Azaan, a Zuihitsu

I wake up every morning to the fruitiest euphony. Bursting with the revelry of something more distant, more certain than itself, this chocolate spiral of jubilant surrender mouths my foggy mornings ajar, leaping towards a peering sun which sharpens its resolve. February moults into a guzzling Delhi spring, not basant, but the unhurried avroh of a koyal’s staccato cheep from the sky, falling into the river of odes, like a brown leaf, tired of waiting.

The azaan is never a stranger, and there is a muezzin in my neighbourhood who has mastered the movement of sound from tongue to sky. It is not recorded, of this I am sure. Some mornings, I hear a hoarseness, perhaps, when delhi crowds around the man’s throat. That is when he dislodges this kankar of a city from his throat, with god’s instruction.

As is my habit, I follow the stone with my kharaj voice, it traces the fuzzy contours of the raag’s ascent. It is mostly Bhairavi, but on some days, perhaps, when he’s feeling a bit intoxicated by the prophecy that is this divine errand, his voice strays, and the melody squirms in his breast. It is in that beautiful mistake, that he acknowledges the crowd. In that moment of kansur, the azaan soars, and embraces the others, murmurating along the rooftops.

The azaan is a horde, a joy-battalion of sleepless eyes, bursting with wonder, as ankles click on the tips of barsaatis and balconies. The city wakes up in this unwieldy Babel, a teetering tower of invocation, spiring into song, in the enigmatic architecture of prayer.

I want to tell this world of hate to wake up early, like I do. To listen to that which is natural, which recedes into the environment, without bells or clamour. So loud it is, and so comforting - the azaan, of fajr. Prayer is better than sleep. The thing that i have envied my pious friends is the conviction, the resilient backbone that faiths their belief. Every morning this melody teaches me of that which is natural, in the way that Tibetan prayer flags in the highest cliffs, are natural, not an aberration.

I woke up this morning to two articles. One, about a joke of a film, that caricatures young Muslim men from the most beautiful, developed and intelligent state in this country, casting them as ferocious, manipulative sons of bitches (this is not new, of course). And the other, about “the upstander effect”, about how more ordinary people around the country are standing up to Hindutva terror. It was posed in the form of a question, that headline: Are More People Finally Pushing Back Against Hate? And then I listened to Arundhati Roy embracing her position as a “slave” pushing back against the “king” of “instant-mix imperialism”, back in 2003, in a speech at Riverside Church, Harlem, New York.

Many years ago, I remember an interview where Shah Rukh Khan says that when you are down, you should look for places where you know you will be loved. The world is falling apart, wokebois are screaming urban loneliness, and even international announcements of solidarity sound feeble. In this precarious, swaying root bridge of survival, I cling to this azaan like an intimate friend, a confidānt, more real, even, than the kiss of a lover.

As you might have surmised I live in an area surrounded by masjids. The people here love feeding me, and there is barkat in the streets, during the month of ramzan. Most evenings you will see Muslim neighbourhoods dancing in the raunak of slowly cooked beef, and sizzling chashni samosas. Families, young lovers, and mischievous youth, flood the streets - aaj rang hain, their footsteps echo.

I have found that this impulse is contrary to the brahminical habit of austerity, and discipline; of staying at home, once it is dark. This punctures the “purity” premise of upper-caste propriety. At the risk of romanticisation, and queer appropriation, I choose to see this celebration with the nous of resistance. I need to see it this way. This is all I have. These friends of bread and music, these comrades who teach me love.

The azaan is always filial, where I live in delhi. It slips from the muezzin’s throat into the atmosphere, and blends with a percussion you’re only likely to hear in DDA flat colonies: a flimsy plastic pipe rattling in Sul taal against the water tank it services, every morning when the water comes, like a woodpecker’s existential search for food.

The azaan searches for its friends, and I listen, every morning to how even the birds, and the cats, have grown accustomed to its circadian consistency. I admonished myself this morning for waking up late to this festival of that which is divine, that which is more-than-human.

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