Zamrudpur, New Delhi – Feb 2021
Delhi is known for its parks, monuments, shopping places, and tony colonies. In this milieu there is a part of urban landscape that has carved its own niche. Long ago, when Delhi was just scrubland, some agriculture patches, forests and gardens, it was always the most coveted real estate for the successive dynasties to establish their own capitals and when the assorted sultans and generals and their progeny died to their own astonishment, they chose to be buried in the scores of tombs that dotted the brown, bleak and broken countryside. It is quite possible that the period between the Mughals losing their hold, Abdali turning the city into a morgue and the British coming into the city, Delhi experienced a period of about 100 years or more when it would have lost the love of its citizens.
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| Tomb D of Zamrudpur |
This is the period when we see the first photos of Delhi with forlorn and ruined tombs standing on a desolate and rocky land with apparently no sign of urban life. Of course, there would have been throbbing urban settlements across Delhi where the common people lived supporting the paraphernalia of the successive reigning rulers. Just like evolving organisms, these settlements grew into villages – some continued to thrive while others disappeared and some new ones appeared in the landscape. Some villages are still known by their original names while others got themselves new ones.
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| View of Mehrauli from Qutb Minar |
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| Qudsia Bagh |
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| Ghiyas-ud-din Tughlaq Tomb |
Even till 1960s most of the urban villages of Delhi would have looked like their counterparts in the countryside with kutcha houses sitting amidst crops and mango orchards. But as the pressure of unending expansion grew with huge influx of people, first during partition, and later for the opportunities the capital offered, just like rest of the city, the urban villages also underwent transformation – mostly unplanned and ghastly. Those open-courtyard single storey houses have all but disappeared turning into multi-storeyed buildings built to squeeze in maximum number of living units that are rented out. Of course, with land gone, the villagers need steady income. The only remnants of an earlier rural life is an elderly puffing on a hookah; the bullock cart replaced with the Fortuner. You are still not sure, how they got the vehicle this deep inside the village when even walking in these streets is a challenge.
Over the past few years you have visited some of Delhi’s Urban Villages, while some are still in to-visit list. Mehrauli is probably the oldest still-living village. Mehrauli was Delhi's original Purani Dilli. Of course, the presence of Qutb Sahib Kaki Dargah has given the village immortality and a stream of visitors and devotees. Lado Sarai near Mehrauli has some tombs which you still have not seen. Nearby is the Adchini Village with Nizamuddin’s mother dargah which you recently visited. There is Begumpur village with the mammoth Begumpur Masjid. Khidki Village abutting the glitz of Saket got its name from the roofed Khidki Mosque. Hauz Khas Village is perhaps the most popular village with the heritage complex and lake as it transformed into a hip place with boutiques, cafeterias, bistros and restaurants. Not long ago you could not find a parking spot within a km. Recently, it has lost its appeal as restaurants decamped to CP. Nearby is Shahpur Jat, a sleepy village that has become the high street of fashion with most well designers setting up shop here.
Humayunpur, close to Deer Park, with a tomb is Delhi’s Little North-East; scenes like a red-haired dude in Metallica T-shirt juxtaposed against the turbaned elderly lying on charpai are not uncommon – an uneasy but mutually beneficial relationship. The urban villages provide affordable housing to students and new migrants as they try to make it big in this city where all the jobs and livelihoods are. Mohammadpur, behind Bhikaji Cama Place has the huge Tin Burj with balconies resting over the domes. Katwaria Serai, next to NCERT, with probably now lost tomb is popular with students supplied with cheap weed from next door Munirka, another urban village. Another well-known village is Nizamuddin Basti, located across Humayun Tomb that was earlier called Ghiyaspur. Now it houses the dargah of the Sufi Saint Nizamuddin Auliya along with that of Khusrao, Jahanara and Mirza Ghalib.
While some villages have survived, others have disappeared. The Raisina village was shifted to make way for Delhi’s newest city. Now the power centre of the capital is called Raisina Hill alluding to the North and South Blocks sitting on top of the gradient. Lady Willingdon – God bless her – moved the Khairpaur village to create the oasis of Lodhi Garden. Or we would have had the horror show of Zamrudpur right here. Speaking of which let’s get on with our story.
Finally, the 2020 lockdown is easing. It has been several years since you did the monuments. It is a good time to pick the ones that you haven’t visited so far. Zamrudpur, in the neighbourhood of LSR looks promising. Lucy Peck’s description of the village looks interesting. Though you have a feeling that things might have worsened. There have been reports that the residents are hostile to nosey parkers.
Parking off the Lala Rajpat Rai road just ahead of Bluebells School, you walk towards this jumble of concrete that was once an idyllic island in a city that was still not a city yet. Zamrudpur, rightfully and anachronistically is sandwiched by the upscale GK1 and Kailash Colony.
Unsure where to enter the maze, you spot an unmistakable dome of a tomb to the far left. The village and the thatched roofs might have gone but buffaloes have still survived. You will have to negotiate some fresh poop on the ground before you get to the tomb. The smell of freshly squirting milk in buckets mixed with the grime and dung provides a heady hit to the senses.
We will follow Lucy’s labelling since the tombs like so many built during Lodhi and pre-Lodhi period do not have names. Lodhis though did not contribute by constructing a city of their own but did contribute by dying copiously and erecting tombs over their graves. They singlehandedly turned Delhi into a necropolis. The Lodhis might not have had the means to build palaces or a city, the sultans ensured that at least they were buried in the toniest parts of South Delhi from Vasant Vihar to South Extension and to GK using up prime real estate for their tombs; at least making some real estate agents were quite happy along the way.
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| Tomb D |
Lucy thinks Zamrudpur tombs are Pre-Lodhi and it is perfectly fine with you. The first tomb is labelled Tomb D and is of a substantial size. Out of the five tombs here, this is most visible tomb though the nice neighbour has put fences effectively turning it into a medieval outhouse. Hope the people of modest means living on Amrita Shergill Marg do not get ideas and decide to make the tombs of Lodhi Garden their outhouses for weekend cocktail parties.
There is not much you can
do besides taking few clicks of the western façade. The tomb looks like the
Lodhi ones in the neighbourhood of RK Puram and elsewhere. The first-floor
arched opening is flanked by modern balconies. The present and the past trying
to co-exist. It is a matter of time before the present overpowers the past. A helpful
neighbour in the adjacent lane guides you inside the village. He is helpful because if ASI decides to take
back the tomb, his balconies do not run any danger of being felled. However,
this other guy is making no attempt to endear to yourself. When he sees you
poking your nose inside his fence he launches into a Delhi trademarked rant.
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| Chaupal area of Zamrudpur |
You emerge in the centre of the village. On the right, the chaupal of yore with charpais spread under need trees has been replaced with a multistorey marble building. Only the sign proclamation gives some idea of the purpose of the building. Rows of tall buildings lead into the dark passages on two sides. This as you will find later is the only place in the village where some sky is visible. Two Fortuners and few SUVs are parked here. The sight is as baffling as that of the tomb you just saw. Elsewhere in the country, the temple chariot occupies this place of pride in the village centre. But this is Urban Village in Delhi and the self-proclaimed muscle flexing pardhans can do whatever they feel like in a place where the nameless tenants are rendered voiceless too.
You are moving towards west along one of the two arterial streets inside the village. You have been guided inside this lane that seems like a cul-de-sac. Wait a minute, to the left there is a dark narrow path barely wide enough for two abreast adults leading into an opening. Lucy calls the Tomb A the gem of Zamrudpur and it is. Raised on a high platform is a twelve pillared (another Barakhambha in Delhi!) tomb. The setting is dramatic. There is a bunch of excited kids who are happy to find you here and they go on a sugar rush posing and climbing. High rises engulf the tomb from all sides and it is twilight zone here. You just can’t imagine raising kids in these surroundings and looking at these happy hopeful kids, you realise they have actually turned out okay. The spoiled rich brats elsewhere complain too much.
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| The Gem of Zamrudpur - Tomb A |
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| Tomb A of Zamrudpur - those are some never before seen tomb pillars in Delhi - were they harvested from a buried demolished temple? |
And to top it all there is a tree, its gnarled trunk zig-zagging its way up. It is just a miracle that the tomb and this tree has survived. The beautiful ornate pillars almost seem like pulled from a temple. In all this sudden sensory blast, you forget to climb the platform to peer at the dome ceiling. Lucy says the true glory is inside – the bands are not seen in Delhi but are similar to Champaner’s Jami Masjid. This is what you love about these authors and investigators – how they are able to compare monuments across the country. You need to go back and climb the Pavagadh hill this time around.
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| Tomb B of Zamrudpur |
But before you leave for Vadodara, the children are already guiding you to the Tomb B in the next lane. This is a horror story. Maybe during Lucy’s time, circa 2005, the tomb was visible from the street. Now rows of tenements have come up and the tomb courtyard is reached by literally walking through houses. And this is when you realise that Zamrudpur is hell right in the middle of the city. The people here living in these conditions are just like you trying to make a living in the big city. You are feeling claustrophobic. It is like as if the sun has suddenly gotten eclipsed, disorienting you. It wouldn’t look nice if you reel and fall down here in the garbage.
At least you have access to this tomb unlike the Tomb D. The tomb is huge like one of those in Lodhi Garden. But the cows have beaten you to it. In the dark, you can barely make out the shapes of two cows condemned to live in this Anda Cell, the infamous abode in Mumbai’s Arthur Jail. And there is garbage everywhere. Above, the balconies are jutting over the dome. You are aghast. The cows and the kids do not seem to mind this at all. The kids are again in sugar rush posing and squabbling. The cows look on indifferently. Now that you notice, the tomb has double pillared columns – so is this tomb Tughlaq?
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| Spot the Tomb E behind the curtains |
So far you have seen three
tombs of the five tombs. There is a Tomb E but like Metcalf it has been turned
into private kitchen or bedroom – you are not sure which. All you can see
inside the house is a corner pillar and maybe a beam.
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| One of the two main streets of Zamrudpur |
The Tomb C has possibly no
access now. It can be seen from a rooftop (Check Sahil’s blog for photos). But
asking for permission is too much. You will call it off now. Zamrudpur has a
sixth tomb called the Langar Khan Tomb to the north along Lala Lajpat Rai Marg.
You will see it some other time. Your visit here in Zamrudpur is done. It is
time to step out of the Anda Cell into sunshine and skies. Some things that we
take for granted.
Zamrudpur – A Commentary
Following in the glorious tradition of Metcalfe who turned one of these strewn-all-over-Delhi tombs into his dining room, the denizens of the urban horror called Zamrudpur have their own acquisitions. So, while people usually keep pets or bonsais, the villagers here have tombs in their yards, now turned into cow-sheds, dumpyards, and follies, not decorating the landscaped gardens of Metcalfe’s Dilkusha, but as some props of a gut-wrenching horror movie where you can hear the sickening whirr of a chain-saw shearing away the limbs of the tombs.
This is a labyrinthine equatorial forest of densely packed high-rise buildings, where even the sun disappears and it seems you are burrowing inside a rabbit hole. You have just walked, okay burrowed, into a set of Indiana Jones movie with this surreal setting of a grimy pavilion with a tree curling around one of its ends and walls from all sides closing in, the square of the sky above canopied by the incredulous presence of this tree. As you stand here, in this never seen before light (a mix of twilight and a storm approaching), the feeling is a strange mix of asphyxiation and exhilaration. It is like a never experienced before monumentorgasm. You later walk back to experience it again.
Lucy indicates five tombs here (A to E and one Langar Khan Tomb). You are able to see three tombs and one that was hidden behind a curtain, probably turned into a kitchen. Two of the tombs are huge and majestic. It is their misfortune that they found themselves here instead of Lodhi Gardens.
Every village has an idiot and this guy
too became agitated seeing you peeping inside the gate. Two things are going to
happen. One, the tombs disappear completely and second - almost zero chance of
happening - the ASI and INTACH grow some spine and reclaim them. In that case,
the idiot might lose his walls and balcony that now rests on the dome.
And then there are the kids who go wild seeing you and the generally helpful population who guide you around and pop up in every frame. And that is the contrast of Delhi’s urban villages - most people living in these inhumane, Dickensian condition (well, you have to make a living in this big city) while there are two Fortuners parked in the Chaupal area. You are still not sure how they manage to bring them into the centre of the village through these hardly wide-enough-for-a-goat lanes; the whole setting being so wonderfully harrowing, incongruous and confounding.
Pre-Lodhi Tombs, Zamrudpur, Kailash
Colony, New Delhi
Epilogue
Seeing the carnage in Zamrudpur has set you thinking.
Now imagine this – if Lady Willingdon had not gotten rid of the Khairpur village, the Lodhi Garden tombs would have been condemned to same fate as Zamrudpur and Kotla Mubarakpur.
And no Lodhi Garden!
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| Mubarak Shah Tomb - now this place is unrecognizable in Kotla Mubarakpur |
So, it was a roll of dice for Delhi Tombs.
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| Makhdoom Sahib Tomb in Mayfair Garden |
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| Bijri Khan Tomb in RK Puram |
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| Unknown Tomb in GK I |
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| Complex in Wazirabad |
Tombs in Delhi’s Urban
Villages have suffered the worst fate. Elsewhere, Bijri Khan Tomb had a change
in fortune and now lives in a gated villa with a guard, tombs in Hauz Khas
Village complex live among manicured lawns, the tomb in GK – I lives in a
walled compound in a park with flower beds tended to by gardeners, and the Makhdoom
Tomb is ensconced in a luxurious upscale abode.
References:
Lucy Peck: Delhi – A Thousand
Years of Building
Get wowed with this kid - http://pixels-memories.blogspot.com/2016/01/lodi-era-tombs-zamrudpur-village-delhi.html
https://thewire.in/urban/delhi-story-urbanisation-gone-wrong-lal-dora-villages-city-periphery
https://sarmaya.in/spotlight/delhi-evolution-of-a-city/
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