City Walk – Gali Gunna Mishra, Near Dilli Gate Walks by The Delhi Walla - April 22, 20230 A Walled City street. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Narrow, secretive. The street is 50 steps away from Dili Gate, and 10 steps away from the crowded khasta kachori kiosks of Jaipur Namkeen Bhandar and Brajbasi Namkeen Bhandar. Yet, it feels completely severed from the Purani Dilli pandemonium. This afternoon, Galli Gunna Mishra is empty, silent. It tingles the spine to cross so easily from total chaos to total calm. The right-side wall is weatherbeaten pink. The left-side wall is weatherbeaten blue. A slightly open door to a house shows a small boy in a small room, enjoying dal-chawal. A slightly open door to the next-to-next house shows a cloistered veranda with two shafts of soft daylight falling across the
City Monument – Summertime Baolis, Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah & Elsewhere Monuments by The Delhi Walla - April 22, 20230 That old AC. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Some of us are dodging the summertime heat waves by self-exiling within AC rooms. AC existed in the very old days too. That medieval-era air-conditioner was of stone, a secretive monument linking light to shade, earth to water. It was the baoli. Stone stairs descending to a well or water tank; the staircase punctuated with pavilions, chambers, jaalis and corridors. In hostile summer months, heat-oppressed citizens would retreat into it, lounging in the lower reaches, closer to the receding water and its coldness. Delhi’s centuries-old baolis are no longer compatible with the summer of our times. But here are a few you might explore. The 13th century Gandhak ki Baoli is the capital’s oldest.