A Day at the Ruins

Ya rahey hissar* oosar, ya basey gujjar (May [this place] remain unoccupied, or else the herdsmen may live here).

I will admit I started with doubts. Don’t get me wrong, I love to wander around ruins and love seeing new parts of the city even more. But Shalabh can sometimes be a little over enthusiastic about history. So when he told my friend Johnny that we were going off to a far corner of the world to look at a fort with no ceilings, no complete structures to speak of, surrounded by villages and used as a grazing ground for the local goats, I felt it was my obligation to explain to Johnny that he should keep an open mind and just enjoy the metro/auto adventure until we saw what we were really up against.

The metro ride itself had to be an hour. It was January of 2011 and the Tuqhlaqabad stop (second to last stop on the purple line) still had a film of new station dust. After twenty minutes on a corner, we convinced an auto to take us to the fort. Feeling generous and desperate, we agreed to pay his way there and back so he didn’t have to wait for us to finish to pick up another ride. Bumping along, I wondered if we were leaving the authority of the MCD. Just a bit further and we would be in Faridabad.

Even after we piled out onto Mehrauli Bedarpur Road, and I saw the huge walls of the Tughlaqabad Fort looming above us, I was pretty skeptical. The entrance looked hokey, there were fake stone stairs, an ASI board, polished towers, and a ticket booth.  The warning signs of an uninteresting afternoon.

I could not have been more wrong. Three hours later and I was convinced. There is no better way to appreciate the grand, artistic, spiritual, and destructive history of Delhi than within the walls of Tughlaqabad. Here is a simply recipe for how you might spend the day.

1.    Take twenty minutes when you first enter to sit on a hill and look to the far reaching walls and the desolate inner grounds of the fort below you. Despite missing roofs it is easy to conjure up dreams of history and life pacing streets. A grain grinder looks as if it is waiting for the operator to come back from a long harvest season. Perhaps it’s because the ghosts of this disserted city were abandoned here, disconnected from the growth and destruction of Delhi, undisturbed even now.

Climbing through secret tunnels.

2.   Take a walk with the ghosts. Legend has it that this city is cursed. When Ghiyas-ud-din began building his fort city, the famous Sufi dervish Nizam-ud-din was completing a step well for serving the needs of the local people. Although Ghiyas-ud-din decreed that all craftsmen should be dedicating their time to the fort, many snuck out at night to volunteer on Nizam-ud-din’s well infuriating the ruler who already mistrusted and disliked the spiritual leader. During their struggle Nizam-ud-din proclaimed, Ya rahey hissar, ya basey gujjar (May it [Tughlaqabad] remain unoccupied, or else the herdsmen may live here).

Whether curse or prophesy, Nizam-ud-din's words were remarkably accurate. Tughlaqabad, which took four years to build, was only occupied for six years before a lack of clean water and the ambition of Ghiyas-ud-Din’s son, Muhammad, forced the capital to shift to the new city of Jahanpanah.

3.     Get into the walls. I won’t tell you where it is but somewhere, perhaps a kilometer from the entrance, there is a crawl space in the fort walls that will lead you outside, and leave you standing on the edge of fort and forest in what used to be a mighty water way. Perhaps an escape route, or something less interesting, it is definitely human sized (well, small human sized). If you find it, keep in mind you will be sharing the crawl space with bats and the only option once you have reached the other side, is to turn back around through the tunnel, or scale the fort walls. You don’t need ropes but you may want to bring a friend. We found it perfectly safe, but promise nothing.

Reaching new heights.

4.     Play a game of tag. Ever since visiting this site I have a recurring fantasy of playing laser tag or paintball at the fort. Of course, that is impossible, but a game of simple tag is not. If you steal this dream from me, tell us tell us how it goes!

If you haven’t figured it out yet, Tughlaqabad is sort of like a giant sandbox. If you can allow yourself to regress into childlike imagination and restlessness you might just have the best day you’ve ever had in Delhi.

*Struck through and corrected after the comment by Arghanoon-e-aashiqaan at 05:05 on 24th May 2012

The One and Only Rahim!

Rahiman dhaga prem ka mat todo chatkay

Tute se phir na jude, jo jude to gaanth pad jaaye

Don't snap the thread of love, O Rahim,

Once broken, it cannot be mended. If mended, there will always be a knot

I came across this as a boy of twelve, in a remote village of Himachal. For good measure, our Hindi teacher conveniently displaced the word 'love' with 'friendship'. Fair enough, twelve year olds are perhaps not supposed to understand love, of any kind whatsoever. In the same courses, we had couplets by Kabir Das. Kabir was a 16^th century 'low-caste' weaver who transcended his background, education (or the lack of it) and recited some of the most beautiful things ever in Khadi Boli and Hindi. Most of his work was documented much later through oral tradition. For some reason, the image of a poor man sitting in his hut by the Ganga in Banaras weaving away and reciting nuggets of wisdom stuck in my head and I associated it with everyone writing couplets in Hindi, Urdu or Khadi Boli. That another well known poet Raidas (also known as Ravidas) was Kabir’s contemporary, a poor cobbler, and very wise did not help matters.

From there on, I imagined Rahim to be an impoverished mendicant dressed in tattered clothes, wandering through the world. I never associated a profession with him but he could have been a potter or an iron-smith. He would slave away for subsistence and, in his daily struggles, manage to see profound wisdom that escaped the mortals around him. Imagine my surprise then, when I learned that Rahim was a noble in Akbar's court, a wealthy governor, one of the navratnas, an accomplished warrior among much else. He was also an accomplished writer and translator, he translated Babar's autobiography from Chagatai to Persian.  And he has a tomb in Delhi, right next to the tombs of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya and Humanyun. He is clearly keeping exalted company even in death. His resting place has been ravaged by time and the makers of Safdarjung's tomb, but that does not take anything away from its impressive size. With a little imagination, you can still see the delicate carvings on the walls, the ornate jharokha work on some of the small windows, and the grandeur of the grounds in the centuries past. Feeding off of the ghost story told to me by a security guard in Masjid Moth, I even imagined Rahim's ghost procession joining Humanyun's to seek Nizamuddin's blessings.

What has continued to hound me though is how could a blue blooded man, a noble and a wealthy man have the time, the depth, and the perspective to be such a profound thinker. Not taking anything away from Kabir (who I already called The Winner), it was probably easier for a Kabir to brood over life, for he did not have many other cares, no provinces to govern, no wars to fight and win, no autobiographies to translate and no emperor to please. For Rahim to have achieved what he did in literature is truly outstanding. It is perhaps fitting then that there are two Rahims in my mind and the two exist in different worlds. And lest I forget, when we met him in December, even Sam Miller was not aware that there was only one Rahim!

Bade badai na karen, bade na bole bol,

Rahiman heera kab kahe, lakh taka mera mol.

The truly great never boast about themselves or talk about their worth,

O Rahim, when does a diamond ever say it is worth a million.

Goodness! Forgot to mention, all photos above courtesy Wanderfool of A Date with Delhi.

On the Ridge

In City of Djinns, William Dalrymple briefly mentions a bungalow that William Fraser built for himself on a hill. The mention is only about a sentence or two. Read carefully, it yields two things important enough to hold my attention any day. That it was built by William Fraser and that it was atop a hill. For the uninitiated, my love for William Fraser is documented here and that for the hills much more extensively at Trek Himachal. Obviously visiting the bungalow immediately became a personal quest. So, when one July morning a friend, Varsha, expressed a desire to see the Northern ridge, I had every reason to accept.

We got into the swanky Delhi Metro from Hauz Khas and got off at Kashmere Gate. After stopping briefly at Qudsiya Bagh and wandering around a city park we quibbled over which direction to take, (and sadly, I lost the argument) before we finally got into an auto for the Hindu Rao Hospital.

It was a surprisingly short auto ride. Towards the end it got really interesting, weaving through a couple of small lanes before eventually climbing up a steep hill. I had no idea such steep slopes existed in Delhi. Eventually, we were dropped off at the entrance of the Hindu Rao Hospital, and had no clue what to do. Dalrymple had said Fraser's bungalow had been converted to Hindu Rao Hospital, named after a Maratha merchant of that name, who had bought the bungalow after Fraser's death. An ASI book we were carrying said the same thing. We had assumed we would get off the auto and bingo, bang in front of us we would see a charming building from early Raj with fluted columns and colonnades. Instead, there was a 1980s, dilapidated, typical stinky hospital looking at us with sleepy, disinterested, eyes. Lost of purpose, we walked around a bend in the narrow road and spotted a police post. But Varsha refused to use her womanly charms to quiz a policeman for the whereabouts of the haveli so we moved a little further down the road trying to orient ourselves while sifting through the pages of the ASI book.

Just before we passed the last of the hospital grounds, we spotted another guarded gate. Just to prove a point I had been making (that I am a very charming man), I politely asked the guard on duty for a baoli in the area which the ASI book mentioned. People are more likely to know old, unused baolis than re-used havelis. After a bit of apprehension, he actually led us inside the gate. While I was basking in the afterglow of having proven my point, Varsha looked around and whooped at having possibly found Fraser's haveli. I am not sure why she got so excited. What stared us in the face was a sad, half mossy, stinking, unkempt building showing multiple failed attempts at renovation. We tried going inside but were blocked by a pile of broken chairs. Anyway the room stank like a public loo in Kashmere Gate. I lost all my enthusiasm.. I have been to many a ruin covered in shit but this building was supposed to be in use. You could see name plates outside doors and yet it was stinking of pee. It was unbearable!

Walking a little further down the road, the baoli was not much different either. Parts of the walls had caved in and it was fenced off. Tall grass grew around it and, moss settled into the empty places left by fallen stones. ASI had fenced it off physically and fenced it off their minds as well. A little further after the baoli, was Pir Ghaib and it was a completely different story. It is a curious structure. I didn’t know what to make of it. Actually, no one does. One legend goes that a sufi resided here and one day just disappeared. Disappear is ghaib in urdu, hence the name. Who the Sufi was, when he lived, how and why he disappeared, no one seems to know. There is no mihrab anywhere to indicate a place of worship. The couple of graves inside are not conventionally oriented. The ceiling has a couple of openings which seem to be part of an astronomical observatory. Then there is the theory that this could have been a part of Kushk-i-shikar, Feroz Shah Tughlaq's hunting lodge on the ridge. There are very steep staircases with very narrow stairs on the first floor leading to the rooftop. From there, you can peer down through the holes to the ground floor and also look around many parts of North Delhi. It is two floors high on a high hill in Delhi and in a green area with very little haze. This is about the best view you can get in the city.

The curious Pir Ghaib, of the Pir who disappeared curiously

After Pir Ghaib, we went to the Asokan Pillar on the ridge. Truthfully it was nothing but another thin, strong column of special iron with Asoka's edicts on it. This one had been taken off from somewhere, reassembled somewhere else, then blown to fragments in a blast, collected and pieced back together again and then placed somewhere else. I wonder if Asoka would be able to read what edicts are left on it!

The Asokan pillar! Yet Another!

One of the charms of the Northern Ridge (and I say this with the benefit of hindsight) is many small monuments littered in a small area, all a short walk away from each other. They come in all shapes, mostly small sizes and encompass about eight centuries of Delhi not counting the Asokan Pillar. The latest of them all is the Mutiny Memorial built by the British in memory of the Mutiny of 1857.

Mutiny Memorial from the foliage

The search for the Mutiny Memorial took us on one of the most pleasant walks I have ever been to in Delhi. Varsha, with her aching feet, would probably not agree. We strolled down a slope on a narrow road with woods all around. It was rainy season, the forest was lush green and calm. An auto plodding up the slope with a few school kids looking curiously at us accentuated the far away feeling. It could have been in a small village in Himachal.

A close up.

Finally, we turned back up the slope, much to my disappointment, and found our way towards the Mutiny Memorial. While the memorial was closed for renovation, the staff allowed us to poke around the outside. Whatever else people may say about it (it has been renamed Jeet Garh with new inscriptions about how 'those referred to as traitors here were the freedom fighters'), the British taste of location was perfect. Perched on the top of a small hill, itself on the top of Northern Ridge, there could hardly have been a better location for placing a memorial to victory. It is not grand and is slightly understated but, placed where it is, it does not need to be any of those things.

We walked around a bit more and were surprised to find amongst other things a clean loo in a public park. The park itself is full of monkeys, has a water channel, a small pond, Flagstaff Tower and some other remains of Kushk-i-Shikar. Finally, exhausted and in search of an auto, we walked past Rajpur Road, which I had recently learned was the poshest of the posh residential neighbourhoods in Delhi. Yes, more upmarket than anything in South Delhi. You only have to walk on that one road lined by huge bungalows and mansions situated back in their own grounds and guarded by tidy greenery to believe that this exists in Delhi.

Flagstaff Tower. British officials' families hid in during the mutiny.

The afternoon was topped off by a sumptuous Korean meal, courtesy of a friend Jamal Mohammad, who is the single most reliable source of food information in Delhi and a lecture on moderation by Varsha, which she herself did not follow when faced by a chocolate fondue at AIM Cafe in North Delhi and the most wonderful waffle I can ever hope to have.

Barah Khamba

Location - Hauz Khas/Green Park (click here for the map location)

Co-ordinates - N28 33.177 E77 12.122

Closest Metro Station - Hauz Khas/Green Park (Yellow Line)

Landmark - Aurobindo Place market

Barah Khamba from the entrance gate.

Barah Khamba literally means 12 pillars. As expected, the square tomb stands on 12 pillars, 4 large ones on the corners and 2 small ones on each of the 4 sides. Each side measures 10.5 metres. The 'Delhi Heritage' board at the entry says 'At one time there were several cenotaphs inside this building,...' All that remains now is some cardboard boxes and clothes drying on a line.

Drying clothes and cardboard boxes have replaced the cenotaphs.

The graves outside the structure, together with a bastion, a dry well and a structure which would have probably held a lamp still survive. The bastion like structure can be seen on the left of the tomb in the first photo. It is said to date back to the Lodhi period. My guess is the square shape on the inside in addition to proximity with other Lodhi period construction leads to this conclusion. I will however need to read more to ascertain this. The square shaped inside has a row of small niches just below the squinch. The north and south walls have arched openings just above the main arched gateways on either side.

The row of niches below the squinch.

Close up of the dome

Like its neighbours, Dadi Poti ka Maqbara Barah Khamba is fortunate enough to be blessed with some artificial lighting, which I later figured was a last ditch ASI effort to beautify the city before the commonwealth games. However, I would rather have spent the money on 'real restoration' of the monument than spend it on lighting a monument which has clothes drying inside it. Anyway, what the lighting does is make all of them look beautiful and surreal after evening, which sort of serves the purpose in a posh neighbourhood, where only 1 in a 1000 walking past will ever think of entering it.

Barah Khamba lighted in the night

Inside the tomb with light streaming in. Photo Courtesy: Rachel Leven

Tomb of Mubarak Shah - Kotla Mubarakpur

Location - Kotla Mubarakpur

Co-ordinates - NA (alleys too narrow for a GPS signal)

Closest Metro Station - Lajpat Nagar (Purple Line)

Landmark - Opp Defence Colony

I started at a little before 8. It was a Saturday, not many people were around. As I crossed the road to Kotla Mubarakpur, it felt like crossing a few centuries. From the wide open posh Defence Colony to the cluttered medivial village of Kotla Mubarakpur is a change that can inspire anyone to say this. One moment, its B block, House no 28 in Defence Colony and a 2 minute walk across the road, there is an old settlement easy to get lost in. Houses hug each other closely, the roofs almost touch together, light barely gets in. From Honda Accords to good old bicycles, from stores selling olive oil to shops selling oily bread pakoras, the transformation does not take a minute.

Transported to the past

As I walked into the narrow alleys, it was not difficult to realize I was lost. Each street looked like the other. After 2 turns, all sense of direction was lost. India is a land of uncertainities. Ask for directions from 10 people and I can bet an arm on it, you will get 10 answers. I asked people for old 'gumbads' (Gumbad is Urdu/Hindi for tombs). 'There are none around', 'What does that mean?', 'You should go to Red Fort', 'Its just around the corner' were amongst the responses I elicited. After multiple attempts, many failings, getting lost a few times, someone told me I needed to find the mosque. With an SLR slung around the neck and a small backpack across the back, I was already getting some weird looks. In due time, I found something. It was everything I had not expected.

Tomb of Mubarak Shah crisscrossed by electricity wires

Staring at me was an octagonal tomb. Quite large, the size was accentuated by the closed surroundings. Surrounded by an iron railing and rounded by a 10 feet wide road, the claustrophobic surroundings made it look much bigger than it was. All around were myriad shops, a cobbler, a laundry, a general store. Trash was littered around. Atop the building was a lantern structure with pigeons flitting around.

Pigeons Flit around the top of the tomb

The front gate was crudely locked with a bolt and screw. I enquired around and was told the local cobbler is the caretaker. After I had circled the building twice, a boy approached me. 'Do you want to get in?' he asked me. 'Yes'. 'Use the side gate'. He led me through the side gate and I was in the verandah. The boy looked about 15. His name was Aman. Over the next 30 minutes as I walked around the tomb, I bombarded him with questions and he answered patiently. The 'Tomb of Mubarak Shah' is locally known as Bada Gumbad (large dome). The locals say it houses the remains of a Sufi and his family. The largest grave is said to belong to the Sufi (unnamed) and the rest to his disciples/family.

Graves in the Tomb

Cats and pigeons inhabit the Lodhi period tomb. By my guess, at anytime, it has 5 feline inmates and about 10 flying. Octagonal in shape, as is typical of Lodhi period tombs, the inside has intricate engravings all around. Three sides of the tomb have arched gateways while the one on the west is fashioned as a mihrab for a praying mosque with verses from Quran engraved on rock.

The Mihrab of the tomb with the engravings on top right and left

The roof on the inside and the western face on the outside also have ornate carvings. Floral patterns or verses from the Quran are the most common. The roof has remains of the famed blue tile work. Though soiled by time, it still retains some of the original colour.

Carvings on the roof

Carvings on the outside western face (on the outside of the prayer face)

Unlike most other monuments that one gets to see around Delhi, this is a live monument. Everyday, people from all faiths come to the tomb, leave their footwear outside, walkin into to sanctum sanctorum and ask the Sufi for help with worldly matters. The multi-communal aspect of the monument is best highlighted by the half broken small idol of Ganesha displayed on South East face of the monument. As I was walking around the monument, I saw many a passer by pay their respects to the idol and I would guess, in turn to the Sufi as well.

The broken Ganesha idol on the South East face

From the Dadi Poti Maqbaras to Kotla Mubarakpur was quite a change. Both places have tombs from Lodhi period. One set is right opposite a posh market, is lighted by ASI, is fairly well maintained and is only visited by camera holding tourists, almost bearing an eerie, far away look. On the other hand is this quaint, large tomb in a quaint, medivial village, surrounded by walls on all sides, littered by pigeon and cat poop and still has enough significance for Aman to tell me to not worry about my footwear left outside. 'Bahar chhod dijiye, yahan se koi nahin le jayega' - Leave your footwear outside and dont bother, no one will steal from here (that is from a Sufi's tomb where people come to pray).

Offerings on one of the graves

Aman, my informal guide for the morning

For more, read the wikipedia link here and references section.

Dadi-Poti ka Maqbara

Location - Hauz Khas/Green Park (Map location here)

Co-ordinates - N28 33.208 E77 12.226


Closest Metro Station - Hauz Khas/Green Park (Yellow Line)

Landmark - Aurobindo Market

The Dadi and Poti tombs from the entry gate

Just as the road turns in towards the Hauz Khas village, rounding the corner around the Aurobindo market, a look to the right transports the scene to the 15th century. On the left of me, across the road is the Aurobindo market. I was in the market at the Midlands book shop, trying to hunt down 'The Hall of a Thousand Columns' by Tim McIntosh Smith. The book traces the 8 year journey of the great Moroccan traveller Ibn Batuta in India and derives its name from a hall in the Tughlaqabad palace which Batuta has eloquently described in his journals. Just as I left the book shop and walked out a little further up towards Hauz Khas village, there was blinding light on the right. It was already dark and I could see 2 monuments bathed in orange light. The domes atop them were lighted puprle. Intrigued, I entered through the black iron gate.

The tombs lighted up in the night

The complex houses 2 tombs, one fairly larger than the other. The larger, Dadi ka Maqbara, dates to the Lodi period while the smaller, Poti ka Maqbara is from the Tughlaq period. The original names of the tombs are not known, nor is anything known about the people buried in. It is said the tombs derived their current names much later and owe this to the disparity in their sizes (Dadi is grandmother and Poti is granddaugther in Hindi).

The tombs from the North

Dadi ka Maqbara - 15.86 metres X 15.86 metres in dimension, dating to Lodhi period, this is the larger of the 2 tombs. The northern and southern walls have arched entrances and 2 levels of 4 arched niches each, giving it a 2 storey appearance from the outside, which is typical of many Lodi period tombs. Inside, the structure is square at the base. As the walls rise, its get octagonal, then hexagonal and finally 32 sided before the sides merge seamlessly to form the round of the dome. There are unidentified graves inside.

From the North East

From the complex's entry gate

Same shot, different time

One of the corners inside the Dadi tomb

Poti ka Maqbara - smaller in size at 11.8 metres X 11.8 metres and with sloping walls typical of the Tughlaq period, this structure is a bit of an enigma. Tombs traditionally have their entrances to the South and as such, the south face gets the maximum artisan attention. However, the south face here is plain. The north face on the other hand is ornately decorated, though the decoration has blackened with time and lack of care. The dome on the top is supplemented by a lantern shaped structure, possibly to hold a lamp. As with the larger monument, there are unidentified graves inside.

The carving (blackened on the top and sides) on the north face of the Poti ka Maqbara

Looking through the South entrance with shadows in the night

The lantern structure on the top of Poti ka Maqbara

Poti ka Maqbara glows in the night

As the evening descends, the lights put up by ASI come on and give them a surreal look. Watching them from the road outside is like looking back in time. From seeing a black Mercedes flit past you to these serene structures which have seen it all for the last 6 centuries. To think that the man whose adventures I was trying to find the book for could have possibly overseen (or atleast seen) the building of these monuments 6 centuries ago!!