The Walled City encyclopedia.

[Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

It translates to fish in Sanskrit, love in Pashto, and glaze in Persian. Meena, the word.

Meena Bazar in Old Delhi overkills the senses with its stupendously immoderate range of stuff on sale. This afternoon, a stroll through the market’s many lanes shows the following: kurtis, jharfanus, face mirrors, cut off machines, sun shades, shararas, lamps, ladies suits, pressure cookers, sandals, topis, shoes, air compressors, waterproof watches, neembu pani, haleem, mixers, room heaters, woollen jackets, vertical high pressure pumps, chicken biryani, hookahs, tala-chabhi, table fans, shawls, cotton candy, undergarments, carbide tips, mufflers, barbie dolls, burqas, handbags, toy cars, dahi badas, blankets, selfie stands, leather belts, sandals, kebabs, carpets, milk pumps, dry fruit, gear motors, lehengas, rumali rotis, multi-stage high pressure pumps, handkerchiefs, amulets, magnetic pumps, mohabbat ki sherbet, artificial jewelleries, electric blowers, clocks, suitcases, old grinding wheels, tool wheels, gamchas, showpiece Taj Mahals, electric kettles, keema machine, prayer mats, men’s kurtas… there’s more but we’re exhausted!

Now admire the stunning panorama of the eastern face of Jama Masjid, as viewed from Meena Bazar’s central street. The red sandstone mosque towers over the market like a mountain peak.

While the bazar is extremely congested (even by the congested Old Delhi standards!), it does have its open spaces. But they lie hidden. Take the sprawling garden tomb of freedom fighter Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. It stands atop a huge platform, but cannot be seen until you climb the discreetly situated stairs to the grass-filled serenity. The marble grave towards the garden’s far corner is topped by a stone canopy.

The bazar is also the resting place of General Shah Nawaz Khan. He served in the Indian National Army (INA) under the leadership of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose during the second world war, and was famously convicted for treason in 1945 by the British in the Red Fort, along with two other top INA figures (Prem Sahgal and Gurbaksh Dhillon). The general’s marble grave lies inside a small garden, the boundary wall lined by a row of unwieldy trees. The bazar shoppers milling about the other side of the wall probably have no idea of their dramatic nearness to such a calm place.

The bazar once had a monument to… music. Shah Music Center, housed at shop no. 256, would be stacked with LP records—those ‘Long Play’ discs that stored around 20 minutes of music, before needing to be turned over. The shop had thousands of collectible music albums, from Mughal-e-Azam to Beatles, Mozart to Ravi Shankar. Some years ago, the owner moved the establishment to the more accessible Daryaganj, creating an irreplaceable void in the bazar.

This afternoon, the shop no. 256 is lying shuttered (and silent). The mood nevertheless becomes joyful on coming face-to-face with shop no. K – 100, stocked with machinery tools. A bazar cat is perched atop the shopkeeper’s thermos—see photo.