“Off with his head.”

[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Do not be surprised on coming face-to-face with headless ghosts in Hauz Khas. The south Delhi district has a particularly frightful past, and that past is etched in stone.

The historic region has many monuments, including the tomb of Emperor Feroz Shah Tughlaq. Two of the monuments are not particularly handsome or well-known or greatly historic, but they are the most unique among all the monuments. For they are dedicated to the head. To the lack of head, actually.

‘Off with his head’, meaning “chopping off the head,” is a gruesome phrase that famously appeared in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, as well as in the plays of Shakespeare. The phrase strongly resonates with Hauz Khas’s 13th century landmarks Munda Gumbad and Chor Minar.

Munda Gumbad (see right photo) is a stone pavilion overlooking the Hauz Khas lake. Munda means bald, and the monument gets this name because it has its dome missing, as if somebody lopped off the topmost portion, making it a headless relic.

Chor Minar (see other photo) is a stone tower ringed by posh houses of Hauz Khas Enclave, and its past is stained with a cruelty beyond the unspeakable. The legend has it that it was employed to display the severed heads of chor, or thieves. Indeed, the tower’s many holes must have been the very places to exhibit the ill-fated heads. The all-knowing Wikipedia talks of the long-ago execution of 8,000 Mongol prisoners, their heads displayed in the many towers that littered the vicinity. This tower might be a leftover from that era.

Munda Gumbad is perched atop a public park’s grassy mound. The small dark chamber within smells of dampness and dead insects. The walls are scrawled with declarations of love. Morning walkers in the park often lounge outside the monument, sometimes praying with clasped palms.

Just as the wild grass of countryside diligently does its work and cover the many blood-soaked battlefields of long-ago wars, the diligent time too has tamed Chor Minar’s dreadful holes that showcased the severed heads. These niches have become a refuge for the peaceful pigeons. This late morning, a window in one of the surrounding houses is open, and a lace curtain is ballooning gently out towards the tower. The minar is looking harmless. Even so, while touring the two monuments, make sure to have your head on the right place.