The Walled City encyclopaedia.

[Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

There must be a tap somewhere. The cramped lane is, after all, called Gali Nal Wali. Yet no nal, or tap, shows up in this dark street in Old Delhi.

At the entrance, two guesthouses flank the alley. One bears a large painting that briefly transports you to some town in Luxembourg or Netherlands—trams, elegant façades, buildings in a European style.

The lane is wide at first, then narrows. It grows darker as the lane further constricts, the buildings on both sides blocking out the sky. As in many Old Delhi lanes, the gali is lined with arched doorways and slanting staircases—until you reach a building unlike the rest. The interior here is something! It is packed with thousands of egg crates. The structure itself stands out: old, worn, weathered by decades, perhaps centuries. This is actually an egg dealer’s establishment. Eggs are supplied across the Walled City from here, says a man sitting inside. The room follows a haveli plan—a chamber with large taaks and fluted columns. Houses like these, when they survive, sometimes still hold families. Many others turn into warehouses, like this one. The room is currently dim. One more man is sitting in a corner. He says the eggs come from Punjab. He points to a crate of pink eggs. “Desi ande,” he says.

This gentleman introduces himself as Samad, a chicken supplier, and is in the warehouse to meet a friend working here. Samad has lived in Gali Nal Wali all his life. There was once a nal, he says, now gone. In local usage, he explains, nal here meant not a tap but a hand pump (which makes sense, since there must have been no piped water supply for a tap to exist in the olden times in Purani Dilli). The man adds that Old Delhi has many lanes with the same name, including ones in Dariba Kalan and near the Mahila Qabristan.

This afternoon, a lamb is tethered in a corner, sitting quietly, almost resigned. Another room serves as a makeshift living space for the warehouse’s workers. A clothesline hangs from the ceiling, heavy with shirts and lungis. Some columns are broken; those intact show floral motifs. A man is sitting in a corner, silent.

This warehouse must have once been someone’s house. “But as long as I can remember,” the chicken supplier who grew up in the street says, “it has been an egg warehouse.”

The lane continues beyond the warehouse, but nothing matches the sight of the old edifice filled with eggs. Toward the dead-end, the lane grows too dark, even though it must be sunny outside the constricted street.

And there is no hand pump to be seen.