Qawwali at Nizamuddin Dargah in Delhi

We reached Delhi around on18th morning (around 9). Right after coming out of the aircraft, I felt the hot air on my face. It was quite familiar. After all I spent 2 summers in Delhi NCR. But it was after my 9 months stay in Bangalore. From that moment onwards I started to miss Bangalore. Anyway, it was a Thursday. And we had decided in Bangalore that we would go to the Dargah at Nizamuddin to hear live qawwali. Shal already had sent me quite an informative guide about the dargah. I called one friend in my ex-office and he readily agreed to come. So we three started in his car from Noida around 6:30 in the evening. None of us knew the exact location of the dargah. I tried to call Shal and a few other people. None of them were reachable as Murphy always says. But in the end came to know that the driver is a muslim and he knows where the dargah is.

way to Dargah

We reached there around 7pm. It was heavily crowded with people visiting the dargah, beggars, hawkers selling beaded chains, hats, foods and what-nots, cows – and nearly everything that you can expect in a busy Indian market. It was long narrow way surrounded by shops to the dargah. Shal told me not to get afraid on the way because of the crowd and ignore calls from beggars and shopkeepers to buy flowers and chaddar. So we reached till the gate of the dargah, left our shoes with a shop and bought flowers and aggarbattis. There are 2 shrines inside. I couldn’t enter any of them – as females are prohibited from doing so. Other 2 however went inside and offered the flowers we bought. Qawwali was supposed to start from 7:30pm, right after the namaaz. The place was heavily crowded. There were people from different religions and different countries! There were occasional cries from some corner, apparently some sort of bhoot-bhagao-ing going on there. I also smelled Biryani and sighted a few packets of it here and there in the hands of people. Decided next time we would come to dargah we would definitely have biriyani as our stomach was not perfectly fine that day.

we bought flowers from this shop

I saw namaaz for the first time from so close. The mike started booming Allahu-Akbar…. volunteers requested people to clear the ground infront of the bigger shrine, men after men formed neat lines, sat shoulder to shoulder and prayed to their God. Many people stood watching the namaaz. It was very hot. People were standing really close to each other and there were sometimes people going from one end to another carrying a big black (covered with soot and biriyani smelling) Kadhai and shouting warnings at the people standing near by to save their clothes. After the namaaz ended, people who were praying started dispersing and at the same time people who were standing started to sit down on both sides of the ground keeping some space in the middle. So we followed the crowd , sat down and waited expectantly for the qawwali to start. There were 2 qawwali teams. The first team started with “Allah hu Allah hu”. It felt great and more than worth of taking pain of bearing heat and sweat! The tune sounded extremely familiar. After 1 or 2 minutes realised it’s the same tune of a hindi bollywood song! Felt very bad how such a beautiful song has been converted to a pathetic movie song with fast beats. We spotted a person in second qawwali team whom we have heard before. He sings with a fusion band in India. And we really like the band’s compositions. But it was not him, but another guy in the qawwali team that took most of our attention. He had such range in his voice – with such ease he sang – it was quite evident that he knows hindustani classical from the way he touched one or two raags in “chhap tilak”. I had heard Chhap tilak by Abida Parveen before and liked the song. But what I heard there live – was even beyond that. It was heavenly. With Chaap Tilak qawwali ended. And we started back tracking towards the gate. For the first time, I guess, since we arrived in Delhi, I felt glad that I came to Delhi. I never heard or saw such a thing before. The experience was awesome and is a must do for anyone who loves music and is in Delhi or is visiting Delhi. It felt quite friendly in the Dargah, as there were a good number of women. The qawwali was amazing! Overall it was a nice experience I would remember for quite some time.

Qawwali at Nizamuddin Dargah

Advertisement