In the 1950’s a Delhi college girl who was injured seriously in a train accident near Mathura was recovering from her trauma in Paharganj . She was greatly depressed and her cousin Sayeed Uddin made it a point to visit her regularly and cheer her up. One day when Afshan (not her real name) opened her eyes and saw Sayeed sitting near her bed, she asked him to tell a story to relieve her boredom. Sayeed, who was interested in the occult, scratched his head trying to remember an article by a spiritualist he had read in an old issue of Globe Magazine, edited by Thomas and Habib. Well here’s the tale he related:
“A degenerate nawab lived in Purani Haveli in Kutcha Tihar, South-West Delhi. Munne Nawab had inherited a good fortune from his uncle and with no close relatives, didn’t bother much about how he lived. He did have a lot of companions, who enjoyed nawabi hospitality. One day, at a different venue, one of them was suddenly taken ill in his suburban home near Beriwala Bagh. A doctor was called and, after the young man Ameer was better, the nawab sought leave and enquired if he could take an old pack of cards lying on the table that had attracted his fancy. Ameer was only too glad to oblige because his benefactor had hardly ever demanded anything from him. The nawab brought the cards and placed them on his bed. He gazed at each one night for some time until he came to the Ace of Spades. There was something strange about this card and no sooner had he passed his hand over it than a beautiful woman stood in front of him with a queer smile and said, ‘Whoever possesses this card possesses me.’
“The nawab was taken aback. However, he managed to recover his composure and ask the young woman to sit down. ‘How did you emerge from this pack?’ he asked. ‘That is a long story,’ said the stately personage. ‘I am Princess Zamani, daughter of King Idris. While still a girl, I was married by proxy to King Zuber, but ere I could reach his palace a wizard chief forced my palanquin bearers into his fortress, where he tried to seduce me. But I resisted. Meanwhile, Zuber, my husband, attacked the fortress. The day it fell, Zahur the wizard ravished me. I pulled out his dagger and stabbed him in the heart and then myself. Oh, it was a gruesome sight. His blood and mine was spilt over a pack of cards. But before he died the evil man breathed a charm on one of the cards, entrapping me in it’.
“The woman ended her story and lay down on the bed as though exhausted. Munne Nawab stared at her face, she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. ‘Zamani,’ he said, ‘I have fallen in love with you and would make you my bride.’ ‘That cannot be,’ she said. ‘But so long as you have this pack of cards I will keep you company in the wee hours, when none else is around and the moon is not more than seven hours old.’
“Just then the clock struck and Zamani was gone in a flash, leaving the quivering Ace of Spades, the symbol of death, on the bed. The nawab could scarcely believe his eyes. He wondered why Ameer did not know the secret because the pack of cards had been lying at his house.
“A few days later, he held a party at which Ameer was also present. They drank late into the night and when the party broke up he asked Ameer to stay back. When they were alone he broached the subject. ‘Where did you get this pack of cards from?’ he asked. A nervous Ameer stammered out, ‘Why, I picked it up from the Red Fort museum, when I went there along with my cousin. I thought nobody would bother about such an old pack.’
“The nawab heard what Ameer had to say. Now he was convinced that he alone knew the secret of the Ace of the Spades. At the next new moon he waited impatiently after a good drink, whose taste lingered till the clock struck the longed-for hour. He passed his hand over the enchanted card and lo, Zamani stood in front of him. Her dress was sky blue and the diamond in her nose-ring shone like the evening star. ‘Where have you been all these days?’ he couldn’t help asking. ‘In deep slumber ~ what you call death.’
“The nocturnal experience, which he faithfully recorded in his diary, was such that slowly the nawab lost interest in daily life. Zamani held all the pleasures and thrills. But when she was not around after the seventh-day moon, the nawab would just sit and brood. His servants got alarmed and a doctor was discreetly brought, who examined him and diagnosed that, besides symptoms of insanity, he was also suffering from TB, and in urgent need of medication. And that probably prolonged his life. So the ‘affair’, real or imagined, with Zamani continued and the last time she came she told him that it was to take him away. Munne Nawab was found dead of cardiac arrest with the diary on his chest the next morning.”
But by the time the tale ended Afshan had fallen asleep. The haveli, which was looted by a mob pursuing Muslim Meo herdsmen in 1947 and all its books, presumably including the diary, burnt, however, survives after restoration as a tenanted building. But the pack of cards was never found. And Sayeed Uddin Vakil (whom one used to meet at Faiyaz Manzil before his vendetta murder) regretted all his life not marrying the coy Afshan, who died a spinster.
Years later, someone else staying in the haveli fell in love with a much older man. The girl, Jasmine (not her real name), would wait for Marius every day and then indulge in sweet amours as her mother used to be away on duty and her father was dead. This went on for two years until Jasmine’s mother decided to get her married off to a member of her own South Indian community. This led to the girl going into depression, though she realised that Marius was old enough to be her father and not the right person she could settle down with. Eventually, Mrs Thomas put her foot down and told Jasmine that she had no other choice but to wed Jose, the boy she had selected for her. Arrived the wedding day and Marius, a bit depressed himself, was among the honoured invitees as he had contributed a substantial amount for the marriage in response to Mrs Thomas’ appeal to him as an old family friend.
After the wedding Jasmine went away to stay with Jose but when she returned home for a short visit, she called Marius one afternoon, when her mother was away at work and forced him to cohabit with her, saying, “You’ll have to be the father of my first-born because even if I have become somebody else’s wife it is you who are my first love.” After Jasmine’s confinement, she had a dream in which she saw a young woman (Afshan?) telling her that she had done the right thing in not denying her lover his due and by doing so she had fulfilled her own unfulfilled desire. When Jasmine disclosed this to Marius he nodded his head and said, “I’ve always felt that this haveli exercises a weird influence on its young inhabitants. I know both Afshan and Sayeed Uddin Vakil, the latter more intimately, and he once confessed that he had impregnated Afshan as per her wish but it resulted in a still-birth that caused great grief to both though she was convinced that at some later date somebody else staying in this haveli would realise her wish of having a love-child with a man she couldn’t marry because of social taboos.
Jasmine has other children too but continus to love Marius, who is now past 75, and neither her mother nor her husband knows of the platonic relationship, except perhaps the haveli, which has lasted over 20 years. But the haveli is known to keep its secrets, many of which it has harboured over the long decades of its existence!
