Senior litterateur Prakash Manu has entered his seventy-fourth year after completing seventy-three years of his life. Exactly thirty years ago in the year 1993, his novel ‘Yeh Jo Dilli Hai’ was published. Since then till now this novel has been in equal discussion. How this story of the dreams and struggles of young Satyakam, who came to do journalism in a metropolis like Delhi, connects with his love and future as well as the fundamental questions of humanity, this is the core of the aliveness of this work. Recently research was also done on this in Jodhpur University. Read excerpts from this novel ‘Yeh Jo Dilli Hai’ on Manu’s birthday:
‘There is another Delhi in Delhi!’
The next day, instead of going to the office, the feet reached the India Gate (you can easily imagine…how) first the feet were surprised…and then the eyes.
If you keep roaming in the same circle for a long time, then maybe it happens that getting out of that circle is a thrill…! Satyakam kept roaming there for some time.
He was feeling really good, open and open. After a while, Kaveri was seen coming – easy, simple Kaveri in yellow saree. When did you see Kaveri in saree before? Satyakam caught in a little riddle! Then another puzzle, what happens as soon as you wear a saree that…!
Then there is a third idea-simplicity has its own beauty which cools, pacifies. What has that Pant said that ‘the girl was my lovely friend…!’
When he saw Kaveri, a slight tremor was visible on Satyakam’s face. Like a grateful greeting – silence!
Kaveri giggled.
Just like that, just like that – or had he seen something like this?
Satyakam was feeling ashamed of his slight shyness. Thinking – Kaveri’s behavior is more open – healthy!
Both of them wandered aimlessly in the lawns of India Gate for a long time. Fragments of conversation – sometimes meaningful, sometimes meaningless. Home, office, past, country, society… and don’t look at things of the future. I don’t know what all I kept remembering. What words kept coming down. His enthusiasm was overflowing.
Don’t know why Satyakam in yellow saree Kaveri, her mind flying like flowers, butterflies and spring – and say that another mind was visible inside the mind.
He felt that you cannot touch Kaveri even after touching it. He is beyond the body and the touches – somewhere else, somewhere else…! And he wanted to touch her – a challenge. From where does such sweetness, simplicity come from… Simple love. What is there in Kaveri that is… only in Kaveri! Or does he think so?
While roaming around, they came to the zoo. Saw the board from a distance and Kaveri’s Kaveripan started…! There was much for Kaveri here that would leave her yearning like a child. And seeing Kaveri happy – or should we say seeing Kaveri – Satyakam was getting happy.
“Look at that…that…!” While roaming around, Kaveri pointed out. And Satyakam speechless. Surprised.
Some distance away was a pair of male and female zebra. Such beautiful black stripes on both of their bodies as if a painter had just touched a brush and left a picture… Final touch! And both have come out of the picture and are standing outside. Judging each other with such affection- such beautiful, silent love that… Satyakam found himself pictographed.
And when he turned and looked towards Kaveri, there was mischief in his eyes.
Yet another wonder. There was a black panther with green eyes in a cage. He was walking so furiously – and his eyes burning like flames were telling as if to say ‘Unlock me for a moment, just for a moment’ – and son of man I tell you that. ..That Ssale…Hecked Baaz…!’
Listen, listen, listen, the voice of the forest. Of that forest, which was trampled, cut, destroyed by man, but still its primitive voice ever rises…? Someone has said within Satyakam.
Some monkeys were ahead – jumping and jumping. One of them got off the branch. Made a cup of leaves and started drinking water from the canal.
“Look at that, Kaveri…!”
“R u serious…”
There were different types of langurs – their faces were as if they had just come back after playing Holi. Female langur very soft – with very indescribable softness, stick to her child. Mother is after all – mother is mother…!
The most beautiful were the colorful parrots with long tails. So many colors, so many colors in parrots – red, blue, yellow, purple… that Satyakam was surprised, some of the colors of the mind were not mixed in them!
Some parrots look like magicians, with colorful caps on their heads. The voices are also strange, Tadap-Tadap-Tadap…! When Satyakam copied, the parrot enjoyed it – speak son, speak… and speak…! Satyakam had to lose.
Just hummed something like this, “Aha, aha… are parrots also like this?”
And Kaveri’s childlike playfulness began to clap her hands, “Here you are, Satyakam…Yeh…! The real Satyakam is here – not the one with the heavy cloak…That, that…”
“His antonym is – isn’t it!…Antonym of one day of Ashadh.”
“Exactly!…and I hate that fellow traveller!!” When Kaveri said in a cool manner, Satyakam laughed.
While wandering, he came to the place where the peacocks were – in big cages.
Satyakam and Kaveri were standing in front of a peacock’s cage. Staring at her beautiful feathers with admiring eyes….and who can say that peacocks don’t know how to recognize admiring glances. Kaveri was being seen with very playful eyes. Almost to the point of staring.
“Why have you never seen a peacock?”
Kaveri nodded happily.
What happened all of a sudden that such a sound as clouds roll in…and lo, all the peacock’s feathers were opened – and it was in a new form.
As soon as we saw it, the peacock started dancing.
Trembling all around. Trembling wind…strange rhythm…! Kaveri is shocked, Satyakam too. So did the peacock really understand the meaning of those admiring eyes? And the distance was being danced with the greed of getting praise and with more speed – even more speed…! As if there is a storm in the feet, there should be lightning.
What a wonderful dance it was. Kaveri applauded, “Wow!”
He had seen the dancing peacock for the first time.
Satyakam once sitting on the window of a train saw a peacock dancing, far away in the fields, but…
Even he had not seen what happened after the dancing peacock.
i.e…? When Kaveri was clapping after seeing the dance of that green peacock with some blueness, then how long would the white peacock standing in the other cage keep staring? And then like magic happened!
Then the opening of the wings like the rolling of clouds. In the same way, the movement of the storm, the lightning tied in the feet!
And Thar-Thar-Thar…the trembling rhythm!
And in no time, the white peacock also danced in the same rhythm and dance. Trembling earth, trembling sky, trembling wind…!
Both the peacocks dance together… as if both are participating in a dance competition. Kaveri speechless. Speechless Satyakam.
Wah-wah, brother wow…!
Applause!…Everyone’s round applause!!
Sometimes a moment of happiness becomes so big that sorrow, pain… poison-everything starts dissolving inside it.
Somewhere this passion of peacock dance had entered Satyakam as well – in its own way.
Kaveri and him.
He and Kaveri.
The peacocks joined them by dancing and dancing.
Both their minds were dancing with the peacocks – and both realized together that the dance of the mind must be like the dance of the peacocks.
Some distance ahead there was solitude – the green solitude of a clump of green bushes, so Satyakam took hold of Kaveri’s hand and put it to his lips. Kaveri’s smiling eyes met his and soon both of them pulled themselves together.
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Then Kaveri proposes to visit the Modern Art Gallery. Satyakam had seen the art gallery many times before, but with Kaveri he would see it for the first time, wouldn’t he? And it is not surprising if the presence of Kaveri changes the angle of things and sometimes even the whole scenario. Satyakam had understood this much.
Now he was walking from the zoo to the art gallery, eating corn. Telling And Satyakam was feeling, he has seen Delhi today – for the first time DTC full of crammed crowd and insults. Delhi was so different from buses. How charming And Kaveri is no longer Kaveri, it was wind….hill wind!…playful wind touched the mountain springs!!
The wind was pulling Satyakam. Talking wind… Smiling wind. The wind humming the song-trembling wind…!
And there also his commentary started.
He was missing his home and childhood. He saw that home, that childhood spontaneity and spontaneous moments slowly getting destroyed in the storm of commercialism. As in a storm, each end of the thatch becomes weak. One by one bamboo, thuni… and then one day… thump thump!!
It was only mother who understood him. Mother who was disabled…could not even walk properly. Helpless even while alive. Still, there was so much affection… and she was not helpless, she was made helpless. A story telling which Satyakam’s lips always start burning. And he has to leave it midway and pour water on his coal eyes….Then one day mother left and…
Since then he has been getting cut off from home, in fact he has been cut off.
Now the house follows him in the memories – and in the sleep, the subconscious – everywhere… The feeling of home is tingling. It is just like a living thing becoming inanimate or non-existent in an instant.
National Gallery of Modern Art!…Hey, we’re here – so soon!
Let’s go out on the lawn to meet the statues waiting in the sun first! Really a world of rugged feelings, experiences, shapes.
Passing by the artefacts outside the Modern Art Gallery, he entered.
A long journey of color and lines – from Raja Ravi Varma, Rabindranath Tagore, Nandlal Basu, Abanindranath Tagore, Ramkinkar, Amrita Sher-Gil to Hussain, Ganesh Paine and G.R. Till satisfaction
The world of colors today seemed closer and more personal to Satyakam because Kaveri was close to him.
Kaveri may not have had much technical knowledge in the matter of painting, but she was an intelligent – and even more emotional – viewer and could get to the bottom of things. She used to understand very deeply each gesture of the pictures, the shades of colors, the moods…and the interesting thing is that whatever she saw, she would explain it in today’s context. And he used to come alive as soon as he saw the picture. The shapes that were locked in the frame a moment ago suddenly burst out of bounds and come out.
A river of living people, living feelings kept flowing between them.
Rabindranath Tagore’s sketches, Nandlal Basu’s art, Yamini Rai’s art-experiments, folk-art wearing a new face, Abanindranath Thakur’s art simplicity. The fleshy beauty of Ravi Varma’s art going on at the other end of this very different. And here in art one by one astonishing expressions of abstraction, distortion and fantasy. The meaning and inconsistencies of awkwardness.
By repeatedly breaking the rules, the art goes towards freedom and with freedom, then one by one unique expressions deepen like classical ragas. Deep meaning one by one.
Amidst all this, a new meaning of beauty, a new aura was being published, because Kaveri was with us today.
Did the painting of Raja Ravi Varma with fruits in his hand make him laugh out loud because Kaveri was with him today? Laughter Kaveri too, then barely restraining herself, said, “Beauty, only beauty of the body! To measure the beauty of intelligence, I do not see that art in Raja Ravi Varma. Is…!” And then rounds of laughter.
When something became spontaneous, she said, “If I had to choose one of the two sisters of Amrita Sher-Gil and all today’s experiments, I would choose these two sisters. Teasing all the experiments, these sisters still make us feel their power.”
When we left there, the bus going to Pragati Maidan was standing in front.
Don’t know what to suggest to Satyakam. Pulling Kaveri’s arm, he said, “Come on Kaveri, we will take our respective buses to return from there.”
When he got down from the bus at Pragati Maidan, he was drenched in a light shower of rain. It wasn’t bad to get drenched in a little rain after a day of sweltering heat. Feeling hungry, two parathas were lying in Kaveri’s lunchbox. They sat in the lawn and ate parathas with chilli pickle, drank coffee and felt close to each other.
When the coffee got a little warm, Satyakam felt relieved. The ‘philosopher’ sitting inside hit hard. Slowly, stressing on each word, he said, “Kaveri is feeling so good today’s openness!… Today I understood how important it is to have a Pragati Maidan in a congested city like Delhi!”
Kaveri burst out laughing – very loudly. She kept on laughing…she kept on laughing…why is this Kaveri laughing so much today? No, she used to laugh before as well, but today she doesn’t seem to be laughing – why?
“Maybe I said something too stupid?” Satyakam Jhenpa.
No – he pretended to be shy. He can be a bit of a dramatist too – he felt it while talking with Kaveri today.
“What’s the matter? You have been saying something or the other since morning!”
“So…?”
“Maybe, you didn’t laugh.”
“So…?”
“Look over there…!” Kaveri raised her finger towards Satyakam – and seeing him looking here and there said, “Oh no idiot. Look at your chest… what a modern art, abstract… fantastic!.”
When Satyakam saw it, he was shocked. badly. This time there was real shyness – not pretended to be shy.
His chest hair was really presenting a sample of modern painting on his white kurta.
“I actually…that…doesn’t wear a vest…!” Satyakam was saying as if someone was caught red-handed while stealing.
“So when am I complaining…? You look fine even like this, but better.” By saying Kaveri then laughingly.
He too.
And all the distances inside and outside seem to have narrowed.
After some time the laughter stopped, then Satyakam wearing a serious posture said, “Brother Kaveri, your painter is always active.”
“And your poet. The pair is not bad…and for this, if you want, thank Rajdhani Press.”
Saying this, Kaveri’s eyes lit up with laughter – very clear, feel free laughter.
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# Contact: Prakash Manu, 545 Sector-29, Faridabad (Haryana), Pin-121008, Mohd. 09810602327, Email- prakashmanu333@gmail.com
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