Mirza Farhatullah Baig’s Urdu novel ‘Dehli Ki Aakhri Shama’ recreates Delhi’s lost poetic heritage

Marsiya Dilli ye marhoom ka ae dost na cher
Na sunaa jaaye-gaa hum se yeh fasaanaa hargiz

Do not strike the chords of the story of Delhi
My heart won’t bear the woeful tale of its loss

Delhi, the city of lights and poetry, has been destroyed seven times only to rise again each time from the ashes of memory, a memory painted into vivid relics and commemoratives; the memoirs of loss and longing.

The life of the last King of Delhi, the poet Bahadur Shah Zafar, took a drastic turn in 1857 when the British exiled him to Rangoon for his alleged role in the uprising of 1857. His sons were shot, his titles stripped and his poetry confiscated. Denied a pen and paper, the exiled and imprisoned poet-king used a burnt stick to write his epitaph on the walls of the small room, outpouring his desolation and heartache:

Padhne faatehaa koi aaye kyon
koi chaar phool chadhane aaye kyon
koi aake shama jalaye kyon
main vo bekasi kaa mazaar huun

The siege of Delhi marked the end of a literary epoch, but the nostalgia inspired numerous fictitious and fanciful accounts of the city, colonial rule playing an ironic impetus in this memorialisation, with its blooming print culture and a fetish for memorabilia. Among those who bled...

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