City Hangout – Lodhi Garden in White Light, Central Delhi

December 5, 2023 · by The Delhi Walla · in Hangouts

Lodhi’s light ages.

[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]

The green of the green hedges is coated in a semi-transparent film of white. So is the grass on the baldy lawn. Tonight’s moon is super-generous, liberally bestowing its white chandni upon the sprawling acres of Lodhi Garden.

It is not the moon.

Delhi’s most iconic park is undergoing a profound transformation in its post-sunset character. Until some evenings ago, the gold glow of the many lamps would illumine everything here into varying shades of that colour, including the many monuments, trees, benches and lawns.

That golden era is largely over. Lodhi Garden has turned white. A gardener confirms, saying that the new lights are replacing the old.

For a long time, a casual walk in Lodhi Garden, during the small window between the sunset and its closing hour, would transport the citizen into a dream-like landscape. The trapped orange light within the glass lamp would grudgingly shed its glow around the darkness, turning the surroundings into a mystical panorama of light and shadows. The centuries-old tombs would look fantastical, more poetic than in the clear daylight. The coarse stones of Bada Gumbad monument for instance would be smouldering in gold at this moment. Now, the same stones are washed in white. But it is not the kind of flat white that reveals everything, leaving no space for conjecture and illusion. Parts of this white have the shy, discreet softness of a clear sky’s moonshine.

Nearby, a walking track is also cloaked in this new white. The passage is coursing through an unlit lawn where a group of boys are playing football; their uninhibited cries are more palpable than their blurry silhouette-like figures.

The small, unused mosque near the Rose Garden, too, is bathed in soft white. The interiors though are filled with a darkness so thick that this darkness is glowing brighter than the light outside. The black-and-white combination is making the monument look two dimensional, as prone to be carried away by the wind as any paper-cut prop.

Further ahead,, a winding pathway is speckled with pools of similar white. One of the lamps summons the attention for being different. It is still emitting the gold glow of old times. The sight is surreal.

Golden era over