The Walled City encyclopaedia.

[Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

At Turkman Gate Chowk, the eye first naturally settles on Turkman Gate—a seventeenth-century stone fragment holding its ground against traffic, cables, and the chaos of street life. For years, the view toward the gateway’s west-facing side, overlooking the historic Ramlila Maidan, was choked by construction. The recent demolition of those “encroachments” has opened up the sightline. While standing at the stone gateway, you can now directly spot the Ramlila Maidan pavilion built to receive Elizabeth II in 1961—a structure so modest it can easily be overlooked.

What now dominates the setting is the vertical concrete beyond: the Dr. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Civic Centre (see photo). At 112 metres, this glass-and-concrete tower surpasses the 73-metre Qutub Minar. Views of this landmark seen from different vantage points were noted here some years ago, but the new perspective draws fresh attention. After all, when the city’s tallest building offers a new angle of perception, then it marks another step in the city’s evolution.

Completed in 2010, the complex—four six-storey blocks and a 28-storey tower—houses the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD). Its chambers stage the theatre of local politics. The complex stages a different drama when viewed from afar. From different parts of the city, it evokes different scenes and moods.

From Old Delhi’s rooftops as well as from the high points of Connaught Place, the tower glimmers through smog like Monet’s Rouen Cathedral. Near New Delhi Railway Station, while the kothas at the GB Road’s red-light district remain dark and claustrophobic, their rooftops open onto an unobstructed view of the tower. Or take the twilight hour at the aforementioned Ramlila Maidan. From the 1961 pavilion, one can watch the sun descend until it seems to rest on the tower’s tip.

Each week, at the Sunday Book Bazaar in Mahila Haat, the vast exhibition ground transforms into a republic of print—booksellers squat under the shade of summertime tarpaulins, with thousands of citizens moving sluggishly along the stalls. Far above the books, the haggling, and the noise, the Dr. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Civic Centre serenely holds its head in the sky, like some benign mountain.

In Khwaja Mir Dard Basti, sunlight doesn’t penetrate into its most cramped alleys. Lanes twist inward, as if there were no exit. Then, at a corner, the Civic Centre abruptly flares into view. On stepping out of the dense warren, the tower is discovered standing adjacent to the cramped Basti. A wall at its base doubling up this moment in the afternoon as a wash-line for some of the Mirdard Basti’s residents.

Then there is the curiously named Chuhon ka Chowk. One side of this traffic circle harbours a shelter for the homeless—this seemingly makeshift tin edifice overlooks the grand Civic Centre, which stands just across the road. And so, in a single frame, you see the city’s tallest edifice and some of the city’s most precarious citizens. The scene says it all.