Perhaps What Divides Us Is Only an Optical Illusion!

Perhaps What Divides Us Is Only an Optical Illusion!

Four pictures, eight interpretations, maybe more. Look closely, tilt your head if you must. What you spot first, and what you miss entirely, might just say something about how you see the world.

What do you see in these pictures? They say psychologists can glean insights into a person’s mind based on how they interpret an optical illusion.

I’m no psychologist, and wouldn’t dare trespass into their territory. But I do believe this: two people might not see the same thing the same way, one image can hold a thousand interpretations.

And just a gentle warning—this post may run a little long. There is much I want to say, but never quite enough space or time to say it all.

Prepping for the event!

In my last blog post on Bada Mangal in Lucknow, the city of Lakshman, and the story behind how the tradition started, I mentioned Nawab Wajid Ali Shah’s wife getting the Aliganj Hanuman temple constructed. A reader had commented, Murti Puja is strictly banned in Islam and you are mentioning that Begum visited temple to pray to a Idol? please do research …”

Let me say this upfront: before anyone sharpens their theological swords! Yes, I do know that worshipping idols, or even images, is not permitted in Islam. I’m not here to argue with that. I was simply sharing a story, and the belief that shaped it.

Still, when I realised, I may have unintentionally hurt someone’s feelings, I felt the need to reach out. So, I turned to Afshan Kabeer. She has been something of a guiding light to me in the Railways, and is also the wife of scholar Kabeer Ahmad, Mani’s senior colleague and a UP Sahitya Akademi awardee for translating Iqbal from Urdu to Hindi.

Her response was clear, “If you’re not from Lucknow, you might not know, but the city is full of such stories. They’re not about religion. They’re about the art of living together without losing our minds, or our adab (manners).”

I checked with city historian Ravi Bhatt. He was emphatic that history does not tell us anything about who got the temple built; all that is there, is folklore. So, this story about Wajid Ali Shah’s wife getting it constructed, cannot be true.

Photo: Aman, The Wire

He, however, added that there is no doubt, that the ruling Nawabs of Avadh ‘had a role in’ the construction of the temple. There is even the Islamic symbol of crescent moon and star on top of the temple.

Trying to absorb that, I looked for and read several articles, and now I am thoroughly confused.

Was this temple constructed by Wajid Ali Shah’s wife? Or Begum Rabiya, the childless (till then) wife of Nawab Mohammad Ali Shah, who had a dream about a grand statue of Hanuman lying near Islambari garden. She is said to have been blessed with a child after that.

I shall sum up another version for you, published in https://www.esamskriti.com/e/Culture/Festivals/BADA-MANGAL-festival-symbolises-Lucknow-colon-s-eternal-love-for-Hanuman--1.aspx

Chattar Kunwar, mother of Nawab Saadat Ali Khan II (Mirza Manglu), was the daughter of a Hindu Thakur from Banaras and the first mamtu’a (concubine) wife of Nawab Shuja-ud-Daula. Overshadowed by Bahu Begum, Shuja’s chief consort, Chattar Kunwar remains largely invisible in recorded history, remembered only for her deep devotion to Lord Hanuman and her prayers for her son. She named her child Manglu, after Mangalwar (Tuesday), the day of Hanuman. She lived in Faizabad where her son grew up playing with his stepbrother Asaf-ud-Daula. Manglu later became Nawab Saadat Ali Khan II and was noted for his integrity and financial restraint. When he once fell gravely ill, Chattar Kunwar prayed fervently to Hanuman and experienced a divine vision instructing her to build a temple. Though history forgets her name, it remembers her through this faith and the quiet power of a mother’s prayer.

I leave it to you, readers. You may pick up the story or version you like.

But there were some other things about Nawab Wajid Ali Shah:

https://janataweekly.org/in-lakhnawi-tradition-communal-harmony-in-places-of-worship-leaves-no-space-for-hatred/

says: Nawab Wajid Ali Shah … wrote the famous Urdu play titled Radha-Kanhaiya in which he himself played the role of the popular Hindu Lord Krishna.

When Wajid Ali Shah was being taken by Britishers, to be kept in exile in Matiaburj, (a suburb of modern Kolkata), the rumour spread that he was being forcibly transported to London. Congregations of Hindu women gathered in temples across Awadh to pray, ‘Hazrat jate hain London, kripa karo Raghunandan (‘The Nawab is being taken to London, please bless him Lord Ram’).’

But this is not the only example of mutual respect for each other’s religion between Hindus and Muslims of Lucknow.

In his book Lucknow’s Lost Monument, Saiyed Anwar Abbas, mentions Kazmain Rauza (dargah) in old Lucknow’s Chaupatiyan area which was built by Jagannath Aggrawal, a courtier of Nawab Amjad Ali Shah and resident of Chowk, after he saw the Rauza of Imam Moosam in Iran. He invited Persian artisans for assistance. This was the first Rauza to be built by a Hindu.

Nawab, Asaf-ud-daula not only got Baba Gomti Das’ temple in Thakurganj built in the same lane, but also funded its daily running.

One anecdote says, once the entourage of Nawab Asaf-ud-Daula was passing through the old Chowk Bazar after the traditional ceremony of Tazia (miniature mausoleum) burial, from Talkatora Karbala, Hindus playing Holi asked the Nawab if they could put colours on him. The Nawab got off his royal cart, greeted everyone and shared the revellers’ spirit. When his minister asked him if it was appropriate for him to have done that during Muharrum mourning, he explained that he had simply participated in the happiness of people who were part of his family.

Rani Jai Kunwar Pandey, the owner of Aminabad, and a close friend of Khadija Khanam, the Begum of the then Awadh Nawab, Saadat Ali Khan. got a mosque built as a gift to her friend.

This mosque, popularly called as ‘Panditain ki Masjid’ or ‘Padain Ki Masjid’ (the Brahmin Woman’s Mosque), a big white structure with a golden gate, is in the narrow lanes of Aminabad.

In Thakurganj locality of Lucknow, stands a mosque where Muslims offer prayers five times a day. Just across that is an Imambara, built in the memory of the martyrdom of Karbala. The Imambara and the mosque were not built by any Muslim but by Nawab Asafudaula’s Hindu minister Raja Jhau Lal Shrivastav.

While Lucknow’s very own renowned classical singer Sunita Jhingran, is a Hussaini Brahmin and, comes from a Brahmin community which has faith in Imam Hussain, the third Shia Imam, and follows several traditions of the Shia community, famous ‘Dastango’ (storyteller) and scholar Himanshu Bajpai, recites Marsiya or elegiac poetry.

Irrespective of their religion, hundreds visit the dargah of Shah Syed Qayyamudin, popularly known as Khamman peer at the Charbagh railway station on Thursdays.

Funnily enough, closer to home, while Kabeer Ahmad writes in Hindi that flows with effortless grace, Mani finds joy in wrestling with the layered complexities of Urdu poetry.

Those who have lived their whole lives in this city will tell you: here, peaceful coexistence is not just a matter of etiquette, it is the reality. In the city of nawabs, shared spaces or stories often matter more than fleeting religious divides.

Now to the other point: What does a desperate person do in sickness? 

You will often find Indian scientists with sandalwood paste on their foreheads, calmly working on missiles. Does anyone doubt their excellence? Science is certain that the moon is Earth’s rocky satellite, made of olivine and pyroxene. Yet we Hindus revere it, Muslims wait for its first sliver to break a month-long fast, and lovers write songs to it: rationality and reverence orbit the same planet.

As a close doctor friend, Sunayna Misra, points out, when illness strikes and hope wavers, people do not care about scientific processes. They try everything, many times all together at the same time- idol worship, Quranic duas (prayers), sacred ash, mantras, magnets, moonlight, homeopathy, Ayurveda, even a brisk walk at sunrise. This is desperation, not religion. When science runs out of prescriptions, most of us reach for anything that promises a cure, or at least comfort.

Further, this may be a silly, baseless assumption, but I am quietly certain the reader is a man, perhaps even a father, because only someone who has never been tethered by the umbilical cord from within, can look at mothers and still expect logic. Mothers, whether born or made, bound by blood or by love, go gloriously, shamelessly, heartbreakingly mad when it comes to their children.

You could find either right whether she is a Kaikeyi, possessive of her son and jealous of stepson Rama’s seemingly bright future, or Rama’s own mother Kaushalya who let him go to exile to uphold his promise.

We have read of Judgement of Solomon -two mothers, one baby, one sword. A true mother would rather lose her child than see him/her harmed, and that truth remains unchanged across borders, centuries, and sacred texts.

Only a mother can cut ties with her child for marrying ‘wrong,’ and still pounce at a stranger whose tone even suggests a hint of criticism of her child. She may fume at a daughter-in-law, but will be there with a cup of tea and hundreds of kya hua, tum theek ho? (What happened, are you alright?) the moment her son looks weary.

Her voice laced with horror and disbelief, a railway wife had once asked me, “What kind of a mother are you for letting your only son, that too so young, go off to study and live alone in a foreign country?” But that was my way of letting him grow wings, and learn to fly.

Although after all these years I still lose my sh** if he forgets to call when he said he would. I ask for photos of salads and ramen bowls, cocktails and hiking trails, sunsets and the dogs he is friends with in his building. I am sure he is rolling his eyes when he sends them. But this is how we stay stitched together, across time zones and growing up.

She, on the other hand, kept hers, watched over their every move like a lamp in a dark room.

Neither of us was right, or wrong. We were just mothers, irrational in different ways!

Today is Bakrid—a day of faith, of sacrifice, of giving, of remembrance. So, let’s celebrate with hearts full of love and homes aglow with warmth and togetherness.

Because in the end, religion, like our name, our surname, our language, even the homes we were born into, was given to us after we came into this world as human beings.

Dear reader, just for today, forgive a foolish mother for choosing the version of the story that comforts her heart. Raise your eyebrows, smirk at her if you like, smile kindly, and carry on.

Is it Van Gogh? Look once, you’ll see the painter. Look again, and the painting unravels. Sometimes, what we see depends on our eyes, our mood, or… our drink.

                                                                                                - Anupama S Mani