The Pandavas founded this place, the Mughals followed on and the British couldn’t resist their temptations either – the city that was to be one thing and one thing alone – a capital, any day and every day as every power that ruled it, in essence ruled India. We know the mad melting pot of the eastern hemisphere with influences from every Indian state and every country in the world as Delhi.
Delhi is also my city and although I haven’t been living there for the past 7 years, I still remember every street I have driven through, every shop I have been to, every street food that gave me diarrhea, every gali I played cricket in and in my neighborhood I had named every lamp post, every roadside tree, every stray dog and every cow on the garbage dump.
Welcome aboard folks, your tour starts at the New Delhi Railway station, I am your tour guide and in this trip we will drive around and across Delhi and I will relate my adventures along the way, so sit back and enjoy the ride.Heading out of the New Delhi railways station we immediately enter Connaught place (or Rajiv Chowk) or simply CP. New Delhi was planned by Sir Edward Lutyens and Herbert Baker and while they were busy in building other things it was Robert Tor Russell who designed CP in a very British way. CP was designed to be a business district and it still is. With its concentric circles and radial roads it is the most easily identifiable thing on Google earth when you zoom in on Delhi, it is home to the Gurudrawa Bangla Sahib and the most famous Hanuman temple in Delhi which I visited on a very regular basis when the exam results were awaited. The idol of Shree Hanumanji Maharaj is Swayambhu and the temple has been there forever, even before British and even before the Mughals, it origins date back to the greatest story India has ever told – the Mahabharata. As you are in CP and in a mood to walk, let us start with Palika Bazaar, if you ask where it is? The answer is, it is right under your feet, yes it is completely underground and you could actually get lost in its confusing ways, you may even be tricked into buying a telescope or an anchor for a ship you don’t own if you fall for the very enterprising and slick talking salesmen.
As we head out of the fully air-conditioned Palika Bazzar into the overwhelmingly hot sun, our next stop is a small shop which will greet us with a big crowd with every single one in the crowd sipping something out of an old glass milk bottle. It is the Keventer beverage shop and it has been around for ages serving excellent milk shakes and ice-cream, let us buy ourselves some ice cold milk shakes here as the day will only get hotter. If you fancy cakes – there is the famous Vengers bakery and if you are hungry then look no further, every single cuisine in India with perhaps the exception of what people cook at the southernmost tip of the Lakshadweep islands is on the menu.
Next is a walk around CP – there is a never ending lineup of shops selling apparel, shoes, toys, electronics you name it but I will tell you what – there are places in Delhi where CP buys its stuff from and we will head there soon so one final look at CP and we drive away. Towards the outer ends of CP we see some really tall buildings (not sky scrapers exactly) – there is the LIC building, Amba deep, Gopal das and many more. Before we head out any further east, let us have a look at the famous Sun Dial at Jantar Mantar which was built by Raja Jai Singh and which is now the home ground for gathering people and shouting slogans against the Government.
We will now be heading east on our way to see the Yamuna river and between CP and the river lies something enormous, the walled city or the city within the city – it is Old Delhi and like I said, there are place where CP buys its stuff from, this is one of them. Old Delhi was the crown jewel of the Mughal Empire, Emperor Shah Jahan built the iconic Red Fort, the place where Mr Prime Minister delivers his speech on August 15th and which faces the busiest, clumsiest, toughest, most quarrelsome, noisy and the most mystifying markets – Chandni Chowk
To be continued…
