The Walled City encyclopaedia.

[Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

The street is in constant motion this afternoon. Labourers are weaving through the cramped way bearing hefty parcels on their backs. Delivery boys hurry on, balancing glasses of chai on round rusting metal trays. A man in old-fashioned safari suit goes past carrying a stack of old-fashioned file folders. A few dogs are sitting motionless through the commotion, looking carefree.

Kucha Dayaram is one of the many narrow lanes branching off the choked spine of Chawri Bazar. Shops spill onto the lane. Their signboards advertise hardware, aluminium, sanitary goods, GI strips, springs, and display fittings. None offers a clue about the Dayaram of Kucha Dayaram. Though one signboard gives the street’s name as the slightly longer Kucha Raja Dayaram.

“Dayaram must have been some long-ago dhanna seth,” says a passer-by, thoughtfully pouting his lips. At least the “kucha” word in the street name is easier to crack. It traditionally referred to a locality where people of the same occupation lived together.

Whatever, the long lane is punctuated by a temple with a bright yellow portal, and a couple of old stately wooden doorways before giving way to Brij Mohan Market. Amid such sights, the most enduring landmark of Kucha Dayaram happens to be not a building, but a gentleman’s very modest establishment. Amar’s paan stall stands beneath the street’s arched entrance, facing Chawri Bazar. The elderly man was born in Old Delhi but now lives outside the historic quarter, in a neighbourhood across the Yamuna.

When asked how long he has been running his stall, he raises his eyebrows, saying, “So long that I don’t remember.”

Then he explains. The stall was started by his father, Shri Sarju Ram. Amar barely got to know him. The father died when he was very young. Amar has been running the stall for 57 years. As he folds betel leaves, he glances out towards Chawri Bazar. Long before his father was born, he says, Chawri Bazar was home to tawaifs, the dancing girls. They were later forced out to settle in an area just beyond the Old Delhi walls. “Today, the place where they were sent to live has itself become part of this city,” he says.

Just as the tawaifs disappeared from Chawri Bazar, Amar’s stall will disappear from Kucha Dayaram. His sons have no desire to carry on the family business. “This old stall will go when I go.”

Meanwhile, at the deserted end of the lane, two labourers pause for a post-lunch break (they requested that their names not be published). One soon returns to work. The other lingers a while longer, lying flat by the wayside, scrolling through Instagram reels on his phone, see photo.