On a colonial-era legacy.

[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Some of us lean against these white columns for support, while waiting for, say, a friend. Some of us spit out aak-thoo at these.

The columns constitute the signature sight of Connaught Place (CP).

Enconsced in capital’s heart, CP is uniformly accessible to all corners of Delhi, drawing citizens from a variety of backgrounds. Like the rest of the megapolis, this place too has changed. Scores of landmark showrooms and restaurants have been replaced by new showrooms and restaurants—many times over. But CP continues to resemble the newly built CP of the 1940s that we sometimes come across on Instagram reels; the eerily silent clips stitched out of footage from old documentaries.

Amid this changing world, one of the many CP constants is its white columns. The tall columns support the ceilings of the colonnades, rooting them to the earth. Identical in their circular shape and height, they line the arcades of the Inner and Outer Circles, and also the corridors that link the circles.

The grace notwithstanding, the columns are an offspring of our colonial-era past. The area was a forest of babool trees before the British turned it into a commercial district, modelled after an arcade in England. Today, these columns have strayed far from history, actively resonating to CP’s contemporary rhythms. Sample these instants.

One afternoon, two citizens were leaning against a column, holding hands.

One evening, a citizen had his arm raised on a column, as he watched a troupe of flying pigeons oscillating between Statesman House and Gopaldas Bhawan.

One night, a busker was crooning an Arijit Singh love song, prompting a citizen to dreamily tip her head by a column.

One midnight, a citizen was asleep in Inner Circle, his mosquito net tied to two adjacent columns.

One recent evening, The Delhi Walla is manually counting the exact number of CP columns of the colonial-era construction. Starting with the Outer Circle (next will be Inner Circle’s turn). G Block has 156 columns, H Block has 154… CP doesn’t have any block named I and J… K has 62, L has 62, M has 151, and finally the N Block—155. In all, the Outer Circle has 740 columns. One of these bears a masseur’s mobile number, promising “full body massage.”