Mathura Archives - INDIAN MEMORY PROJECT

The bittersweet legend of a family mansion

(Left to Right) My great-great grand-uncle Ata Husain, seated with his younger brother, my great-great grandfather Fida Husain and his five sons. Hyderabad, Hyderabad State, 1900. Image and Narrative contributed by Afnan Khan, New Delhi This is a photograph of my great-great grandfather Fida Husain (seated second from right) along with his five sons and elder brother Ata Husain. It carries within it our ancestral memory of amazing accomplishments and family legends. In 1715, my ancestor, an Afridi Pathan teacher Husain Khan migrated from Kohat (now Pakistan) to Qaimganj (now Farrukhabad, Uttar Pradesh). Kohat was mainly a tribal area and Qaimganj was closer to Delhi, the capital of the erstwhile Mughal Empire and may have offered him better employment opportunities. Family legend says he lived for more than a 100 years and was known as 'Bade Ustaad' (The Great Teacher). His next three generations (sons, grandsons and great-grand sons) chose to serve in the army. Husain Khan’s great-great grandson (see photograph) Fida Husain was fond of academics and would borrow books from a lawyer in the neighbourhood that triggered his interest in law. He took the law examination and graduated in first class. Fida Husain then moved to Hyderabad (then ruled by the sixth Nizam), established a successful law practice, and built a house in Begum Bazaar, Hyderabad. He would also regularly send money to his father Ghulam Husain to supervise the building of a family home, a haveli (mansion), in Qaimganj (now Farrukhabad, UP) that he could eventually retire in. The mansion came to be known as ‘Mahal’ which translates literally to ‘Palace’. The family legend about the mansion is intriguing - During construction, an unfortunate incident took…

The best lyricist, the Indian Film Industry ever had

Hasrat Jaipuri, Jaikishen, Raj Kapoor, Shankar & my father Shailendra. Bombay. Circa 1955

Hasrat Jaipuri, Jaikishen, Raj Kapoor, Shankar & my father Shailendra. Bombay. Circa 1955 Image & Narrative contributed by Amla Shailendra Mazumdar, Dubai. U.A.E This is a photograph of an incredible team who marked the beginning of a golden era in Hindi Cinema’s music. Shailendra, (my father, whom we called Baba) Hasrat Jaipuri, Shankar and Jaikishen came together to create some of the most powerful and beautiful songs of the Hindi film industry, and it was none other than Raj Kapoor who discovered and brought this foursome together. My father, Shailendra (extreme right with a cigarette in his hands) came from a very humble background. As a young boy in Rawalpindi (now in Pakistan) he used to sing Bhajans (Religious Songs) in temples but after my grandfather lost all his money, they relocated to Mathura (Uttar Pradesh). It seemed that the times were always hard on his family. By 1948 he was an apprentice at a Railway workshop in Bombay and was struggling to make ends meet. Poetry, however was his savior & first love, and he wrote about social issues of the time and would often be invited to recite his poems at small cultural events. He came from Bihar,had lived in Rawalpindi, Mathura which made him skilled in various hindi & urdu dialects and their expressions. On one such evening at a Poetry Soiree organised by the Progressive Writers’ forum, my father’s recitation of his poem on Partition of India, titled “Jalta Hai Punjab” caught the attention of another attendee, actor and director Raj Kapoor. It was about the massacre of Hindus and Muslims alike during partition and how it left those who witnessed it scarred for life. Raj Kapoor, who introduced himself…

All translations are machine generated, hence they are not 100% accurate.