A city secret.

[Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

This Monday evening, yellow police barricades stand beneath the trees beside Jantar Mantar, in Central Delhi. Men in blue camouflage linger by a banner warning against “any public gathering.” Khaki uniforms appear beyond the road’s barricade. Only a few people in civilian clothes are walking along the pavement linking the Jantar Mantar monument complex to the adjoining protest square.

Here, almost unnoticed, is a public park. Its secretive entrance stands at a turning of the said pavement. A board identifies it simply as “NDMC Park”, displaying a map of paths and trees, though the place hardly seems large enough to need one.

From outside, the park’s greenery could be taken for a roadside plantation. Step inside, and it turns out to be a place to wander aimlessly. The park’s pathway is full of curves, bends and turns. Walking through it, you feel your body continually changing direction. A circle of paving encloses a bed of greenery.

Truth be told, the trees are reason enough to enter the park. One stands amid a congregation of its hanging roots. The roots descend around the trunk, clinging to one another like a sadhu’s matted hair.

The park overlooks the 18th-century solar observatory of Jantar Mantar. Parts of the observatory’s gigantic structures are visible between the trees, including a red wall with arched openings. The horizon is tipped by the high-rises around Connaught Place. Jawahar Vyapar Bhawan, which houses the Central Cottage Industries Emporium, is catching the early October evening light on its upper heights. Segments of this multi-storey jut out on either side of its tall tower. Seen from here, its shape seems as unconventional as those of Jantar Mantar’s astronomical structures.

This evening, the park is occupied by policemen and policewomen, perhaps taking a break from duty at the barricaded protest area. Some men are standing beneath a spreading tree. In one corner, a policewoman is sitting under another tree, her folding chair turned away from the solar observatory’s picturesque structures. The park is pin-drop silent. This is Jantar Mantar, yet there is no sound of slogans or police sirens, or even of birds.