The Walled City encyclopaedia.

[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Virtually every old building in Old Delhi is of slim, narrow bricks known as lakhori. A defining component of Mughal-era architecture, these burnt clay bricks once constituted the weight of entire edifices—havelis, gateways, temples, and mosques. Their decline mirrored the decline of the Mughal Empire, though their era ended much later.

One such building dominates Chatta Girdhar Lal, a lane that forms part of the larger Gali Arya Samaj (already been chronicled on these pages). While the lane is mostly lined with well-kept modern houses, this old, dilapidated structure stands abandoned. A broken window gapes onto the street, and an arched niche below is filled with discarded plastic bags, sacks, and broken bricks. The plaster and paint of the building’s rundown façade have vanished, revealing the lakhori bricks beneath. Yet a section of one of the walls is carefully maintained, covered in new shiny tiles (see right photo). This portion happens to be a part of an inhabited house.

The street’s name too reflects an intermingling of old and new, in a less crude way. Traditionally, a Walled City street earns the title of “chatta” when a series of chhat, or roofs, span across it at intervals. Chatta Girdhar Lal begins like a corridor, whose ceiling does give the appearance of a long chhat. Additionally, a passer-by notes that Girdhar Lal, the man after whom the street is named, lived here many years ago, and that his descendants remain connected to the area. That claim is confirmed when this reporter steps into the clinic of Dr Sanjiv Gupta, just outside the street. It is crowded with local residents inflicted with persistent coughs and seasonal illnesses. During a brief pause between his patients, Dr Gupta confirms that Girdhar Lal was his great-grandfather. The continuity ends there. While Dr Gupta continues to run his clinic in the vicinity each day, he resides beyond the walls of Old Delhi, in the British-era Civil Lines. He also sees patients in one more clinic, in New Delhi’s Tolstoy Lane.

That said, as long as the dilapidated lakhori brick edifice stands, Chatta Girdhar Lal will bear a tangible fragment of past. If the edifice goes, so will be the street’s old character. Only the old name will remain.