Sarai Locative Media Workshop

When is "Old Delhi"?

Aarti Sethi, Sarai
Iram Ghufran, Sarai
Lokesh, Sarai
Tapio Makela, Artist in residence, Sarai
Ronald Lenz, Waag
Kristel Kenstens, Waag

 

The project will use GPS technology to mark a trace of what could have been the old city wall in the year 1850.The old structures are largely gone, some remain standing in their new avtaars. The city has grown much beyond what it was in the seventeenth century. the city wall that marked the boundary of the capital city of the Mughals has effaced with time and its traces and gates now lie within the city.We hope that the map and the trace of the wall could act a template for for others who wish to explore the city in interesting ways.

What does it mean to visit or re-visit the “Old City” or the “Walled City”, as it is popularly known, in contemporary Delhi? The wall was almost entirely demolished by the Imperial government in 1912, as part of its city improvement works, and “Old” is not really an accurate epithet for the last of the “seven” cities of Delhi. Indeed, in strictly chronological terms, Shahjahanabad, being the last of ‘the’ seven cities and a mere 300 yrs old, is brand new!

Shahjahanabad, the walled city of Delhi, came into being in 1648. Shahjahan, the Mughal emperor who would be imprisoned for life by his younger son, in less than five years, built the wall. The wall, within which this fledgling city was ensconced, would subsequently erode in stages, and completely disappear by the early years of the 20th century.

Old Delhi appears in tourist brochures and the discourse of 'heritage' as New Delhi's exotic holiday from itself. It plays the role of the dark, mysterious other of the new city as well as it's elegant genteel old world self. It gets produced as a marker of old world gentility as well as proof of all that can go wrong and must be corrected. However, this correction takes the form of a move to preserve the 'fetish' of the city's antiquity, so that the emergent new city is suitably adorned with the gravitas of the 'past'. In this tension between the demand for the new and nostalgia for the old lie the everyday tensions of life and livelihood in 'old' Delhi.

If we were to look only at the last 150 years, daily life in the walled city is marked by a series of disruptions, in which the revolt of 1857 and the subsequent violence, and Partition, stand out in their singularity.

The revolt of 1857, which began as a sepoy mutiny against British officers but eventually took the form of a widespread popular movement against British rule, marks a radical rupture when The revolt was crushed and Delhi became the theater of its defeat in the brutal reprisals of the imperial government. Besides the forcible eviction of residents from their homes, which were appropriated by government officials, and the rape, loot and pillage by the army, the spatial character of the walled city was transformed. All buildings within a 450 yard limit from the Red Fort walls were cleared, which resulted in the demolition of places of worship, shops, residences and entire localities, such as the Urdu and Khas bazaars.

Almost a hundred years later, in 1947, Partition would signal a rupture of similar proportions, when nearly 500,000 refugees, primarily Hindu Punjabi’s from Punjab, arrived in the city and as many as 330,000 Muslims left, many of them residents of Old Delhi, taking with them memories they would spatialize in the Anarkali Bazaar in Lahore, while the Lahore music shop in Daryaganj, about a kilometer down from Delhi Gate, testifies to the persistant memories of what they had been forced to leave behind of those who arrived. The landscape of the city of Delhi is overdetermined by the horror and silence of the Partition.

Besides the sharp ruptures produced in moments of historical crises and epic violence, the old city has been subject to a routinized violence of dislocation in the form of “slum clearances” and the demolition of homes and spaces of work, on an almost continous basis, for the last 100 years: from clearances by the imperial municipal authorities during the 1920s to make way for the widening of roads, demolitions again in 1936 in the interests of “hygiene”, through demolitions in the 1950s fueled by fears of “refugee squatters”, to the Emergency in1975 which saw demolitions of residences at the Turkman gate to 2006, which witnessed the demolition of shops and houses from the precincts of the Jama Masjid.

The old city today is also located within the economic life of Delhi, of the circulation of goods and services. With its location in traditional networks of commerce in medieval North Indian economic life, Old Delhi in one of its avatars can be seen as a whole-sale bazaar for everything from paper to dry fruit.

Bhagirath Place, the haveli of Begum Samru, who began her career as a courtesan and eventually rose to commanding her own troops and saved Delhi from being ransacked in 1787, is the hub of film distribution for all of North India. The Camera Market is one of Asia’s largest market and transit point for cameras, film, and electronic goods.

By charting a route which traces the now demolished city wall by walking along its route, using a GPS device, we hope to engage in a kind of “mapping” which does not attempt to chart all that can now henceforth be deemed as “known”, as “discovered”. On the contrary, the fragile re-appearance of the trace of a disappeared wall on a map gestures to the many stories that signal their persistant presence in the daily life of the city by the wall.

 

http://www.geotracing.com/gt/?cmd=showtrack&user=sarai1&zoom=14&map=satellite&id=2225060

 

If you are beginning your journey from the University, or the Civil Lines area, take a rickshaw to Kashmeri Gate via Tees Hazari. Go under the overbridge towards Ritz cinema hall. Opposite Ritz is the Kashemeri Gate with the remains of the old city wall.

Walk along the city wall, with the auto spare parts market on your left till you get to Mori Gate. Mori Gate is not a gate. Mori Gate is a crowded four-way intersection, which marks the site of hole in what used to be the city wall, called Mori Gate.

Cross the road, walk further along the lane at the mouth of which is Lalaji's tea stall and you will happen upon a tiny gate set into the wall called Phoota Gate.

Emerge from the lane and take an auto to Lahori Gate. The spot is marked by the MCD's Old Delhi Museum. Take another rickshaw to Ajmeri gate, through Shraddhanand Marg (GB) road. At Ajmeri gate hop onto a bus to Turkman gate, near the Foreign Resident's Registration Office. Walk further to Dilli Gate, at the mouth of Daryaganj, just opposite Delite Cinema, walk to Rajghat, take another auto back to Kashmeri Gate, passing Nigambodh Ghat gate, Calcutta Gate and Kela Ghat Gate along the way, and you would have completed as close a parikrama (circumference) of the old city wall as is possible.

 

Kashmiri Gate wall	Ritz	Ear cleaners	Broken wall	Tea stall
Kashmiri Gate	Sandbags	Wall	Wheelbarrows	Cycle
Fence	Steps to gate	Metro track	Wall house	Road
Pigeons	Handprint	In the gali	Address	In the gali
Hole in the wall	Closed door	Closed door	Old mansion	Traders notice
Speed	Mori gate in absentia	At Mori gate	Mori gate	By the tea stall
Gali	Man steps	Gali	Gali	Beside the wall
Phoota gate	Phoota gate	Mori gate ?	Mori gate	Rickshaw Lahori gate
Rickshaw Lahori gate	Sadar Bazaar	Sadar Bazar station	At Lahori gate	Lahori to Ajmeri
Near Delhi gate	Near Dilli gate

for the high resolution images please see flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ronaldlenz/sets/72157594418355694/

 

The city by the wall:

Ritz Cinema, opposite Maharana Pratap Bus Terminal, Kashmiri Gate

Ritz jaana hai bhaiyya.
We have to go to Ritz (Cinema).
Ritz nahi hai. Woh Ritzy hai.
It’s not Ritz. It is (called) Ritzy.
Hmm. Haan. Wahin jaana hai.
Hmm. Yes. That’s where we need to go.

30 Rupees. 10 minutes.

Sarai to Ritz in an auto with Kristal, Lokesh and Tapio. Aarti and Ronald are following in a cycle rickshaw. They have the phone. So, the journey doesn’t begin effectively till they get here. Meanwhile Tapio and I are busy taking pictures of the raunchy film poster outside the movie theatre.

I promise myself that one day I will catch a show here. I remember Jeebesh once saying that he watched many good European films in the morning show at theatres such as Ritz because these films got an ‘A’ (for Adults) certificate from the censor board.

People outside Ritz(y) mistake us for tourists because of the obvious presence of foreigners. We are taking pictures and in a few minutes there is a medium size crowd around us – everyone wants their picture taken. Everyone has a story to tell. But we don’t have time to listen. The circumference of the wall has to be completed in a couple of hours! There will be time for stories later! We have to find the wall!! One kind soul points out the Kashmiri Gate and the remnants of the wall there. Well! We are on the wrong side of the road – that’s obvious.

With a stylized – “I’ll be back”, I move ahead with the team. We cross over, dodging heavy traffic and breaking many rules. The neatly removed fence from the road divider makes it easy for us to get to the other side.

The wall hosts a tea stall and a chane - murmurewala at this juncture. We have an interesting conversation going with a few patrons of the tea stall. They are sitting on a wooden bench, daily commuters to the city – their bus from Kashmiri Gate bus stop will be leaving in 20 minutes.

“This Wall? The Kings made it to protect the city and the people. The city was once contained within the wall… It goes right up to Turkman Gate and the Red Fort.
You don’t know its history?! Where have you come from?”

Ignorance is no longer bliss. It is deeply embarrassing. Anyway the project was not supposed to be a history lesson… It was supposed to be an exploration of contemporary Delhi… For me, the wall was just a route! Well, there wasn’t much to say, so we moved into Kashmiri Gate, the monument, protected by the ASI.

Kashmiri Gate.
One of the four main gates to Delhi as built by Shahjahan. The others being:
Lahori Gate
Ajmeri Gate
Turkman Gate

Lokesh relates a conversations she’s had with Prince, alias Rajkumar, of the Bharat tea stall at Kashmiri Gate says, of what is now the General Post Office, that during British times, this was the main court house. Three judges sat here and behind was the scaffold/hanging house. All the death by hanging sentences passed in Delhi were executed here. Today the building has fallen into complete disuse.

Meanwhile some of us have a conversation with the ASI official who talks about the restoration of the gate. “These holes in the wall that you see are the marks left by the British canons during the 1857 war. They cannot be repaired. Even though the ASI is renovating the rest, they have specifically left this section broken as it is important that the marks remain so people know there was a war, in which the wall was broken.”

The holes in the walls are not repaired– so that the revolt in the city is remembered…

We follow the wall, along a narrow lane to Mori Gate and Aarti tell a story from Lahore - The people of Lahore have a strange sense of humour. If you ever ask anyone living inside the Walled City as to how many gates the ancient city has, they will invariably say 12, and a ‘mori’ a hole. Lokesh, who is the designated interviewer and guide, leads the way. The area is a wholesale market for auto parts. There are quite a few banners and posters by various traders associations – indicating the protest and rage among the workers and traders against the sealings, which threaten the market. People are wary of us because of the cameras… I heard someone comment – survey kar rahe hain (They are conducting a survey). The survey evokes strong reactions from everyone… We move on…

We reach Mori Gate. It is but a presence – marked by the absence of a structure. It is a crossroad where four roads meet. Mori gate is a bus stop. Tapio and Lokesh talk to Lalaji, who runs tea stall there. He says that “This used be the old city wall, and then in 1857 the British tore the wall down to make way for this road. So that's why this is called Mori gate as there was a hole in the wall through which the road came. There was never any gate here...” Perhaps.

Meanwhile Aarti overhears a conversation.

I heard that there used be a gate, and then it was torn down so that the road could be built.
Really? And who told you that?
My father...
Well I have lived here all my life and neither my father nor my grandfather ever told me any such thing.
Well, thats what my father told me...
You?! You live across the river! How would you know what the history of this place is huh??”

We keep following the structure of the wall and enter a narrow gali. There are small houses built along the wall. We move quickly through. Soon everyone is dispersed along the length of the gali. Tapio is taking pictures and recording sound. Aarti and Ronald have stopped at some point. I am standing at the mouth of the gali… looking for a rickshaw. Aarti comes running. Do you want to see the phoota gate? We rush back. How did I miss this? Well so much for my powers of observation. There it stands – a 6 ½ feet arch of stone/ bricks (?) as clear as daylight. It leads to some place. We promise that we will go down that route (one day)… but now there is confusion because there are claims that this second crossroad is the actual site of Mori Gate! There is no time to check these counter claims. We haggle over the price for rickshaw rides and settle for 30/- a rickshaw to Lahori Gate.

20 minutes later.
Well it seems that many roads lead to Lahori Gate. We (Tapio, Lokesh and I) can no longer see our other teammates. We are in the middle of the mother of all traffic jams in Sadar Bazaar. I can hear my phone ring but it’s difficult to locate it amidst the bag, the camera bags and the various pockets of my trousers. It is a frantic Aarti. “Where are you people? You were supposed to take a left but you just went on ahead… you should have followed us! Now come back.” There doesn’t seem a way out of the traffic. We bid goodbye to our rickshaw and trudge along. The GPS didn’t map this extra leg of the walk! We move through Sadar Bazaar – bustling with activity. There is talk in the market that this wholesale market (the largest in Asia) will be relocated to a spot outside the city.
Lokesh wants to take a picture of a ‘night shelter’ for children who work on the city streets. Meanwhile Aarti has called twice convinced that Sadar Bazaar has swallowed us or that I have gone on a mad shopping binge… I guess Lokesh’s calming presence is her only hope… she doesn’t realize that we are “walking” and not flying to Lahori Gate.

The Walled City Museum greets us at Lahori Gate. As do Aarti, Kristel and Ronald.

We take another rickshaw through Shradhanand Marg to Ajmeri gate. The rickshaw wala is quite informative and opinionated… “This is Shraddhanad Marg for people like you madam… for all these other kind… it is GB Road… bad things happen here… women are traded…” I cannot concentrate on the conversation because my phone is ringing again. It is Aarti. This time it is a pickpocket… “Someone tried to steal my wallet a while ago… now some person has followed our rickshaw and is saying that the public is beating up the kid and they will leave him on the railway tracks – Ronald and I are going back… See you at Ajmeri Gate!” There goes the GPS!

Ajmeri Gate is a protected monument, with gardens and benches; plaques and guides; and gates and guards. This is also one of the sides of NDRS (New Delhi Railway Station) We take a few pictures in the fast fading light and take a bus to Turkman Gate.

5 min. 2/- Rupees. A song.

The signboard is rusted, with many coats of ‘Hue and Cry’ notices stuck to it. One stands out prominently… “Missing….” Turkman Gate - a mute witness to the demolitions of the emergency of 1975 -77.

Aarti recalls a report she read in the Sarai Archives:
Government of India. 1978. Shah Commission of Inquiry, Interim. Report Vol 2.

Shri Birdi (Tehsildar, Slums, DDA) said that after the firing on April
19, 1976 (at Turkman Gate), the demolition was speeded up under the cover
of curfew. Flood lights were installed and more bulldozers were pressed
into service. The decision to resume the demolitions was taken at the
highest level and no effort was made by anyone to stop it.

An old man watching us take pictures of the gate, mistakes us for tourists. In a conversation with Lokesh and Aarti, he recalls, “I have lived here all my life. Earlier the traffic used to flow beneath the gate. This is where the city ended and there were only fields here, where you can see all this construction. Then they sealed off the gate, perhaps because children would get in there and do mischief.”

The mood is muted now. Everyone is tired. We still need to cover a large chunk. The walk from Turkman gate to Dilli Gate seems never ending. Dilli Gate lies in the middle of the road. I don’t want to cross the road. I want to catch a show of Dhoom 2 at Delite Cinema.

We trudge along. There is no transport in sight. We decide to give Calcutta Gate, Kabuli Gate, Kela Ghat and Nigambodh Gate a miss. We walk through the necropolis of the city to Raj Ghat and catch an auto to Kashmiri Gate… and in an error of human communication, switch off the GPS before our circumference is complete - leaving a ‘mori’ on our map!

Coming back to sarai we hear that colleagues had been keeping tabs on our progess through the day. The bright pink line shows the path the GPS took. The map new looks suspiciously like the city map of 1850. Or does it?