April 17 : “Would Garuda mistake a scarecrow For a sentinel human being?” From Savaal-e-Bachchoo, Javaab-e-Pattha
My friend Roddy Matthews, the Indian historian, occasionally brings to my notice tracts by Indian history writers which contend, for instance, that the
Vatican is actually an ancient Sanskrit sanctuary of the old and lost world-dominating Hindu empire, and the proof of this magnificent contention is that “Vatika” can in Sanskrit mean a holy grove. This genre of history helps to while away some afternoon hours at The Fox and Firkin in Lewisham (house motto: “For fox sake, buy me a firkin pint!”) though it doesn’t in any significant way advance one’s understanding of Indo-European history. Worth a laugh.
And now, on a reading tour of Italy, I chance my arm and offer my readers some tentative comparisons and deductions. Italians eat pasta and pizza and in these days of internationalised cuisine, everything else. Varieties of pasta, it is agreed, have their origin in Marco Polo’s visit to China and his return to Italy with the noodle recipe — which turned into spaghetti, macaroni, tagliatelli, burlesqueoni and the rest. What is not as widely, historically acknowledged is that Marco took a turn through India on his way back and there picked up the notion that wheat flour could be mixed with water, kneaded into a dough and flattened, and with a bit of ghee perhaps, gridled into a chappati. He brought the precious knowledge back to Italy and the pale imitation of this staple bread, impregnated with olive oil instead of pure ghee is now the Italian ciabatta! Get it? Chappati: ciabatta???
And pizzas are nothing but glorified naan. So Marco must have passed through Samarkhand and Bokhara too? Which makes one wonder what the Italians ate before Marco got back and wrote his recipe book.
So did Marco bring noodles from China to India? In other words is “seviaan” originally a Chinese dish or a Chinese derivation? The Gujarati and Parsi sweet versions of vermicelli are not known in Italy or in China and can be claimed as authentic pre-Marcopolic confections.
The history gets muddled. We know that Walter Raleigh brought tobacco, syphilis and potatoes to Europe from the newly-discovered America. Then all three come to India via Vasco and other degenerates. The big question then is, if potatoes only came to India in the 17th century, what then was the previous filling of masala dosai? I think we should be told.
My most significant visit is to Pompeii, the city destroyed by the volcanic eruption of Vesuvius in 79AD. The historical and tourist literature designates it a “city”. In official English parlance, a city is an urban settlement with a cathedral — so Salisbury is a city, but Brixton is not. Walking through the ruins, one notes that there are villas and forums, temples, theatres, grand houses with columns holding up the ceilings of reception rooms, baths, mosaic floors, paintings on the walls and in streets large stones placed as breakers in the centre of the cobbled streets to deter chariots from exceeding the speed limit.
Pompeii has all the appurtenances of a real city with streets and shops, villas, a forum, temples, gardens, a theatre, a whorehouse, the reserved and luxurious quarters of the imperial cittara player, triumphal arches, public baths, restaurants or what used to be public eating houses and magnificent fortifications.
Walking around it for three hours — a proper circuit would take days — I begin to compare the ruined or abandoned “city” to which tourists to northern India are inevitably directed: Fatehpur Sikri. It comes to mind because it is said that it was abandoned when the river that supplied it with water changed its course. Pompeii was destroyed by the first eruption of Vesuvius, the regional volcano which stands on the edge of what is now Napoli and as it was being restored and rebuilt, was subject to a second eruption which destroyed it completely. The citizens of the time got the message and it was left as a ruin, buried by mud and time till it was dug up in the 18th century and has been slowly restored — as a ruin. It is a compelling relic which Fatehpur Sikri is not.
Why we persist in calling this collection of open pavilions a “city” has always been puzzling. One always associates cities with a population and with the normal human activities of life and production. Fatehpur, from the literature authoritatively issued by the Archaeological Survey of India and from the nonsense one hears from the on-the-spot “guides” seems to have had neither.
The other feature of Fatehpur and other Mughal buildings that has puzzled me since I was first dragged around them by my parents, is that the pavilions which are labelled “palaces” seem to have only one wall and are open to the wind and weather on three sides. It gets very hot on the Indo-Gangetic plain in summer and quite cold in winter. How did anyone live or do anything else in these “palaces”? I have always fancied that they must have been heavily carpeted and there must have been heavy drapes acting as the second, third and fourth walls of these pavilions, but that’s a conjecture which has never been confirmed, even by archaeologically and historically well-read friends. When, next to these pavilions one comes across what one is told were the “quarters” of a queen or princess, it’s always some dark and tiny windowless dungeon with stone floors and an overbearing though tiny dome of a ceiling. How did they fit a bed in there? And don’t princesses need wardrobes and dressing tables?
The logical plan of Pompeii’s villas is instantly comprehensible: the courtyards, the columns, the pools, the chambers each with its purpose and access to temperature control between windows at various heights and fireplaces, the baths, the kitchens, the storerooms, the stables and the adornment of the walls with murals.
I offer this comparative disloyalty as a series of questions rather than an attempt, as the street-talk of Mumbai has it, at “dissing India”. I expect the usual abusive emails from my fellow Indian patriots for praising an Italian ruin and running down Indian ones. And then I think there may be one or two people in Delhi who may secretly, very secretly, agree with me.
By Farrukh Dhondy
