City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi

During his lifetime, the Sultan had built himself a massive tomb of red sandstone. This he erected in the very centre of Jahanpanah, the new city of Delhi he had first built, then destroyed.

Dr Jaffery said that very few people in Delhi now wanted to study classical Persian, the language which, like French in Imperial Russia, had for centuries been the first tongue of every educated Delhi-wallah. ‘No one has any interest in the classics today,’ he said. ‘If they read at all, they read trash from America. They have no idea what they are

‘Learning Persian would give you access to some great treasures. I would not charge you for lessons. I am half a dervish: money means nothing to me. All I ask is that you work hard.’

‘But many people in Delhi still speak Urdu.’ ‘Urdu is an aristocratic language. It was not the language of the working classes. Those who are left - the artisans - speak Karkhana [factory] Urdu. The Urdu of the poets is dead.’

‘Of course Karachi Urdu is really pure Delhi Urdu,’ explained a judge, biting a pakora. ‘Now that they have Sanskritized all the dialects in India, this is the last place you can hear it spoken.’

When Shah Jehan moved the court from Agra to the new city of Shahjehanabad in 1648, it was Jahanara Begum who built the Chandni Chowk, the principal avenue of the Old City. Half-way down the boulevard she built a vast caravanserai which, before it was destroyed in 1857, was regularly described by visitors to Delhi as the most magnificent building o

‘In the fort I saw the finest set of buildings in the world - but no one was caring for them. They were all falling apart. My ancestors brought such sophisticated culture to India — but they have just let it disintegrate. In time it will just disappear and no one will ever know.’

‘But don’t your pupils get good jobs? And doesn’t their success encourage others?’ ‘No. They are all Muslims. There is no future for them in modern India. Most become gundas or smugglers.’

The moment had come for me to visit Karachi for myself.