The home of headless ghosts. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Khooni Darwaza means ‘bloodied gateway’ and legend has it that blood drips from its ceilings during the monsoon. Built by Sher Shah Suri in 1540 it is in the in the middle of the four-lane Bahadurshah Zafar Marg connecting New and Old Delhi. It was originally named Kabuli Darwaza, when Kabul-bound caravans left the city through its arched entrance. The gateway, 15.5 m high, took its present name after the Mughals started displaying the heads of executed criminals from its battlements. Soon it became a popular place to hang the body parts of unwanted princes. Emperor Aurangzeb displayed his brother Dara Shikoh's head at the gate. Prince Dara was to succeed

Reflections of faith. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Built by a Sikh general in 1783, this gurudwara, or Sikh temple, has an expansive compound and a large sarovar (holy pond). Dedicated to Guru Har Kishan, the eighth Sikh guru, it was so named because it is on the site of the bungalow of the Mughal noble Mirza Raja Jai Singh, where the guru stayed during a visit to Delhi in 1664. The gold-plated dome reflects beautifully in the rippling pond, which teems with goldfish. A corridor, skirting the pond's entire length, has a small white dome on each corner. Up the stairs from the pond is a marbled courtyard with a nishan sahib, a tall flagpole that marks every gurudwara. This

Poet's last home. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Every 27 December, on Ghalib's birthday, his admirers march to his haveli in Shahjahanabad with lighted candles and give sound bites to the media on the poet's relevance. As if he needs this lip service(!) What Shakespeare is to the English language, Mirza Ghalib (1797-1869) is to Urdu. He exploited a courtly language to compose verses of lustful love, piquant ironies and bawdy humour. Mughal princes loved his works, as did roadside tipplers. Today, Bollywood actors lip-sync his poetry and Indian politicians quote him in their speeches. But nothing of the poet’s popularity is reflected in the house where he spent his last nine years. Ghalib's last home lost its original flourishes of frescoes, alcoves

The fifth city. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Built as the citadel of Firoz Shah Tughlaq, along the banks of the Yamuna, this is now a ruin. Firuzabad, the fifth city of Delhi, once extended from Hauz Khas to Pir-Ghaib (near Bara Hindu Rao hospital) but most buildings were vandalized during the construction of the new city of Shahjahanabad. This is one of the few Delhi ruins that is not patronized by tourists or romantic couples. The once-scenic gateways lead to nowhere and the stairs go up to gloomy circular chambers. Squirrels race up the stone ramparts and colonies of pigeons and parakeets fly out of reach of the numerous cats. On Thursday nights people who believe they are possessed by

The resting place of Delhi’s great poet-saint. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] It is one of Delhi’s most melancholic monuments. The tomb of Khwaja Mir Dard (1721-1785), an Urdu poet and a Sufi saint, is beautiful, but not in a conventional way. It has no dome. Situated near Zakir Husain College, next to the glass highrise of Municipal Council of Delhi, the tomb is not of marble or red sandstone, but of bricks. The roof is of tin, painted white. The upper part of the wall is of crude wire mesh. The concrete portion has drawings of flowers. The green circular shrine is caved in by a congested neighborhood of unpainted apartments and hole-in-the-wall shops, which is named after its patron

Ruins in a landscaped setting. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] The Lodhi Garden in central Delhi is famous for its flowers, trees, birds and sloping lawns but before the garden there were the tombs. Built by the Sayyids (1414-1451) and Lodhis (1451-1526), who once ruled the Delhi sultanate, the tombs, now ruined, make dramatic centerpieces in this garden, which was created around them in 1936 on the site of a village called Khairpur. The park was originally named Lady Hardinge, the then British viceroy’s wife. Visible from Lodhi Road, the mausoleum of Muhammad Shah Sayyid, said to have been a lazy and inefficient ruler, stands on a mound. One of Delhi’s earliest octagonal tombs, it is surrounded by royal palms and

Recreating a lost time. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] Can it be done? “It’s like drawing the picture of how a dead person looked by putting together stray pieces of his unconnected skeleton,” says Anisha Shekhar Mukherji, conservation architect and author of The Red Fort of Shahjahanabad. The 17th century Mughal fairyland of pavilions, canals and gardens—a Unesco World Heritage site—is getting a makeover. “This is Red Fort’s first major conservation since independence in 1947,” says K.K. Muhammed, superintending archaeologist, Delhi circle, Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). The only other Mughal monument to have seen conservation on such an ambitious scale is Humayun’s Tomb garden in Delhi, by the Aga Khan Foundation in 2003. For visitors, Red Fort is an anti-climax.

The Mughal harem. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] The largest apartment of the Mughal harem, Rang Mahal – the palace of colours - is one of the most evocative architectural compositions in Red Fort, a 17th century world of courts, palaces, mosques, water channels and gardens, now all of them in ruins. Shahjahan, the builder of Taj Mahal, raised the palace-fort complex on the banks of Yamuna, which, over the centuries, has moved away by several hundred yards. His walled world of marble buildings was the site of the decline and fall of the Mughals. The fort was looted by Nadir Shah, the king of Persia; and vandalized by the British, who ended the Mughal dynasty. After retaking Delhi following

The gloomy getaway. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] The graveyard is dead. The last person was buried in 1985. Karbala, the Shiite burial ground in BK Dutt Colony, central Delhi, is reserved exclusively for the funeral of tazias, the ritual coffins of Imam Husain Ibn Ali, the prophet’s grandson. Every year on the 10th day of Muharram, Shiite mourners from Shahjahanabad, Mehrauli and Nizamuddin gather here to commemorate the martyrdom of Husain, who was killed in a battle at Karbala, in modern-day Iraq. Named after the town where Husain was buried, the Karbala ground is brown and arid; the graves, few and far from each other, appear like half-marooned ships in a placid ocean. Some tombs are covered with green, red

Delhi's oldest Mughal-era ruin. [Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi] Its beauty lies in its tiled dome, rare in Delhi. Situated behind Humayun’s Tomb, Nila Gumbad, or blue dome, was on the banks of Yamuna, the course of which shifted down the centuries. Now it faces the platform number one of Hazrat Nizmauddin Railway Station. Built in 1625 by Abdur Rahim Khan-i-Khana, a noble in Akbar’s court, the Gumbad is Delhi’s oldest Mughal-era ruin. Though it is the tomb of Khan-i-Khana’s attendant Fahim Khan, The Delhi Walla saw no grave inside. A single-structure monument, the visitor has to concentrate only on a few essentials. The building – standing on a 32.9 sq. m platform - is shaped like an octagon from