The secret and surprising world of Delhi’s Walled City

About 20 minutes harried walk from Old Delhi’s Turkman Gate, through alleyways and streets so crowded you have to breathe in as the cycle rickshaws push their way past, lies the home of the Jhinjhanvis, a Muslim family originally from Uttar Pradesh. In seven rooms split over several floors, the families of two brothers live together. From the noisy streets outside, where traders bustle and shout and where goats are tethered to pegs awaiting their fate,you ascend a narrow staircase and enter an oasis of blue-coloured calm and extraordinary hospitality.

Recently, we were guests for dinner at the house, located in Chitli Qabar Chowk and dating back to the second half of the 19th Century, and received not only a delicious meal but a rare glimpse into a part of India’s capital city that is barely seen by outsiders, and even many residents.

On a warm night during Ramadan, we were taken to the house by the writer and journalist Mayank Austen Soofi, a friend who is steadily making a name for himself as a perhaps unparalleled contemporary chronicler of this vast, complicated city and its people. On a recent assignment for his newspaper, Mayank had been walking in the walled city built by Emperor Shahjahan in the 17th Century, and stumbled across the home of brothers Muneer and Naseer-ul-Hassan. Intrigued by the look of the door to their home and the prospect of what might lie behind it, he knocked, introduced himself and was subsequently invited inside where he explained he was looking to write an article about the changing nature of Old Delhi. His intention, he said, was to challenge some of the assumptions people might have about these neighbourhoods and their residents.

Over the course of several weeks, Mayank became friends with the various family members, who took him into their confidence and talked about their lives in an unusually intimate manner. The generous instructions of Muneer to the various family members had been to “tell him everything”.

As it was, Mayank’s terrific account [accompanied by stunning images by photrographer Javeed Shah, which he kindly gave me permission to post here], included several revelations that not every member of the family had known about. He revealed for instance, that one of the daughters, Yumna, a student of political science Delhi University, took off her traditional stole the moment she reached the edge of Old Delhi on her way to unviversty and revelled in her jeans and  Western-style clothes.

A son, 24-year-old Shaheer, who works for an outsourcing firm in the satellite city of Noida, revealed that he has a Hindu girlfriend, something that many Muslim families in traditional Old Delhi would not tolerate but which made his father Muneer chuckle. Mayank’s article  also detailed how all of the family members were signed up on Facebook and regularly checked their page.

After talking with the family, we were invited to sit down to dinner, served for a dozen or so of us on the floor. There was rice, bread, salad, yoghurt, traditional cottage cheese with spinach, a spicy chili paste and wonderful lamb meatballs cooked in a savoury gravy. The evening rapidly slipped by.

I have admitted before to having something of a love-hate affair with Delhi, a huge, hot, chaotic sprawl. But on this particular evening, as we made our way out of the Old city, pleasantly full and invigorated by the people we had just met, it felt like an utter privilege.

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