Latest news with #Tughlak
Hindustan Times
3 days ago
- General
- Hindustan Times
Delhiwale: Purple prose
Plop! That's the sound these berries make after they fall from the tree, their purple juice sometimes squirting out in all directions on hitting the hard earth. The stains explain that why Walled City hawker Kishore is no longer hawking bananas. He is, instead, carrying a basket of these berries on his head, walking all day from gali to gali, hoarsely crying, 'jamun walla, jamun le lo.' Say hello to Delhi's jamun season. This evening, at a central Delhi roundabout, scores of men have gathered around a jamun tree, violently shaking its branches, causing the berries to fall, one after another. These jamuns will later be gathered for an impromptu feast. Some metres away, street vendor Mahaveer's cart is left with only a tiny pile of neatly arranged jamuns. He gets them every morning from Azadpur Subzi Mandi, where they arrive from Punjab, he says. But our own city-state is full of jamun trees. Crisscrossed with leafy avenues, the beautiful Lutyens' Delhi is rich with eight so-called avenue trees, one of them being jamun. (Others are neem, arjun, imli, sausage tree, baheda, peepal and pilkhan). Each year, the authorities auction the rights to collect the jamuns from these trees. In fact, scores of hawkers are currently conducting business along Ashoka Road, the avenue rich in jamun trees. These men and women line the roadside with baskets and buckets filled with the day's harvest, plucked freshly from the very jamun trees under which they sit, awaiting customers. Other jamun-dense margs in the vicinity are Rajaji, Ferozeshah, Tughlak, Tyagraj, and Motilal Nehru. An exceptionally luxuriant jamun stands in Connaught Place's N-Block. The tree is huge, its shade much appreciated during the hostile sun-drenched summer afternoons. Waiters from a nearby restaurant sit under this tree during their smoking breaks. The nearby Central Park used to have scores of similarly huge jamun trees. They were sacrificed for the greater common good, after the park was taken over by the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation in early 2000s. All the park trees were uprooted, the grounds dug up to make way for an underground rail terminus (Rajiv Chowk!). Whatever, as soon as the jamun season will end next month, aforementioned vendor Mahaveer says he will switch to selling coconut slices. In winter, he will switch to shakarkandi, which he hawks around the India Gate circle. Meanwhile, miles away in Ghaziabad, two men are repeatedly striking a tree branch with a lathi. Finally, something falls on the ground with a thud. It is mango, which, too, is in season.
Hindustan Times
4 days ago
- Hindustan Times
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.'
