Lane with a well and temple.

[Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Maa Durga, Bhagwan Krishen with Radha ji, Devi Sita with Bhagwan Ram, and Hanuman ji… all these divinities are present, their portraits sanctifying the temple’s blue walls. The eyes though are first drawn to Shiv Bhagwan. The life-like statue’s right palm is bestowing a blessing, while the wrists are adorned with marigold malas.

The eyes next wander down to something less common for a sanctum sanctorum. A blue hand-pump. It stands where a kuan is said to have existed. For centuries, that well diligently served this part of the Walled City, a passer-by says. Inevitably the place came to be identified as a general pyaun of drinking water for the people, and that identity gave the street its name.

That said, Gali Pyaun Wali in Chawri Bazar is very small (the corridor in a standard Lajpat Nagar Flat is longer). Even so, the lane is fiercely individualistic. This late afternoon it is quietly rebelling against the Chawri Bazar chaos by being cocooned in shantih and silence.

The street begins as a straight narrow alley with the temple on the right, and ends into a square-shaped courtyard, ringed by shops selling “wire netting, perforated sheets, valves, pipes, fittings… all industrial items & hardware.” The interiors of one of the shops is like a painting. The walls are green, the metal almirah is green, a great part of the wooden desk too is green.

Within the temple, a gali shopkeeper points out, the umbrella raised above Shiv Bhagwan is part of the mandir’s tradition to mark the rainy “sawan ka mahina.” The fifth month of the Hindu calendar, sawan also marks Shivratri, the festive night of Shiv Bhagwan Shiv.

Among the mandir’s many tenderly beautiful aspects is its tiny taak. This arched niche on the wall is sooty, suggesting that perhaps an earthen lamp is lit regularly inside the scooped space; the playful flames darkening the inward walls.

Some steps away from Gali Pyaun Wali, on the maddeningly busy market street, Ajay Mohan, a drinking water vendor, is silently hawking “machine ka thanda pani” from his refrigerated metal trolley, which for all practical purposes is a modern-day paid pyaun.