Hedāyat in India Nadeem Akhtar Abstract: [The account of Hedāyat’s stay in India (1936-37) is inadequately recorded in his biographies. Besides publishing stencilled copies of his novel, Buf-i-Kur, he has not only travelled to several parts of incredible India but also depicted it’s various facets of life in his short stories. The works of Hedayat help to trace out his whereabouts in Mumbai, the metropolis in which he lived with ̌yn Partv. ] Melancholic and gloomy Hedāyat sailed for India in quest of happiness at the invitation of ̌yn Partv, his biographer in Bygānhay dar Bhšt. Hedāyat’s sojourn in India helped him to add a new aspect to the corpus of Persian literature. The account of Hedāyat’s stay in India from 1936-1937 has remained a hidden fact. However, his guest house, Summer Queen at Arthur Bunder Road in Mumbai (Fig.1) is mentioned in his letter to Mjtbā Mynvy (Bahārlu, p.179). But letters are not sufficient enough to exactly locate the house. However, his short story, Lunatique (hvsbāz), also gives a real description of the house where he stayed as a paying guest. This description matches with the above Summer Queen. Moreover it was a paying guest house in the past as confirmed by the novels-Cobalt Blue (Kundalkar, tr. Pinto, 2013, p.217) and Bygānhay dar Bhšt (Partv, 1352, p.42). The presence of century-old elevator in the Summer Queen made of iron and wood and the lift present in the story of Lunatique (hvsbāz), again confirms that the paying guest in the story is Hedāyat and the present building of Summer Queen is the same guest house. Since it is established that Hedāyat stayed in Summer Queen building during his stay in India, but the building consists of eight apartments and it is difficult to trace out in which apartment he was residing because neither it was mentioned by Hedāyat nor other documents give any idea of it. Therefore, the 1 only source on which one can depend is the fictional sources of Hedāyat, reflecting the real life event, an art which he has used in his previous works too. (see- Katouzian, Sadegh Hedayat: The Life and Legend of an Iranian Writer, highlighted many real events which reflects in Hedāyat’s fiction). Lunatique (Hvsbāz), shows Hedāyat as a paying guest in the pension living on the ground floor of the building. He hears Indian music and looks at the street outside the window where a pauper by the name of Bhagwan was coughing and causing disturbance to Hedayat. From his window of his room he could see the view of the Sea (Hedāyat, 2008, p.560). On this account the exact location of Hedāyat can be traced out in the building, since, the building has an octagonal shaped structure (Fig.2) and both the sides are obstructed by adjacent buildings and the only side from where one could see the Sea is the octagonal side. Hence keeping this possibility into view one can pin down that Hedāyat had lived on the ground floor room of the east wing of the Summer Queen (Fig.3). During his stay Hedāyat travelled to the southern part of India. However his visit to Hyderabad was not comfortable since he could not meet his hosts and returned to Bombay in a general class of the train sitting near the toilet’s gate (Bahārlu, p.189), but he visited the Kingdom of Mysore at the invitation of Mirza Ismail and got a royal treatment in the city as Mirza Ismail himself was very generous towards him. Hedāyat also attended the royal birthday party of King Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV (As he was the then [King] Maharaja when Hedāyat had visited the Kingdom). Though the account of the city cannot be traced in his literary work except in Ḥāji Āqā, where, once he mentioned the King (Maharaja) of Dakan,(Hedayat, 2008, p.178) but the picturesque details of the city of Bangalore and its suburb Kengri are vividly recorded in his 2 poignant literary piece Sampingué (Sampyngh) that confirms that Hedāyat must have visited Bangalore. The minute description in Sampingué (Sampyngh) narrates the entire socio fabric of Bangalore and its surroundings. There are clear mentions of places and objects in Bangalore such as Ganesha Temple, Vani Vilas Hospital and Lal Bagh. He is striding in these places in the story which in fact exist in present Bangalore. These places are near to the palace of Tipu Sultān, an 18th century ruler of Mysore, which might had attracted Hedāyat to look at the Persian inscription carved there. The story of Sampingué has the milieu of the city of Banglore and its suburb, Kengri and narrating the poignant story of a Brahman family and the ill fate suffered by his family members. Laxmi, a character in the story was admitted to the hospital to deliver her child (Hedāyat, 2008, p.554). It is interesting to see that the name of the Hospital- Vanivilas in the story actually exist in Bangalore in front of the Summer Palace of Tipu Sultān and it is one of the major hospital in dealing with maternity and child health care. This evidence proves that Hedāyat not only visited the hospital but closely observed the ambience of hospital, and later added them to the story. Later in Sampingué , Sita, the other character in the story was engaged to Seeva who was a custodian of a Ganesha (Elephant God) Temple in Bangalore. In the surrounding there exists a similar temple by the name of Dodda Ganesha of which Hedāyat gives a graphic description in the story. The depiction of the temple in the story is no less amusing than his portrayal of the Lingam temple in the Buf-i-Kur. Hedāyat writes about the temple when Sita visits his fiance in the above temple: In the leisure time Sampingue used to visit his faience at the temple of the Great Ganesha, who had an elephant head and human body [Elephant-God] and was made of a monolithic black rock and drenched in oil. The temple was decorated with garlands of Mogra flowers with a fringe of Ashak leaves and filled with the 3 perfume of incense sticks and Seeva half-naked, tied a loin-cloth around his waist, smiling from the top of the alter and blessing the pilgrims (Hedāyat, 2008, p.553) A person visiting the temple today will be amazed to find the same scenario as depicted by Hedāyat in the late 1930s. Bangalore Tourism website exactly states about that Temple like Hedāyat t: The Dodda Ganesha Temple at Basavanagudi attracts devotees from different localities of Bangalore. Devotees come here to get blessings of Lord Ganapathi. What make this Ganapathi idol more eye-catching to the people is, the different sorts of decorations which are done during the week. One of the most famous decorations is the butter coating to the idol. Over 100 KGs of butter (Benne) is needed for to apply to the idol of Dodda Ganesha Temple (See- the webpage Bengalooru Tourism, http://www.bengaloorutourism.com). Having all said and done, Sadegh Hedāyat was indeed a story writer parexcellence who did not showcase Iran alone but also depicted India as naturally and factually as possible. He recorded important and material moments of his life which he passed in the Incredible India in his works. Hence, it is in the fitness of things to conclude that the stories of Sadegh Hedāyat having Indian tinge are not simple concoction or figments of imagination but facts recorded in fiction. Nadeem Akhtar Centre for Persian and Central Asian Studies Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi, India 4 Bibliography: Homa Katouzian, Sadeq Hedayat: The Life and Legend of an Iranian Writer, London and New York, 1991 Moḥammad Bahārlu, Nāmahā-ye Ṣādeq He-dāyat, compiled by, 2nd ed., Tehran, 1995 Sachin Kundalkar,tr. Jerry Pinto, Cobalt Blue, Penguin group, New Delhi, 20013 Sadegh Hedayat, Complete Works Volume I The Short Stories , ed. Jahangir Hedayat, The Iranian Burnt Book Foundation, USA, 2008 Sadegh Hedayat, Complete Works Volume II The Satarical Works, ed. Jahangir Hedayat, The Iranian Burnt Book Foundation, USA, 2008 Sheen Patov, Bygānhay dar Bhšt, Kanun Intešrat Mzda,yazd 5