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In the corridors of time
R.V. SMITH
CONNAUGHT PLACE is a strange place by night, gone is the hurry of the day and gone too the people responsible for it. It's so quiet and peaceful, with the corridors dreaming of the pre-War past when this fashionable market came up as a showpiece of the new Capital. Connaught Place though fallen on bad days, is still considered a promenade, where everything is taken in its stride. But that's in the day. At night things are different, with drug addicts with anti-socials on the prowl, and perhaps murder, rape and abduction lurking in the dark. Don't shudder, for you may for reassurance, find a chowkidar, an armed policeman on his rounds, a pigeon asleep on a parapet or a cat taking a royal walk through deserted roads - a link of sorts with the wild past of the place where once jackals, foxes and wolves roamed in search of prey.
That was long before Barakhamba came up. Who knows in the distant future, when the jungle reclaims what originally belonged to it and the animals come back to their old hunts some enterprising archaeologist might not stumble through the thicket on our fancy bazaar and imagine it to be an example of decadent Moghul architecture or the palace of a king, with apartments for his begums and rooms for his retainers! Or some Prince Charming may come on his horse (would they have this noble animal then?) and find a "Sleeping Beauty" of brick and mortar. He will climb our high-rise buildings and wonder whether we perished while constructing a Tower of Babel. There is no room for incredulity. Decay has laid its withered hand on seven Delhis earlier, so why not on the eighth? Think of Athens and Troy and the lost cities of the Incas, the old Jerusalem, and nearer home Fatehpur Sikri, the once mighty capital of Akbar. Nature does take back its own somehow and Connaught Place may not be an exception. Just think how it would be in the centuries to come when its pseudo-British architecture becomes a maze of wonder! Could its discovery be compared by some civilisation to that of Mohanjodaro or Harappa? Would it be a flattering comment if they were to say we knew how to build pillars and that our roads were quite wide but that we did not have the know of proper traffic arrangement?
Walking through Connaught Place at night one cannot help wondering what time holds in store. The darkness makes this modern mart a hoary place whispering from every nook and corner. When everything else is gone, the cats, the pigeons and the discarded buildings would be our grim talebearers to a future age.
Before it was built as a mart to commemorate the Duke of Connaught, people from the walled city, Nizamuddin and Mehrauli used to come here for partridge hunting, for it was a wilderness with a profusion of babool trees.
In 1857 many of the so-called mutineers hid here after escaping from Shahjehanabad via the Delhi, Ajmere and Turkman gates. At that time the area occupied by the Ramlila grounds was a huge lake, Shaji-ka-talab, in which people came for a swim, fishing or boating. Once a wedding procession was looted near the shrine of Hazarat Turkman Bayabani. It was night and when the wailing bride and bridegroom came to the saint's tomb, some of the dacoits were caught and the loot recovered while those who jumped into the lake drowned.
Beyond the lake were fields where vegetables were grown, and they covered the ground where stands the L.N.J.P. hospital complex. After the fields were the thickets that extended right up to what later became Connaught Circus. During the Moghul era people passed this way on horseback. The sepoys of the `Mutiny' naturally found the area ideal as a hiding spot until they could escape to Gurgaon, Rajputana, Mathura or Agra.
Besides the Hanuman temple, a number of smaller temples and mosques existed in the area. The one big inhabited place then was the palace of Maharaja Jai Singh, where now Gurdwara Bangla Sahib stands. A prominent landmark even in the 18th century was the Jantar Mantar built by Shah Rangila. It was in the time of this Moghul emperor that Nadir Shah invaded Delhi and massacred its inhabitants. Some of those who escaped found shelter in the hilly tract of Raisina, where New Delhi was to come up after some 200 years.
When Connaught Place was completed in the late 1930s, many of the shops went for a song as nobody wanted to carry on business in such an isolated place then. Chandni Chowk was the main shopping centre and Kashmere Gate the promenade frequented by the British and the rich. People had to be persuaded to take up shops in Connaught Place.
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Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Madurai
Thiruvananthapuram
Visakhapatnam
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