The Walled City enyclopedia.

[Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

A giant flowerpot is standing under the blue sign for Brijmohan Chowk. Nothing is growing in the pot. Its wide mouth is holding plastic bags, empty cigarette packs, wrappers and other rubbish. The paving around it is cracked. Cars are edging past on either side in the afternoon rush.

As you can see, dear reader, even a flowerpot can grow into something else in your beloved Dilli. This one has the air of a nihilist art installation to which the common man has been invited to contribute.

This Saturday, our weekly series exploring the present and past of Old Delhi’s streets arrives at this dreadful crossing on Netaji Marg in Daryaganj. Here, you might spend enough time stuck in a long traffic jam to learn the name on the sign by heart. But who was Brijmohan?

In a recent tribute on social media, the neighbourhood traders’ association describes “Shri Brijmohan ji” as a Gandhian freedom fighter who devoted himself to public service. His birth centenary was marked this week not far from the chowk with a bhandara and the distribution of prasad. The chowk’s blue boards bear his name in Hindi, English and Urdu.

The place has another name, too. Sorry, it had. Lohe Wala Pul. The iron bridge.

That footbridge once spanned over the chowk. Back in the time when the Sunday Book Bazar stretched along Daryaganj’s pavements. The pul marked the end of the bazar. You could then go up onto the bridge and look down at the traffic that presently keeps you stranded below. A longtime golgappa vendor nearby remembers routinely going up the Lohe Wala Pul to watch the buses passing underneath, their clanking “katar katar” echoing through the metal bridge.

A 2009 newspaper report announced plans to dismantle the bridge and build an “underpass cum subway”. Today, the bridge is gone. But neither the underpass nor the subway is anywhere to be seen. Pedestrians crossing the road are obliged to run, stop, run, stop, then run again. On safely reaching the other side, they must feel grateful to have escaped the bus tyres.

Right now at the chowk, buses, cars, autos, battery rickshaws, and motorbikes are jammed side by side. Just beyond them, a man on a rickshaw is standing over the handlebars, looking for a gap.

Now look up from the afternoon jam. An old corner building overlooking the chowk has long rows of windows under sloping shades. A hanging lamp is lit in one of the rooms. You want to go up to that room and sit silently under the lamp.

Across the crossing, an eatery notice lists the wait times for fried and roasted dishes. “Fried items” take about 15 minutes. Indeed, while stuck in the chowk jam, you might order something fried, wait for it to arrive, eat it at leisure and find that your bus still hasn’t moved an inch.

Meanwhile, in the center of all this racket, the giant pot is standing there in a state of shantih shantih shantih. See photo.