The Old Delhi encyclopedia.

[Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

The lanes pause at Gadhe Walon ka Chowk.

One lane runs towards Chitli Qabar. Another slips beneath Turkman Gate and out of the Walled City. A third heads towards Chawri Bazar. The fourth goes to Teliyon ka Phatak, making this a proper chowk.

Overhead, a huge banyan tree leans from one building to another. Its thick branches thread through a maze of cables. Beneath the tree stand Shahji Doodh Bhandar, Bismillah Bakery and Standard Chicken Point. Around them crowd meat shops, stationery stores and photocopy kiosks. Scooters squeeze past battery rickshaws. Men on motorcycles stare at their at their screens.

Citizen Moinuddin, who runs a tea stall here, says the name Gadhe Walon ka Chowk comes from the scores of gadhe, or donkeys, and mules that used to gather beneath the banyan every morning. Their owners led them into the lanes of Old Delhi carrying bricks, cement, sand and other building material to places too narrow for vans or carts.

Nearby handicraft trader Zahur Khan, however, insists this isn’t the chowk’s name. At best, he says, it is a colloquial one. According to him, the chowk has no name.

At the chowk’s chai stall, Yaseen (see photo), who lives on a nearby street, says, “Baap, dada, all of my ancestors used to work with gadhe. I did too. Now I drive an auto.”

The gadhe left the chowk decades ago when their owners were asked by the authorities to move them to a ground beyond the old city walls. Their numbers have since fallen, though they are occasionally seen trotting through Purani Dilli lanes with bricks slung on either side of the back, the bridle pulled tight by the handler walking ahead. Yet a long, barely visible concrete water trough survives at one corner of the chowk. At first glance, it looks like a bathtub. Donkeys and mules sometimes lower their heads into it to drink.

The chowk has one more reminder of its past. An old marble grave lies beneath the banyan tree. Here neighbourhood elders gather with glasses of tea stall chai to pass the hours. This afternoon, a dog is lying in the street facing the grave, chin resting on the ground. The elders sitting beside the grave call the dog Madam.