Fabled, festive Fatehpur Sikri

“Why don’t you drive down to Fatehpur Sikri , since you are already here in Bharatpur? suggested a Bharatpur resident bird specialist. This seemed a better option than climbing two floors of the slowly being renovated Khas Mahal where we were staying, although it has gorgeous terraces and a bid’s eye view of the city. In any case, what is not to love about an opportunity to visit Fatehpur Sikri? To stand inside Salim Chishti’s dargah and be gripped by the fabulous music at the dargah’s entrance , be carried inside by the sway of the devotees and to be energised by the myriad hopes and prayers that flutter threadlike on the marble-filigreed windows of the dargah? To walk past the expansive sandstone courtyard, after entering through the emperor’s gate and stand awestruck as always at the Bulund Darwaza, looking at the magnificent architecture of the gated entrance and the aerial view it provides of the city and to drink in a world of people, within and without, praying, wandering, visiting, staring, selling odds and ends and fresh fruit and vegetable salads and consuming all of it is momentous. Each visit is always one of encountering wave upon wave of headiness, that stetches all the way to the ibadatkhana at the other end of the dargah. A little way off from the Diwan-e-Aam and close to the Diwan-e-Khas, the ornately carved sandstone pillar that speaks of the craftsmanship and traditions of diverse communities, reiterates that only special people, with access to the diwan-e -khas can visualise a Din-e-Illahi , a composition of multiple faiths. Here, then, is a moment of fruition, of calm and repose, within a beautiful idea. Emperor Akbar believed in this possibility in the seventeenth century. Administrators in power should be able to build entire worlds in the 21st century, were they to draw upon such strong foundations.