Delhiwale: Tughlakabad underground
The silent, secretive tunnel-like corridor crawls through facing rows of darkened cells. The underground place is truly a revelation.
This is one of the most puzzling segments of Tughlakabad Fort. In fact, the entire 14th century citadel, here in the southern tip of Delhi, is a kind of puzzle.
The fort is huge, yet sits somewhat detached from mainstream Delhi—so unlike the equally splendid Red Fort. That monument, further north, commands a dynamic presence in the capital's public life. Red Fort hosts the Prime Minister on Independence Day, and poets on Republic Day. Teeming with tourists, it is permeated with the story of Mughals, whose legends have seeped into the most minute crevices of our popular culture.
But Tughlakabad Fort remains deserted (though is full of monkeys). Its austere ramparts and swollen bastions lie spread along a hillock, looking grim, ancient and windswept.
This was the third city of Delhi, raised by the Tughlak dynasty founder, Ghiyasuddin. It must have been a Versailles of its times. Traveller Ibn Battuta talked of Tughlakabad's 'gilded tiles' and 'vast stores of wealth'.
After Ghiasuddin's death in a freak accident, his successor forced Tughlakabad's population to move into a new capital—very far from Delhi. The abandoned fort fell into prolonged dereliction, a downward slide that still hasn't ended.
Today, the ramparts shelter a land of stone ruins, wild grass, and eerie silence.
Some edifices are no longer whole. One of these resembles a Roman aqueduct. The oddest is the aforementioned underground corridor. It lies hidden under the rugged earth.
This afternoon, the dusty wind is freely blowing through the fort, and the white-hot sun is hurting the eyes.
An opening in the ground leads to a flight of steep stairs. These steps go down into the mysterious corridor. Here, the daylight at once becomes less intense, the air less hot. The corridor isn't long, quickly ending into another set of staircase that goes up back to the dusty, hot exteriors.
Nobody can confidently tell about the exact point of the passage.
Was it an army barrack? A horse stable? A shrine for djinns? A hostel for cloistered monks? An escape route?
A guard patrolling the fort's bleak environs mutters that at night strange voices stream out from inside the underground passage. That must be the sound of bats, one might infer. But the guard says—'ghosts.'
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