One landmark, many perspectives.

[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Which Old Delhi monument is so grand and so visible from all parts of the historic quarter that it appears to symbolize the entire Old Delhi?

It is not the great Red Fort, which lies on the outer limits of the Walled City; a good part of it anyway destroyed in the 1857 uprising.

That monument is the Jama Masjid. The sandstone edifice is visible from the rooftops of every neighbourhood in Purani Dilli. During the Emergency years, in the 1970s, some members of the ruling party wanted to demolish parts of the Walled City, to create an unhindered view of the monument. “I want Jama Masjid to be clearly visible from Turkman Gate,” said the then prime minister’s powerful son Sanjay Gandhi, referring to one of the Walled City gateways. The killings in Turkman Gate, an event that marks the 50th year of that fateful episode, was the consequence of that desire, which thankfully remains unfulfilled. Otherwise, the Jama Masjid would have been rudely stripped of its magical ability to appear again and again, in myriad forms, as one walks through the labyrinthine quarters of crowded Old Delhi. The kaleidoscopic arrangement greatly enriches the monument, giving it thick layers of multifarious perspectives.

From the congested Meena Bazar, the monument reveals all three of its domes in a single, unobstructed view. The Jama Masjid also has two towers that constantly tease passers-by in Chawri Bazar, appearing and disappearing in a game of hide-and-seek. Now one tower lifts itself above the bazar’s cluttered rooftops, now the other.

The monument’s most poetic aspect is witnessed from the vicinity outside the gate no. 1 of Jama Masjid metro station. The southern tower then appears independent of the rest of the monument, as if suspended in the upper reaches of the smoggy air. Its tip thrust like a velvety gaon-takiyan against the sky, which appears to have capitulated beneath the tower’s prickly pressure, hollowing slightly to make space for it.

The monument also stands in clear sight inside the glass walls of surrounding restaurants, serving as a backdrop to filling meals of garlic nans and biryanis. One café in fact hosts a super-panoramic view of the mosque’s central gumbad, or dome (guess the café’s name!). The rooftop of Haji Hotel, modest yet perfectly placed, offers a bird’s-eye view of the monument’s stone steps where people lounge during the day hours, and also of the busy life of its wide courtyard within. From the rooftop of a luxury hotel near Chandni Chowk, the monument reaches out to the eye most poignantly, disciplined and marooned, in the midst of Purani Dilli’s chaotic modern sprawl.

Lastly, few among us would expect to see the Jama Masjid from New Delhi’s Connaught Place. Walking along the radial road between the Inner Circle’s British era’s C and D blocks, Old Delhi’s old monument emerges, distant yet unmistakable—a sight strange and hypnotic.