The Walled City enyclopedia.

[Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

All the doors on both sides of the lane are shut. A couple have cobwebs around their locks and latches, suggesting they haven’t been touched for a long time. This pre-dawn morning, only cats are moving about Old Delhi’s Gali Sakko Wali.

Now a man in grey kurta pajamas is entering from Matia Mahal Bazar, into which the dead-end lane opens. Returning from morning prayers at a nearby mosque, he introduces himself as Farooq Bhai. He is a bawarchi, a cook. Many residents here are bawarchis, he says.

Gali Sakko Wali is part of our weekly exploration of Old Delhi’s streets, their pasts and present. The lane’s name recalls the sakko (or sakke) wale, the traditional water carriers who drew water from wells, poured it into goatskin bags called mashaks, and went from house to house selling it.

Indeed, many of Gali Sakko Wali’s residents had forefathers who worked as sakke wale, Farooq Bhai says. His own family, however, has been in the business of cooking for generations. His great-grandfather Abdul Majid and grandfather Bhoori Bawarchi were cooks, as was his late father, the famous Kallan Bawarchi. In the 1960s, his father set up a more professional kitchen a short distance away in Matia Mahal Bazar. While the family home remains in the lane, Kallan Bawarchi’s kitchen establishment in Matia Mahal Bazar has become a familiar landmark. During the day, it is super-crammed with ladles and cauldrons, the air smelling of cardamom, clove, onion, ginger and garlic. Smouldering coals encircle deep-bellied cauldrons, with meat and rice cooking slowly on dum.

Back in the lane, Farooq Bhai names other illustrious bawarchis living here. Abdul Hakeem, whose kitchen establishment is in Lal Kuan; Abdul Khaleel, whose establishment is in Matia Mahal; Zameel, whose establishment is in Welcome, the locality outside Old Delhi. A few cooks from the lane, he says, are working as far away as Dubai.

The lane also houses the families behind some of Old Delhi’s wildly popular eateries, including Hafiz ji Chicken Wale and Cool Point’s Zahid Bhai.

And yet, for a gali that shelters so many eminent households, it is surprisingly short and narrow. Among its doorways, one calls for a pause. The doorway doesn’t look old but is in a severely derelict state. Even so, it is so beautiful. The arch rests on carved pillars. The door panels have curling metalwork, topped with latticework. The building it once opened into is gone, leaving an empty plot behind the entrance. When a new building finally comes up here, the doorway may go too.

The soft-spoken Farooq Bhai now stands beside the curtained doorway of his residence, graciously agreeing to pose for a portrait. A black cat settles beside the door’s dehleez, she too graciously turning her face towards the camera. See photo.