Where the stones give no sound of water

[Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Untamed, elemental. No tint of tenderness redeems the bleakness of this baoli. The stone step-well inside Tughlaqabad Fort is radically different from the aesthetically perfect stone step-wells of coffee-table books and photo exhibitions. Those idyllic baolis show a series of symmetrical stone steps gently drifting down into the burrowed earth, where the water is. Their smooth sightly steps being ornamented by shaded pavilions, niches, chambers, and corridors.

No such frills for Tughlaqabad. The baoli is grandly austere.

In the olden times, baolis would be built in parched lands to bring people close to scant sources of water. They were a fleeting refuge during harsh summers—indeed, over the course of ongoing summer, this page will visit all the accessible baolis of Delhi. Back then, heat-weary people would withdraw underground into the lower cavities of a step-well, lurking for a few hours in its dimmed depth, close to the water. As the summer would turn more hostile, the baoli’s water would further sink. The daytime refugees would then withdraw to the remotest steps, staying close to the penumbral coolness wafting over the step-well’s depleted water.

Tughlaqabad Fort’s baoli might have given a similar sort of relief, but that must have been hundreds of years ago. Today, it is utterly desolate, drawing the trait from the wider desolation of the 14th century citadel’s arid landscape, which is dotted with scores of windswept ruins. The baoli’s staircase is as forbidding, the vertigo-inducing sweep of steps hewed out of jagged stones. These dry unfriendly stones look totally lifeless, and yet are breeding wisps of wild grass here and there.

On a burning-hot summer morning, a hatted lady boldly descends into the pit of the baoli. Half of the step-well is illumined in daylight, the rest is in shade. The lady suddenly utters out a word. The word whirls inside the echoing baoli, and is swiftly swallowed into the ensuing silence.

Looking ant-like from a distance, the lady continues with the descent, eventually reaching the dry bottom of the well.

Meanwhile, a plane is passing over Tughlaqabad. It swiftly crosses the tiny island of sky framed by the baoli, and flies out of sight.