The Walled City encyclopaedia

[Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

No horses here any longer. Haven’t been seen for a long, long time. They aren’t even part of anybody’s lived memory. The horses have become a legend, and so have their “tabele,” the stables.

But during the Badshah raaj, when the Mughals commanded the empire from the Red Fort, this Old Delhi street had tabele for horses. That must had also been a time when Jaam Beg hadn’t yet become a myth. Today, the man who gave his name to the street is remembered only as mister somebody who was VIP enough to have got the honorific title of ‘beg.’

Like any classical Purani Dilli street, Chatta Jaam beg in Tiraha Behram Khan is narrow, dark, cramped, silent and self-contained. A series of chhat, or roofs, span over the street at different places, justifying its designation of “chatta.” The mouth of the lane ushers the explorer into an arched tunnel-like corridor, the walls pockmarked with steep staircases going up to private quarters. One door has its lawyer-resident’s name rendered in skilled calligraphy. That’s the great Shakeel Artist! Old Delhi hyperlocal painter, his distinctive signature adorns the door’s corner.

It was friendly grocer Nafis ur Rehman who revealed to this reporter the Chatta’s “tabele” origins, plus the nugget that what used to be horse stables later turned into factories for electric light fittings. (The factories eventually moved out of the historic quarter.)

In his 60s, the grocer has spent all his life in Jaam Beg. “Nothing ever changed in our gali for a long time… and suddenly it started to change some five years ago, when a few of the old families left the Chatta for spacious homes outside the Walled City.” The vacant houses were replaced by multistoried flats, now inhabited by families from outside the Chatta, he says.

After hitting a dead-end, the lane splits into two opposing directions. One side-lane is micro-short, partly crammed with dozens of water pumps. The other side-lane swells out into an airy courtyard. A neem tree here looks over scores of houses, including Deep Shikha Public School. Looking up at the neem, grocer Nafis ur Rehman says, “This tree was much larger.” As he poses for a portrait, a brown cat appears behind the grocer, looking bold and indifferent.