by Ankur Barua
O my Lord –
Of countless currents of civilization this city is the connection
Of your beautiful names I discern a reflection in every direction
O Allah – enliven my exhausted spirit with the breezes of your monsoon.
Across the demands of dīn1 and duniyā2 help us all to find a mīzān3
In the cave of our original disposition you do abide as ar-raḥmān4
O Allah – enliven my exhausted spirit with the breezes of your monsoon.
Crushed by the travails of time I cry to you from this caravanserai
The secret shrine of the beloved shimmers forever in my heart’s eye
O Allah – enliven my exhausted spirit with the breezes of your monsoon.
Suffuse this repentant servant with streams of your unceasing mercy
Envelop me now with the perpetual peace of your resplendent majesty5
O Allah – enliven my exhausted spirit with the breezes of your monsoon.
On these vast horizons of history we are all broken pilgrims enticed by eternity
Whence all this venom that animates anxieties of “majority” and “minority”?
O Allah – enliven my exhausted spirit with the breezes of your monsoon.
I wait at the doors of your many mansions in the mosaics of Mehrauli6
Delhi is my luminous lamp7 and I am the moth that meanders to it merrily
O Allah – enliven my exhausted spirit with the breezes of your monsoon.
My cup of intoxication lies shattered today on this moonlight square8
On this dusty alley surround me again with the resonant call to prayer9
O Allah – enliven my exhausted spirit with the breezes of your monsoon.
I narrate to you the misfortunes of this land10 over which circle birds of prey
Breathe into our parched lives your cryptic wisdom: “Delhi is still far away”11
O Allah – enliven my exhausted spirit with the breezes of your monsoon.
Through this heat and dust allow me to state with a moment’s audacity:
“Through the agony and ecstasy of humanity have I discerned divinity”
O Allah – enliven my exhausted spirit with the breezes of your monsoon.
In the august halls of Cambridge upon academic matters I daily dilate
But one half of my aching heart lies sleeping beneath Kashmere Gate12
O Allah – enliven my exhausted spirit with the breezes of your monsoon.
1. Arabic: “faith”.
2. Arabic: “world”; “worldliness”.
3. Arabic: “balance”.
4. Arabic: “the merciful One”.
5. I first encountered metaphors of this type in the Bengali songs of Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) before encountering them, in a somewhat different light, in the Qur’ān, Sufi treatises, and Persian poetry (all in English translation).
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehrauli
7. An allusion to Chirag Delhi (“The Illuminated Lamp of Delhi”), a location in New Delhi historically associated with the Sufi master Nasiruddin Mahmud.
8. Chandni Chowk.
9. This verse is not intended as a (veiled) criticism of Sufism – almost from nowhere, these images came fleeting into my mindscape and found a nest therein.
10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shahr_Ashob
11. The Sufi master Nizamuddin Auliya (1238–1325) is said to have uttered these words to distance himself from the political intrigue of the Sultan’s court. On an alternative reading, they mean: “our (true) destination is far away”.
12. More specifically, St. Stephen’s College, established in 1881 by a group of Cambridge missionaries, at Kashmere Gate in Old Delhi. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashmiri_Gate,_Delhi
Ankur Barua is University Senior Lecturer in Hindu Studies at Cambridge University. He read Theology and Religious Studies at the Faculty of Divinity, Cambridge. His primary research interests are Vedantic Hindu philosophical theology and Indo-Islamic styles of sociality.
Project Noon 
One response to “Zikr: The Distant Domes of Delhi”
Beautiful. My favourite line is, “Of your beautiful names I discern a reflection in every direction”.
Thank you and many pronaams.
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