A pre-partition edifice.

[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]

This greyish Old Delhi landmark is simply known as “building.” The storeyed structure looks profoundly different from the surrounding storeyed structures. It is decidedly more elegant in an old-fashioned way, apparent even to those among us with no insights on architecture.

The “building” stands at Mohalla Qabristan Chowk, and is the vicinity’s only pre-partition edifice still wholly intact.

The intersection has been visited on these pages, but the “building” is demanding an exclusive appraisal. A much taller multi-storey has lately risen right in front of it. The development is significant. Until the turn of the century, the “building” used to be the tallest in this part of the Walled City. Its initial presence was so overwhelming that people in the area started pointing it as the “building,” and the label stuck.

The “building” has three floors, six flats and 15 windows, one of which flaunts a bird cage with a parrot inside. Most dwellers are the descendants of original tenants. The first inhabitants are remembered to this day. Muzammil, the “Bangali,” was a labourer with a jewellery manufacturer in Dariba Kalan, Bhai Shafique made glass frames in Gali Garraya, and Shehzad Qawwal sang sufi qawwalis in Delhi’s many dargahs.

A neighbourhood raconteur remembers seeing the distant Qutub Minar from the roof of the “building,” back when no multi-storey stood along the sprawling miles between Purani Dilli and the distant Mehrauli. “Qutub looked like a lapat (flame)”—he once told The Delhi Walla.

A long time ago, Minu Pehelwan, the wrestler who had a chai shop beside the “building,” used to fly pigeons on its then-tallest roof. Following the partition, he moved to Pakistan, and was rumoured to have started a chai place in Lahore’s Anarkali Bazar. Today, no tea stall faces the “building” the wrestler left behind, but “Mullaji Ice Merchant” operates out from one of its ground-floor rooms. The ice shop was formerly the home of a highly respected transgender woman (name not remembered by anyone) who lived alone.

This afternoon, peering out from the new multi-storey’s high-altitude window, the “building” appears to have further shrunk. Its roof looks deserted. But then there is so much more to see from the newer, taller roofs of these other buildings.