Exploration 7 - Roshanara Bagh

Last week I had written about the public arts festival set around the metro stations. The one that impressed me was Motornama Roshanara.

This was a trip along the Roshanara Bagh area with the rickshawala acting as your guide. Along the ride we had headphones and an MP3 player. As you hurried along the lanes, you heard songs and interviews related to the trip. The rickshawalas had been trained to talk to the visitors and explain the histories of various places they took them to.

The entire experience was an oral history of the industrial age - its products (machines, factories), its impact on the people, migration, pollution and its decline. From the metro station we traveled many centuries in history. At an ice factory we were told that this technology was brought to India by the Mughals. Babur had complained about India his Baburnama:

.... There are no good horses, meat, grapes, melons or other fruit. There is no ice, cold water, good food or bread in the markets....

Just a few minutes ago we had been shown Palace cinema - one of the first halls to get a license in independent India and now has shut down. A cobbler sitting beside the hall played a film on a laptop stuck onto a tree. The film showed the technology of film projection - the mechanics that have been in use for more than a century.

The entire trip was to make the traveler aware of the technologies that are dying out and with it the skills and jobs. We got into a discussion with the rickshawala about how with each decade even the rickshaw is getting pushed out of the city in favour of cars and other forms of transport.

However with the spread of the metro line I feel that the rickshaw will survive. Many parts of Dwarka and Rohini already have rickshaws plying passengers from the stations to their homes. Their numbers have increased in the last decade. But they feel threatened by the police and transport authorities ban them from entering many areas in the city .

What can be done is that the rickshaw can be used in places where large vehicles are banned. Also the Roshanara trip opens up possibilities where the rickshaws can be used as tour guides for different parts of the city - Chandni Chowk, Mehrauli...

The ice factories and the old cinema halls may shut down but the rickshaw may still survive this century.

Route Plan: Take the metro till Kashmere Gate and then get onto the line to Rithala. Get off at Pul Bangash station. Although the arts festival ends today, the trip through the bylanes is still worth it.

Explorations 6 - Tank Road Ka Maal

Once Tank Road was the youngster's shopping mall. In the 80's and 90's this market of winding lanes led to small shops that had almost everything you required to dress up for the party. Lee, Wrangler, DKNY - you name it- they were there. Just that they were all fake. Tank Road ka Maal (Bought from Tank Road) was a term often used for anything fake or cheap.

If you were in college or new to a job and didn't have much to spend, here is where you went. While most of the market only dealt in wholesale stuff, some smart shopkeepers decided to make use of this demand for "foreign brands" and cater to the younger crowd. However, the labels were all wrong. Lee would have a Bruce attached to it and DKNY would be spelt wrong in all the possible ways.

The shopkeepers would never take no for an answer. In a way they had an advantage. We had come there to buy a brand. So if Wangler is not available, then Wrngler would suffice. Before going to Tank Road we had all these visions of wearing the latest stuff but once in the galis we would settle for just about anything. The other advantage the shops had was that Indians were competing with Russian tourists shopping for cheaper clothes in bulk. It seems that the biggest impact of the breaking up of the Soviet Union was that in Russia clothes became expensive !

With the coming of malls and speciality shops, Tank Road is not the same anymore. It still does a huge business of wholesale stuff with all the Maruti vans filled with clothes lined up at the entrances. Once in a while one can still see a Russian tourist, but the young goes elsewhere.

You see they need a coffee break while they shop.

Route Plan: Take the Metro line to Dwarka and get off at Rajendra Place . Walk around the lake down to Prasad Nagar or take a cycle rickshaw. Tank Road starts just behind the Faith Academy school.

Explorations 5 - the suburb that metro forgot

Now that Faridabad is also going to be on the Metro map, all the adjoining towns are going to be linked up.

Well almost.

There is a industrial township just outside Delhi that is not. Sahibabad.

Many decades ago, as factories began to spring up just beyond Shahdara on the highway to Meerut, no one thought that this will do into a large suburb. Last week as I had to go to Sahibabad on an errand, I realized that the Metro when completed in 2010 will terminate at the Delhi border. And the funny thing is that nowhere else is the metro needed more.

If only the Metro were extended five kilometers - the residents will benefit of course, but the Metro would also make a killing on the daily numbers that commute to work. The system could be the same as in Dwarka. The Metro has stops on the main road. Cycle rickshaws take commuters to their destinations from the station.

As one crosses the border, the roads gives way into portholes, the autos are replaced by the loud Vikrams and you are transformed into an industrial town that the world-is-flat theories have left behind. If you are lucky, you can enjoy the bumpy ride in a car but i think the rackety buses are better since the noise they make cushions the shocks from below.

The plan of the town is somewhat strange. Along the highway there are factories while the residential areas are behind them. To get to a residential area one has to negotiate a traffic snarl that can put purani dilli to shame.

However this township is unlike anything you can get to see around Delhi - Gurgaon, NOIDA, G Bad or F Bad. The factories stare at you, you can actually see denting workshops repairing the huge monstrous trucks lined up along the roads and there are no signs that its Christmas (or New Year) time. The factories make all kinds of things - from pistons to cable to cooler fans. These are the urban farmlands that feed the hungry buildings in the city that we live.

If you are in the mood you can get to watch the latest Akshay Kumar flick in a seedy hall named Star.

Route Plan: (Only for the strong hearted) Get off at the last Metro station on the Shahdara line and then take a rickshaw to the Delhi border, get onto a Vikram and begin your ride through this industrial relic

Explorations 4 - Matka Pir

Route Plan: Get off at the Pragati Maidan Station walk towards the Zoo. A sign indicates the dargah on the left side of the road. You can see matkas along the wall facing the road.

Of course, the first two times I came here for the biryani. Then I started asking around about the huge number of upturned matkas on the trees in that compound.

This is no ordinary dargah. If you ask for something and your wish comes true you cannot get away with a simple tying of thread or presenting a chaddar. Here devotees have to return with jaggery, sugar, channa and milk if their wish has been fulfilled.

The story is that the pir Hazrat Sheikh Abu Bakr Tulshi Haideri Kalandari Rahmatullah (wow is that how they said it evrytime in those days when they annlounced him?????) refused to go to court of Giasuddin Balban. So the king sent matkas with balls of iron and mud in them. The pir of course turned the iron pellets into channa and the mud into jaggery.

Another story tells us that it was the pir who drew a line on the ground with a stick to indicate to the Yamuna that she could not flow beyond this since she was flooding her banks and destroying homes each year. I think the river has taken it very seriously and reduced itself to a stream. Or is it that the followers of the pir stole this magical stick and kept redrawing the line reducing the flow of the river?

Come here in the evenings to enjoy the light breeze from the Yamuna . And pick up biryanis and kababs on your way back home.

Explorations 3 - Khooni Darwaza

Route Plan: Get off the Pragati Maidan Metro Station and walk towards ITO. Khooni Darwaza is opposite the Feroz Shah Kotla grounds on the Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg.

Built in Sher Shah Suri's reign this gate was one of the entrances to the Pura Qila. Initially it was known as Kabuli Darwaza because of the caravans that came from that part of the country.

I thought it got its present name when Major Hodson murdered the sons of Bahadur Shah Zafar - Mirza Mughal and Mirza Khizr Sultan and grandson Mirza Abu Bakar, at the gate after the king's surrender to the British on September 22, 1857.

But apparently the name became popular during the Moghul days. Jahangir, ordered the killing of two sons of Abdur Rahim Khan-e-Khanan here on the charges of being traitors. Aurangzeb hanged the head of his elder brother Dara Shikoh at the gate after he ousted his father Shahjahan.

Wikipedia tells me that it is one of the 13 surviving gates of Delhi. 13?????? One trip to Chhattarpur and you can see bigger gates surviving !!!!

Ramsay Brothers of course have their own interpretation.

pir ghaib update

Just an update to this blog I wrote on the Pir Ghaib. Nehru Planetarium has discovered that it may not be a hunting lodge but could have been an observatory. It seems that the Muslim rulers were equally interested in the movement of celestial bodies as their Hindu counterparts. A zenith tube found in the complex could have been used to correct clocks in the 14th century.

Check out this place next Sunday. Instructions to get to the place are here.

Explorations 2 - Pir Ghaib

Route Plan: Get off the Tis Hazari Station and walk towards Rani Jhansi road junction. Turn right into the Ridge at the junction. Pir Ghaib is near the Hindu Rao Hospital.

With all this din about 1857, here is a place you can look up if you are spending time around the University.

Near the Hindu Rao Hospital lies a rubble of a double storey structure, popularly known as Pir Ghaib, which means 'Vanishing Saint'. There are some remains of a Baoli or step well nearby. The place got its name after a saint who disappeared while meditating here.

While studying at the university I used to pass this place taking the short cut through the Ridge on the days that I was lucky to get the only car I shared with mom and dad. Otherwise it was short walk (in winter) from Tis Hazari or the University.

Built by Feroz Shah Tughlaq it was supposed to be a hunting lodge. Now the ASI is studying the building as a possible astronomical observatory because the hollow masonry cylinder perforating the floor resembles a structure put up later by Jai Singh of the Jantar Mantar fame.

The place gained importance in 1857 when it was the centre of action during the siege of Delhi. Many of the sepoys hid in this area during the months of May and June. Later when the British captured Delhi, Pir Ghaib was used as outpost to keep track of rival armies in the area.

It is interesting that most of the people who come to Pir Ghaib today are non- Muslims from a nearby village. The practice apparently started after 1857 when many Muslims were expelled from Delhi for five years and other communities began to take care of the place.

Today the monument is almost hidden away in the ridge with occasional lovers and college student group wandering into the compound.

Explorations 1 - Agrasen ki Baoli

Route Plan : Get off the Metro Station at Barakhamba Road and walk towards Modern School. Turn right at Tolstoy Marg and then left at Hailey Lane. Turn right where the road joins Hailey Road. Agrasen ki Baoli is 100 metres away.

In the middle of the “urban jungle” one can find a step well - Agrasen ki Baoli

A cool breeze hits you as you enter the complex. As you walk down the series of steps to the water, the heat evaporates and the summer sun disappears. You look back to the sky. It is hot and dry. It is May. And this is Connaught Place. Skyscrapers and all.

You can sit here for hours - read or reflect. Well preserved and recently cleaned by the ASI, tourists rarely come here. A footnote to a trivia quiz. Everyone knows about a step well in the centre of Delhi but no one has been there.

A step well is a semi-enclosed complex that was a resting place for travelers. These buildings were planned around a perennial water source that had caretakers who kept the water body clean. Like Gujarat, Delhi has a strong tradition of man-made water bodies. The Haus Khas is well known. But step wells are often forgotten.

Very often we think that most of the older buildings in Delhi are built by the Mughals. However this is a common mistake. Lal Kuan, in the heart of Old Delhi has a pre Mughal history. The Tuglaqs (14th century) started constructing step-wells for drinking water and also for the several gardens they laid.

Step wells are spread all over the city - Tughlakabad, Nizammuddin, Mehrauli and there is also one near Saket. Some of them have been built by communities. In the case of the Agrasen ki Baoli, it is supposed to have been built by the Aggarwal community.

For me step wells are places of mystery. I remember going to Rajaon Ki Baoli in Mehrauli near Qutub Minar when I was in school. What fun we had playing hide and seek. Our laughter echoing. Teachers shouting out for us. The darkened corners where we hid. The bats that surprised us. A series of tunnels with the sound of water never far away. We wanted the place to go on for ever.

So many of these step wells are in a state of neglect with hardly any water in them. The irony is that they were made to hold water even in the hottest months. Today with depleting groundwater levels, baolis provide open places for recharging water levels.

Thankfully the ASI has cleaned up Agrasen ki Baoli clearing up the garbage and desilting the place although much work needs to be done to restore the water levels.

The next time you come to CP or even work there, surprise yourself…