I was at St John’s Church in Meerut, wondering where to go next. My train was due to leave for Kanpur seven hours later at 7pm.The three church-minders had let me loose within, allowing me to touch a ragged but proud looking Bible held together by tape, letting me press keys on the century-old pipe organ, watching patiently as I ran my fingers over the engravings in bronze plaques embedded in walls to cement the town’s history of revolution and Christian valiance. I wanted to sit there and fool myself, imagining times seen through biased eyes. Nevertheless, the images were always exciting, always packed with action. These bronze plates told of deaths through sickness, by mutiny, and even the ones that said nothing seemed violent by dint of just being here.
The three keepers, brothers whose family had lived here since 1921, suggested a nearby graveyard. We were in the Cantonment area, the stage for the big one in 1857, but now a serene area where anger and violence seemed relics, etched in epitaphs, carved in bronze. No, this was a place where the steeples of churches rose above clusters of trimmed trees, where the cyclists of empty cycle-rickshaws wheeled by wordlessly, and where batsmen waiting their turn slept in the shade of trees.
There were few signs here, and none that indicated where the graves were. After what seemed like a mile, I found it, and found the gates locked. Dialogue followed, where I had to convince guards within that I wasn’t here to break anything. My guide, the caretaker of the graveyard, took me about, proudly pointing out gravestones he thought were pretty and historic, only pausing to tut-tut when he saw a white stone lying about. These were parts of graves, broken down by vandals to throw at trees for fruits. This is what he had imagined me doing as we spoke with the gate between us.
I walked on a swathe of green under a warm sky, unable to speak. I moved from one stone to another, reading 1857, 1821, 1901, 1876. The crypts were enormous, the homage was monumental. The epitaphs accused, cursed and wept. These dotted the landscape of graves and tall grass, where few visitors came. I tried to think but found it difficult because of superstition; I was afraid to tread on someone, and concentrated hard on following my guide’s footsteps. My thoughts and actions in the cemetery were unusual. I kept thinking we were outsiders here, and I was trying to not step on a resident’s toes. It felt like I was in someone else’s home: someone quiet and meditative, urging visitors to behave similarly.
After the meditation came the party. Old Meerut was alive as one giant marketplace, with rickshaws pressing into impossibly narrow lanes, the aroma of piss from open gutters and jalebis and mithai rising, and well-oiled children in shorts out with their fathers. Fruit sellers blocked paths to cloth shops whose storekeepers sat lazily, unmoved by the obstruction. It seemed somewhat philosophical—if anybody needs cloth, or anything, they will squeeze past the fruit stall and come for it; until then I will nap. These keepers were the hosts, the customers their guests and I was the new guy at the party, asking naive questions. “Where’s Ravana’s father-in-law’s home?” I asked one host, who smiled chidingly and said I wouldn’t find it here. I had heard this marketplace was where Ravana’s wife came from. I hadn’t seriously expected to see the house, but was still disappointed. But the storekeeper did point me up the hill where the market winded.
Walking upwards, I found a certain quiet and happy laughter. There were carefully painted homes on either side of the narrow lane. Large families of different religions lived in each home, inherited from parents who had inherited it from theirs and so on. Their homes were coated in red, yellow, green, blue and pink. This suited me better than holi, which got in your ears and toenails.
As I made my way through the labyrinth, peering through open doors and stopping to listen to conversations, I was nostalgic. The colony of my childhood had unlocked doors, long hours of doing nothing and uncles who did not mind broken windows. Everyone had aged, but the buildings of my memory were fresh white, my neighbour’s hair was still black, the price of a paratha was still 25 Fils. So it was entirely apt that, in this mist of nostalgia, I stumbled upon the Jama Masjid, for a mosque was the centre of my colony: the place outside which meetings and cricket matches were arranged, where we talked away time, where we met uncles and aunties who told our parents what we had been doing.
A side entrance at the masjid opened to a large courtyard where pigeons clustered, pecking at seeds spread beside a large basin of water. Its minarets were blue, its doorways green, as was the water, and inside were two hands preparing for the next prayer.
One of the two noticed me and my shoes on the ground. He placed them sole to sole so that the dirt outside did not come in contact with the sanctity inside.
Sit where you like, he said. You can even come in if you want to. I thanked him for the offer, choosing to sit outside. Watching the birds, the bearded constable who enforced discipline on errant children, the nervous young man waiting to go in for his first ever prayer visit to the mosque, the opening of the main mosque gates, I thought that, though these were everyday occurrences in this town, I was new to this.
These were things I was seeing for the first time. I wondered what other secrets Meerut had to reveal to me that I had missed all along.