The Walled City encyclopaedia.

[Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Once upon a time there lived a lady in Old Delhi. She remains a mystery. Since this happened a long time ago, no one can tell anything about what kind of a person she was. Nevertheless, a barely known Walled City street is named after the said lady. Gali Mirza Suraiya Jaan is a dead-end street. A very small one at that.

The etymologists among us might be tempted to imagine Mirza Suraiya Jaan as a stylish elegant woman wearing lots of chooriyan, or bangles. That is because Gali Mirza Suraiya Jaan is one of the many sub-streets of a much larger street that goes by the name of Gali Choori Walan, the street of the bangles.

This late night, the lane is deserted; its entrance marked by a tall rusting metal gate. Every evening at seven, citizen Salman arrives at the gate, and sets up his food stall on one side of the street’s entrance. He sells only one dish, which happens to be the home-made paya made by his mother, Shaheen. The young man ladles out the meaty dish to customers from a large cauldron, which—it must be noted—empties out swiftly. Salman lives in this same gali. In his late 20s, he says that “nothing has changed in Gali Mirza Suraiya Jaan since my childhood.” The unchanging nature of his street is reflected in the unchanging traditions of his private world. His later father, Abdul Majid, sold the same dish on this same spot. His father’s father, Umar Daraz, also sold the same dish on the same spot. His great-grandfather, the name no longer remembered, also sold the same dish on the same spot. Salman intends to bring down the curtains on the family legacy. “I will want my children to receive high education, and get office jobs.”

After Salman ladles out to a customer the last of the evening’s paya, he quickly packs the pans and bowls. It takes about a minute. He now gets up, and starts to slowly walk deep into the darkened gali, towards his home. He walks past a monumental gateway of red sandstone. The sight is surreal. The beautiful gateway looks out of place in such a narrow, inconspicuous, ordinary street. As if this grand edifice does not belong to the world of today, and seems to stand solely as a spiritual souvenir to the life and times of Mirza Suraiya Jaan, whoever she was.