The Walled City encyclopaedia.

[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]

What to do when a street has not one but two names? Naturally, it ought to be profiled twice, to present it in two different perspectives.

It’s a hilly neighbourhood in the historic Walled City of Delhi—and it is the Poet Wali Pahari, the poet’s hill… my on-the-ground dispatch, please read!

For the last four years, this page has been steadily building a dictionary of Old Delhi streets. Each week, I pick a Walled City gali, and track the story behind its unique name, along with exploring its contemporary life. Pahari Rajaan had its turn exactly three years ago. The name-story is simple. It is a pahari (hill) in Chitli Qabar Chowk that originally housed raj mistri (labourers), who were hired to build the Jama Masjid and the Lal Qila. The word “raj mistri” gave way to the more colloquial “rajaan.”

The truth is that not all citizens in the vicinity refer to Pahari Rajaan by this name. Many call it Gosht Wali Pahari, or the hill of the meat. The street was said to have many meat shops.

Today, the street neither has enough labourers, nor enough meat shops, to deserve either of its two names. It should actually be called by a third name—Poet Wali Pahari. For this gali’s most illustrious resident was Musheer Jhinjhianvi. The renowned poet died decades ago. His descendants continue to live at the same address, although the course of their current life could not have been foreseen by the late poet.

Start with the poet’s house. It used to be a warren of steep staircases and open spaces. The doorway stairs would lead to a courtyard. There, a new flight of stairs passed a kitchen, and would go up to another courtyard. More stairs, more rooms, and finally the roof.

The house continues to exist on the same site, but not the architecture where interiors mingled cozily with the exteriors. Some years ago, the family oversaw a drastic reconstruction of the residence. The many courtyards were eliminated, replaced by more rooms. An additional floor was added to the building. The house consequently exudes the setup of a modern multi-storey flat. Even so, one of the rooms has been allowed to preserve an element of the old architecture—the niched taak on the wall. The rare taak showcases portraits of the poet, including awards and trophies he received during his creative years.

An even more intense transformation has unfolded in the lives of the poet’s descendants. Last year, one of his grandsons, a chartered accountant, exited the street, getting a “very good job” in Amsterdam. Another grandson, a medically trained physiotherapist, moved to England. The two grandsons will eventually imbibe some perspective of another culture and language.

Pahari Rajaan/Gosht Wali Pahari itself has grown to be profoundly different from what it used to be when the poet was alive. The poet, for instance, would write in Urdu. Whereas most present-day dwellers of Poet Wali Pahari are no longer able to read the Urdu script, being more well-versed in Hindi and English. The shift in daily life language also applies to most of the poet’s descendants. That said, one of the poet’s four offsprings happens to be a verse writer in Urdu, and lives just a few streets away from Poet Wali Pahari, enjoying the reputation of being a rare Purani Dilli poet who happens to be a woman.