Dante’s CP.

[Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

In Dantei’s Inferno, Hell has nine concentric circles, each representing a different level of sin and punishment. In Delhi’s Connaught Place (CP), the shopping haven has four concentric circles, each representing a different level of experience.

Start with the innermost circle. It happens to be the tiled track that runs along the border of what is CP’s heart-core: the Central Park.

This tree-lined path makes for a leisurely stroll. Plus, if you suddenly feel tired, then… fret not! The way forward is interspersed with benches (see photo). The seating spaces face the traffic-heavy road that separates the circular pathway from CP’s Inner Circle colonnade… the colonnade! Speckled with showrooms and restaurants, the colonnade is a reservoir of CP memories that generations of Delhi wallas have collected out of vaguely remembered strolls with loved ones from times past and present.

This afternoon, the leaf-strewn track is mostly deserted. Which makes it doubly surreal to comprehend that right under our walking feet is the underground Rajiv Chowk metro terminus, teeming with waves of commuters rushing about in cloudy swarms of flying bees. During the pre-metro era, the adjacent Central Park had a profoundly different persona. Post sundown, it would fill up with lone men and transgender citizens. Then, early this century, the park was taken over by the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (to construct the underground station). It reopened years later in a gentrified avatar. The former regulars—society misfits—never returned.

Since the round path runs along the park’s entire fence, the walker’s gaze easily takes in the people currently lounging inside. Many are romantic couples, others are in groups of families and friends. Only one loner is sighted—he is under a tree, reading a book.

A more interesting sight shows up on shifting the gaze to the other side, across the road, towards the crowded Inner Circle colonnade. The scenery is stamped with CP’s uniform white double-storey blocks. This is the original holograph of Connaught Place, built by the British in what was a jungle of keekar trees. The circular path on which the stroller is walking in fact makes for the best vantage site to view (and study) CP’s signature architecture. Right now, the rude summertime sunshine is hitting hard on the CP white, the strong reflection is hurting one’s eyes as well. Continuing to walk, the stroller reaches a spot that overlooks a gap between the two white blocks. The distant horizon is marked by something very non-CP. It is the stone dome of Old Delhi’s Jama Masjid.