He chases djinns

A visual documentation project spanning Lucknow and Delhi, about ‘supernatural entities’ made from smokeless fire, readies for an exhibition in Sharjah, but its creator waits to open it in the ruins of a 14th century fort where his protagonists are said to reside

Photographer Taha Ahmad knows the djinns, like he knows his family. In the old-world neighbourhood of Agha Meer Deorhi in Lucknow, where he grew up, these supernatural entities or genies—which, according to the Islamic theology, are created out of smokeless fire—have pervaded the consciousness of its residents since time immemorial. “Every home in the locality has had a tryst with the djinns,” Ahmad shares, in a telephonic interview. The area itself is steeped in history. 

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Once said to be the residence of a nawab named Agha Meer, it was taken over by the East India Company, which minted silver and built stables for their horses here. By the time Ahmad’s great great grandfather bought a home and moved in somewhere in the late 19th century, the neighbourhood was already overrun by djinns.

Men and women, who visit Feroz Shah Kotla in New Delhi every Thursday to receive the djinns’ blessings, seen sitting across the large stairs of the 14th century fortress. These stairs are built parallel to the fortress’ mosque and the underground tunnel leading to the dark alcoves and niches where the genies are said to reside

“The walls of most of the homes in Agha Meer Deorhi have niches. As a child, I was told that the djinns resided here, and that they weren’t to be disturbed. We would also light incense sticks and place them inside these niches,” Ahmad says. He also remembers being told not to go to the roof after the dark, and to avoid keeping any furniture in the middle of the aangan or courtyard of their home, “as it’s a passage for the djinns, and it could obstruct their path”. Two people on different occasions had even seen a ghostly figure making its way into Ahmad’s room on the top floor of their two-storey home. Since theirs is a practising Muslim family, nobody thought these encounters or sightings to be strange. “The Quran makes a mention of the djinns, good as well as evil. So, we came to believe in the existence of a parallel world, where they lived,” he adds.

When Ahmad moved to Delhi in 2012 to pursue Fine Arts from Jamia Millia Islamia, the stories of djinns continued to follow him. A few years later, a chance meeting with Anand Vivek Taneja, who at the time was working on the book Jinnealogy: Time, Islam, and Ecological Thought in the Medieval Ruins of Delhi, led him to the Firoz Shah Kotla fortress, built by the ruler Feroz Shah Tughlaq in the 14th century, where amidst the ruins, djinn worship was being performed. “Every Thursday, thousands of people from all walks of life gathered here, praying, writing letters, pasting coins, lighting candles and lamps to impress the djinns in exchange for a better life,” says Ahmad. “It intrigued me.” But the more Ahmad visited the place, the more he’d come to realise how far removed this practice was from his own understanding of the djinns that resided in his hometown.  

Taha Ahmad. Pic Courtesy/Kushal Kapoor

A middle-aged woman, whom he encountered during one of his visits to the fortress, believed that the only reason her loved ones were “hale and hearty” was because she has been visiting the fort every Thursday for the last 20 years. Another family told him how Sulaiman, a self-proclaimed godman who visited the fort, declared that the family’s wishes and yearnings would be entertained in the court of the djinns, depending upon how hefty an amount they’d pay him. Intimate letters that devotees would write to the djinns, where they’d share their problems, make open confessions or seek intervention, would be pinned on the alcoves of the stone walls in the fort, only to be later collected and burnt, or dumped in the garbage bin. “The practice had become a money-making mechanism for the godmen in the fort, who were exploiting the misfortunes of uneducated and unaware faithful,” he adds.

The experience led Ahmad to document this “mystical force,” which was very much part of his upbringing, but had come to be dogged by superstition and fallacy. The result is a photo project, A Displaced Hope, which has been over five years in the making, and will be showcased starting September 18 at Vantage Point Sharjah 9, the ninth iteration of Sharjah Art Foundation’s annual initiative dedicated to the medium of photography. “I began in 2015 by photographing everything that I was witnessing at the fortress of Firoz Shah Kotla. What was happening there was in absolute contradiction to what I was raised to believe [about the djinns] and the teachings I had received from my parents,” he shares. After two years of continuous shooting, Ahmad remembers nearly giving up on the project, “as I wasn’t getting anything concrete out of it”, when he turned homewards for inspiration. “I started photographing my home and neighbourhood; while revisiting my own memories, and the stories that I had grown up hearing, I started getting a better understanding of the belief.” Around the same time, he received The Documentary Project Fund (2017), becoming the first Indian to receive the US grant, which enabled him to continue his work.

Djinn wali Masjid as it is called, is more than a century-old mosque situated in the Agha Meer Deorhi area of Lucknow. According to people of the area, the mosque has been the residence to djinns since a long time. Thus, closed and abandoned

The project is a lesson in contrast. On the one hand is Agha Meer Deorhi, where djinns are an invisible force, moving softly and subtly through its gullies and old houses made of Lakhori bricks, and on the other is Firoz Shah Kotla, where it’s more brutal and perceptible, a force created by godmen and clerics, which is both feared and revered.  

A few years ago, neighbours at Agha Meer Deorhi found this boy, who was five years old then, fallen from the Djinn wali Masjid’s roof, bleeding profusely. The fall cost him his right eye. Rumour has it that he was playing on the roof and allegedly urinated in the mosque’s vicinity. People believe he was thrown from the roof by the djinns

Ahmad remembers taking a picture of a century-old mosque in his locality, unpopularly known as Djinn wali Masjid, as it was said to be possessed by two families of djinns. “Previous caretakers have complained about being harassed by a ‘presence’ inside the premises, and it’s one of the reasons why it has been abandoned,” he says. A Muslim family in the area, which built a room that abutted one of the walls of the mosque, saw four deaths after they didn’t pay heed to a dream by a family member. In the dream, a bearded man in white had warned them against the construction. “The room was left unfinished after that,” says Ahmad. It’s not just Muslims in the neighbourhood, who pay obeisance to the djinns. The Agarwals of Agha Meer Deorhi have also encountered the paranormal. “They are a family of merchants. During my interviews, they shared how they’d bring spices and wheat that they’d store in the basement. It would go stale overnight. They believe that they lost two brothers, because the djinns were unhappy with them. The family even got pandits to perform havans, and maulanas to recite the Quran, but the activities didn’t stop. It was only after they ‘apologised to the djinns’ for a mistake they felt that they committed that things started looking up for them.” Ahmad says he did a series of staged and candid shoots in the area to bring alive these stories.

A girl stares from behind a broken glass window pane in her room in Lucknow, which was left unfinished due to the occupancy of  the djinns. Her house witnessed four deaths due to the supposed ignorant behaviour of the residents who kept constructing the room despite supernatural happenings

At Firoz Shah Kotla, he was able to capture disturbing rituals associated with djinn worship, after he had befriended the clerics and godmen, who gave him a peek inside this world of theirs. The djinns, they claimed, lived in the poorly-ventilated, bat-infested tunnels below the fortress, where Ahmad has seen many an exorcism being performed. “During exorcism, the women would be brutally treated and manhandled. As the ritual progressed, these ‘possessed women’ would speak in a tone very different from their own original voice,” he shares. The “godmen” would tell the family how the djinn possessing them was a stubborn spirit. “The women would cry, scream, scratch with their nails and bang their heads on the walls, some lying unconsciously in the fortress. I have also seen men get under the grip of such supernatural forces,” he adds. Ahmad feels that this ritual had little to do with djinns, but the general unsettling atmosphere inside the dingy and dark tunnels. 
In all these years of photographing these spaces, he says he has never encountered a djinn. A believer himself, he admits to having mysteriously fallen ill on three occasions. At one point, after emerging from the tunnel, he remained unwell for nearly a month. “My family thought I should discontinue the project, but it was distressing to see what was happening at Firoz Shah Kotla,” says the award-winning photographer.  

While A Displaced Hope, comprising black and white prints, has been exhibited at Maribor Photo Festival in Slovenia, Addis Foto Festival in Ethiopia, Pier 2 Art Centre Kaohsiung, Taiwan, and Screened at Naples Italy by curator Mario Spada, it is yet to see the light of day in India. If and when it does, Ahmad hopes that the venue will be the ruined fortress itself. “I want to hold the show on a Thursday, when this practice takes place. I hope my visuals will do the talking, and that people will see the truth.”

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