Delhi Gate, New Delhi

Suppose you are walking down a street flanked by a bustling marketplace on both sides - the shops stock everything - clothes & accessories, electrical instruments & articles that have become a commonplace in the modern world. The street is in fact a modern one, wide, filled with cars & low-floor buses, there are banks, hospitals & ATMs jostling for space with mosques & Victorian buildings. All of a sudden you come across a medieval structure with arches & bastions, standing in the middle of a traffic square & looking down upon the passer-bys with an impertinent gaze. What would be your reaction??

Mine was literally "Oh Delhi!". The city never ceases to surprise me, every time I think I have covered an entire area & there isn't much left to document, a new structure pops up out of nowhere. So here I was in Shahjanabad (now referred to as Old Delhi), the city that the Mughal emperor Shahjahan (ruled AD 1628-58) established in the year 1638 - Shahjahan had intended the city to be a replica of paradise, had commissioned huge mansions for his nobles & generals, built wide-tree lined avenues, created canals & public squares. But as the city's population increased, magnified by the influx of migrants from Pakistan after the country was divided, Shahjanabad turned into cramped quarters, the mansions were divided into smaller houses, the streets were taken over by shops & flea markets, the ancient structures have all but disappeared. Just a few of them survive not being encroached upon - the Delhi Gate that now stood before me was one of them.

Shahjanabad was enclosed by a high rubble wall as a protection against foreign invaders. The strong wall was interrupted by 14 large, square gates & several smaller ones. Very few of these gates & wall portions have survived the ravages of time & human maltreatment - most of them were destroyed during the British bombardment of the city during the 1857 revolution. The larger gates were named after the cities they faced - the Delhi Gate faced the older citadels of Delhi that existed before Shahjahan built his capital.

The square-shaped, bastion guarded gate is majestically located on one of the major streets of Shahjanabad/Old Delhi, at the beginning of Daryaganj Street (literally “River Facing Avenue”). Close by exists a small portion of Shahjanabad's wall - there is even a Martello Tower that the British added for defense after retaking the city. Not to be confused with the Delhi Gate of Red Fort nearby, this was the city gate, used to enter the city & not the fort. A road next to this gate leads to Red Fort. These aren't ordinary gates, to be opened up one way or the other, these gates are large, monumental structures, built of stone & rubble, with high walls, arches & bastions. Soldiers kept guard over these gates & made sure no hostile element entered within the city limits.

The Delhi Gate

The gate, built with a combination of locally available stone & red sandstone, is now kept locked & a guard stands on duty inside it in order to prevent any encroachment by hawkers or any illegal activity inside its premises. The guard would open the gate if you request him & even tell you about the historical importance of the place & the fact that over the years, the number of enthusiasts wishing to enter the gate has been increasing. The high arches seem inviting & yet cleverly conceal all their secrets from onlookers. The arched doors are large enough to permit the emperor’s convoy of horses & palanquins to pass through without any difficulty during his royal procession to the nearby located Jama Masjid & other parts of the empire. The outside walls have stone carvings & are embossed with geometrical designs & medallions.

The front view

Once inside, you notice that the place is being used to store large concrete slabs & stacks of building material along one of its arched inner sides. I saw mongooses running amok in the interior. The walls had once been plastered & one can still see the remnants of geometrical patterns amidst the flaking plaster in the niches.

The inside view

The 2 bastions along the side of the gate stand tall, keeping an eye all around with their numerous arrow slits. As a whole the structure looms desolately over its surroundings, higher than other buildings & shops nearby, with a small unkempt garden for company behind it. The garden is now used as a cricket ground by local kids, which in my opinion is a good thing in today’s playground-starved Delhi localities. Interestingly enough, the playground is said to be haunted!! Legend has it that a British soldier ("Sipahi"/"Tommy" - take your pick) was in love with a local girl & wanted to spend the rest of his natural life with her. However he later found out that the girl was soon going to be married - in a fit of rage & desperation he shot the girl & himself too. It has been claimed that the Peepal tree (Ficus religiosa - Sacred fig) is now haunted by a Chudail & people can hear her heart-rending screams at night (A chudail is the Indian version of a banshee - she has a dreadful appearance with her feet turned towards the back, is said to appear to young men as a pretty maiden & then drains their blood & virility). The Tommy is also spotted at times - he comes walking out of the gate with his head in his hands & then walks through the Daryaganj street. Now the atheist in me loves these stories - why does the banshee only haunt that certain tree? How come the Tommy carries his head in his arms - he shot himself, he wasn't beheaded. & why isn't entire Daryaganj considered haunted since the Tommy walks past the entire area. People & their silly stories!!

The side view

Entry to the upper floors is prohibited & the doors are now grilled & locked. No amount of persuasion moves the guard to open the grille.

This impressive structure is now being maintained by A.S.I. If you ever happen to visit this structure on Sunday, do pay a visit to the Sunday Book Bazaar which is one of the major attractions of Daryaganj, drawing hordes of people from different parts of the city in search of their literary fill (refer Pixelated Memories - Daryaganj Sunday Book Market).

The "How-can-it-be-haunted??" view

6 months after this post was published - The Govt. has become strict with its orders, entry to the gate premises is locked. The guard refuses to let you enter even if you tell him you have been inside & you write for the city. Another monument taken away from the people. Sad!

Location: Daryaganj, Chandni Chowk
Open: All days, Sunrise to Sunset.
Nearest Metro Station: Chandni Chowk Metro Station
How to reach: As you exit the metro station, walk straight till you reach a temple, a small street near the temple exits to the main Chandni Chowk Street (just follow the crowd, they would enter a very narrow lane). On this street, on one side, you can see the large Red Fort looming, walk till there & take a bus from near the Fort to Delhi Gate. Alternately, buses ply to Delhi Gate from different parts of the city, just climb on those going to Old Delhi (Purani Delhi)
Entrance Charges: Nil
Photography/Video Charges: Nil
Time required for sightseeing: 20 minutes
Relevant Links -

1. Pixelated Memories - Daryaganj Sunday Book Market
2. Pixelated Memories - Red Fort

Daryaganj Sunday Book Market, New Delhi

It is not unusual to see school/college students early morning moving around with bags full of books, despite the December chill & foggy conditions. But if you see the same on a Sunday morning, rest assured you have reached the right place for book shopping – The Daryaganj Sunday Book Bazaar. No, the bazaar does not have this grand name, it is just an assortment of traders from many different places in Delhi, getting together on the footpaths of Daryaganj every Sunday, to showcase their wares – predominantly books, but also stamps, coins, amulets, cheap clothes, mechanical & kitchen accessories & stationery. Why were we there, for the books of course.

I want a throne like that!!

Every Sunday the mile-long footpath gets covered with books – thousands of them, millions of them, there are so many books that many a times not getting the space to walk, people walk over them, which is actually quite a pity. & then there are the traders themselves who sit on top of the book piles, handing the customer what s/he needs by picking it out & replacing at the right place.

But not a floor like this!!

There are all types of books available – novels (Chetan Bhagat, Arundhati Roy, J.K. Rowling, V.S. Naipaul, Dostoyevsky, Tagore, Premchand, William Dalrymple - you name it, you get it), memoirs, biographies, quiz books, coffee table books, encyclopaedias, magazines, school & college course books & even entrance exam preparation material – be it IIT, AIEEE, CA, UPSC, Bank or any other of the numerous exams. There are possibilities of one finding books that may not be available in regular book stalls due to them being difficult to order or find.

Since not many people read books these days, & not even half of them know about the market, we, i.e me & my school friend Piyush, were pretty pleased with ourselves for going there one fine Sunday morning. Since it was our first time to the market we decided to reach there by 8am (it opens from 6am-9pm), we were in for quite a shock. The market was filled with people – men, women & children of almost all ages, thronging to the sellers, bargaining like anything. How did they reach there so early?? Shit!! We had to jostle in the crowd to move our way through. & since it was our first time there, we were not even sure how to bargain. The first book-pile we saw, we bought the same set of books – the only difference being that while I bought them for Rs 300, Piyush bought them off for Rs 200. Disappointing!! But it left us all the more cleverer as we went to the next pile. Sadly we did not get to try our newly learnt bargaining skills, since even the thickest & glossiest books were priced at Rs 20-30. Even though most of the books here are either second-hand or pirated editions or second-hand pirated editions, yet the place is a heaven for those who are tired of having to buy overly priced books. . Given the correct skills & practice, a person can bring down the price of a book to as low as 10% of its original price – I was able to buy Amish’s "Secret of the Nagas", available for Rs 300 elsewhere for Rs 20 (yes yes I helped promote piracy, so what?? They should be happy I am reading the book). Although these days most books can be downloaded free of cost from various internet sites, yet it can never match the pleasures of the printed word, & what better place to buy all the bestsellers at throwaway prices. The simple fact is the readership is not going to increase unless book prices are brought down, if piracy helps, then why not?? One does not face issues like missing pages or typographical errors in the book itself – although as it happened to me, the cover stitched to a book may not actually be its own, it may be an altogether different book on the inside – hence, don’t judge a book by its cover!! Two shops later, we had our hands full with books, so heavy that we just wanted to keep them somewhere & sit, but we did not, because the lure of more books kept pulling us to the next pile. Also we had to buy some study material too, you can get college books at dirt cheap prices, though you might have to put in some extra effort to find the latest editions & the correct authors among the bulk of books available. I even bought some stamps off a dealer selling whole stamp books & stamps from countries like the US, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Canada, Brazil, Nepal, China, Nigeria etc. I was not sure how many of those were real, but since each individual stamp was only Rs 1-2, & a whole book was for Rs 50/100, it seemed a sell-out.

Buy some stamps..

Coin sellers too peddle their ware here, so do several cloth-traders & traders of a number of paraphernalia, like screwdrivers, hammers, knives, pans, amulets & even photo albums. The mass of humanity swelled as the day got longer, & at 11 am we had to step down from the footpaths in order to avoid the milling crowds.

Or would you like some coins??

There are more than 150 book sellers here who sell their books on the pavement. They have their fixed spot and they can be seen here every Sunday outside the closed shutter of the shops. You can not only buy second hand books here but can also sell them to the vendors or get them exchanged for other books. Some of the book sellers sell specialized books while many others can be found selling all types of books. The traders, even though they had their hands full, were helpful & guided you to the right shop if you asked or tried to help you find the right book, no matter how long it took. Well, at least most of them, a guy selling IAS study material from Vajiram-Ravi, was quarrelsome with almost all the customers, I still don’t know what got into him. Moreover most of the people involved in this big Indian bazaar – from the customers & traders to the tea-seller manning the corner shop – would pose for you at a single request, which definitely made my day.

Does he know how to read??

Finishing our quota of shopping, we headed to the nearest bus stop, just down the road, right next to the Delhi Gate, one of the surviving gates of the erstwhile Shahjanabad (refer Pixelated Memories - Delhi Gate). It was difficult to pull oneself away from all those books & move on, more so because one knows that so many of those hold the keys to strange worlds & distant lands, a welcome relief from the monotony at the end of the day (or at the beginning or the middle if you are just like me). A date with books on another Sunday then..

Location: Near Delhi Gate of Old Delhi
Nearest Metro Station: Chandni Chowk
How to reach: Once you deboard at Chandni Chowk Metro Station, ask for the Red Fort, you would be guided to a narrow lane that opens straight to Chandni Chowk Road, take a rickshaw to Delhi Gate & walk from there on. (Don’t ask the rickshaw-wallahs to take you to the book market because they would drop you off at a place called Nai Sarak, where permanent book shops are located)
Timings: 6am – 9pm
Photography/Video Charges: Nil
Precautions: It gets pretty crowded so take care of your belongings, Beware of thieves & pickpockets. 

Relevant Links - 

1. Pixelated Memories - Delhi Gate