The Walled City dictionary.

[Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

The man who writes poems is called a poet. The woman who writes poems is also called a poet. Sometimes she is referred to as poetess. The way a female actor is referred to as actress.

Now, take the case of lohar and loharan. “Lohar” means blacksmith, the artisan who deals with metals. While “loharan” is considered to be the feminine equivalent of “lohar.” So is loharan a female blacksmith? Or, can it be that loharan refers to lohar’s wife? Since the word “lohar” is also identified with the wider community of blacksmiths, does “loharan” then refers to a female member of the community?

By the way, loharan is also the name of a village in Punjab.

It is also the name of an Old Delhi street.

Situated near the centuries-old Ajmeri Gate monument, Gali Loharan is a narrow, cramped cul-de-sac. This sunny morning, the entrance to the lane is deserted, except for a citizen sleeping on the pave. The darkened gali within is lined on both sides with shops and residences. At this hour, all the shops are shuttered, all the house doors are shut. Now, one of the doors open. The man at the door doesn’t attempt to hide his suspicion of an unfamiliar face, exclaiming to the stranger—“Go to Chandni Chowk, go to Chawri Bazar, go to Ballimaran—those are the Old Delhi places for tourists!” The woman standing behind the man folds her arms, and frowns. Answering reluctantly to a query, the man mutters that no blacksmith lives in the lane, and if any blacksmith ever lived here, it must have been hundreds of years ago. He closes the door.

Truth be told, it is tough to spot an active blacksmith any longer in Old Delhi. One exception is Ikram’s workshop in Gali Chooriwalan. All day long, the middle-aged man engages with iron and fire, hammering the metal pieces atop a small furnace, coercing them into multitudes of tools with names like batali, jambur, chaapar, khurpa, hathora, and samsi. (Some days ago, this page profiled a blacksmith’s son in Old Delhi, who left his forefathers’ profession to become an IT professional in a Gurugram multinational.)

On exiting Gali Loharan, the eyes are drawn to a notice board beside the gate: “Attention delivery boys, this gali is a dead-end, not a thoroughfare. Google map is galat.”