O, What A Lovely Death!

IT happened just like they said. A little after mid-day on one of those sultry monsoon days when the overcast sky spread its hot damp over the unsuspecting city, disaster struck. Five nuclear devices of varying megatonnage cleared Indian air space and landed in around the capital, reducing everything in a few seconds to a layer of ashes. First to be hit were small towns like Panipat and Karnal—towns whose loss could easily be sustained by the national budget; then the suburbs of Model Town and Punjabi Bagh, then ancient Old Delhi and finally ancient New Delhi. At least, when the dust settled anyone could escape. They were only two megaton bombs—the size of motorcycles—a hundred times stronger than the Hiroshima one, and so on impact, 200 million people just evaporated, and another 100 million were converted into radioactive waste. The millions still left suffered nausea, permanent nose bleed, internal haemorrhage and facial burns. Before they, too, succumbed to their injuries.

For us here in the 21st century the results of the nuclear bomb are both tragic and fortunate. Tragic because of the apocalyptic destruction of entire cities like New Delhi, Amritsar and Chandigarh, yet fortunate because some of the victims of these disasters have been preserved along with their handiwork—a silent but eloquent testimony to a special culture, an industrious people whose civilisation was doomed by the nationalist zeal of a few mad men.

It may not be easy to reconstruct the life and times, the rise and fall of a people by examining just a few charred fragments of their culture; but perhaps we may find the history of urban 20th century culture in the remains of a fast-food restaurant, in a collapsed high-rise office building or the broken columns of a stadium; even in the fragments of a concrete drain, a mangled bus or a burned car. We may even manage a glimpse into the private lives of its middle class by sifting through the remains of a destroyed home, by recording the expressions of its dead inhabitants. As the deep cover of ashes was removed, a particularly unique urban structure was revealed to archaeologists and to posterity. Ancient New Delhi, it seems, had been dominated by many rulers. They speak of the eight cities of Delhi; of a time when an Old Fort dominated the skyline, of towering minarets like the Qutab Minar and crumbling ramparts like Tughlakabad, of Moghul Delhi like Shahjahanbad; and of Imperial Delhi, the new capital of British India, a city laid out in bold strokes—open, sprawling and perennially green; a place where winter blazed with the glory of pointsettias and the days were spent sipping carrot wine and ambling to rose shows. A place of big bungalows, noble squares and tree-lined avenues.

Yet, a site discovered in the southern region of the excavations in an area called Greater Kailash reveals a culture vastly different from its Colonial ancestry, and one that defies all the accepted precepts of archaeology. Layer upon layer, strata upon strata of awkward buildings and apparently useless items are now being cata-logued to provide us a close-up of the domestic lives of the inhabitants.

Dr B.B. Kumar of the Archaeological Survey of Modern India (ASMI) has hit upon the remains of an ancient commercial cen-tre in an area which he believes was once called 'The Greater Kailash Market'. Carbon-dated to 1985, it is obvious from the stratification that a primitive modern culture was sharply imposed upon a more advanced traditional one. "Culturally, these people were very backward," says Kumar. "Their whole life revolved around collection and accumulation." Items totally unnecessary for day-to-day living were bought and hoarded in large castle-like buildings believed to be houses. "Every place sold something or the other," said Dr Kumar, "...lamps for the house, necklaces for the body, upholstery for the car...never any bookshop or museum."

 Many of these houses, he maintains, belong to the Early Punjabi Baroque period—a particularly grotesque period in architectural history, where the burgeoning affluence of its owners began to be reflected in the architecture. One particular example in the Greater Kailash excavations is of a house like no house at all, not in history anyway. A series of broken pediments and Doric cornices in the top layer of the burnt-out stratification showed a facade that was stylistically Greek; a second layer revealed a structure that was essentially Mongolian; finally, archaeologists digging the remaining streets found a ground floor that could easily be classified as the Middle Halwai Period.

The Halwaian Invasion, historians explain, has been dated to the early 1950s. A desperate tribe of self-indulgent invaders whose genius lay in raiding their own culture and laying it waste. Yet, despite their mean conquering nature, the Early Halwais were a happy lot. They knew how to live life and they lived it in style. Many of the faded photographs that have been carefully preserved in the National Archives show the Halwai family as being larger than the ordinary family, both in size and number. Altogether, the Halwai family portrait was a fitting testimony to a grand tradition in obesity, studied intemperance and occasional flatulence.

Noted anthropologist Herman Lardner, who has carefully pieced together the life of Early Halwais in his new book Myths and Realities of Halwai Life talks of the balanced private lives of this tribe. In fact, one of the smaller houses in the Greater Kailash area has revealed, in a small room, a metal container in the outstretched hands of an elderly couple, suggestive of an act in which a inflammable fluid. Although little remains of the woman, except for a few charred bits of nylon, sociologists believe that this was a revival of the ancient ritual of Sati, welcoming the bride into her new home. Ancients claimed that the act of immolation often brought good luck to the new couple, mostly in the form of Vespas, self-defrosting fridges and colour TVs.

ON the basis of excavated evidence we are also able to arrive at certain hypotheses about the racial preferences of the Halwais. A torn section of a Sunday newspaper paper reveals one query from "a 179 cms Aggarwal male who desires a 27-year-old fair and homely female well-versed in household chores." Advertising for matrimony seemed necessary in a culture where social alliances on a day-to-day basis were particularly difficult. Sociologists are also able to infer from this and other advertisements a preference for members of the fair races, and the fact that matrimony did not stem from the desire for love and companionship, but from the desire for a young, docile house-keeper.

Nuclear archaeologists digging near the foundations of the Greater Kailash house have also hit upon an extensive system of underground pipes. The initial theory was that the modern Indian drainage system was as advanced as anywhere in the world. However, as our team of archaeologists and experts broke through the concrete, an entirely new and unsuspected function was revealed. Lying within, in awkward circular positions, were whole families of undernourished labourers. Many such families, it is believed, came to the city in search of a better life. And the city, in turn, exploited their skill and manpower for gigantic building projects. But after the constructions were complete, the city fathers con-fined the labourers to the sewage system in the hope that someday, like sewage, they too could be dumped in the outlying areas.

Excavations north of Greater Kailash have revealed a structure of enormous proportions. Tiny pigeonholes piled on top of each other in a stepped ziggurat formation—unlike the individual houses of Greater Kailash—suggest a collective type of settlement. Black objects identified as cellular phones have been recovered from many sites. These are the exact replicas of an instrument invented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1880 for long distance communication. It is unclear if the purpose here was the same. Many of the rooms so far recovered are small and prison-like; it is obviously an architecture where crime-prone members of the elite were kept in solitary but fairly pleasurable confinement.

"These convicts," says anthropologist Lardner, "were respected by the society they lived in. Although many had amassed personal fortunes through corruption, smuggling and exploitation, they were nonetheless worshipped by the very people at whose expense they had risen. Similar structures uncovered in other parts of the city suggest that these pleasure palaces function in chains and were often named after gluttonous emperors from history, men like Ashoka, Maurya...."

 A huge circular arena has been unearthed in the centre of town near a series of monumental structures believed to be government buildings. Anthropologist Lardner holds that the circular building was a Parliament house, a place where decisions of national importance were made by men of national stature. But after the rubble was removed, the frozen antics of its inhabitants became apparent. Many of them were clad only in flimsy white togas, too small for their wide girth; their underdeveloped heads covered in a skull cap.Under portraits of famous personalities these men were

gesticulating wildly, like frightened children, many were even sleeping openly.These scenes made Lardner wonder whether these were really men capable of national decisions.

But they were. For on that fateful day, one summer long past, one amongst them had opened the floodgates. And then, there was no looking back. Standing in the Raj-asthan desert he had laughed, and given the thumb up sign. Watching the ground disappear in front of him, his eyes had displayed the mock contempt of a fanatic on a religious war path. But knowing that whole nations could be rebuilt from scratch he had only smiled again; why worry about a nation that had not even been built once.... Besides, the family was safe in America. Hell. He had laughed and pulled the switch...