I can’t really say when I first heard the Aazan  (the call for prayers given by the Muezzin, five times a day) it must have been in the early 50s when I was a little child and lived in Chabi Ganj, next to the Faseel (City wall) near Kashmiri Gate.

The sound of the Azan would have drifted in from one of the nearby Mosques, there were a few not too far away. The practice of using loudspeakers was not in vogue those days and yet the muezzin’s call for prayers travelled quite some distance, primarily because the horrible ambient sounds that assail our auditory nerves were almost non-existent at the time, in place of this cacophony there used to be other ambient sounds, the rustling of leaves, the chirping of birds and others, that have, it would seem, now been lost forever.  Continue reading Of Mosques and Minars →