Once upon a time, in the middle of the14th century, Sultan Firoz Shah Tughlaq built a large ‘palace of the hunt’,a
thick-walled Kushk-i-Shikar upon a high ridge in the wilderness. It was alsoknown as the Kushk-i-Jahan Numa, the ‘world seeing place’, perhaps becauseof some astronomical significance (there still is an inexplicable cylindricalhole in the roof), perhaps simply because from atop this steep-stepped structurebuilt on the high ground of the Northern Ridge, you can see Delhi stretching outfar and wide, far to the south, and all the way across the river, though part ofthe view is now blocked by the flats immediately to its east.
The Kushk-i-Shikar of today stands in the quiet residential area adjoining theHindu Rao Hospital. Nothing much happens here anymore. Just squirrels and birdsand the occasional wandering student from Delhi University, children from thecompound playing hide and seek. On Thursday afternoons, however, it turns intoone of the most remarkable sites of religious practice in Delhi.
The first time I came here on a Thursday, several years ago, there was a teaparty going on, on the first floor landing of the ruin. About 20 people hadgathered—some who lived and worked at Hindu Rao, some former patients, somewho lived here before but had left a long while ago, some from the nearbyvillage of Chandrawal. All the major religions were represented, I think, withthermoses and samosas. Much laughter and gossip was happening. They were allhere to pray at the absent memorial of an invisible saint.
The story goes thus—one day Tughlaq Shah climbed the steep winding stairs ofhis hunting lodge to find a fakir meditating on the landing. He wasstartled—and when he looked again, there was no one there. But the fakir cameto him in his dreams and said, I keep visiting this place, remember me. TheSultan and his courtiers all found peace here, and the place came to be knownfor, and as, Pir Ghaib—the invisible, mazaar-less saint.
How was the invisible saint rediscovered here in the wilderness? In the tumultof 1857, a group of Muslim men left Delhi. One of them was a man called AshrafAli, from Paharganj. Returning after things had quieted down, on his way back tothe suburbs of a devastated city, he came to Pir Ghaib, and found peace in theNorthern Ridge, in what had been the epicentre of the fighting, said to behaunted still by the ghosts of the Ghadar’s dead. He came back every weekafter. He lived to be over a 100.
His grandson, Rahmat Ali, a spry 72, now comes here on Thursdays. He doesn’trun things very professionally, like what would happen in an established dargah.He’s only been doing this for a few years since retiring as a tailor. He’smade up a litany with which to address the saint, ‘Jis murad se aaye hain,muraad puri karo’, but he’d much rather just sit and gossip with hisflock, and give them homespun commonsense advice.
He attributes it all to the invisible saint, of course. And if you don’tbelieve in invisible presences in the world, he says, watch Discovery Channel.
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This article originally appeared in Delhi City Limits, March 31, 2006
