One of the two brothers.

[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Once upon a time there were “do bhai”— Rohilla Khan and Baqaullah Khan. Both brothers were Mughal nobles. The assertion is forcefully made by a handful of men idling this humid evening at Kucha Baqaullah Khan. (The same claim was asserted one afternoon months ago by a few men idling at the neighbouring Kucha Rohilla Khan—a street already featured on The Delhi Walla).

The entry to Baqaullah’s blind alley is like a hole in the wall, sandwiched between the hole-in-the-wall shops of Chitli Qabar Bazar. Fortunately, the green-bordered signboard bearing the street’s name is easily discernible. The other marker is the huge black tank perched atop the tricoloured gateway.

Inside, the unpainted brick wall flanking the street’s eastside is abruptly interrupted by an arched niche of long, slim, old-fashioned lakhori bricks. This stranded piece of beauty appears to be the final residue of some vanished edifice. Nobody loitering along the alley is able to tell anything of its antecedents. It is anyway hard to spot the niche, for it is blocked by an electricity unit (“Danger 440 Volts!”)—see photo.

Slowly shaking his head, a passer-by remarks: “We have not preserved the memories of our elders.” Indeed, it does seem that nobody at Baqaullah has any gyan to give on Baqaullah Khan. One helpful dweller optimistically suggests talking to “somebody hundred years or older.” Another directs this interlocutor to a muscled youth leaning against a discoloured wall—he could as well be one of those hot-blooded Montagues in a Romeo-Juliet production. “He is the hero of our street, always doing big talk, he must know all about Baqaullah.” The “hero” bends down his head, laughing silently, chin almost touching the chest. Finally, he speaks–“I’m zero.”

Gatecrashing into the conversation, an elderly gent says in a calm historian’s tone: “Go out into the bazar’s main street, turn left, walk to Tiraha Behram Khan, go straight to the big tree under which the labourers sit, you will see a plaque showing Baqaullah Khan’s photo along with a brief information.”

The plaque is there, just as the gentleman said, but it is commemorating the legendary Sir Syed Ahmad Khan.

By now, the sun has set, and the barely discernible entrance to Kucha Baqaullah Khan is even more difficult to discern along the super-packed bazar street. Maybe because the green-bordered signboard has transmuted into a pavement hawker’s display window. See the other photo.

A lane in the old city

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