There is heavy rush at the makeshift milk shops outside the Dargah-E-Shareef Hazarath Sayed Suleiman Baba at Suleiman Nagar near the Barkas-Pahadi Shareef Road in Rangareddy district on the outskirts of Hyderabad.
Devotees feed milk to the cats at this 600-year-old dargah when their wishes are fulfilled.
“Devotees throng this place on every Thursday to feed the cats with milk, a few after their wishes are fulfilled and others out of sheer affection towards the felines and the aulia (Baba).
The dargah located on a hillock, mostly covered by a rock protruding almost 10 feet without a pillar to support it. The aulia’s Mazar (resting place) is under the big rock where the devotees offer flowers, and incense sticks when they visit the dargah.
“His holiness prophet Mohammed (Muhammad) had a great fondness for cats. He apparently loved cats and rather than disturb his sleeping cat, Muezza, he once cut off a sleeve of his robe on which she was sleeping when the call to prayer sounded. It is also said that the reason he loved cats was that one saved his life from a snake that had slithered into his sleeve.
Legend has it that Mohammed blessed cats with the ability to land on their feet. One of his writings tells that he had a vision of a woman punished in hell for starving her cat to death,” Syed one of the organisers manning the dargah said.
Probably the only such place in the vicinity, many childless women visit the dargah praying the baba for children. They believe that big and small cats are symbolic of hearth and home. Their
reproductive habits associate them with devoted motherhood, fertility and promiscuity. They are also protectors of the home because they hunt the pests that raid or fouled food stores.
“These cats appear here every Thursday as if some have invited them. A few named them basing on their colour pattern such as Safedi (snow white) and Cheetenwali (the one with a sprinkle of black dots),” Moazzam a milk vendor said. The vendors sell around the dargah sell about 100 packets of milk on every Thursday. People also visit the dargah on the remaining days of the week to feed the cats, which enjoy milk and the cooler environs under the rock.
Syed Suleiman Baba who lived six centuries ago in this rocky Deccan Plateau loved cats and had great heeling powers like any other aulia. The cats which were groomed and taken care by the Baba
himself, the devotees believe, lived on and many generations of the felines survived on the rocky hillock.
The people living in Hyderabad, Rangareddy and Mahbubnagar districts consider the dargah as a place that drives away evil forces that and bless devotees with prosperity and
children.
“The big cat painted on the rock also indicates that the dargah bestows its devotees with fearsome strength and a capacity to save their offspring from any adversity,” Vijayamma, a Hindu devotee, said while feeding milk to cats at the dargah along with her daughter in law after their wish was fulfilled.
A regular visitor to the dargah, Mohammad Arif from Sangareddy, said that he has been to a similar dargah in Baruch in Gujarat. “The concept is the same, there too devotes feed the cats with milk and pray for offspring,” Adding to that Mohammad Lateef of Barkas said that there is a dargah in Pakistan that feed felines.
However, the 600-year-old dargah lacks basic facilities like famous Moula-Ali-Dargah, Chote Hazrat Ki dargah or near by the famous Pahadi Sheriff dargah. Residents complain that there is no sign board from the Hyderabad-Srisailam road and no rest rooms for the large number of woman visiting the place.
“The dargah brings in a large number of visitors every day, they are also willing to chip in their mite for the development of the dargah,” a few devotees said. They demand that the local government should show some interest in developing a road linking the dargah to main road.
“The dargah must arrange milk on the premises, like other religious places do, the vendors outside are charging exorbitant prices for a packet of milk,” Mariam Begum of old city complained.