My post on the pictures of Nizamuddin Auliya’s dergah (shrine) attracted a visitor whose devotion to the great Nizamuddin is quite touching. Marta wrote:
“…picture of the Dargha is next to my bed, first thing I see in the morning and last in the evening. …. No one ever loved me like he does. To experience the power of his love is something impossible to express with words, something that has changed complitely the prospective of my life.”
Commenting further on the pictures, Marta said:
“…..The best gift for Christmas. I am not muslim, nor christian, or anything else, but however my heart is full of love for God which, I am sure, is One and Overwhelming. And does embrace me all time long. If my presence doesn’t offend anyone in your site I will be glad to come back again, and possibly talk to anyone close to the Great Chisthy Saint.”
Her full comment can be found here
I visited this remarkable place recently spending my evenings and all the spare time at the shrine. I have met more and more people at the dergah including a devotee who also runs the Sufi Inayat Khan Center nearby. I will write more about that later.
Now that I have had some time to sort out my pictures, I am posting a few more here. These are dedicated to Marta and I hope she will find them inspiring again…
And this is the last one – the renovated mosque that looks ethereal in the night time.
Dara Shikoh with a saint [Src: A. Mittal]
Jahane Rumi 
Alhamdulillah! What a lovely comment to go along with the photos 🙂 Please invite her back.
Ya Haqq!
Dear Rumi, thank you so much for the pictures, I really appreciated. To live so far from Delhi sometime makes me homesick. Even if I know (and feel) His presence everywhere, I wish I could sit again in front of the shrine, and spend a night of mine just there. I am longing to touch the marble of the columns, to lie my forehead on the steps, to listen to the gazhals. So, having the pictures is a great gift for me. I had put one of them on my desktop and when I stop my Mac I wait for the image to disappear. So thank you so much, dill se!
When I was studing in Delhi at the Jamia Millia Islamia University, I wrote a short paper on Nizamuddin, first in English and then in Urdu. I was 27 years old, very young I would say now that I am 48, and very naive. But I had already felt a strong touch in front of the Dargha, which I didn’t know how to call it yet. Many years later I started to understand my feelings, “to hear the song”, as I love to say now, but that is a long story, an all life long story.
Anyhow, after delivering my paper to the university, I recived a letter from the faculty asking me to present within a few days. I did, and I was recived by the Chief (I don’t remeber the right title) of the Urdu departement. He looked at me serously and told me: “After the first glance to your paper I was going to reject it, because I believed you had it made for you by someone else, obvioulsy an urdu writeing muslim. Then I looked more carefully, and notice some recurrent mistakes that only a not mother-tongue writer could have made. That was the proof you wrote the paper yourself. But your hand really seems a muslim hand. Or else the Saint has made the miracle”.
Since then, I have always thought the second one was the true. LOVE MAKES THINGS POSSIBLE.
If you, or anyone wish, I still have that paper in english, and I will be glad to share it with the blog. It is not very professional, it is juat a glance on how a foreign can feel sitting over there and how deep and wild can be the encounter, even for someone who is not aware of anything, as I was.
Khudafis. Marta
Marta,
I just spent a semester abroad in India, and I was able to spend a month in the basti, sitting as much as I could in the dargah. I can relate to your comments; I have an installation opening later this week that I think of as niyaz to Hazrat Nizamuddin. But what I really want to say is that would be very interested in reading your paper if you still have it in English (the Urdu would be difficult for me, although it may be good practice).
-Kiira
Dear Kiira
Thanks for visiting and leaving the comment. Marta’s essay was also posted here. Please visit this link:
regards, Raza