travel – Missionaries, Mercenaries and Misfits

January 15, 2026

Across North India by Train and Some People I Met

18 January 1990

What a rush at the airport. A huge group of Raiwindi[1]s was heading to Lahore from Karachi. It was a jumbo.

Wally met me in the drizzle at the airport and took me straight to the border. He’s pretty bummed out with the developments in the States. Berkeley has fucked him over the BULPIP directorship; hiring someone else and informing him that he was not even in the running for this year’s directorship. Wally takes these things very hard but I know I would too.

Got across to Amritsar in an Ambassador[2] which stopped every half kilometer or so due to ‘blockage’ in the fuel pump. An ansty Aussie shared the front seat with me. He was wired—shouting at the drunks, pissed off with having to pay Rs. 20 for the taxi and going on and on about missing concerts and plays back in London. Not the kind of travelling companion I want. We parted at the Railway Station.

I was greeted by 2 friends–rickshaw walas—from my last trip to Amritsar. Made a new one—a hustler who first told me there was no way I’d get a berth on the Amritsar-Howrah Mail tonight. He left and then came back after a brief interval. He suggested if I paid a little ‘chai pani’[3] I’d definitely get one. So, I paid Rs. 20 for the ticket clerk and Rs. 40 to my new friend for the luxury of a sleeper berth. A good deal. Rs. 220 for a 1879km journey.

I asked my rickshaw friends if he was a ‘gent’. Not the English term but a shortening of the word ‘agent’, used in these parts to refer to touts and fixers. “Yes”, they replied, “but an honest one. He’ll do what he says he will.” And he did.

I had asked if there were any bombings on the rails[4] these days.

They looked at me disappointingly. “This is written at the time of our birth. There is no changing it. Bombs or no bombs, when your number is up, it’s up.”

One of the rickshaw walas then broke into a parable.

“There once was a man. A mad camel got to chasing him and to escape the man jumped into a well. The camel sat outside the well and said to himself, ‘He’s got to come out one day and when he does I’ll bite him’. He settled down to wait. After a couple of days a poisonous snake slithered by and bit the camel. In an instant the camel was dead.

“The man in the well finally crawled up to have a look. He saw the camel lying bloated in the sun, rotting away. He triumphantly strode forward and gave the camel a mighty kick. His leg sunk deep into the rotting belly of the camel. The man’s leg got infected and he died.

“So, you see,” said the rickshaw wala, “even when we take precautions, Fate tricks us.”

With such encouragement I set off for Calcutta.

19 January 1990

A long journey across northern India. Lucknow, Pratapgarh, Benaras, Patna. People flow in and out of the aisles as if choreographed. It’s stuffy on the top tier but I sleep a lot. I’m surprised at the spareness of the big stations. It’s hard to find even a packet of Marie biscuits. The thought crosses my mind that maybe the great lurch into the 21^st century that India Today so proudly heralds has been at the expense of the further impoverishment of most Indians.

I share a smoke with a masala magnate from Calcutta. He’s actually Punjabi but his family moved to Calcutta from Lahore over a century ago. He never goes back to Punjab.

“I like Calcutta because it’s the cheapest and safest place in India. You have no riots, no ghadbad.[5] The loadshedding is tolerable-nothing like in Benaras. The prices of everything is cheap—living, food, transport.”

He’s a real Calcutta booster. At one point to tells me, “Yes, the police are corrupt but at least a Bengali will do what he’s bribed to do. You give him some money and your work is done. It’s the honesty I like.”

He speaks in a soft voice. He begins to tell me about how he used to drink like a ‘mad man’. Always drunk. Always looking for a drink. He was, as he puts it, “at the last stage”. He then sought the help of a guru, whose name is drowned out by the clacking of the rails as we whoosh by a dark Bihari village. He pulls out an amulet with a hand tinted image of his guru. “Whatever he says, has to happen,” he quietly says. He places the image back under his shirt and against his chest. He begins relating more miraculous acts of his guru to a couple sitting next to him.

I climb up again to the 3^rd tier and fall asleep.

20 January 1990

Calcutta is the city of superlatives. There is no end to the seeming premier-ness of the place. Most dirty city, most crowded. Most posters per pillar, most taxis per person. Most specialised bazaars. I saw one this morning which catered entirely to shoppers interested in balloons and rubber bands. Most cruel means of public transportation (hand-pulled rickshaws). Most diverse inhabitants, most rundown colonial buildings. Most cultured city: International Film Festivals, Classical music programs, Beatlemania stage show. Most touts. It’s hard to find anything new to say or any new superlative to add to Calcutta’s already superlative list of stellar ‘mosts and bests’.

I have found a room in the Paragon Hotel, one of these new tourist hostels which are the same no matter where you go nowadays. The Ringo Guest House just off Connaught Place is no different than the Paragon Hotel just off Chowringhee.

Tourists—Germans, Dutch, Japanese, Australians and a few frightened Americans—writing in small script in their journals, talking to each other about their similar discoveries and eating out at the same restaurants.

I walk up Sudder Street. I remember coming here, to the Red Shield Guest House[6],with my family every other year enroute to a deserted beach in southern Orissa/Odisha—Gopalpur-on-Sea.

I’m afraid to go Gopalpur these days. Afraid to find sparsely dressed Germans scowling at me as they strut around like they discovered the place.

In those days (late 60s) we seemed to be the only white faces in Calcutta. Sudder Street was quiet; New Market cool and refreshing; the Globe Theatre ran movies like The Bible. Now it shows Young Doctors in Love and New Market is crawling with sad Muslim touts begging you to buy or sell something. Hotels proliferate. Tourists swarm.

These tourists are backpackers. Young folks from the 1^st world bumming around the 3^rd. In Benaras they learn sitar, in Dharmsala they take a course in Buddhist meditation. In Jaisalmer they ride camels into the desert and here in Calcutta they volunteer for a week or so at Mother Teresa’s. They then catch a train to Puri or Gaya.

I admire (in a way) their altruism for washing and feeding the dying. I wish I could do the same. But something rubs me the wrong way. There is a feeling of inevitability to their righteousness. Mother Teresa is another stop along the way—like the journey of the cross in Jerusalem—full of good material to write home about. Mother Teresa is now another tourist franchise, another neat thing to do.

Calcutta is a pleasure to visit again despite the restless 1^st Worlders who hang on like frightened knights of the tourist round table. The locals don’t seem to give a damn about your origins here.

22 January 1990

Spent a thrilling few hours wandering among colonial tombstones in the Park Street Cemetery (opened 1760). The image that comes to mind is a ghost ship shipwrecked on an isolated reef, forgotten and dark. Like all cemeteries it has an immediate calming effect. Jumbled and disorderly tombstones and mausoleums crumble in silent gloom among trees and hundreds of potted plants. Some of the paths are under repair but other outlying areas are as untouched as they were a hundred years ago.

I’m instantly aware this place is an entire city. Stately and expansive. Towering citadels with Corinthian columns, baths and porticos keep watch over a host of long-dead nabobs and Company servants far from home. Each tomb is grander than the next. Spires rise 6, 8, 10 feet above the soil in honor of a young civil surgeon downed by ‘fever’ or an indigo planter consumed by the pox. The most ordinary of India’s first British colonizers have erected over their bones and spirits structures few Presidents can boast.

The Raj was young when Park Street opened. The Battle of Plassey was only three years won. Young men with no social standing back home, here had a chance to be rajahs off the plentitude of Bengal. These young men had never dreamed of the fortunes to be made in Bengal; Bengal had no way to stop them. Park Street memorialises the sense of destiny and ostentation of the early Raj. The world was waiting to be plucked from the mohur trees. Fortunes were huge and readily won for those who showed their ruthless ambition. For them this was a larger-than-life world. I suppose a bereaved father felt it perfectly natural to raise a small Roman temple in honour of his nine-month old infant son, dead by flux. The cemetery, like the period, like the characters buried here is an overstatement. The epitaphs are sentimental and overegged. There was never a disliked, cruel or greedy person buried here.

Of course, not everyone buried here is insignificant. William Jones, the great Orientalist icon who was the first to propose the idea of a shared kinship between Sanskrit, Greek and Latin, lies under a 15-foot obelisk. Charles Dickens’ second son has been lovingly moved here by students from Jadavpur University. Richmond Thackeray, father of William Makepeace Thackeray, a senior servant of the Company, lies here, as does the wife of William Hickey, India’s first prominent English journalist.

Teachers of Hindoostanee at Fort William College, traders and fair maidens, Park Street Cemetery is, more than any other place in India, a memorial to the Raj. Here one can taste the self-aggrandisement, the self-importance and most of all, the self-pity which characterises British India. You only need to close your eyes to hear them speak again. Little do they realise that their ostentatious moments of death are long forgotten and ignored.

23 January 1990

Residential mural in Bhubaneshwar by Nate Rabe

Today I arrived in a cemetery of a different sort. The great ancient temple city of Bhubaneshwar. An initial quickie around the city has left me awed with the grandeur of India—truly the Wonder That Was. I’m none too impressed however by the greedy mahantas and pundits who follow me with visitor books filled with the names of foreigners who have come before me and donated Rs. 100 or 150. They are like blood suckers who will not detach themselves from you until you fork over some cash. Muttered curses follow me when I hand over a fist of Rs. 2 notes or a tenner. “You should give at least Rs. 50,” one calls out as I walk away.

24 January 1990

Had a sleepless night. The bed in the Janpath Hotel was infested with bedbugs and the room abuzz with mosquitos. I was so tired and on the verge of the final descent into sleep only to be woken by a damn katmal gnawing at some remote part of my body. The room was distinctly shitty. A weak but persistent stench wafted across the room. No windows, only some cement grating at the top of the wall which allowed easy access for the mosquitos.

I flung my few large pieces of cloth on the floor and turned on the fan. I caught a cold and my neck ached but I must have fallen asleep between 2 and 3.

I blearily wandered off toward the Lingaraja complex which was still as impressive as it was yesterday evening. The priest left me alone to take some photos. I met two young pandas[7] who were only interested in chatting, not in extracting money from me. One was Kuna and the other Bichchi. Kuna kept classifying women into a personal scale of ‘sexual’. “Western lady very sexual”, or “Japanese lady most sexual”. He was full of obscure English aphorisms. “Every book has a cover every woman a lover”, was his favorite but others addressed less sexual subjects as well.

Bichchi was interested in telling me about politics. One of the Patnaik[8]s was in power. Another Patnaik was trying to squeeze him out now that he (the second Patnaik) had the leverage of the National Front government in Delhi. Bichchi was confident that his Patnaik (the second one) would be victorious in the end. The main complaint against the ruling Patnaik was that—as best as I could understand from Bichchi’s broken Hindi—he liked to consort with little boys. If not that he drank or smoked something that wasn’t good.

Kuna immediately spoke up. “Is there only one tiger in the jungle? They all do these things. Have you ever seen only one tiger in the jungle?”

They tried to encourage me to drink some bhang[9]. Being already light-headed from a sleepless night I declined. They extolled the virtues of bhang but cursed heroin, charas [10]and alcohol. All these vices Bichchi attributed to the Pakistanis. He saw a nefarious attempt to destroy his country. Apparently, there are in Bhubaneshwar a growing number of drug addicts.

Kuna again offered his own interpretation. “It is good. We have 90 crore[11] people here in India. If a few kill themselves with heroin good. It will keep our population down.”

I took my leave after an hour under the shade of the Lingaraja, one of 125,000 temples said to be scattered around the city. This statistic came from Bichchi. I was tired and wanted to nap but didn’t want to do it in the Janpath Hotel. Over a beer at the Kenilworth Hotel, I resolved to head immediately to Puri in search of cleaner mattresses and an airy room.

25 January 1990

Puri strikes me as an overgrown seaside fishing village. Except for the fact that it is one of Hinduism’s four major dhams[12], there didn’t seem much to commend the place. The beach is here too, of course, but it has none of the isolated charm of Gopalpur or the lushness of Kovalum. The alleys are dark and damp and only Hindus are permitted to enter the ancient Jagganath[13] temple. For a photographer it is also frustrating. The temple is set at an awkward angle which makes it almost impossible to capture well. The square in front of the temple is in glaring light most the day so people huddle in the shadows under the tarped awnings. After walking around searching for some good light, I put my cameras away. From now on I’ll stick to the alleys where little icons and shrines add color to the landscape.

I talk with Mohammad Yusuf who is selling reptile scales for the cure of piles and general unwanted blood flow. He makes rings of these and advises his customers to wear them on their left hand so as when they perform their toilet, the rings’ magical effects will “make you 100% clean. You can spend Rs. 10,000 on a doctor but these rings will cure you completely.”

He is an Oriya[14] but like most Muslims in the north speaks quite good Urdu. When I told him I was living in Pakistan he quietly asked, “What’s the news? Is it good?” I find the Muslims I’ve run into –a lot—to be sad people, though I’m probably projecting. In Calcutta all the booksellers and tape hawkers on Free School Street are Muslims from Howrah. One told me with a bit of over enthusiasm that “Hindus are the best. I have more Hindu friends than Muslims. We have no problems here!”

Another, Salim, is a waiter at the Janpath Hotel in Bhubaneshwar. He was soft spoken and left me with a feeling tender. He claimed to make Rs 200 a month in the hotel of which $150 he remits to his family. He used to work in Calcutta in a factory that makes cooking utensils but for some reason came, as he put it, “into the hotel line.” He doesn’t like the work but is stuck. He saw two postcards I had bought from a sidewalk dealer on Sudder Street. One was of the Kaaba[15] the other was of Imam Hussain on his horse. Salim kissed them and pressed them against his forehead when I offered them to him.

The Muslims seem to be accepted and other than a slight hesitation before telling me their names, they seem content. They confess to cheering for Pakistan’s cricket team but have been quite uninterested in asking me about life in Pakistan. Only one, a cloth merchant in Bhubaneshwar, asked me if I preferred India or Pakistan.

Tomorrow, I take a day trip to Konarak. It’s Republic Day and will be overrun with tourists undoubtedly.

26 January 1990

I was accompanied to Konarak by a Gujarati, Dr. Parwar. A pleasant and gentle man who had pulled himself up to a position of considerable rank and authority in a government hospital. His father was a manual labourer in Pune, “so I have seen life from close up.” Through hard work he got his MBBS and MD from one of the best medical schools in India and has since added a triad of MA’s in subjects like Public Health, Venereal Diseases and Administration. He has been attending a conference in Calcutta on Public Health Administration and has come to Puri to kill some time.

He is deeply committed to serving the people of India as a doctor back in Ahmedabad. He has no desire for an overseas job or money. He proclaims more than once how proud he is of being Indian. This is not something I hear in Pakistan very often.

Konarak is impressive. The stone sculpture is beautiful and majestic. The monument is set out as a sun chariot with 24 giant wheels pulled by 7 rearing horses. Most of the original temple has been destroyed but the remaining bits inspire awe for their size and beauty. The original temple rose more than twice as high at the remaining remnant which rises 80 feet into the air.

Dr. Parwar and I climb to the top of the temple and gaze into a deep opening. A pedestal is at one edge where we overhear a guide explain, “This is the place where the image of the Surya (the Sun God) stood”. Inside his stone head and feet, apparently, was magnet which when a certain interaction of physics and metaphysics transpired “caused the God’s head and feet to move.”

The Indian government is preserving the temple. Dozens of lungi[16] clad workers scratch the eroded stone with water-soaked bamboo brushes. Here and there new plinths and slabs of granite have been fitted into the chariot spokes and walls. Up near the top they have placed two huge Buddha-like images, upon which, during the Eastern Ganga dynasty[17] which built the temple, the sun was said to have shone continuously. One at dawn, one at noon and one at dusk. The third image is yet to be restored.

Dr Parwar and I silently take in this magnificent piece of human-divine cooperation before boarding a bus back to Puri.

[1] Raiwind, a town near Lahore, famous as the headquarters of a major Islamic missionary organisation, Tablighi Jama’at

[2] Hindustan Ambassador. Iconic Indian manufactured sedan which for decades was about the only car available in most parts of India.

[3] Literally, ‘tea water’. Colloquially used to indicate a small gift/bribe.

[4] A Sikh movement for Khalistan as a separate country was raging in the 80s and early 90s. Often trains passing through Punjab were bombed as part of the terroristic tactics of militant Sikh groups. By 1990 things had calmed down quite a bit but my question was not entirely unjustified.

[5] Hindi/Urdu word meaning ‘chaos’; ‘confusion’; ‘disorganisation’. Colloquially, ‘hassle’.

[6] Part of the Salvation Army’s global charity empire. Cheaper rates for Christian missionaries right in the heart of Calcutta!

[7] Hindi word for priest or guide to a temple. Not the Chinese animal.

[8] A prominent political dynasty in the state of Orissa/Odisha.

[9] Traditional Indian cannabis drink.

[10] Hashish

[11] Hindi/Urdu for the numerical value of 10,000,000

[12] The four dham are the major Hindu pilgrimage destinations located at each cardinal point of the compass. Dwaraka (West), Puri (East), Badrinath (North) and Rameshwaram (South)

[13] From which we get the English word, juggernaut.

[14] A native of Orissa/Odisha

[15] The stone building at the center of Islam’s most important mosque and holiest site, the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, Saudi Arabia

[16] sarong

[17] 11-15^th century CE

January 12, 2026

Recalled Conversations: Taxi driver, Delhi.

For the first several minutes he said nothing, just guiding his yellow and black Suzuki taxi through the clamorous traffic of midday Delhi. My daughter wanted me to ask him what his name was. “Jai Bhagwan,” he said. “An old-fashioned name.” His smile is half apologetic.

“You’ll be going to Jaipur? That’s a beautiful city. They call it the Pink City. Its a five hour drive from Delhi and Pushkar is another 2 or 2 and half hours further. You’ll stay in Pushkar for a few days? No? I see, just for a day. Ajmer is just half hour more away. What a place that is. Moinuddin Chisti…the Emperor of India! Will you be taking the train from Ajmer to Varanasi? No, from Agra. Ok. I see, your agent arranged it that way. Watch out for these agents. They’re in it for themselves, a lot of them.

This traffic is like this but not for too long. There’s a fly over up ahead and the road narrows so everything slows down to a crawl. But soon we’ll be moving again. Yes, that metro line was made for the Commonwealth Games in 2010. What a rip off! The organizers stole 80% of the investments. Only 20% was spent on the infrastructure. The main crook, Kapladi is in jail but what does it matter. It won’t change anything. The rich and our netas don’t give a shit. All the rules are for the poor, not one of them is for the rich. It never changes.

My people used to own the land around the airport. A long time ago the government came and forced us off the land and gave us Rs1.40 per square meter! A very low price. But they got what they wanted. You know Gandhi? They say he is the father of the nation. We say he’s the number one Thief. Don’t believe me? What did he ever do for us? Did he do anything to improve our lot? He and Nehru did everything for themselves and to make their own money and name. Gandhi, the old bastard, used to feed his goat grapes while the rest of the country starved.

The real hero of India was Subhas Chandra Bose. What a guy. You know what his slogan was? Give me your blood and I’ll give you freedom! He was a man of action. That’s why they killed him. You know Gandhi could have freed Bhagat Singh but he didn’t. He let him hang. All for his own glory.

Ambedkar? Yeah, he was a good man too. He wrote the Constitution. No one else could have done that. He was a great man actually. I have nothing bad to say about Ambedkar.

Right, we’re almost at your destination. Just 5-10 minutes more.”

July 3, 2025

The Book of Accounts (Instalment #3)

The others were jealous of the little space they shared, and stared at the newcomer with resentment. I want to sleep but my mind won’t be still. Is this Quetta? Am I a criminal to be kept with these rats? Abdul

Rahman surveyed his companions. Two or three were sleeping but the others averted their cold eyes whenever the newcomer looked in their direction. Iranians. But that one over there scratching his balls, he’s no Persian. Too dark and hairy. Pakistani? Afghani probably.

The itchy Afghan seemed separated from the Iranians by an invisible glass wall. No one spoke to him. He ignored everyone. Was he mute? Someone patted Abdul Rahman’s arm and broke his examination of the Afghan. The Arab turned irritably to see a thin boy with oversized round frames on his nose holding up a cigarette as if it were a major discovery. He made it clear he wanted a match. Abdul Rahman stared at the boy for a few seconds with slowly narrowing eyes then turned his attention back to the Afghan, who yawned and scratched his armpit before shifting his shoulders against the wall as if he believed it was made of silk cushions and not hard hot cement.

‘Marhaba. You’re an Arab isn’t it?’ The kid with glasses had put the cigarette behind his ear. ‘I can tell.’

Abdul Rahman muttered, ‘Leave me alone.’

‘A difficult request to fulfil,’ said the kid glancing around the lockup. ‘How is my Arabic?’

Abdul Rahman said nothing. Refused to look at the squirt. He put his head on to his knees and closed his eyes.

‘I lived in Najaf for three years. Studying the traditions. After Imam Khomeini of course, but still, there were many other wise teachers in the madrassa. Are you from Najaf?’

Lifting his head Abdul Rahman planned to tell the boy his conversation was of no interest. Words started to form but just before reaching his tongue they sank deep within him again, like anchors heading for the ocean floor. Each word carried the weight of years. Who had the strength to pull them up? He closed his eyes and placed his head against the concrete wall and muttered, ‘So tired.’

Then he fell asleep.

The light and heat bored into the room like a magnifying glass burning dry leaves.

Though he had been asleep, he thought, for hours, his mind was just as wobbly as before. The sun was a long time away from setting. The green door had been opened slightly to allow some air, but the turbans and carbines were still on the other side. The kid next to him had found a match. He was sharing a smoke with a middle-aged man whose purple shirt was ruined by the dry whitish stains of sweat that hung in rings under each arm. The fag passed languidly from one set of fingers to the other. Wisps of smoke moving like a belly dancer in slow motion twisted towards the door. A game of Three Two Five played by the guards was the only sound. Thup. A card slapped the floor. Thup. Thup. The others threw their cards down like gauntlets. Thup.

Abdul Rahman considered his situation. He wanted to select his next move but until he understood where he was, how could he? Who were these others? Must be like me. Crossing into Pakistan without papers. For what? The idea that others might be in the same boat as he, that these men and boys were also running for their lives, seemed ludicrous. Indeed, he had never considered that he was running from anything. More like towards something. But what he couldn’t say. At least not out loud. Or even to himself. The one thing he sought was an impossibility. Don’t be ridiculous, he scolded the part of him which insisted upon whispering her name. But now that his forward motion had been stopped and he found himself under arrest in an airless desert lockup in the middle of nowhere he admitted that he had been running to save his life. He shivered involuntarily.

The feeling of relief, almost joy, which had washed over him when the fat man’s soldiers had pulled him up the hillock to the lockup had been displaced by a stronger feeling of humiliation. How could I have done a deal with that black bastard? Knew he was a snake. And then he saw Bashir’s gaudy hat and his only money disappearing under it and the shame soaked deeper. Such a ridiculous team. But they took me. He would have laughed but it required too much.

The lethargic strings of cigarette smoke caught his eye again. As he followed the swaying movement Abida came into view. His wife had fallen asleep in front of the television; she still clutched the remote control. Her cheeks were pudgy. Abdul Rahman liked them that way. Healthy and baby-like. Suddenly, the Pakistani doctor was rocking his head back and forth telling him about the saint’s tomb but then mid-sentence he disappeared, making way for Zubeida. She was singing his favourite song. And with his head resting against the concrete wall, Abdul Rahman let the song be his lullaby and he nearly return

to sleep, but the ugly dark face of Fu’ad popped into view. He rubbed his eyes as if they were the dials of a radio and tried to recover his daughter’s voice, but as much as he cursed and threatened his mind its power to grasp any idea for longer than a few seconds was gone. His inability to hold the reins of his ideas worried him. Haven’t been thinking properly for weeks. How else could he explain giving money to that black bastard, Fu’ad? And letting those grease monkeys deprive him of the last of his cash without so much as a bleat?

The sun set, and with it disappeared the warmth. Sleeves were rolled down and collars buttoned. Some men rubbed their arms because they wore only T-shirts. Abdul Rahman zipped up his leather jacket. The cool evening had everyone talking. The Afghan (obviously not a mute) was arguing loudly with the turbans on the other side; Abdul Rahman thought he understood the Persian word for piss. Iranians chatted in groups of twos or threes, their teeth lighting up slightly as the darkness grew. Fag ends glowed and dimmed like June bugs on a summer’s night.

The kid with glasses smiled and remarked that Abdul Rahman seemed to be very tired and did he feel better now. Abdul Rahman grunted an indistinct and uninformative response but the boy didn’t mind. He appeared satisfied that Abdul Rahman had responded at all. He was about to say something more when the green door rattled open and a dim electric light, lonely under the dust and hanging from the middle

of the ceiling, flickered on. The fat man who had arrested Abdul Rahman earlier in the day stood before the men like a Mexican warlord surrounded by granite-faced, turbaned bandeleros. He was still in bedclothes as far as Abdul Rahman could see, but they were pressed stiffer and whiter than paper.

He spoke. Every time he hesitated or took a breath the Iranians bombarded him with questions and shook their fists. A few minutes passed and then the fat man in white pyjamas turned and waddled away like a ghost receding into the night. Abdul Rahman had understood nothing. The boy scooted closer to Abdul Rahman and said, ‘An official from the UN is coming. Here to Nuskhi.’

‘Nushki?’ mumbled Abdul Rahman. ‘This is not Quetta?’

The boy giggled. ‘Oh no! Quetta is a big city with airport and trains and hotels. And a UN office. They are sending an officer to interview us. That is what the fat man says.’

‘Interview? Why interview? Have we committed crimes? I have never broken the law. Who has the right to interview me?’ Fu’ad had failed to mention the UN was interested in asking questions. Abdul Rahman cursed the African another time.

‘Oh, don’t worry, sir. The UN is not police. The questions they ask are for purposes of helping us.’ Abdul Rahman was dubious. ‘Believe me. Truly. Simple questions: your name and why you left your country and your job. On that basis you will receive assistance.’

‘You know quite a bit.’

‘My cousin told me. He came this way two years back. Now he is in Norway!’

‘Norway?’ The concept was laughable. The boy could have said his cousin was on the moon and it would have been more believable.

‘Yes! Sent by the UN!’ The boy beamed in the dim light. ‘I intend to join him there.’

Abdul Rahman asked who the fat man was.

‘The District Commissioner, sir. A big shot in this country. He’s the king of this desert. All the way from the border to Quetta, his word is better than Allah’s.’ The boy lowered his eyes as if he had just blasphemed.

‘I must have him release me. When will he return?’

‘Without an interview, no one is to be released. That is what he said,’ the lad rubbed his feet vigorously against the night that was becoming colder each minute. ‘How is my Arabic, sir? You have not said. I don’t like to keep asking but I believe it isn’t bad, eh?’

The boy’s presumption that he could just keep on addressing Abdul Rahman like he was his uncle rubbed him the wrong way. But he needed the punk’s information. ‘Your plurals need work. What else did the fat Commissioner say?’ Abdul Rahman asked. ‘Must speak with him,’ he added but more to himself than to the boy.

‘No one is to be released until the UN interviews us. Then, he said, the UN will decide everything. If they agree, we will be released and

taken to Quetta and given refugee cards. If they, the UN, do not agree he, the fat one, will send us back to Iran. Pakistan has, he said, plenty of refugees already. More than three million. There is no more room for you fellows. That was his phrase exactly. You fellows.’

‘What will he do with me? I am not from your country.’ Something to be grateful for. Abdul Rahman sensed relief creeping back. The fat man thought he was an Iranian asylum seeker like the rest of these brooms in the closet. What he said was for them, not Abdul Rahman.

‘He will send you to your country.’ The boy’s attitude was matter of fact. He spoke as if he were already in a queue waiting to board a plane for Norway, not shivering on the floor of a Pakistani jail. Abdul Rahman did not share the boy’s exuberant naiveté. Iran was a dangerous place to return to. Iraq, certain death. Must get out of here. Must find that fat man again and tell him I am not like these others.

‘I do not want to go to Norway,’ Abdul Rahman was thinking aloud.

‘Oh, don’t worry, sir. Norway is my destination. You can choose Australia or England or Germany or even America. Everyone is eager to go there. I too, but my cousin, he’s in Norway, and he said he will find me work and I can carry on my studies. After learning Norway language, of course.’

‘No country. I do not want to go to any country. Norway, America, England. Nowhere. I want to speak to the Commissioner. That is what I want.’

Unbelievable! The boy could not trust what he heard coming from the Arab’s mouth. ‘If you do not want to go to any country,’ he stopped and scratched his ear, ‘why then are you here?’

‘They will kill me,’ was all Abdul Rahman said. He turned towards the wall, lost in thought. The boy’s question was reasonable, at least part of it. Why am I here? Until he confessed that he feared for his life he had not thought through his decision to flee Iraq. Certainly the idea of ending up in such a place as Norway had never even suggested itself. I am here because, he started to put the thoughts together, they would have killed me if I had stayed. Where am I headed? He stopped. No answer to that. I had no plan to come even to Pakistan. It was the next place to go and Iran was dangerous. They too, would have killed me. Just for fun. Fu’ad said UN would give me papers and money. But this news about interviews and settling in Europe… I want the papers. Papers are good to have for protection. And I need money. The fat man. He will understand if I tell him I want to stay here. Not here, exactly, in this place. But in Pakistan. I’ll go to Peshawar, that saint’s tomb. Need rest and quiet. I need the fat man. He can save me.

Jumping up as if he had been administered a jolt of electricity Abdul Rahman stumbled over the shoulders of the Iranians and shouted in Arabic, ‘Open the door. I want to see the Commissioner. Open the door!’

The Iranians laughed. The guards on the other side of the door banged loudly and yelled something. From the far wall the young kid called out: ‘They are telling you to keep quiet. Food is coming. Then we will piss!’

‘I am not hungry. Tell them to open. I need to see the fat man.’ Abdul Rahman banged the door again and yelled, ‘Open! Open! Open!’

The Afghan with the itchy balls tugged Abdul Rahman’s jacket and tried to pull him to the floor as he was standing on the Afghan’s foot. Abdul Rahman slapped his hand away and continued to bang on the door.

‘Hey! Saudi donkey,’ the Afghan growled. ‘Get it off or I’ll break it off.’ A second more violent pull of the jacket brought Abdul Rahman to the floor and on to an Iranian who had been watching the show with a grin. Abdul Rahman reached out without thinking to steady himself and pulled the Afghan’s thick black beard. From beneath him the squashed Iranian no longer was grinning; he was struggling into a position from which he could push Abdul Rahman off, which he did. Abdul Rahman sailed into the arms of the Afghan. The bundle which Abdul Rahman had not let go of since his ejection from the lorry fell to the floor. He scrambled and reached for it, but the aggrieved Afghan grabbed him by his neck as if he were a lamb and said, ‘I would give my mother to the communists to fuck before I let you cause any more trouble. Go back to your little boy and let him lick your wound.’ The Iranians let loose a chorus of whoops and laughter at this but the Afghan didn’t release the Arab. He enjoyed humiliating the man and took the smiles and catcalls of the others as if he had masterfully recited one of Hafiz’s more humorous poems. He was thinking of another thing or two to say when Abdul Rahman’s elbow caught his open chuckling mouth and cracked his teeth together. The Afghan’s grip loosened, allowing Abdul Rahman time to twist around and grab the man’s hair in one hand and, with the other hand, press the blade of a red pocket knife, drawn from no one saw where, against a huge throbbing blue jugular.

‘Time for a shave, hairy monster.’ Abdul Rahman breathed heavily, but his fatigue had left him and his grip was like iron. The blade moved up towards the Afghan’s nose and into one nostril. ‘Moustache a bit bushy too.’ As he withdrew the blade the slightest trickle of blood appeared on the Afghan’s nose. ‘Mother’s cunt,’ Abdul Rahman spat. The room was silent. ‘Tell them out there I want to see the Commissioner.’ Abdul Rahman was looking for the young boy who spoke Arabic with bad plurals. ‘Or else this heap of Afghani shit will never live to see his mother buggered by Gorbachev.’

The boy’s voice quivered, but he did what Abdul Rahman said. The guards opened the door and immediately grabbed Abdul Rahman and pulled him off the startled Afghan. On the way out Abdul Rahman scooped his bundle from the floor, and as the doors shut again he smiled. Especially for the Afghan.

Another building and into a room. Abdul Rahman looked at the bed with a sheet and pillow, and at the chair. They beckoned like a naked woman. For an instant he actually thought they were for him. Two candles, one nearly burned completely, and a box of matches. Under the bed a small tin suitcase. Two windows, both without glass, made of warped wood painted green just like the door of the lockup.

One of the guards pushed him with unnecessary roughness to the floor and positioned his rifle near his forehead. The second guard ran into the darkness. The man with the rifle muttered under his breath at Abdul Rahman, who could sense the man’s nervousness and that the rifle was probably empty. But he had no plans to keep up his show. They got the message. The fat man will be here soon. He leaned against the wall and crossed his arms over the bundle in his lap.

The bundle was heavy and covered with a faded blue cloth. It was rectangular and appeared to the nervous guard to be a large book of some sort. Like a really nice Koran, the type you buy for 300 rupees and that has gold flowers printed along the edge of each page. Or like the book in the District Commissioner’s office where all the criminals’ names and particulars are registered. None of the Iranians or this man had been registered. They must be special. This one sure is. The guard poked the rifle at Abdul Rahman as a menace but the Arab didn’t flinch.

‘Arabi?’ the second guard had returned with the fat man who wasn’t speaking. He had the expression of someone whose amorous intentions had been thwarted with a slap. The guard asked Abdul Rahman the question again. ‘Arabi?’

Abdul Rahman nodded.

‘Mujrim!’ This was the fat man. Spitting the Arabic word for criminal.

‘La. Ana mohajir.’ Abdul Rahman answered in Arabic, pleased to discover the fat man understood his language.

‘A refugee, huh? That’s what you told me this morning.’ The fat man pulled his white pyjamas up and sat on the string bed. The guard with the rifle jumped away as if he had been singed by the shadow of the Almighty.

‘Exactly,’ said Abdul Rahman. ‘I am a refugee. You must help me. I do not…’

‘You have no manners. Fucking Arabs. Don’t know how to address your betters, huh? The same as this morning. Very rude you were. Where are you from? Saudi? Don’t think so. Too much money in Saudi for anyone to want to escape. Syria?’

‘Iraq.’ Abdul Rahman snapped.

‘Ah! Of course. That explains your poor behaviour. How civilisation began in such a place is a deep mystery. Look at you. Without the faintest notion of civilisation.’ For a few seconds he watched Abdul Rahman as a falcon would a small sand mouse. ‘They tell me you are a troublemaker. A real Iraqi rabbler, huh? Did you hope to kill that Afghan? Huh? Killings can be arranged.’ The fat man had eyes like dull black buttons.

Abdul Rahman said nothing. His hopes of persuading the Commissioner to sympathy were nearly crushed. But the sand mouse feared nothing and returned the falcon’s stare.

‘What do you want me for? I am just about to make my evening prayers. It will not be good for you if you irritate the Creator as well as me.’

‘I am a refugee. I apologise for my behaviour but I am not in the same class as those boys and…animal, I may say in one case. They are seeking flights to Europe. To join their brothers and cousins in Sweden and such places.’

‘They are also refugees,’ the fat man growled. ‘Or asylum seekers hoping to become refugees. Chrysalises bursting to be butterflies.’ His laugh was dry like the air.

‘They are tourists. I am a refugee. I will be killed if you return me.’

‘That is not for me to judge. Perhaps you will be killed. Perhaps you deserve to be killed. I do not know. These are matters for the UN to decide. They are expert. I am not. In such matters at least.’

‘I do not need the UN. If an interview is essential I will tell you. You can ask me what you will.’

‘No interest. None at all.’ The fat man flicked a tiny fleck of snot from his fingers. ‘Your life bores me. UN in Quetta has agreed to send an officer to interview all of you as soon as possible. They will decide who is on holiday and who is a refugee. For your sake I hope they find you not to be a tourist as you so confidently accuse others.’

The fat man stood up. His belly was huge but didn’t quiver as Abdul Rahman expected. How he was able to touch his forehead to the mat during prayers was hard to imagine. ‘Tomorrow we will find a more suitable location for an anti-social Arab. One more thing. The UN will not be here for a few days. Should I even hear your name mentioned…what is it by the way?’

‘Abdul Rahman.’

‘Mr Abdul Rahman. If I even hear that name between now and the time the UN makes its esteemed decision on your fate, I will personally drive you to Karachi and hand you to the Iraqi chargé d’affaires. Do not doubt me. God bless you, huh. Mr Iraqi refugee.’ The fat man left to pray.

The second guard went out and when he came back he carried a leg iron which he fastened to Abdul Rahman’s left ankle. A steel bar connected the iron ankle ring to a heavy set of chain handcuffs. Then he clanked like a mechanical man and was marched across the sand, back to the lockup. All night he sat on the floor with his leg extended in front of him and his hands chained together. His bundle was kept on the desk where the guards sat. Around ten o’clock he was given a dry chapati, half an onion and a cup of sweet milk tea.

In the morning with the iron still wrapped around like ceremonial garments, he was led down the main road he had walked up the previous morning. Except in the other direction. Camels opened their eyes but didn’t stop chewing their cud as he clanked clumsily along. Buses slowed to let passengers stick their heads out the window to gawk and two boys pushing home-made cars made out of bent wire and beaten tin giggled just behind his heels until the guards stopped behind a petrol pump. A door to a dark storeroom stacked almost to the ceiling with leaking drums of oil and wet rags and reeking with the fumes of benzene and rubber was kicked open and he was pushed inside. A small space had been cleared and a grass mat placed on the dirt floor, which glinted a silvery grey from years of sucking in oil. Thank God, there’s a window. And so there was. It was barred, and towers of oil filters and other auto parts in cardboard boxes blocked

out most of the light. But air would circulate if a breeze bothered to blow. The temperature in the hole was higher than outside, but next to the grass mat, like valets awaiting their master’s orders, stood a plastic five litre jerry can and an enamel mug with an orange rose-like flower painted on one side. The water was lukewarm and the mug was grimy. There was no light and no candle. No matches. Too much oil to risk that.

The guards removed the leg iron and locked the door behind them.

All the comforts of Baghdad. Abdul Rahman forced an ironic smile, but then panicked. His bundle. It was still with the guards. Immediately, he kicked the door and shouted. Nothing in particular just lots of noise and loud.

‘Sisterfucker!’ The door flung open and the turbans stepped in. One grabbed Abdul Rahman’s arms and the other slapped him, first once and then twice more in quick succession. Then again and again. Each time saying, ‘Sisterfucker.’ Slap. ‘Sis’ slap ‘ter’ slap ‘fuck’ slap ‘er’ slap. Abdul Rahman waited until it was over then said hoping they would understand, ‘Kitab. Kitab. Book. My book.’ He carved a squarish shape about the size of his bundle in the air and repeated the word again. ‘Kitab.’

Some more slaps. ‘Low dog.’ Slap. ‘Motherfucker.’ Slap slap. ‘No. No. No. No book!’ Another tight one for good measure. The man holding Abdul Rahman grew tired and asked his friend to stop. They pushed Abdul Rahman to the ground and locked up again. This time they refused to open the door no matter how loud he shouted, and after more than ten minutes Abdul Rahman fell to the ground, more alone and frightened than he had felt since the day he’d left Baghdad. All

day he paced the small space of the oily shed. The heat had no effect and the darkness and lack of wind he hardly noticed. The book. This is hell. What are you doing, you fool? Have you lost your mind to leave it? They will burn it or shred it and laugh. Animals have no way to value such things. He strained to see if he could find a way out of the hole. The window was impossible: three armed turbans sat slurping tea just waiting to greet him if he should try something stupid. The door was weak. Pop that thing open in a blink, but they’ll shoot me this time. Let them shoot me. I must have it. Never has it been without me. Ever. Not until now. Oh God. What hell have you dropped me in? My mind is going. Unable to keep the simplest things in line.

The day crept by like a snake shedding its skin. Abdul Rahman was in torment. He returned to the window every few minutes, hoping that not only the guards but the bars too would have disappeared. He paced the less than two-metre space, cursing himself and the fat man and the Afghan and that Sudani bandit and the day Zubeida had disappeared. It was from that day, years ago now, that fate seemed to have washed her hands of Abdul Rahman and left him to dangle. Several times he smashed his fist into the brick wall and when he closed his eyes he could see the bundle where he had left it the night before, on the desk in the lockup.

In the evening a guard handed him his chapati and tea. No onion this time. Just a wilted piece of radish lying shamelessly exposed in the bread’s lap. He swallowed the radish and gulped the tea after he had soaked the bread. The jerrycan was nearly out of water. His feet and hands were black from the grease that covered everything in the shed. Inside, he raged at himself. Cursed his name. Spat on his existence and stomped his thoughts into the black dirt below him. At last, a few hours after nightfall, the sound of rattling outside the door

had Abdul Rahman up on his feet again. He knew they were back with the leg iron but he didn’t care. They’re taking me back to the lockup. I’ll recover it now! He was like a child waiting on the night before his birthday party. He nearly jumped with excitement.

Three men with guns greeted him. The slapping-addict stepped forward with a threatening grunt and got to work putting the leg iron and chains on Abdul Rahman’s ankle and wrists. Time for a piss. He was led slightly away from the door then made to stop. He pissed on to the sand next to some old tires. Before he had shaken himself dry, the guards were pulling him back towards the lockup. The fat man was already speaking to the other prisoners, who smiled grimly when they saw Abdul Rahman in his shackles. The Afghan glared like a wolf.

The fat man turned to Abdul Rahman and said, ‘The UN is very busy. No one will be able to come here for at least a week. If there is no remedy within that time, I will take my own action. How long will I be expected to feed you and water you? Costs money these things, huh. This is Pakistan. Not UN-istan. Huh!’ As he retreated he squeezed Abdul Rahman’s cheeks as if he were a newly arrived baby. ‘Don’t forget, huh! I hear your name and…’

Abdul Rahman was not listening. I’ll piss on your grave. His panicked eyes were focused on the desk where his bundle had lain the night before. It was gone. His eyes tore the room apart but could find it nowhere. The turbans closed the green door again. Was it inside? Does that Afghan have it? I’ll rip his tongue out. He stumbled as the guards pulled and twisted him around. The iron rod poked into his stomach as if it had its own point to make, and for a second he couldn’t breathe. Across the sand to the road and back to the shed.

Off with the iron and chains. No slap for good night. Just a shove this time. The door slammed behind him and that was the end of the day.

May 24, 2025

Almost There

“You’ll be going to Jaipur? That’s a beautiful city. They call it the Pink City. Its a five hour drive from Delhi and Pushkar is another 2 or 2 and half hours further. You’ll stay in Pushkar for a few days? No? I see, just for a day. Ajmer is just a half hour more away. What a place that is. Moinuddin Chisti…the Emperor of India! Will you be taking the train from Ajmer to Varanasi? No, from Agra. Ok. I see, your agent arranged it that way. Watch out for these agents. They’re in it for themselves, a lot of them.

“This traffic is like this but not for too long. There’s a fly over up ahead and the road narrows so everything slows down to a crawl. But soon we’ll be moving again. Yes, that metro line was made for the Commonwealth Games in 2010. What a rip off! The organizers stole 80% of the investments. Only 20% was spent on the infrastructure. The main crook, Kapladi is in jail but what does it matter. It won’t change anything. The rich and our netas (leaders) don’t give a shit. All the rules are for the poor, not one of them is for the rich. It never changes.

“My people used to own the land around the airport. A long time ago the government came and forced us off the land and gave us Rs. 1.40 per square meter! A very low price. But they got what they wanted. You know Gandhi? They say he is the father of the nation. We say he’s the number one Thief. Don’t believe me? What did he ever do for us? Did he do anything to improve our lot? He and Nehru did everything for themselves and to make their own money and name. Gandhi, the old bastard, used to feed his goat grapes while the rest of the country starved.

“The real hero of India was Subhas Chandra Bose. What a guy. You know what his slogan was? Give me your blood and I’ll give you freedom! He was a man of action. That’s why they killed him. You know Gandhi could have freed Bhagat Singh but he didn’t. He let him hang. All for his own glory.

“Ambedkar? Yeah, he was a good man too. He wrote the Constitution. No one else could have done that. He was a great man actually. I have nothing bad to say about Ambedkar.

“Right, we’re almost at your destination. Just 5-10 minutes more.”

May 6, 2025

Sydney Road and Coburg: my new neighborhood

I recently moved from Melbourne’s ‘leafy’, wealthy suburbs of Armadale/Toorak to the well-settled northern suburb of Coburg. It’s been like moving to a different country. In a good way.

Coburg, originally named Pentridge, was carved out of the traditional lands of the Woi Wurrung Aboriginal people, in the 1830s. The site of one of Australia’s most notorious prisons, Pentridge, residents changed the name to honour Queen Victoria’s deceased consort, Prince Albert’s, German family, Coburg, in 1870. Throughout the 19th century Coburg and surrounds provided its famous heavy bluestone to other parts of Melbourne as well as hay, some fruit and grapes.

The town was incorporated in the 1920s and has a long history of progressive social and political causes. A stronghold of the then new Australian Labor Party (which just kicked the Conservatives out of existence last weekend) the community pioneered child health facilities that were among the first in the State.

Sydney Road runs through the heart of the area and is one of Melbourne’s many local communities. Today its home to recent immigrants (Afghan, Iraqi, Syrian, Somali, Ethiopian, South Asia) as well as small group of older Italians and Greeks. Young people like the endless number of farmers’ markets, cafes and used bookstores. They wear black, dye their hair bright blue and bling themselves up with tattoos and all sorts of silverware.

I took a stroll down Sydney Rd on Saturday, after voting.

A quiet drink in the Edinburgh Castle Hotel.

What the hell has happened to the price of beer?

May 2, 2025May 6, 2025

Rivers, Spies and a Treasure Trove of Stories (Pt.2)

Lollywood: stories of Pakistan’s unlikely film industry

Mughal Stories

From day to day, experts present books to the emperor who hears every book from beginning to end. Every day he marks the spot where they have reached with his pearl-strewing pen. He does not tire of hearing a book again and again, but listens with great interest. The Akhlaq-i-Nasiri by Tusi, the Kimiya-yi-sa’adat by Ghazzali, the Gulistan by Sa’di, the Masnavi-i-ma’navi by Rumi, the Shahnama by Firdausi, the khamsa of Shaikh Nizami, the kulliyats of Amir Khusrau and Maula Jami, the divans of Khaqani, Anvari and other history books are read out to him. He rewards the readers with gold and silver according to the number of pages read.

Jalal-ud-din Muhammad Akbar. Grandson of Babur, (founder of Mughal Empire), and ‘greatest’ Emperor of Mughal India. (1542-1605)

It was between the 9^th and 19^th centuries when north India was ruled by a series of Muslim sultans that Lahore reached its cultural apogee. And especially under the Mughals who built India into the medieval world’s grandest empire. Akbar, the greatest of all the Mughal emperors of India loved books and stories. The snippet above, from his biographer Abul Fazl, is a fascinating glimpse into the cultured atmosphere that permeated the courts of the ruling elite of northern India. The royal library, Abul Fazl proudly noted, included books written in Hindavi (early Hindustani), Greek, Persian, Arabic and Kashmiri. Akbar’s sons and grandsons and many of his senior nobles continued to add to the library, composing their own works but also drawing to the great darbar (court) of Lahore the greatest talents from all across India, Afghanistan, Central Asia, and even as far away as Iraq.

The Mughals looked to Persia for their notions of culture and gave pride of place not just to the Persian language but to the great poets and thinkers of Iran. And it was from Persia that many of the grand stories they loved so much and which they adopted and were absorbed into Indian culture first came. The elites of northern Indian during this period adopted a number of Persian poetic and literary forms in which they preserved their histories, but also stories, poems and philosophies.

Several of these forms, especially the qasida, which was a poem in praise of the monarch, remained a novelty of the darbar and did not influence broader society, but several others did. Chief among these was the qissa, an extended poem that combined elements of moral and linguistic instruction as well as entertainment. The subject matter were stories of military valour, spiritual attainment, love and romance. The Mughals, especially Akbar and his son Jahangir enjoyed the qissa Dastan-i-Amir Hamza which relates at great length and with vivid imagination the fantastic adventures of the Prophet Mohammad’s uncle Hamza. So much did Akbar appreciate this work that he commissioned a massive project to illustrate the entire epic. Completed over a period of 14 years (1562-77) the final product included 1400 full page miniature paintings and was housed in 14 volumes.

Qissas were not just stories but in the control of a good narrator, complete one-man performances/ shows. Some of the royal qissa-khawans (story tellers) are recorded as demonstrating all manner of expressions, body movements and vocal tones in their telling, sometimes even transforming themselves, in the words of one critic of Lucknow, into tasvirs (pictures). Thus, introducing for the first time into Lahore the concept of moving pictures! Akbar so loved the story that several times he is described as telling and acting out the qissa himself in front of courtiers and guests. When Delhi was sacked by the Afghan Nadir Shah in 1739 the reigning emperor Muhammad Shah pleaded that after the peacock throne what he most desired to be returned to him was Akbar’s Hamzanama which had illustrations ‘beyond imagination’.

Folio from a Hamzanama ca. 1570 depicting the story of the spy Zanbur bringing Mahiyya to the city of Tawariq,

The critics of the day stressed both telling and listening to stories were beneficial to the soul with some claiming that in the cosmic order of beings, poets and storytellers were ranked second, right behind Prophets and before Emperors! Though this is undoubtedly a minority view, the best qissa-khawans were indeed highly esteemed.

In 1617, Emperor Jahangir, son of Akbar the Great, recorded the following event:

Mulla Asad the storyteller, one of the servants of Mirza Ghazi, came in those same days from Thatta and waited on me. Since he was skilled in transmitted accounts and sweet tales, and was good in his expression, I was struck with his company, and made him happy with the title of Mahzuz Khan. I gave him 1000 rupees, a robe of honor, a horse, an elephant in chains, and a palanquin. After a few days I gave the order for him to be weighed against rupees, and his weight came up to 4,400 rupees. He was honored with a mansab of 200 persons, and 20 horse. I ordered that he should always be present at the gatherings for a chat [gap].

It was under the reign, and patronage of Jahangir that Lahore became the favoured city of the Mughals. The emperor is remembered for ruling over a stable and prosperous Empire and for patronizing painting, poetry and architecture. A man of artistic inclinations it was during this time that story forms like masnavi which told of current events and wonderful victories and ghazal a short romantic-mystical form of poetry superseded other forms of literature. The ghazal in particular was championed by Jahangir and his son and successor, Shahjahan.

The ghazal both facilitated a large appreciation of poetry outside the circles of the aristocracy, among people of all walks of life, and began to be composed and recited in all sorts of settings including by women, in private homes, in public houses and in competitions. The masnavi quickly declined because compared to the ghazal it was a bit lengthy and rather tedious. The ghazal on the other hand, was snappy, called for clever word play and rarely ran more than a few verses. Mushaira, poetry recitations that centred around the ghazal, became one of the most popular forms of entertainment in Lahore during this period.

Many tales are told of courtly mushaira presided over by the Emperor who believed that when expertly delivered, a ghazal was full of magical power.

One night a singer by the name of Sayyid Shah was performing for the Emperor and impersonated an ecstatic state (sama). Jahangir questioned the meaning of one line from the ghazal

Every community has its right way, creed and prayer

I turn to pray towards him with his cap awry

From the audience the royal seal engraver, one Mulla Ali gave an explanation of the line which was written by Amir Khusrau and which his father had taught him. As soon as he finished telling the story, Mulla Ali collapsed and despite the best efforts of the royal physicians to revive him, passed away.

Of course, this literary world of elaborate illustrated tomes, royal qisse and the like was not uniquely Punjabi. Rather it was the literary province of the elite and as such, familiar to most urban literate North Indians. But the mass of people was not literate and had no access to the libraries, the texts, treatises and poets of the nobility. And yet beyond the forts and palaces and even beyond the urban areas of Mughal India there pulsated a great tradition of storytelling that influenced the emergence of films in the early 20^th century.

To name all of the genres of Punjabi storytelling would be nearly impossible. In addition to qissa and ghazal there were afsane (stories), dastan (heroic tales), latifa (jokes), katha (Puranic stories), naat (poetry in praise of the Prophet), kafi (sufi poems), boliyan (musical couplets sung by women), dhadhi, kirtan, bhajan, swang, sangit, nautanki , marsiya, mo’jizat kahanis (miracle stories of Shi’a Muslims), mahavara (proverbs) and so on.

These forms of storytelling were a part of everyday life for the people of Lahore and the Punjab. Though they may never have seen the beautiful courtly books produced by the Emperors, the characters, plotlines and themes were deeply embedded in the consciousness and culture of common folk.

One story in particular, Heer Ranjha, based on the Arabic classic Laila Majnun, was especially beloved by Punjabis. Compiled originally in the time of Akbar by a storyteller named Damodar Gulati, Heer Ranjha tells the story of a beautiful girl, Heer, who is wooed by a flute-playing handsome young man Ranjha. Rejected by Heer’s family because he belongs to a rival Punjabi clan, Ranjha turns toward a spiritual path. He spends time in Tilla Jogian, the premier centre of Hindu ascetism in the medieval period, and becomes a powerful kanpatha (pierced ear) jogi. His identity is uncovered by Heer’s friends who convince her to run away with him which ends badly with the death of both lovers.

The tale is the greatest of the many similar legends known as tragic love stories, the speciality of Punjab. Sohni Mahiwal, Sassi Pannu and Dhola Bhatti are taken from the same tradition and have been told, acted and sung to rapt audiences for centuries. Stories such as these and others, like Anarkali, whether recorded in royal tomes or told under a tree by a wondering minstrel formed the foundational inspiration for Lahore’s movie makers. By 1932, just four years after the Lahore produced its first film, Heer Ranjha had already been made into a movie four times!

Performing Arts

Though the earliest Punjabi stories were written down during the Indus Valley civilization, once Harappa and the other cities were abandoned, India would not use writing again until the rule of the emperor Asoka, more than 1500 years later.

The Vedas were memorised and passed on word for word from generation to generation through a caste of priests, the Brahmins. And though many of the later Buddhist tales and eventually, even the Mahabharata and Ramayana were put into written form, writing, reading and access to these skills were confined to the very thinnest layer of elite society. The stories of Punjab survived because they were remembered, retold, performed on stages, recited in poems, acted out in the streets and reimagined with each generation. This oral and physical transmission, this retelling and telling again, kept the stories fresh and alive, changing, not only depending on who was doing the dancing or singing but whether the context was spiritual, secular, public or private.

Mirasi hereditary musicians ca. 19th century.

As with its oral and written literature, Punjab is likewise blessed with a huge variety of musical styles and musician groups. Broadly referred to by the public as mirasi, the society of hereditary Punjabi musicians is complex, and highly differentiated. Though musicians, singers and dancers were uniformly relegated to the outer limits of the caste and class system they played an important, even essential role in Punjabi society. They were the repositories of significant parts of family, folk, clan culture and history. When the movies arrived, the mirasi provided many of the musicians, dancers, singers and composers of what more than any other single trait exemplifies Pakistani/Indian popular movies, the song.

Certain groups of singers have had a direct and enduring connection with the film industry. The dhadhis, wandering minstrels and balladeers who trace their lineage back to the times of Akbar the Great, were particularly active in Punjab. Accompanying themselves on an hourglass-shaped hand drum (dhadh) and a variety of bowed instruments, dhadis specialised in singing heroic tales (var) of local chieftains, especially Sikh rajas ,as well as the tragic love tales such as Heer Ranjha and Sohni Mahiwal. Qawwals, who are sometimes considered part of the dhadhi tradition, were associated with the Sufi shrines and sing an intense trance (sama) inducing music that is so identified with South Asian Islamic practice. Qawwali was a form that was quickly picked up by film makers who inserted it into scenes as light relief or as a sonic representation of an Islamic character or theme.

Also associated with spiritual singing were a class of Muslim singers known as rubabis (after the Afghan stringed lute, rubab). The Sikh gurus employed rubabis to sing kirtans and shabad, essentially the sayings of the various Sikh gurus sung in their temples (gurdwara) as part of Sikh worship. These musicians had respected musical pedigrees and were expert on the rubab, harmonium, drums and other instruments. Being largely a Muslim group, most moved to Pakistan after 1947 and several played critical, pioneering roles as musical directors in the film world that grew up in Lahore.

The brass wedding bands that became an urban phenomenon in north India in the 19^th century drew their members from yet another group of hereditary musicians known variously as Mazhabi (if they were Sikh), Musalli (if they were Muslim) and Valmiki (if they were Hindu). These musicians provided services including acting as town criers and news readers. They would make community announcements while beating their drums and playing their horns and clarinets. During festivals and celebrations they entertained people from their vast repertoire of religious and secular songs. As the forms of entertainment changed in the 20^th century and especially when sound and music were incorporated into movies in the 1930s, these skilled players formed the backbone of the studio orchestras that produced the amazing soundtracks of the films.

In addition to singers and musicians a universe of street performers, actors and magicians made up part of the Punjabi landscape as well. There were bazigaars (acrobats and contortionists who also sang and acted), bhands (comics) who interrupted weddings and other events to make fun of prominent members of the family and their guests with quick jokes and bawdy repartee for small sums, madaars (jugglers and magicians) who with their magical powders and wands would make birds, eggs and even people disappear and reappear at will.

These groups performed publicly on the streets, in city squares or open fields and bazaars. At any fair (mela) or ‘urs’ (sufi celebration at a shrine) all of these and more would be part of the entertainment. Indian diplomat, Pran Neville, writes in his memoir of Lahore, “we had but to walk into the streets to be entertained by one or the other professional jugglers, madaris (magicians), baazigars (acrobats), bhands (jesters), animal and bird tamers, snake charmers, singers, not to mention the Chinese performers of gymnastic feats who would be out on their daily rounds.”[1] Like the mirasi, many of these castes of public entertainers found that the new film studios popping up in Lahore could be an unexpected source of livelihood.

An acrobat (baazigar) climbing a pole held by another man while a musician drums out a beat. Gouache painting by an Indian painter. 19th century.

If Parsi Theatre inspired the early film makers of Bombay, in Punjab other forms of theatre were just as important: swang, naqqali and nautanki. Each of these theatrical codes were common across the Punjabi countryside where performing troupes travelled and performed a rich variety of dramas.

The most important of the traditional theatres in Punjab was a form of nautanki known locally as swang. In essence swang which takes its name from the Sanskrit word for music (sangit) is informal folk opera. The production incorporates liberal portions of singing and dance and often all the parts are sung rather than spoken.

A performance would generally take place in an open part of a village where a local dignitary had invited the troupe to play. After a day of preparation during which the excitement built as stages were erected and children ran amok amidst the activity. The performers prepared by singing for hours with the heads facing downwards into the village’s wells, a practice that allowed them to improve their range and enhance their projection. The actual performance would finally begin late in the evening and continue till the early hours of the morning. If the plot was a long one this would continue over a number of evenings.

Audience participation–hissing, shouting, calling out requests for songs or jokes to be repeated–was expected and happily accommodated. The performers were masterful singers who had to project their voices over the audience noise and often compete against a rival troupe performing in another part of the village. It was said that some of the best singers could be heard more than a mile away. One only needs to listen to the resounding voice of Noor Jehan, Pakistan’s Queen of Melody, and one of the greatest film singers of the subcontinent, to get a sense of the amazing power of these traditional singers.

Long before Nargis played Radha in Mother India (1957) or Prithviraj Kapoor played Akbar in Mughal-e-Azam (1960) these open-air travelling opera companies were laying the essential template of and sketching out the iconic roles for South Asian popular cinema.

The City as a Story

Lahore, the cultural capital of the greater Punjab region was itself was a city of a million tales. In many ways Lahore, a city so fabled for so long, was the most famous of Punjab’s myriad stories.

Sita in the forest with her two sons. Lav is credited with founding the city of Lahore.

The origins of Lahore stretch back to one of the two foundational epics of Hinduism, the Ramayana. In a storyline familiar to all movie lovers in South Asia, we are told that Sita, Rama’s wife and a goddess in her own right, becomes pregnant making her jealous husband, Rama, question her fidelity. Falsely accusing her of adultery, Rama turns Sita out of the house. Deep in a forest Sita gives birth to twin boys, Lav and Kush, whom she raises with great love and devotion. In a dramatic twist of Fate, years later, the boys are reunited with their father whom they have never met. They take him into the forest to meet their mother. Ram is stunned and realises his mistake but despite Rama’s protestations and desperate apologies, Sita is swallowed up by the earth and returned to the Heavens. Rama goes on to rule his kingdom with his two sons by his side in a Golden Era of peace and stability. When the time comes, he sets Lav and Kush up in the far West of his country where they establish themselves in two cities. Kush in Kasur, 52 km southeast of Lahore on the Indian border, and Lav in Lavapuri, modern Lahore, where even today, inside the fort of Lahore, there is still a small temple dedicated to this son of Lord Rama.

Despite its hoary Hindu roots, and being described as early as 300 BCE by the Greek historian Megasthenes as a place ‘of great culture and charm’, Lahore’s greatest glory was experienced when it was the capital of various Muslim sultanates and states. Throughout the medieval period when northern India was ruled by a succession of ethnic Turkish rulers who promoted a heavily Persianised culture, Lahore was a city of prime strategic, commercial and cultural significance. And despite its oppressive summer heat a reputation of luxury, elegance and sophistication attached to the city. Its guilds and craftsmen were heralded throughout the region and beyond; its poets, some of the most beloved, even in Persia. Like a handful of other cities around the world—modern Paris and New York for example—Lahore has developed a special atmosphere which has caused both natives and visitors to fall in love with it. Way back in the 12^th century, Masud ibn Said al Salman one of the city’s most popular poets found himself imprisoned far from his home city for pissing off one of the city’s rulers. Pining away in his cell he wrote a lamentation.

Lahore my love… How are you?

Without your radiant sun, oh How are you?

Your darling child was torn away from you

With sighs, laments and cries, woe! How are you?

Each of the four great Mughals (Akbar, Jahangir, Shahjahan and Aurangzeb) did their bit to build, extend and refurbish the city. Along with Agra and Delhi and for a while Fatehpur Sikri, Lahore served for years at a time as the Imperial capital and was heavily fortified as a military hub. As it enjoyed the presence of the Emperor himself, artists, administrators, philosophers and emissaries hailing from all across the world came to Lahore to live, seek patronage and practice their speciality.

Poets such as ‘Urfi’ of Iran made Lahore their home finding the relatively tolerant and inclusive atmosphere a delicious change from the claustrophobic Shi’a Islam of his home country. He and other poets employed by the durbar [court] produced sublime poems which were sometimes reproduced on paper reputed to be as delicate and as thin as butterfly wings. Artisans brought their skills and looms to the royal city which by the 16^th century had an international reputation for producing exquisite silken carpets which, in the words of one historian, made “the carpets made at Kirman in the manufactory of the kings of Iran, look like coarse” rugs.

The painters who made Lahore their home—both immigrants from Iran and the hills of Punjab and Kashmir, as well as natives—brought glory and awe to the city and its rulers. Ibrahim Lahori and Kalu Lahori, two painters in the court of Akbar illustrated a book called Darabnama (The Story of Darab) which set out the exploits of the young Akbar, sometimes in fantastic detail, just after he had decided to leave his new purpose-built capital, Fatehpur Sikri, to take up residence in Lahore. Their miniatures brought to life the Persian text which told wild tales of dragons swallowing both horses and their riders in one awesome gulp, as well as radical illustrations of naked humans which according to art historians were never before so accurately depicted by Indian artists. The Darabnama which is recorded as being one of the emperor’s favourite story books also depicts scenes from courtly life such as Akbar being praised and honoured by rulers from other parts of the world and India. Ibrahim Lahori along with miniaturists like Madhu Khurd are credited with bringing a fresh and naturalistic realism to portraiture. It was in Lahore-produced books like the Darabnama that for the first time individuals with all their physical quirks—bulging pot bellies, monobrows, turban styles—could be identified as real historical individuals.

The city’s countless mosques and Sufi dargah (tombs) honouring Lahore’s many saints and pirs are not just revered places of devotion but subjects of and characters in stories filled with miracles and magic that are still told today. The city’s storied inner walled city dominated by the domes of the Jam’a masjid but filled with hundreds of other havelis (mansions), shrines, tombs, pleasure palaces and gardens are themselves characters in the various storylines. How many poems, songs, operas and movies, including made in Hollywood, include the name Shalimar—those famous Mughal-era gardens of Lahore?

Poster for 1958 Pakistani film, Anarkali, which is only one of many South Asian films to picturise the famous Lahore-based story of Prince Salim and the beautiful Anarkali.

Probably the most famous of Lahore’s many stories and one that has been retold in film in both Pakistan and India many times, is that of Anarkali. Like all tales that have been passed down through generations this one has several different tellings but the most famous and popular one is the tragic one.

One day a Persian trader came to Lahore for business and brought with him members of his family. In his caravan was his beautiful pink complexioned daughter Nadira also known as Sharf un-Nissa. Her beauty stunned the bazaars of Lahore and word quickly reached the Emperor himself that there was a woman as splendidly gorgeous as a pomegranate seed in his city. He summoned the merchant to his court and upon seeing the young woman fell immediately in love with her graceful charm. The young woman’s father was only too pleased to accede to the great Mughal’s request for Nadira to be allowed to join the royal harem.

Much to the chagrin of his wives and other concubines Akbar seemed completely fixated upon the beautiful Iranian girl who was rechristened Anarkali (pomegranate seed) by the King himself. The only time she was not by his side was when he was away from Lahore, conquering yet more lands and expanding the glory of his family and empire. And so it happened when Akbar was leading his armies in a campaign in central India, Anarkali and the crown prince, Salim, later to rule as Jahangir, developed an intimate relationship. The gossip hit the bazaars and everyone spoke of how much the two loved each other. Salim it was said was ready even to renounce his right to the throne of India for a life with Anarkali.

When Akbar returned to Lahore he called for Anarkali but immediately sensed something different in the way she approached him. ‘What is the matter,’ he cooed but she resisted his embrace and made an excuse to retire to her chambers as swiftly as possible. Akbar was upset and soon livid when his spies and courtiers informed him of the fool Anarkali had made of him during his absence. ‘The bazaar is echoing with jokes that say Your Highness is too old to water such a lovely tree as Anakali’.

The next day Anarkali was summoned to the Emperor’s chambers. ‘Is what I am told true? That you love Salim more than me?’

Anarkali tried to demur but the wizened old ruler knew a lie when it was uttered no matter how lovely the lips that spoke it.

He sent his favourite concubine back to the harem and then called his chief wazir and instructed him to arrest Anarkali before the night was through. ‘You should bury the witch alive and leave no marking of her cursed tomb’.

In the years that followed Lahore was abuzz with rumours and theories of what happened to Anarkali. Salim was depressed as she was nowhere to be seen. Had she been banished back to Iran?

Eventually the old Mughal died and Salim ascended the jewel encrusted throne of Lahore. One of his first acts was to build a simple tomb on the spot where Anarkali had been so heartlessly murdered. Inscribed upon the tomb is a couplet from the love-lorn Jahangir himself, If I could behold my beloved only once, I would remain thankful to Allah till doomsday

[1] Pran Neville. Lahore: A Sentimental Journey. (New Delhi: HarperCollins, 1997), 60.

April 30, 2025May 6, 2025

Rivers, Spies and a Treasure Trove of Stories (Pt. 1)

Lollywood: stories of Pakistan’s unlikely film industry

Rivers and Stories

His eyes might there command whatever stood
City of old or modern fame, the seat
Of mightiest empire, from the destined walls
Of Cambalu, seat of Cathian Can,
And Samarcand by Oxus, Temir’s throne,
To Paquin of Sinaen Kings, and thence
To Agra and Lahore of Great Mogul….

(Paradise Lost XI 385-91. John Milton)

Fourteen hundred kilometres due north of Bombay and seventeen hundred kilometres to the northwest of Calcutta, sprawled across the flat northwest plains, lay the fabled city of Lahore. The city, erstwhile capital of not just the Mughals but numerous Afghan, Arab, Turk and Hindu kingdoms, had a reputation that extended across oceans, continents and time itself. Lahore was mentioned in Egyptian texts and visited by travellers and adventurers from China and Arabia in the early centuries of the current era, all of whom valorised the river city as a place of incredible wealth, luxury and refined taste. Elizabethan poets and dramatists including Milton and Dryden, fascinated by the contemporary accounts of adventurers from France and Italy imagined Lahore to be one of the grandest cities ever constructed by humans. Even in the late 19^th century, the Orientalist opera Le Roi de Lahore (The King of Lahore) by French composer Jules Massanet, ran to full houses and ecstatic reviews all across Europe and North America. It’s bungled-up quasi-historical plot, set in the 11^th century, had Lahore ruled by a ‘Hindoo’ raja named Alim (a Muslim name!) who tries to rally his people to stop the Muslim invaders. Almost forgotten today, Le Roi de Lahore was able to succeed simply by playing on the city’s name, which more than any other conjured up the mysterious exotic Orient in the minds of 19th century Europeans.

Compared to Bombay or Calcutta, Lahore was a seeming backwater. It possessed none of the attributes of the sparkling imperial cities. Where Bombay was new and young, Lahore was ancient. Where Calcutta was the modern power centre of India, Lahore was the sometime capital of the recently vanquished House of Babur. The new colonial metropolises looked outward, beyond India, to the future. Lahore and its walled ‘inner city’ seemed to be the perfect symbol of an insular and irrelevant past.

Far from the coasts, a distant outpost of Empire, there was nothing about Lahore that would suggest that movies, this most modern and technologically complex of entertainments, would take root here. In the early days (1900-1935) films were produced in all sorts of town across the subcontinent. Hyderabad, Kholapur, Coimbatore, Salem and even Gaya, reputedly the site of where Siddhartha Gautama meditated under a bodhi tree on his way to becoming, the Buddha. All had film production units, though almost all fell by the wayside after one or two outings.

Movie making was a cottage industry of sorts and anyone with a story and some basic equipment could shoot a short film. But as the audience for movies grew and with it a demand for meaningful and quality content (there were only so many wrestling matches and train arrivals you could stomach), production became concentrated in Bombay, Calcutta and Madras. With the possible exception of the Prabhat Film Company, initially based in Kholapur but by 1933 centred in Poona (Pune), and which over a short life of less than 30 years produced only 45 films, Lahore was the only non-colonial city in South Asia to produce films of high quality, significant volume, in multiple languages over an extended period. And which continues to do so.

Why Lahore?

While Bombay, Madras and Calcutta had the location and access to new forms of capital and technology, the one thing they didn’t have much of prior to the arrival of the British was stories, the most ancient and beloved form of human entertainment. At heart, movies are nothing more than the most dramatic way of telling stories humans have yet invented. And prior to the arrival of Europeans, the three Imperial cities of India had little history. It was the British who conceived and built the cities; in essence their histories are inseparable from the history of the British Raj. This is not to suggest that the countryside around what became the three great Presidency cities was some terra nullius, devoid of human settlement and imagination. The islands of Bombay had been part of various kingdoms stretching back to prehistory and even under the Mauryas a regional centre of learning and religion. Various Hindu and Muslim dynasts had controlled the islands and, the settlements along the coast had well established links with far away Egypt. But by the time the English took possession of the islands they had lost any significant political or economic consequence. Prior to the East India Company there no Bombay.

So too with Calcutta and Madras. Though they were located in regions which had been part of ancient civilisations, both were mere villages that the English built into complex urban metropolises. Any stories that were told in these new cities had been brought in from outside. Bombay, Madras and Calcutta were blank canvases upon which was written a modern tale of interaction between Europeans and Indians. History was being created here. The past with its legends, myths and tales belonged to the countryside, the far away ‘interior’ from whence the cities residents had come to seek their fortunes.

Lahore, though, was different. It was not just ancient, it was still a vital, thriving city with a huge catalogue of stories stretching back to the very beginning of the Indian imagination. Like the other cities, Lahore attracted to it people from other parts of India but the stories they brought with them were absorbed into an already deep and luxurious sediment of fables, sagas and epics that remained every bit alive when the British arrived as they were when they were first told.

The Pakistani film industry, that which today some call Lollywood, is built more than anything upon this uniquely rich Punjabi culture. At the heart of which lies the immemorial city of Lahore. It’s worth taking a quick tour of this landscape to help us understand why the emergence of a movie industry here was not so much unlikely, as almost inevitable.

Treasure trove of tales

Punjab is the cradle of Indian civilisation. It was here in the land of five rivers (panj/5; ab/water) beyond which, in the words of Babur, Mughal India’s founding monarch, ‘everything is in the Hindustan way’, that the very story of India began.

Greater Punjab which includes all of the present day Province and State of Punjab in Pakistan and India, as well as parts of Khyber Pakhtunkwa, Rajasthan, Sindh, Haryana and Delhi, is home to one of the world’s richest, most variegated and dynamic of South Asia’s innumerable cultures. Peoples, and with them their stories, poems, music, gods, heroes, languages and ideas, have been flowing into the subcontinent via the Punjab since the earliest days of human settlement on the subcontinent. It is not in the least surprising that when the right historic moment arrived a lively and resilient cinema would be crafted from this treasure trove of material.

And to truly appreciate the deep roots of Pakistani films it is essential to have an understanding of the shared culture of language, song, theatre, poetry, storytelling and visual art that has distinguished this part of South Asia for millennia. It is from this profound tradition that Pakistani films initially took inspiration and upon which they continue to draw. And why, despite the many attempts to legislate against the industry, or even blow cinema halls up, Pakistanis keep making and watching movies.

Spies, scholars and antiquities

The good old man unfolds full many a tale,

That chills and turns his youthful audience pale,

Or full of glorious marvels, topics rich,

Exalts their fancies to intensest pitch.

Charles Masson

In 1832, while carrying out his undercover duties as a ‘news writer’ (spy) in the employ of the British East India Company, a certain Karamat Ali was taken by the recent arrival of a strange European in the bazaars of Kabul. Following from a distance he made mental notes of the character which he included in his next report to his control Mr. Claude Wade, British Political Agent in Ludhiana.

‘I would like to bring to your kind attention’ writes Karamat Ali in an undiscovered report, ‘the presence of an Englishman in the city. He keeps his hair (which is the colour of some of my countrymen who stain their beards with henna) cut close to his head. His eyes I have noted are the colour of a cat, by which I mean, grey and transparent. His beard is red as well. He appears to be a strong man as he has no horse or mule with him. His clothes are dusty from walking across the countryside and on top of his head he wears a cap made of green cloth. You may find it difficult to believe but he wears neither stockings nor shoes on his feet. I have learnt he carries with him some strange books, a compass and a device by which he reads the stars and thus makes his way from one place to the next. He answers to the name of Masson and speaks excellent Persian. I trust you will find this information helpful in your duties as Political Agent. Post Script. He could be mistaken for a faqir.’

Mr. Wade was well pleased with this information which he tucked away in the back of his mind. Over the next several years this mysterious Mr Masson continued to enter and exit official British communications like a phantom. Some reports had him pegged as an American physician from the backwoods of Kentucky. Others spoke of his brilliant command of Italian and that he was in fact a Frenchman. He popped up in Persia then Baluchistan; some reports detailed his convincing tales of journeys across Russia and the Caucasus.

But Afghanistan was where this strange morphing wanderer seemed most at home. He was reported to be interested in the history of some old earthen mounds outside of Kabul and had enlisted a number of the natives to assist him in his digging. Political Agent Wade kept tabs on Masson until finally three years after Karamat Ali’s report he wrote a letter to the wanderer with some shocking news. Over the years Wade had pieced together the mystery man’s history and in his letter he took great pleasure in letting Masson know about it.

‘I know who you are, Masson. And not just me. Calcutta is perfectly informed of your antecedents. The jig is up, old boy. You are not Charles Masson at all, sir. You are an Englishman and a traitor. Your true name is James Lewis born in London the son of a common brewer. You arrived in this ghastly country some dozen years ago as a private soldier in the Bengal European Artillery 1^st Brigade, 3^rd Troop.’

The letter which clearly made Masson panic went on to detail his history as a deserter from the Company ranks at Agra and the precarious position vis-a-vis his former employer he now occupied: he was due to be shot if apprehended. But Wade being a practical sort of man and a patriot had already received permission from his superiors to throw Masson a lifeline.

‘We’ve noted your excellent knowledge of several languages including Persian, French and Hindoostani. You also appear to be blessed with a natural ease in your interactions with the natives of the regions you have traversed. Your mind clearly, though not pointed in the proper direction, is sharp. In light of this and by way of making amends for your dereliction of duty and in recognition of the reality that the Tsar is intent on extending Russia’s influence into our Asiatic possessions, I offer you the following modest proposal.’

Wade informed Masson that if he would like to escape the firing-squad he would be wise to accept the Company’s offer to return to Kabul as its spy and to use his sharp mind, ears and eyes to keep Wade abreast of events in ‘lower Afghanistan and Kabul with special attention on the comings and goings of the tribesmen in support of Dost Mohammad but even more so the Russians.’

Mr Charles Masson of course agreed to Wade’s proposition and did (unhappily) return to Afghanistan as the Company’s ‘news writer.’ For several years, leading up to the invasion of the country by his compatriots in 1839, Masson filed detailed and insightful reports many of which cautioned against a British invasion. At the same time, he continued his archaeological digs on the outskirts of Kabul and beyond, wrote ponderous historical poems and engraved a couplet that included his name onto the majestic 55 metre high Buddhas of Bamiyan where it remained until the icons were blown up by the Taliban in 2001.

A sketch of the Bamiyan Buddhas by Alexander Burnes, a contemporary and rival of Masson’s. Circa 1830s

By the time he left the Company’s employ in 1838, Masson had ensured his place in history. Not so much as a spy or soldier but as a scholar. His archaeological digs around Kabul are now acknowledged as advancing the world’s understanding of ancient Afghanistan as well as its archaeological history. His work is still hailed as absolutely fundamental, especially his identification of Bagram as the ancient city of Alexandria Caucasum. Alexandria in the Caucasus while geographically inaccurate was indeed a city established by the Macedonian conqueror, Alexander, but one that history seemed to have assigned to legend. No one knew where exactly it was located which perhaps accounts for the faulty identification of the mountains where it was thought to have been located. Did it even exist?

By digging up tens of thousands of coins many with Greek script on one side and the Kharosthi script on the other, around the town of Bagram, north of Kabul, famous in more recent times as the site of the US Air Force’s major military post in Afghanistan, Masson identified the city as not only as one of the many ancient Alexandrias but shed new light on the Greco-Buddhist culture that dominated the area until the arrival of Islam. Indeed, Masson was instrumental in uncovering evidence of the spread of Buddhism into Central Asia from its Indian birthplace, as well as unearthing the names of several hitherto unknown monarchs of the region.

Masson returned to England in 1842 where he faded away, the only trace being the thousands of artefacts he dug from the Afghan dirt and transported back home and which are now on display in collections across the country. And though he is regarded as a pioneer of Afghan archaeology this rough and tumble shape shifting scholar-spy-poet is also credited with another landmark historical discovery.

Reflecting in 1842 on his initial desertion from the Company’s army in Agra and escape through the Punjab plains sixteen years earlier, Masson wrote,

A long march preceded our arrival at Hairpah (Harappa) through jangal of the closest description…Behind us was a large circular mound or eminence, and to the west was an irregular rocky height, crowned with remains of buildings, in fragments of walls, with niches, after the eastern manner…I examined the remains on the height, and found two circular perforated stones, affirmed to have been used as bangles, or arm rings, by a faqir of renown. He has also credit for having subsisted on earth and other unusual substances…The walls and towers of the castle are remarkably high, though, from having been deserted, they exhibit in some parts the ravages of time and decay.’ (Narrative of Various Journeys in Balochistan, Afghanistan, and the Punjab 1842, pg 452-54)

Thus, within a few lines from an adventurer’s memoir the Western world hears the name Harappa for the first time. Harappa, of course, is the small town just 24 km west of the modern Pakistani city of Sahiwal where 95 years after Masson’s overnight camp, excavations lead to the uncovering of a large buried city, and ultimately one of the world’s oldest, most sophisticated and enigmatic urban societies.

Thirty years after Masson’s visit, British engineers engaged in building the rail line between Multan and Lahore discovered a trove of wonderfully hard but thin kiln-fired bricks lying just beneath the surface of the earth. The bricks, much to the engineers’ delight made the perfect beds upon which to lay the rails and tens of thousands of them were used and in fact remain in place even today. The bricks formed the ‘castle’ Masson described in his book. Scattered in and amongst the bricks, railway workers discovered a number of small soapstone seals, no larger than a large modern postage stamp, but exquisitely crafted. They were quaint, mysterious objects whose beauty and workmanship were beyond question but whose history and significance baffled the archaeologists. A few made their way into the British Museum where bearded antiquarians speculated they dated to a Buddhist past around the turn of the millennium. In 1921, a young Punjabi archaeologist and Sanskrit whiz, Daya Ram Sahni, did some initial excavating at Harappa for the Archaeological Survey of India. His report piqued the interest of the ASI’s Director, John Marshall, who authorised Sahni to undertake more systematic excavations.

Harappa (in present day Pakistan) was one of the major sites of the Indus Valley civilisation which was first brought to the attention of European scholars by Charles Masson after he went AWOL from the Company army in 1826

To their amazement Sahni’s men uncovered an entire city laid out with gridded streets and communal buildings. Delicate, finely worked beads and bracelets emerged out of the Punjabi mud as well as further south in Mohenjo Daro in the Sindh region. Many of the artefacts, especially the seals, were marked what appears to be a script–lines, single or in close formation–squiggles and geometric designs. Despite the efforts of Sahni and others to decode the language, the lines remain one of antiquity’s great mysteries. But the archaeologists noted that the most extensive use of the language was visible on the seals and amulets which also featured a menagerie of beasts.

These seals depicted bulls with massive humps, rhinos, elephants, tigers and deer, sometimes with humans bowing before them, sometimes with the poor sods being attacked. Here was India’s first story. But what exactly is the plotline? What is the point of these images? Are they telling us about the spirit world or the world of markets and trade? Who are the heroes? Which ones are the demons and villains? If only we could make out that writing.

What seems clear is that the people of Harappa and other Indus Valley cities were not particular inclined to warfare and violence. Archaeologists have not found anything that suggests the people were massacred or that their cities were burned or destroyed in combat. Rather, the similar layout and construction of the houses, the lack of particularly large private dwellings together with those seals, which scholarly consensus suggests, were “probably used to close documents and mark packages of goods“, (they’ve been found as far away as Iraq) suggests early Punjabi life was relatively cooperative, civil, peaceful, prosperous and not very religious. There is little of the elaborate hierarchy of later Hindu India and relatively little evidence of great economic inequality.

Such readings of the Indus Valley story are speculative but not so far-fetched. However, the relatively tolerant, accepting, less heirarchical social structure that some scholars attribute to the people of the Indus Valley does echo, if ever so faintly, the Punjab which until the mid-19^th century was renowned for its syncretic, less orthodox and unitary culture.

One thing that can be said without any doubt about the people of the Indus Valley is that these earliest of Punjabis had vivid imaginations. Of all the animals depicted on the seals the most common is what appears to be a unicorn, a cow like quadruped with a long pointy horn protruding out of its forehead.

This unique beast which we now associate with rainbows and 8 year old girls, was born in the Indus Valley but doesn’t seem to have survived in the post Harappan culture. Further west though, the unicorn went on to enjoy a glorious career as a symbol of chastity, the Incarnation of Christ, strength and true love. The one horned Punjabi horse/cow was and is so revered it graces the coats of arms of noble houses from the Czech Republic to England and is the subject of some of the most sublime works of European art and storytelling.

The cities, script, society and unicorns of the Indus Valley vanished from the Punjabi story about 1900 BC and would all but be forgotten for thousands of years. But an even richer series of chapters began to unfold around the same time. Nomads from the steppes of Central Asia came across the mountains with horses, powerful hallucinogens and a love of gambling. Over several centuries they herded their cattle and horses across the plains and between the Punjab’s many rivers. These nomads who called themselves Arya began to recite an elaborate series of poems that told tales of mighty gods and wily demons who provided instructions on how to sacrifice animals and conduct animal sacrifices. Like the American blues would millennia in the future, the Aryan poets bemoaned the addictions of gambling and intoxication.

Unlike the Harappans, the Vedic Punjabis left no cities or monuments. The only way we know them is through their stories—the Vedas—especially the Rg Veda, a song cycle of 1028 verses that was and continues to be passed down by people who took it upon themselves to memorize its every syllable, tone, character and subplot. Suddenly, around 4000 years ago, the Punjabi/Aryan/Vedic/Indian imagination erupts with the intensity, colour and wild swirlings of an acid trip.

The rivers of this land, the Rg Veda tell us, are not five but seven and the land is called Sapta Sindhu (seven rivers). Each one of them is identified by name and is in some way a geographic representation of a character in the grand Vedic story. Vyasa (Beas) is the great sage who divides the Vedas into parts and Askini (Chenab) is married to Daksha who is instructed by Brahma to create all living beings. One of the great Vedic sages Kashyap has a daughter Iravati (Ravi) and one day he asks the goddess Parvati to come to Kashmir to clean up its valleys which she does by becoming the river Vitasta (Jhelum). Saraswati, the goddess of arts and learning herself is a river that flows through the desert but eventually dries up leaving one of her tributaries, Sutdiri (Sutlej), to carry on and join with the others in the rushing Sindhu (Indus).

In these early Punjabi poems and narratives it’s easy to find the deepest roots of many of the outlines of what would one day depicted in the films made in Bombay and Lahore. Take for example the story of the lout who takes a swig of soma (a sort of pre-historic Vat 69) and with his mates tosses the dice onto the gambling mat. He laughs and carouses as his dutiful and kind wife watches silently. Eventually, but too late, the gambler realises his mistake. “I’ve driven my blameless wife away from me. My mother-in-law hates me and all my friends have deserted me. They have as much use for me as a decrepit old horse.”

His mother cries and tries to make him stop but he pushes her away. As the sun goes down, he starts his lament confessing that as soon as he thinks of the tumbling dice, he is off to the gambling dens with his male buddies. Like the drunken Talish in the 1957 film Saat Lakh, who sings the apologia, Yaaron mujhe muaff rakho, mein nashe main hun, [Friends, forgive me, I’m completely pissed] the Vedic gambler sings, “I can’t stop and all my friends desert me.” As the story comes to an end he collapses and dies. (Rg Veda 10:34). Very Lollywood!

The Aryans slowly moved eastward, leaving their beloved Sapta Sindhu behind to push into the northern plains watered by the Ganga and Yamuna rivers. Eventually Vedic religion as outlined in the Rg Veda was transformed into what we recognize as Hinduism and the central importance of Punjab to the Hindu story diminished somewhat. Which is not to say it was completely forgotten, as later epics such as the Ramayana and Mahabharata are filled with references to the places and people of Punjab.

This northwest corner of the subcontinent which was the reputed land of legendary wealth was coveted by other non-Indian empires. Persians, Greeks, Chinese, Mongols, Turks and Arabs and numerous waves of Afghan raiders came crashing through the Punjab on their way to the fabled riches of India. With each of these incursions came not just soldiers but new traditions, new ideas, new heroes and new villains.

During the period 500 BC-300 CE small fiefdoms and city states vied for control of the Punjab and more layers were added to the already rich three-millennia old culture. Taxila, 375 kms northwest of Lahore, became the most significant political and cultural centre of the region. It was here, the story goes, that the sage Vaishampayana (pupil of Vyasa) gave the original recital of the Mahabharata to king Janamejaya. The world’s longest narrative poem (100,000+ verses) the Mahabharata tells with fantastic imagination and a cast of thousands, the battle of various Punjabi tribes for supremacy.

Darius I of Persia, drawn to India for its supply of elephants, camels, gold and silk conquered Taxila in the mid 5^th century BCE. By the 4^th century Buddhist jataka tales (fables of the Buddha’s early incarnations) were speaking of Taxila as a mighty kingdom and centre of great learning. Indeed, it was around Taxila that Greeks who had ventured to the edge of India as part of Alexander’s victorious army, intermarried with local women and developed the unique and elegant Greek-Buddhist Gandhara, culture that added a distinctly European flavour to Indian culture and which Charles Masson did so much to illuminate.

Tales and narratives travelled in both directions, influencing the stories of Punjab but also taking Indian stories to the far corners of the world. The fable of Alexander and the Poisoned Maiden is one such Punjabi story that grew out of this mingling of Greeks and Indians. Though it is long forgotten in India the story was picked up and recorded by the Persians from whom it was passed to Arabs, Jews, and eventually Europeans who recorded it in Latin.

The astrologers of an Indian king warn him that a man named Alexander will one day try to conquer his kingdom and before he does, he will demand tribute of four gifts: a beautiful girl; a wise man able to reveal all of nature’s mysteries; a top notch physician and; a bottomless cup in which water is never heated when placed on fire.

When Alexander arrives in the kingdom, the king obliges in hopes of saving his kingdom. He selects a beautiful maiden whom all of Alexander’s emissaries agree is the most beautiful woman they have ever laid eyes on. Little did they know however, that the woman had been raised as a child by a snake and has been fed poison all her life, instead of milk. Alexander immediately falls in love and that night sleeps with her. However, the top notch physician is aware of the woman’s true nature and quickly slips Alexander a special herb that protects him from the girl’s poison. A grateful Alexander is able to enjoy sex with the woman but not die and he goes on to conquer the Indian king’s country.

Though his story does not exist in any Indian text its central character–a dangerous woman who in fact is a snake (nagina)–is a famous and recurring subject of many a horror film in both Pakistan and India.

Such fantastic stories pop up throughout the history of the region and are buried deep in the DNA of Punjab. We have stories of Buddha as a college boy at Taxila University as well as stories from Zoroastrian Iran. There is even a story told of how St. Thomas was sold into slavery to the king of Taxila by none other than Jesus himself but who manages to secure his freedom by raising the Punjabi king’s brother from the dead! A thousand years later the film makers of Lahore would tell a similar story in the cult horror classic Zinda Laash (Living Corpse).

Note: the letters from Karamat Ali to Charles Wade and related conversations are made up. However, the basics of the narrative are historically accurate.

April 28, 2025May 6, 2025

Deep Dive: The Wadia Brothers and the Masked Woman

Lollywood: stories of Pakistan’s unlikely film industry

Of the many Parsi clans who leveraged their interaction with the British in Bombay to establish themselves as economic powerhouses, even to this day, the shipbuilding Wadia family is worth a closer look.

Even before the community fled Persia to seek refuge along India’s western coast, the Zoroastrians were renowned ship builders and sailors. During the reign of King Darius (522-486 BCE) the Persians had learned well from the Phoenicians (1200-800 BCE) and become the acknowledged shipbuilding and maritime empire of the epoch. Though their numbers were tiny in their new home in India, (never more than 100,000) the community kept these ancient skills alive.

Settled and working out of Surat, the Wadia (Gujarati for ‘ship builder’) clan, interacted with the various European trading nations—Portugal, Netherlands, France—that sought trade with the Mughal empire and its wealthy business communities of Gujarat. When the rather slow-starting English received the islands of Bombay from the Portuguese, Parsis began to migrate from the hinterland south. One of Surat’s most prominent shipbuilders, a Parsi named Lovji Nusserwanji Wadia who had built ships for a number of European trading firms in Surat, was invited by the English to establish a branch of the family business in Bombay. And so, beginning in 1736, Lovji along with his brother Sorabji set to work building Asia’s first dry docking facility where EIC ships could be drawn entirely out of the water to be repaired and refurbished. This single bit of infrastructure increased the economic and strategic value of Bombay immensely. It brought to the foreground Bombay’s exceptional qualities as one of the best deep water harbours (the city’s name derives from the Portuguese words Bom (good) and Bahia (harbour)) from which the British, with their new infrastructure and world-class Parsi shipbuilders, were able to not only vanquish the Portuguese, Dutch and regional Indian naval powers but also clear the Arabian Sea of pirates which led to a steady increase in traffic and trade. By the mid-19^th century Bombay had become a major international commercial and naval port and the most important city in British India.

By 1759 the dry dock was operational. At the same time the brothers Wadia were providing many of the ships that carried cotton and spices and eventually that fateful black gold, opium, from India to China and other Asian ports. Given the EIC’s monopoly on the Indian trade and the massive growth in the economy opium facilitated, particularly in the first part of the 19th century, the Wadia’s became immensely wealthy. Theirs was a full-service enterprise, building single-sailed sloops, water boats that managed trade up and down the west coast, beautifully sleek, fast-moving clippers, well armed frigates and man-o-wars for the military as well as cutters, schooners, and eventually steamships for the Asian/Chinese trade. Using teak, rather than English oak for the hulls, the Wadia’s ships were lighter and more resilient than ships made in Britain. Over the years, the family built over 400 ships for the EIC’s Maritime Service and others including their fellow Parsi sethias.

Lovji’s grandson, Nusserwanji Maneckji continued the family business and in addition to servicing the British became a much sought after local agent for early American traders building up the trade between India and New England. Maneckji Wadia was so well regarded by the Americans that he and his relatives enjoyed a virtual monopoly on the Yankee business with many American traders exchanging effusive letters with him in which his ’impeccable character’ is praised and his family compared to ‘satraps’. Both sides profited handsomely. In the words of one Yankee businessman, they profited ‘monstrously’, recovering up to 300% on the Indian textiles and other goods sourced by the Wadias.

HMS Minden in the heat of the Battle of Algiers

One of Nusserwanji’s sons, Jamshetji Bombanji, was appointed Bombay’s Master Builder[1], a role usually held by an Englishman, but which the Wadia family was to hold for 150 years running. Several of Bomanji’s ships found their way into the larger events of the time, including the first man-o-war built in India—a huge warship with three masts and loaded with 74 large cannons—the HMS Minden. When it set sail in 1810 a Bombay newspaper, the Chronicle, praised “the skill of its architects” and went on to note that with “the superiority of its timber, and for the excellence of its docks, Bombay may now claim a distinguished place among naval arsenals”. Several years later, on the night of 13 September 1814, the HMS Minden was tied to a British ship in Chesapeake Bay, along the east coast of the United States, after a local lawyer, Francis Scott Key, had helped to secure the release of an American prisoner-of-war held by the British. Fighting between the Americans and British was intense with the night sky flashing red and yellow. The frightening spectacle inspired Key to write a poem, The Star Spangled Banner, which was eventually adopted as America’s national anthem.

Steel eventually replaced teak in the building of ships and steam took over from wind. The Wadias, like many Parsis diversified initially into textile production where steam-derived technologies helped to propel the Wadia’s Bombay Dyeing mill into one of the most successful and iconic of India’s modern businesses. And when the movies came to India, two great-great grandsons of Lovji Nusserwanji took the daring decision to turn their back on textiles and ships altogether and embrace the world of moving pictures.

Jamshed Boman Homi Wadia, known as JBH, was only 12 when Dadasaheb Phalke exhibited Raja Harishchandra, but spent his youth captivated by the Hollywood films that were becoming an increasingly common form of entertainment in Bombay. Though well-educated as a lawyer JBH horrified his family with his announcement that he intended to make films for a living. He quickly found work with the then prominent Kohinoor Studios producing a dozen films for the studio, some of which saw moderate success. But being an entrepreneur JBH didn’t want to work for anyone else, so, joined by his younger brother Homi, launched his own studio, Wadia Movietone in 1933, retaining the family’s shipbuilding past as part of the studio’s logo.

The brothers became icons of the early Indian film history and throughout the 30s and 40s Wadia Movietone was the most profitable of all Indian filmmaking enterprises.

Wadia Movietone studios was financially backed by several other Bombay Parsi families-including the famous Tatas-and grew into one of the most successful and consistently profitable studios of the 1930s. The brothers were basically in love with stunts and action. They especially adored derring-do characters like Zorro and Robin Hood played by Douglas Fairbanks Jr, and blatantly copied many of Fairbanks’ movies for Wadia Movietone. When Fairbanks visited Bombay, JBH made sure the actor visited his own studio; so impressed was his American idol that Fairbanks agreed to sell the Indian rights of his mega hit Mark of Zorro to Wadia Movietone.

The brothers proudly low-brow fare of fistfights, speeding trains and masked heroines dominated India’s box offices throughout the 30s and became the most popular genre in India at the time. Sadly, as film historian Rosie Thomas states, Indian “film history was rewritten”, by starchy Hindu nationalists who objected that stunt films did not inspire sufficient pride in India’s Hindu classical past. The whole stunt movie genre was effectively eliminated from most histories of Indian film giving virtually all attention on the more staid and far less fun, middle-class targeted ‘social’ melodramas focusing on family and relationships.

At their height, however, the Wadia brothers’ studio was the rage of the box office. Their greatest success was without a doubt a series of action films which in today’s parlance might be called a franchise, starring a stunning white woman they billed as Fearless Nadia.

Mary Evans, a West Australian girl of Scottish-Greek extraction, moved in 1911, at the age of three, to India where her father served with the British army. Settled and schooled for several of her early years in Bombay, Evans father was killed in 1915 while fighting in France and eventually moved to Peshawar to live with an ‘uncle’ who in fact was a friend of her deceased father. It was the wilds of the NW frontier of India that stimulated Mary’s tomboy personality to blossom. She discovered a love for the outdoors, sports and horse riding and with a mother who had once been a belly dancer, found herself singing (often bawdy songs) and dancing on stages across the NW and Punjab. Between 1927 and 1934, Mary performed as a dancer and singer in various troupes and circuses as well as a solo performer, travelling across the Indian subcontinent performing for wealthy maharajas as well as illiterate labourers. It was a risky job for a slightly big boned, well-built blonde-haired woman, travelling (often) alone across India, speaking only English and Greek, working at night in (often) seedy venues but it was one that seemed to suit her. When an Armenian fortune teller predicted a bright career for Mary, they used tarot cards to select a stage name, eventually settling on Nadia.

Sometime in the early 1930s, a Mr. Langa, the owner of Lahore’s Regent Cinema, saw one of Mary’s stage shows. Given that cinemas in those days regularly booked dance troupes to complement the movie, it is possible Langa hosted Mary at the Regent itself. Whatever the circumstances, Langa was taken by her presence and striking looks. He offered to introduce Evans to a friend of his, someone named JBH Wadia, who ran a movie studio in Bombay. Was she interested? With sparkling blue eyes and blonde hair, Nadia hardly fit the bill as the ideal Indian woman but she was not alone. Throughout the silent era and even into the age of Talkies, many of India’s initial generation of female starlets were in fact Anglo-Indian (mixed European and Indian heritage), European and Jewish women. At a time when acting was considered a dishonourable career by most Indians, non-Indian women felt less inhibited socially to take to the stage. Most adopted Indian stage names and worked hard to improve their unmistakably foreign accents. Still, the basic assumption was that actress was a synonym for prostitute. German film historian, Dorothee Wenner, whose biography of Evans, Fearless Nadia, sums up the situation as follows:

The connections between theatre, dance, music and prostitution remained so closely entwined well into the twentieth century that any official attempt to limit prostitution simultaneously represented a threat to the dramatic arts. The consequences for cinema were first felt by the father of Indian cinema, D.G. Phalke. He knew that filming made different demands on the realism of scenes than the stage did and therefore he wanted a woman to play the female lead in his first film Raja Harischandra. It was 1912 when he went looking around the red-light district of Bombay for a suitable performer. Although the impoverished director offered the few interested parties more money than they would normally earn, all the prostitutes turned the film work down…it was below their dignity!”[2]

When they met, Wadia immediately understood Evans’ appeal and potential. He suggested that the Australian change her name to Nanda Devi and wear a plaited dark wig. But Mary refused. “Look here Mr Wadia,” she said, undeterred of her future employer’s power or status, “I’m a white woman and I’ll look foolish with long black hair.” As for the name change, she scoffed. “That’s not in my contract and I’m no Devi! (goddess)” She pointed out that her chosen stage name, Nadia, resonated with both Indian and European audiences, and also just happened to rhyme with his own name, Wadia. JBH, not used to be spoken to so boldly by an employee, let alone a woman, figured she just might have what it takes to make it in the movies. He hired her on the spot.

An agreement was reached and in 1935 the brothers tested her in a couple of small roles in two films. Her charisma, not to mention her stunning and exotic looks, were obvious. She stood out like a ghost at midnight. Immediately, she was offered the lead in a Zorro-like picture called Hunterwali (Lady Hunter) which became a smash hit and is now considered one of the most significant milestones in South Asian film. The Wadia brothers had been unable to find a distributor for their extravagant production. Most considered it too radical and unsuitable for local tastes. A white masked woman, cracking a whip, smashing up villainous men, riding a horse and sporting hot pants that revealed her very white fleshy thighs? Absolutely not!

Unbowed, the brothers pooled their resources and sponsored the film’s premier at the Super Cinema on Grant Road, on a wet June evening in 1935. This was make or break. The Wadias believed in Nadia even though everyone else did not. Not without a little trepidation rippling through the cinema the lights dimmed and the show began. Fifteen minutes in, as Nadia pronounced that ‘From now on, I will be known as Hunterwali!’, the working class male audience stood up, cheered and clapped and in their own way pronounced the coronation of the Queen of the Box Office, a title she would hold for more than a decade.

The Wadia’s, as indeed most of their countrymen and women, were politically active (supporting Independence from Britain) and socially progressive. They championed women’s rights, Hindu-Muslim solidarity and anti-casteism. Though official censorship prohibited open discussion of these themes the Wadias made sure their superstar made casual references to them. As Nadia herself said, “In all the pictures there was a propaganda message, something to fight for.”[3]

The girl from Perth via Peshawar and Lahore, was now a superstar of action and stunt film with millions of fans. Known and billed as Fearless Nadia she insisted on doing all her own stunts be it fistfights on the top of a fast-moving train, throwing men from roofs or being cuddled by lions. She starred in nearly 40 pictures most made by the Wadia brothers (she married Homi in 1961) with such fantastical titles as Lady Robinhood, Miss Punjab Mail, Tigress, Jungle Princess and Stunt Queen.

In 1988 a version of Hunterwali, perhaps the most famous of all of Nadia’s films was released in Pakistan, starring Punjabi movie icons, Sultan Rahi and Anjuman.

[1] A highly critical and strategic role that oversaw ship design and construction but innovation, compliance with international shipping regulations and development of the shipbuilding industry.

[2] Wenner, Dorothee. 2005. Fearless Nadia: The True Story of Bollywood’s Original Stunt Queen. Penguin. Pg. 79.

[3] Thomas, Rosie, “Not Quite (Pearl) White: Fearless Nadia, Queen of the Stunts”, in Bollyword: Popular Indian Cinema through a Transnational Lens, ed. Raminder Kaur & Ajay J Sinha (New Delhi: Sage Publications India Pvt Ltd, 2005) 35-69.

April 22, 2025May 6, 2025

Punch Houses to Parsi Theatre

Lollywood: stories of the Pakistani film industry

From Punch houses to Parsi Theatre

Though the early years of the East India Company are remembered in history as a time when hundreds of British men came to India and rapidly became very wealthy, life in a small up-country district was tough. Though the British public, to the extent they had time to care, resented the new ‘nabobs’ who returned home to England full of ill-gotten wealth and social swagger, relatively few servants of the company actually made fortunes. Many stayed on in India after their tours setting themselves up as indigo planters or scrounging for work in the big cities. For those not part of the elite ‘Covenanted Officer’ class which included most non-Indians, the Englishman’s daily round involved three essential things: work, avoiding illness and drink, with the last usually combined with the first two. Alcohol consumption was both a way to stay alive–especially since local water supplies were contaminated—and a way to pass the time. The highest rungs of British society had access to a variety of European wines, porters and spirits. The sailors, soldiers and planters, on the other hand, could mostly only afford locally brewed (and occasionally, deadly) concoctions that mixed ingredients like coconut spirits, chillis and opium.

Though the origin of its name is contended (does it refer to the 500 litre wooden barrel that held it, known as a ‘puncheon’ or to the Hindustani word, panch, for the number 5, the number of ingredients) punch was an alcoholic innovation invented in India by early European residents who wanted a lighter, sweeter drink than the local spirits or fiery rum. Experimentation found that by mixing rum or arrack, sugar, lemon/citrus juice, rosewater and spices in water a very tasty and potent beverage emerged. As early as the 1630s, Englishmen were writing home about this new drink they called ‘punch’. When the Company’s ships returned from India loaded with exotic luxuries, the ships’ crew and locals enjoyed evenings together drinking Punch on the docks. Though the many of the individual ingredients (lemons, nutmeg) were expensive in Britain, punch became ‘the tipple of choice for English aristocrats’ for the next hundred years and since then has become a regular offering at parties, weddings and even church potlucks across the English-speaking world.

In India, however, the grimy taverns where such alcoholic drinks were sold became known as punch houses. Not dissimilar to the famous jook joints in the southern United States, famous for their cheap booze and violence, punch houses were perfect venues for drinking binges, rowdy roughhousing, fisticuffs and whoring by bored sailors, down on their luck Europeans and soldiers. Indeed, one Englishman summarised the entertainment available for the British lower classes in India as amounting to “drinking hells, gambling hells or other hells.” For the upper-class elite, punch houses were a definite ‘no go’.

By the early decades of the 19^th century this public drunkenness and violence was so pervasive in the three colonial cities as well as smaller outposts across the country that the authorities grew increasingly alarmed at the damage such behaviour was doing to the image of European and Christian superiority. Serial campaigns were launched. Multiple strategies tested. Workhouses were built, as were insane asylums. Forced religious conversion was tried out, so too was jail time. None was very successful and the problem of European drunkenness remained forever an embarrassing black spot on the rulers publicly promoted sense of moral superiority.

Though alcohol abuse remained a problem among the British, over time the raw violence of the punch house gave way to other forms of entertainment. Musical evenings, card games and regularly scheduled visits to other European homes were popular among the ‘better’ classes. The rowdier types (i.e. drunken sailors high on Punch) were drawn to disrupting dramas and causing havoc at dramatic performance at a number of theatres that began to pop up across Bombay.

Bombay’s first theatre opened in 1776, situated on a space known as ‘The Green’ surrounded by other official buildings. The Bombay Theatre, as it was christened, catered to officials and their families and staged performances by amateur drama enthusiasts from among the European community. It experienced a difficult life through the early years of its existence and ultimately stood shuttered and unused for many. It was eventually bought by the city’s post prominent businessman, Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy, a Parsi opium and shipping magnate, who never bothered to reopen it.

By the mid 1840s, the city was wealthy and large enough (thanks in large part to the illegal trade of opium smuggling) to demand better entertainment. Wealthy Indians, again mostly Parsis, championed theatre building as an important part of their civic duty which grew to include funding public charities, colleges and museums. The Grant Road Theatre opened on the northern edge of the city in 1846, at the time, quite a distance from the Fort area inhabited by the elites of the Company. Though opened with an eye on that market few English found the prospect of travelling into underdeveloped outer suburbs, where hygiene and other surprises lay in wait, attractive. Very quickly the financiers opened the halls to local artists who staged plays in Bombay’s most widely spoken languages, Gujarati, Urdu and Hindi.

Somnath Gupt, who wrote a history of Parsi theatre summed up the transition this way. “As long as it was patronized by the governor and high-level officials, the theatre was frequented by people of good family. Because of the location on Grant Road, however, their attendance decreased. Some Christian preachers also opposed the theatre as depraved and immoral. The Oriental Christian Spectator was chief among those newspapers that wrote in opposition to Hindu drama. In consequence, the theatre was attended by sailors from trading ships, soldiers and traders. A low class public came and made the theatre foul-smelling with their smoking. The performances began to start late, and etiquette deteriorated. Drunken sailors and soldiers behaved rudely with the women. It began to be necessary to bring in the police to keep order. This audience was…inherited by the Parsi theatre.”[1]

The Grant Road Theatre hosted international troupes enroute to and from Australia when they showed up but the 1850s saw Parsi-owned theatrical troupes mushroom to fill the supply of plays, actors and audiences. Based on the European proscenium-style theatre that featured a huge arch over the stage as a frame for the action, the Parsis saw the theatre as a way to both entertain and educate Bombay’s growing middle class.

What quickly became known as Parsi theatre was an instant hit. The plays set the imagination of Bombay-ites on fire. Many of the plays were wildly popular, running to packed houses night after night for years on end. A whole new class of Parsi actors, playwrights, directors, composers and producers grew up, many of whom moved seamlessly into the film world in the early 20^th century. Many companies toured the countryside, not just around Bombay but to far flung parts of the interior and even to places as far away as Sumatra, Malaya, Burma and Ceylon. Drawing on local talent and tales from Hindu, Islamic and Persian epics, Parsi theatre became a uniquely Indian and lively form of entertainment many aspects of which—song, dance, bawdy humor, melodrama—were directly absorbed by the subcontinent’s early film makers.

Along with the companies and cohort of professional players, more theatres were built with names like the Elphinstone, Gaiety, Novelty and Tivoli. The staging of dramas was by the 1870s and 80s a huge part of Bombay’s entertainment scene. Jamshedji Framji Madan “the Parsi actor-turned-wine merchant-turned owner of the largest chain of theatres and cinemas in India in the first three decades of the 20th century”[2] exemplifies the central role the Parsi community played not just in whetting the Indian appetite for staged comedic and dramatic entertainment in purpose built buildings, but of leading the transition from Parsi Theatre to what would become one of the most consequential film industries the world has ever seen.

Madan started his career in the theatre first as an actor but he made a considerable fortune in y securing large contracts to provision British troops with the wine that the governing classes so condemned for corrupting Her Majesty’s troops. Sensing greater opportunities in the capital of British India, Calcutta, and loaded with money from his wine-provisioning business, Madan in 1902 set up a diversified business group, J.F Madan & Co., with interests in everything from insurance to film equipment and real estate. He also began buying up Calcutta theatres (the Alfred and the Corinthian) where playwrights including Agha Hashr Kashmiri, aka India’s Shakespeare, plied their trade. Kashmiri, though from Banaras, moved to Lahore in his later years where he also wrote for films, an early example of the cross fertilisation of cinematic talent between India and what would soon become Pakistan.

Immediately after arriving in Calcutta, he set up the “Elphinstone Bioscope Company and began showing films in tents on the Maidan before opening the first dedicated movie house in Calcutta, the Elphinstone Picture Palace.”[3] The venue not only was Calcutta’s and India’s first dedicated movie hall but marked the beginning of India’s first cinema hall chain. In 1917 his company, Far Eastern Films, partnered with Maurice Bandman, an American entertainment magnate based in Calcutta to distribute foreign films in India. “In 1917 his company Madan’s Far Eastern Films joined forces with Bandmann to form the Excelsior Cinematograph Syndicate dedicated to distributing films as well as owning and managing a chain of cinemas. In 1919 Madan, like Bandmann, floated a public company, Madan Theatres Ltd, which incorporated the other companies. It was this company that formed the basis of the remarkable growth of the Madan empire.” Madan’s multiple interests in theatre and commerce led him to producing his own films, including the first commercial length feature in Bengali, Bilwamangal (1918).

Title page of a programme of the Empire Theatre Calcutta, the headquarters of Maurice Bandman’s theatrical company and his touring circuit. It was modelled on the Gaiety Theatre in London.

Madan’s strong commercial eye recognized that the medium would need its own venues and screening halls, rather than relying on established theatres. By 1919 the Madan Theatres Limited was in business and set to become India’s largest integrated film production-distribution-exhibition company with assets located not just across India but in Ceylon and Burma as well. Madan issued shares that generated Rs. 10 million and through effective management practices was able to procure a huge number of theatres across South and SE Asia. Though film making was picking up steam in India, the vast majority of films shown were foreign. In 1926 only 15% of films were Indian. 85% were foreign, mostly American, movies. By partnering with the French company Pathé Madan’s theatres were to a significant degree responsible for creating an audience for American and European films in India by importing and screening Hollywood films, such as the Perils of Pauline, The Mark of Zorro and Quo Vadis.

By the mid-1920s Madan controlled half of all revenues from the Indian box office and owned 127 movie houses. His hiring of foreign directors such as the Italian, Eugenio De Liguoro who directed 6 films for Madan Theatres, gave many of his films a sheen of expertise and craft that was not yet visible within local ranks. In essence, Madan had monopolised India’s nascent film industry.

The Lumiere brothers may not have understood the commercial viability of their inventions but it seemed that many Indians did. The great colonial cities of Bombay and Calcutta both quadrupled in size between 1850 and 1900 to be home for nearly 1 million people. Bombay and Calcutta were now world cities. It was not surprising that this most modern and hypnotic of new technologies would catch on in places like this. But Bombay, Calcutta and Madras were not alone. Far to the West, on the far frontier of British India another city was starting to make waves in the movie world too.

[1] Hansen, Kathryn. (Translator) 2001, “The Parsi Theatre: Its Origins and Development (Pt 2).Pdf.”

[2] Balme, Christopher. 2015. “Managing Theatre and Cinema in Colonial India: Maurice E. Bandmann, J.F. Madan and the War Films’ Controversy.” Popular Entertainment Studies 6: 6–21.

[3] Ibid.

April 18, 2025May 6, 2025

Lollywood: stories of Pakistan’s unlikely film industry

Scenes from never-made Pakistani films [Number 1]

Film: Tabahi (Annihilation)

Released: June & July 1947

Starring: al Nasir, Vinod & Roop Kishore Shorey

A man stands by the side of the road staring into the smouldering skeleton of a large double storied building. He covers his nose with a blue silk handkerchief to keep the noxious, semi-sweet smell of burning nitrate at bay. The lenses of his round rimmed glasses reflect the flames that leap from room to room.

The camera pans back for a super wide shot and reveals behind him the apocalypse that everyone had been praying would never come playing out. The citizens of Lahore are moving hurriedly and fearfully towards the railway station. For once no one argues with the tonga walas who are demanding Rs100 to make the short journey. Bloated groups of people–women and children in the middle; wild-eyed men armed with swords, pistols, axes and lathis on the perimeters–move deliberately towards neighbourhoods where their co-religionists might give them safety. Hindus to Nisbet and Chamberlain Roads. Muslims to Mozang and Icchra. Sikhs want to make Amritsar or Delhi.

To the north, old Lahore is an inferno. The once rich markets and havelis of Shahalmi, one of Lahore’s mighty 13 gates is no more. Gangsters and politicians had banded together two days previous to raze the historic mohalla to the ground, killing hundreds of mostly Hindus. War chants echo in waves as lorries race by loaded with enraged men. “Khoon se lenge Pakistan!” “Har Har Mahadev.” For weeks the citizens of Punjab’s greatest city have heard that goondas from Amritsar have snuck into town to mock and shame their Muslim brothers to cleanse the city of all kafir. In response the Sikh leaders have mobilised their small armies of jathas in an all out war of revenge. Everyone knows that even the Lahore Relief Committee set up by some prominent Hindus is just a front for RSS militants more concerned with smuggling weapons to their frightened people than offering relief any sort of relief.

The days are unbearable. The early summer heat has maded the tar on the roads gooey. With the fires and explosions all across the city the temperature has never risen so high. Perhaps when the rains come all this madness with come to an end?

The staring man goes by the name of Roop Kishore Shorey. He turns away and falls into the backseat of an American sedan that has been idling for him. Inside an anxious driver guns the car down the road and yells out “Where to sahib? Lahore is no longer safe.”

Shorey doesn’t answer. Next to him fidgeting anxiously sits his friend, the music director Vinod, who just a few months earlier had completed his first score for the movie Khamosh Nigahein at the now destroyed Shorey Studio. Vinod shouts for the driver to turn the car, which was headed north toward the city and railway station, to the south. ‘Go to Walton Air field.’

At the airport the pair find Al Nasir, the debonair hero and recently licensed pilot, readying his tiny single prop plane for takeoff. “You know, I only have room for one of you,” Al Nasir says merrily, seemingly oblivious to the carnage in the city.

“Take him.” Vinod pushes a nearly catatonic Shorey forward. “I’ve got a family to worry about.”

“Thirty-four and still a bachelor! Who can believe it,” laughs Al Nasir. Sex and women were essential parts of the actor’s life. He’d just divorced the beautiful Meena and was now hot in pursuit of a number of other starlets in Lahore and Bombay.

Shorey embraces Vinod seemingly unwilling to let him go, but the music director untangles himself. “I’ll follow you soon. I’ll find you, don’t worry. My family must think I’m dead, I have to go.”

Vinod runs back to the car which speeds off toward the city.

Al Nasir gets in beside Shorey and notices that the producer’s normally pristine white shirt is grey with dust and ash. Sweat and tears have muddied the lenses of his expensive German spectacles. He smiles grimly at his friend and without waiting for approval from the tower taxis down the runway. Lifting off, the plane circles and climbs steadily through the heavy, smoky air. Shorey stares out of the window. The city of his birth, the city he loved, the city he was so determined would one day be as famous for its movies as Bombay, is now a medieval battleground. Fires, pillars of black smoke and crumbled buildings everywhere. Around the railway station a mini city has grown up. He can hear gun shots, There are army trucks at every chowk.

‘We’ll be back,’ Al Nasir, calls out. He’s still smiling. “Nehru and Jinnah and Gandhi will sort it out. This is Lahore after all. Let them call it Pakistan. It’s still India. In a few weeks everyone will get tired of blood and bombs and the public will want to see our movies and have fun again.”

The plane climbs higher and disappears into a dark grey cloud.