By now as you all must know we have moved to New India. It’s difficult to time precisely when this momentous shift took place, if we all moved at the same time, where we have moved to and what exactly is new in India, but we are assured that we have made the transition. So perhaps this column can be a requiem for Old India, which seems to have been consigned to another time, much like an old sweater that had started to unravel.
If places can age and have a sell-by date, then they must have an interface between new and old. Like Old Delhi you might think, which bore the name of Old until it was dignified by becoming simply Delhi, although in Hindi it continues stubbornly to be Purani Dilli .
Smell of jalebis
Described as ‘Old’ in contrast to Lutyens’ Delhi, it continues to bear the marks of age, such as the lingering association with Urdu that wafts in the air, like the smell of jalebis frying in ghee. Even in its overcrowded narrow galis , a few havelis survive, with their tehkhanas or basements, stories of buried wells and murmurs of resident ghosts of past begums.
If the original number of 500 havelis has dwindled to barely 50 habitable ones, we are presented with a memory of a magnanimous past and a cruel reminder of how the old is allowed to crumble and self-destruct.
The sections of Old Delhi which are nurtured however, bearing the power of the state, recall the imprint of the still older cities: Shahjahanabad and its magnificent Red Fort still signify the seat of power, from which the ruler of India addresses the nation. The symbolic value of the old thus remains, to reinforce and validate the present.
Nevertheless, Old Delhi, first isolated by Lutyens and then the aggressive growth of South, East and North, has proved surprisingly resilient. In the age of the high-rise apartment and panoramic view, Old Delhi still commands the highest commercial price for the ground floor of the smallest stall or khoka to the largest shop floor.
Despite the burgeoning NCR, it has maintained its supremacy as a leading Asian market — congested and chaotic — but the nerve centre for the trade of silver and gold, grains and spices and dry fruit, saris and textiles, paper and sanitary ware. For over 400 years, Shahjahanabad with its apparent chaos, is the largest whole sale market in India.
The fragrant spice bylanes of Khari Baoli, and Naya Baans, the market for the export of betel leaf and nut across South Asia and the U.K., are unique for the manner in which they have adapted to global trade, led by the traders of Ballimaran and Kucha Mahajani, the nerve centre of deal-making in Old Delhi.
Where are the books?
What has not fared so well is the sterling image that Old Delhi once had as a centre for learning. The nearly 20 libraries here stocked with rare manuscripts seem to have been relegated to another time.
Wedged between Old Delhi railway station and the Chandni Chowk cluster, the Hardayal Municipal Public Library, named after freedom fighter Lala Hardayal, has nearly 7,000 rare books, including a handwritten Quran by Aurangzeb. But it has been squeezed for funds, unable to buy new books.
A recent infusion has given the library a facelift but much needs to be done to redress the condition of the nearly 20 smaller libraries in the area, such as Marwari Library, a nearly 100-year-old repository of Hindi writing that enumerated Gandhi and Madan Mohan Malviya among its visitors.
Perhaps these centres were like another extension of the cultural life of the old city such as the famed Sir Shankar Lal mushairas , which brought together leading poets Jigar Moradabadi, Firaq Gorakhpuri and Majrooh Sultanpuri. Or the publishing industry on Nai Sarak, which had its heyday with an influx of booksellers from Lahore after Partition. With the digital revolution, this industry is gasping for survival. But the architecture of Old Delhi, its food, language and crafts, have so much to give, so long as New India can accommodate the old.
Gayatri Sinha is an art critic and curator who, while preoccupied with her art website www.criticalcollective.in, is also contemplating a book on the Middle Ages
