursday, one can see the charm of flowers, with both men and women buying them for the weekly devotions at the shrines, where the qawwalis are sung with gusto and sometimes a lover catches a glimpse of the future wife in the smoke of joss-sticks. But long after all the pretty faces have ceased to dazzle the bazaar a half-blind bearded man sits patiently waiting for more customers, and when they are long in coming he caresses the rose petals by the handful for they seem to be dearer to his heart than all the beloveds.
The planting of a rose sapling from Ispahan in the Roshanara Gardens by Ziba Jahan, the Iranian envoy of Roses, years ago was in a way a repetition of history. It was over 400 years ago that another beautiful woman from Iran, Mehr-un-Nissa Begum, who later became famous as Nur Jahan, introduced the Persian rose into India.
It is perhaps in the fitness of things that Roshanra Begum’s garden should have been selected for planting the Ispahan rose, for Nur Jahan was the step-grandmother of the princess. Delhi has a rich heritage of gardening and, along with Agra, was at one time world famous for its Mughal landscapes. Babar, in his yearning for the gardens and cool streams of Kabul, introduced the art of Mughal gardening in India, by laying out his Charbagh on the left bank of the Yamuna at Agra. The work begun by him reached its fullness in the reign of Shah Jahan, who laid a hundred gardens round Delhi and Agra.
But time lays its hand on everything. Nothing escapes it, however great. Gardens and flowers that lend enchantment to the eye and the heart, however, are on a different plane and the thought of their disappearance makes one sad, observed veteran journalist “TS”.
Traces of some of Delhi’s discarded gardens can still be found. It would, therefore, be appropriate if, acting on the advice offered over 100 years ago by the famous Mughal gardening expert Miss C M Villiers Stuart, these were replanted.
The memory of the visit of the “Envoy of Roses” reminds us that it is high time to make such dreams come true and Phool Walon-ki- Sair keeps the Capital’s floral tradition evergreen. Now, besides Delhi, other states too have started participating in the festival, which concludes with a period play at Jahaz Mahal, where Bahadur Shah Zafar once presided over the finale.