My rendezvous with the Old Fort

When I asked the autowallah to go to Old Fort he very confidently asked, “Sir, wohi na jo chidiya ghar ke pass hai.” (The one which is near the zoo)

With much pain and agony I managed to say yes. My friend who was also accompanying me giggled at my meek, reluctant and unenthusiastic reply to the autowallah.

The tragedy of Old Fort is that it is more frequented by the zoo hoppers than the heritage walkers. And adding insult to this sprawling but crumbling fort, half of its own area has been converted into a zoo.

Converting the abode of the once rulers and noblemen into animal farm is a pretty pity idea! Did our planners and heritage conservationists took the satire of George Orwell too seriously, and heaped this terrible insult to this colossus edifice.

In recent years, however, one of the most prominent zoo hoppers to have visited Old Fort is the outgoing US President George W Bush when he came to India.

Many laughed at Bush at his strange choice: old, crumbling and lichen infested fort. But little people knew that poor Bush was so enamoured by the beauty of its fauna (Read monkeys, chimpanzees, chameleons, etc of the zoo) that he ignored the majestic Red Fort and beautiful Humayun tomb for his address.

He is so fond of crumbling and dilapidated buildings that he asked his B2 bomber jets to pound all buildings in Iraq and Afghanistan with tonnes of bombs thereby, flattening them to the ground.

Finally, I reached the fort and got entry tickets and when I glanced around, my heart sank with horror. The fort entrance was swarmed by eunuchs, I just set my sight on the ground and hurriedly entered the main gate and in between kept praying for my ‘safety’. My friend was finding it difficult to keep pace with me completely oblivious of the fears in my mind.

Meanwhile, my curious friend kept asking about the thin attendance of videshi paryataks but then I did not have the answers.

When I reached the inside of the fort, I looked back and heaved a sigh of relief. The ramparts of the fort instilled in me a huge sense of security.

However, my relief was short lived as the fort had its own set of ‘issues’ within its fore walls. There was an ambience of love and lust, the proverbial love was in the air in every nook and cranny of the fort. Love birds were busy as usual in their liplocks unaware of others like me who were forced to peek at the free pornographic view.

Couples, leaped together, were scattered across the length and breadth of the lush green lawns of the fort. Finally, we also managed to get space just in front of the Shermandal, an octagonal structure made in red sand stone showing many architectural qualities of pre-Mughal era built by Sher Shah Suri. It is believed that Humayun used it as his library and on its very stairs he tumbled to his death.

However, the single dome mosque built by Humayun on the northern side of fort is an impressive structure. Built in red sand stone and white marble, its regal looks are hardly found to have waned in the past many centuries of its existence.

The mosque is a double structure building with the first floor made for the female worshipers. It has intricate marble work in the prayer area with Quranic scriptures engraved on them.

It is believed that the place where the Old Fort exists now was once the capital (Indraprastha) of Pandavas during Mahabharat period.

Many excavations have been carried out inside the fort and objects dating back to 10000 BC have been found, taking the fort’s history to ancient India.

No other structure tells the story of many layers buried deep inside the womb of Delhi than this one, each layer telling a story of a different era.

The serene environment inside the fort was so mind calming that I did not feel like leaving it. Finally I bid goodbye and emerged out of the citadel.

I was walking aimlessly out of the main gate (also known as Humayun Gate) and suddenly a hand came from my side and started caressing my body. By the time I realised, came the retort, chal la paise, kaisa sundar jawan launda (give me money o handsome man).

Seeing this, my friend almost ran away, leaving me alone to fend for myself. I kept pleading the eunuch to ‘release me from his grip’ but in vain.His hands were now pressing by the time and the dilemma was that I did not have the change. I shouted at my friend in sheer desperation to bail me out. I was lucky she had change and that made the eunuch happy.

Meanwhile, he/she kept showering us with his ‘embarrassing’ duas till we melted in the darkness.

The Qutub Walk

Heritage sites have always fascinated me but I don’t know why in my four years of stay in Delhi I could never find ‘time’ to pursue my first love.

Heritage structures of all kinds -- magnificent, monumental, and dilapidated – mirror the frailties of an old era, the gloated pride, narcissism, vanity and of course, height of opulence of the rulers of that time.

It reminds me of that magnificent era which has come to not; the once royal property is under the naked glare of subaltern lot! What a sight, commoners gazing at kings’ creations.

The helplessly staring edifices long for life and vibrancy, they once were used to; but alas, loneliness and seclusion is their new reality now.

The boundaries between the kings and the subject have blurred irreversibly, the crowns are now the jewellery of the museums.

Since childhood I have been hearing about the grand structure called Qutub, read in school textbook but it eluded me for quite long.

Last week when I visited it along with a dear friend I was transported back in time, its magnificence rose high up in the sky, the perforations and designs on the minarets were simply awesome.

Qutub-din-Aibak would not have thought in his wildest dreams that the gargantuan minaret (Qutub Minar) he built on the bosom of Delhi after his victory march, will remain the pride of the city for subsequent generations for centuries.

Hardly, he would have realised, that he was mortal (not lesser at that time), and that his victory memorabilia would be subject to immense public scrutiny. Today his soul must be stirring in the grave, in that rules of the game have changed, many more victors followed him and erected their own pride, far more enormous and glorious than him, at various locations across Delhi.

Quwwatul Islam mosque, of which Qutub is a part, is nothing but a sign of a king’s rampaging victory and bequeathed to us nothing but the arrogance of an emperor of bygone era.

The entire Qutub complex is neatly maintained and the good part is that touts are almost negligible. The beauty of the intricate designs on Iltutmish’s tomb reflects the grandeur of that era. Tourists or paryataks were queuing up to get frozen in that immortal frame.

However, one of the most significant parts of this Delhi Sultanate period structure is that it lacks the near symmetry of the Islamic structure.

Many historical accounts say that several Jain temples were brought down to build the mosque, and the remnants and structures especially the pillars very clearly tell their own story. These are the sins of rulers’ accesses. The pillars have sculptures which are not associated with Islamic architecture.

My friend in a lighter vein said, the complex denotes the secular ethos of our country where mosque and temples not only co-exist together but within one another, and clearly retaining their own identity. How true it sounds.

In between we straddled across the length and breadth of the complex and tried our level best to ‘inspect’ each and every falling wall, bat infested rooms and halls. Sometimes we became Sherlock Holmes then on some other occasion William Darylimple. We were enjoying every bit of the past that was lying in front of us, a slave of our own interpretations.

Meanwhile, tourists both foreign and Indian were very liberally being (mis)guided by the guides.

But amid all these, the Qutub Minar was standing tall, fascinating and imposing; amid the ruins, and it told a very different story – touching the sky to conquer all limits but still graceful in ruins. A lesson worth learning.