Celebrating death and union in Wadi

This week we are in a suburb of Gulbarga, for the Urs of Hazrat Syed Mohammed Badesha Qadri. My friend Usman Rangila joins me in the 16-hour drive to Wadi, where five thousand people gather to celebrate the 22nd death anniversary of the saint.

All of us stay at Halkatta Shareef, the dargah complex built by the saint’s son and successor as Pir, Hazrat Mohammed Ibrahim Shah Qadri Chisti Yemeni Banda Nawazi. The Pir’s mureeds (there is no English translation) call him Bawa, or father. He is a stocky man with twinkling green eyes. Bawa’s mureeds have helped him build the dargah complex brick by brick over 22 years, in the middle of what is sweltering nowhere.

Fifty kilometres from Gulbarga, Wadi has three principal features: a cement factory owned by ACC whose smoke plumes dominate the village’s vaporous skyline, a railway junction, and the Halkatta Shareef.

The terrain is rocky -- the sandstone that juts out of the ground is Wadi’s principle industry -- and the air is hot enough to give you a headache inside an airconditioned saloon.

The mureeds return for the Urs with enthusiasm; for many these two days is the highlight of every year. It is difficult to explain their relationship with their pir. It is intense, mostly unspoken and very personal.

For the Urs, they adopt tasks and carry them out with fervour. The Pune contingent, for example, comes in a week early and paints the entire complex, making it shiny and new every year.

The activity begins on Wednesday evening, with the arrival of the sandal, a sandwalwood paste and fabric that covers the saint’s mazhar, from Hyderabad by a special train organised by Railways. It is received at the station with much fanfare and an impromptu qawwali concert.

Back at Halkatta Shareef, the families settle in for the celebrations. The dargah’s grounds have become a village fair. At the centre, families live and sleep in the open around a large hauz. The men wear cotton plugs suffused in that indescribable but uniquely Muslim perfume in the cranny above the orifice of their ear. The smell of this fills the air, sharing space with the poetry of Amir Khusro that is played loudly.

On the periphery, there is food and entertainment. As with every Indian festival, there is also some serious shopping. Sample, for instance, the 100-year old formula of the Special Gesudaraz Herbal Bathing Powder For Long, Soft, Silky Hair (“Created by Haji M A Rehman ‘Ladley’, Marketed by Haji M A Qadeer ‘Ladley’.”)

Mohammed Altaf Hussain, M A Rehman’s grandson sells the powder from a stall. A 100-gramme box will cost you Rs 20, and sports the unbeatable appeal of Juhi Chawla on its cover.

The fair is compered expertly over a public address system that repeats all messages in three languages: English, Kannada and Urdu.

The security that those gathered feel is reflected in the voice of the announcer. He uses the same tenor when asking that people be awakened to clear the grounds (“Soyein huey ko mohabbat sey jagaein”) and when announcing that a three-year-old has been lost in the crowd.

A recorded Amin Sayani-like voice extolling the evils of television is played from one of the stalls selling cassettes. Five bored-looking men and a curious boy gather around to listen; apart from them there are no takers.

A group of volunteer mureeds organises everything. One of them is Prabhu Das, who wears a white skullcap. Everybody has their head covered, most men sporting a knitted cap ringed with the Halkatta colours: red, green, white, black and yellow, which are also the colours of Rastaman and Bob Marley.

After the evening prayer, Bawa comes out of his house and towards the Samakhana, the concert hall.

A troupe of Fukra (fakirs) lead him, singing the zikr, “Allah-Allah-Allah hoo” accompanied with a duff and a cascading and hypnotic four-note beat. The head fakir is the Fukra’s sarguru. He is a hawkeyed man dressed in black, and with an authoritative air. The Fukra pitch their tent on the periphery of the grounds, right at the very back. They eat the food of beggars: stale, crisp, papad-like rotis that crumble to the touch, and leftover gravy. Water is swigged from a canvas-covered aluminium army canteen. They have a mysterious aura about them and have their own patron saint, Hazrat Ahmed Kabir Rafai, nephew of the Iraqi Sufi, Hazrat Abdul Qadir Jilani, founder of the Qadiriya Silsila.

That night, there is a sama, a qawwali concert. Two singers dominate, singing qawwalis penned by Bawa; one is a friend, the Hyderabadi Mohammed Mahbub, who for my money is the finest qawwal in all of south India. But the star tonight, going by demand, is another man from Hyderabad. His name is Vittal Rao.

The singing goes on till 5 in the morning.

The next day, Bawa will bestow some of his mureeds with khilafats, entitling them to become khaliphas, or caliphs, and therefore Pirs.

Bawa holds, and can bestow, the khilafats of the orders of Chistiya, of Qadiriya and of Banda Nawaz, which though of the family of the Chistiya Silsila, assigns its own khilafats.

The ceremony is at the Samakhana; only men may attend.

The audience sits on the floor facing Bawa, who stands and, on conical caps, called Kula, expertly wraps sheets of narrow fabric into turbans, holding one end under his beard. Eight men are then gifted the headgear. Four of the turbans are saffron and yellow, the colours of the orders of Chistiya and of Banda Nawaz; four are green, the order of Qadiriya.

As the turbans are put in place, the fakir sarguru asks the audience: “Is it right to make this man a caliph?”

“Al Ham’d-u-lillah!” is the response: “With the grace of Mohammed!” The eight men are then asked to sit facing Bawa and he sips from small glasses of milk, giving them one each to finish. They do so and are now caliphs. The moment they get their first mureed, they will become Pirs.

The ceremony ends with a celebratory qawwali sung by Mohammed Mahbub and Babu Mian, Halkatta’s resident qawwal. They sing ‘Mubarak bashad’ in the high pitch that qawwali is famous for. Asif, Mohammed Mahbub’s 6-year-old son, is encouraged by his father to join in. His voice pierces through, one clean octave over everyone else’s, searching the upper reaches of the Samakhana’s minarets before escaping into the warm April evening.

A roll of drums soon alerts us to the arrival of the chief guests, and everyone rushes out. One of the invitees, Sharana Baswappa Appa, 8th Mahadoshaha Peetadhipati of the Basaweshwar Samsthana in Gulbarga, is ill and and has sent word that he will be unable to attend, for the first time in seven years.

The others are Totendra Sivachari Swami of Nalway, Chandra Gunda Shivacharey of Kerengi, Nagappaya Swami of Alloli, Gangadhar Sivachari Swami of Yadgir, Mune Prasad Sarope of Raour, Seddevera Dewarao of Degai, Gangadhar Dewarao of Malkedh and Channa Malleshwara Tyagi Swami of Itka. The swamis are given an honour guard that plays a military beat on the drums as they are escorted to the Samakhana.

With the eight swamis sits U C Deveshwar, senior vice president of ACC. The company has built and maintains the road that leads to Halkatta Shareef, and is conducting a free medical camp inside.

Mr Deveshwar is requested to say a few words; he speaks in Urdu. “Bahut ajooba tajoorba hai”, he says, “It is miraculous that religions can exist in this kind of union.” His every statement is greeted with delighted shouts of “Bahut khoob!” and “Subhanallah!”.

The chief guests then speak in turn, some of them in Kannada, referring to Bawa as Saheb. The packed hall listens in rapt attention. Bawa sits in the audience, kneeling in respect with feet under legs -- as he sits in the presence of the Sajjada Nashin, the guardian, of the Dargah-e-Bandanawaz.

One swami speaks in Hindi. “I cannot normally speak it,” he says, eyes laughing, “but every year I stand here and face you I am somehow able.”

“What brought me here?” he asks, “the train. What was the engine of the train? Saheb’s devotion.”

This gets a round of applause.

“Where is Allah? He is neither in mandir nor in masjid. Allah sits here among us,” says the sadhu, sweeping his arm in the direction of Bawa. “There are many religions, but there is only one god. We may be of different religions but we are one people.” His message is as old as this land.

The applause is loud and sustained.

The qawwals then sing for the chief guests. The mureeds rise, one after the other, sometimes in twos and threes, and approach the swamis, asking them to touch and bless the money they ceremonially carry in cupped hands. This is then taken to Bawa and soon a small mountain of coins and notes rises by his side. It is handed over to the qawwals.

After the qawwali, the sadhus depart, once again accompanied by drum rolls.

The local police chief, an IPS man, comes to inquire of Bawa if all is well. It is.

Soon after, a crowd gathers to take the gilaf, the fabric covering the mazhar, into the dargah. The band strikes up a furious beat, and a group of intense young local men -- the Qadiriya braves -- dances frantically, hands in the air, swords flashing. As quickly as they started, they stop, and, hearts still pounding from the exertion and the excitement, they launch themselves into a series of physical activities.

First they twirl a steel lathi expertly, almost dance-like, in the air. Then they engage in simulated battle, the blows of their lathis ringing out louder than the shouts of their akhara head, who urges them on. This is followed by fire-eating and gymnastics, the young men somersaulting over an ever-higher lathi held by two others, landing lightly on their feet.

Thursday night is ended with a mushaira, where 40 men rise to read their poetry. They end only at 5 am, and it is time to leave. We pass an old man who sits by himself facing the dargah, recounting the massacre at Karbala, alternately shouting out the lines of Yazid and of Hussain. As we open the car’s doors, the muezzin calls the faithful to rise for the Fazr namaz, the first prayer of the day. It is the only prayer that is different in text among the five daily prayers.

“As-salato khairum minan noum,” he wails, his voice carrying far out into the cool morning: Prayer is better than sleep.

I ponder that line as we drive back to Bombay.