This Above all
The grand spectacle
KHUSHWANT SINGH

TWO programmes I never miss watching over TV are the Republic Day Parade down Rajpath and Beating Retreat at Vijay Chowk three days later. They have been getting better and better; this year they were the best ever. I don’t know who the people responsible for the bandobast were, but they deserve hearty pats on their backs — Shaabash! Well done!

I have seen military tattoos in England, including one outside Edinburgh Castle where Sikh bagpipers led the march; I have seen Bastille Day parade down Champs Elysees led by cadets of St. Cyr Academy and Israel’s Independence Day parade in Beersheva and many others in Washington, Moscow and Beijing on TV but take it from me our boys do a better job than any of them.

There is childish joy seeing men decked in colourful uniforms of khaki, red, blue and black, chests ablaze with medals swinging their arms in unison and marching in step to the playing of bands. In the spectacular display of martial splendour, our President and Prime Minister look oddly out of place. We can’t do anything about their physical stature but since their presence is a must, it would not be too bad an idea to persuade them to wear uniforms of some kind on these two events. No joking! Of the two spectacles, I prefer watching Beating Retreat. The parade takes up all the morning and there is a lot of coming and going of VIPs, preliminary rituals, banging away of canons and endless floats of different states which I find somewhat tedious.

On the other hand, the Retreat is compact and over in an hour. It has no boring interludes; it is a succession of bands, non-stop martial music till the Tri-colour is lowered. And as the sun goes behind Rashtrapati Bhawan, bands march uphill through arches of necks of caparisoned camels playing Allama Iqbal’s Saarey Jahaan Sey Achha Hindustan Hamaara.

Thousands of bulbs are switched on lighting the Secretariates and the Presidential Palaces. Bapu’s favourite hymn Abide with me rings out in melancholy notes. He might have disapproved of the display of military might along Rajpath but he would have certainly enjoyed Beating of the Retreat, if for no other reason than that here are soldiers in uniforms not carrying guns but bugles, bagpipes, trombones, flutes, cymbals and drums.

Year of the Dervish

This is going to be the year of Dervish Jalaluddin Rumi. He was born 800 years ago on September 30, 1207. Preparations are afoot to celebrate his birth anniversary on a world-wide scale. I understand our government has earmarked a tidy sum for the purpose. I do not know how birth anniversaries of scholars, poets and saintly personalities can be celebrated besides bringing their writings and messages to the common people.

Rumi wrote in Persian. Most of his mathnavi is available in English translation. Much of it is obscure and esoteric. I am not aware of it being translated in any Indian language. But I have reason to believe that most of our celebrated poets read him in the original. One of Ghalib’s couplets baazeechai atfaal hai duniya meyrey aagey is lifted straight from the mathnavi.

Rumi also set up the Dervish order in Koyna (Turkey), where he lived most of his life and died on December 17, 1273. His disciples continue to dance the way he did — dressed in long red fez caps and black tassels, flowing white skirts pirouetting round and round in endless circles to the beat of the drums and melancholy notes of flutes. It is spectacular.

I expect our organisers or the Turkish embassy in Delhi will get a party of dancing dervishes and take them on a Bharat Darshan tour. May be the Afghan embassy will also pitch in as Jalaluddin was born in Balkh (Afghanistan) and initially known as Jalaluddin Balkhi. To avoid Mongol depredations, he migrated to Koyna (then under Roman domination, hence the suffix Rumi) when he was ten years old. He was meant to follow his father’s calling of being the Sheikh of his community and did so till he was in his thirties. Then he met Sufi Shams Tabrizi. It was a dramatic turnabout in his life. He turned Sufi and poetry burst out of him like lava out of a volcano.

Rumi’s poetry is a strange amalgam of the divine and the earthy. He wrote about the love of God, Jesus, Prophet Mohammed, Hazrat Ali and Sufi saints; he also versified anecdotes of sexual exploits. Nevertheless some of them are gems. He had an open mind.

(All translations by Barks & Moyne)

Rumi did not value book learning. He said:

He extolled poverty. What you own can vanish; it’s only a dream, a vanity, breath through a moustache, he wrote. What really makes a difference is love in practice. He wrote:

When Rumi died on December 17, 1273, he told his disciples:

of the traceless, neither body nor soul.

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