magic for the soul - a foodies delight

 

 

The delights of Delhi are splendid and many, especially for an inquisitive mind, one ferretting for the unusual. Be it a long forgotten piece of history, a cultural curiosity, a tantalising tingle of the tastebud.

One such delight is Daulat ki chaat. It is one of old delhi’s best kept secrets. Found only on the bylanes of Chawri bazaar;  a winter speciality, its recipe dating back to the Mughal kitchens, and  is literally a spoonful magic that disappears the minute it is on your tongue, leaving behind the merest sensation of cream and sweetness.

A trundle down the bylanes leading off the jama Masjid can be witness to the sweet magicians hovering over huge cauldrons of milk being continuously boiled to skim off the layer of foam. This is spun with caramalised sugar and saffron to make a delectable airy concoction, a little bit of heaven.

Come winter, just follow the wafting aroma of freshly baked nan khattais and the sharp tangy smells of fruit chaat, and one is sure to find a cycle cart tray of Daulat ki chaat alongside.

jahapanah and begumpur - a walk through time

Once upon a time this was a citadel of power – of a man called the mad genius, emperor Thuglaq. Visionary, eccentric, whimsical, tyrannical – he built one of the greatest empires in Indian history and ruled it from the bastions of Jahapanah.

Little remains of this kingdom today. Standing across the campus of IIT, alongside the Sarvapriya club near the Hauz Khas metro station, a stone epitaph put up by the ASI, announces the presence of the Bijai Mandal.  Overgrown bramble bush and elephant grass run amuck over what must have been large, stately palace grounds. Unadorned and bereft of any decorative grandeur that mark the citadels of contemporary Mughals,  tall, majestic walls and imposing arches of stark simplicity mark the last standing structure, the BijaiMandal of the kingdom of Jahapanah. Clamber up through narrow stone staircases to the roof of the structure, and one can only imagine what this must have all looked like then, when the ramparts stretched all the way across the kutub, lal kot, siri and tuqlaqabad.

The Begumpur mosque nearby is a study in reverence and mystery. The antecedence of this place is little known. An enormous courtyard dominates, almost as large as the Jama masjid. And 5 large prayer halls dedicated for women is intriguingly  unusual. The mosque complex has numerous incredibly narrow stone staircases leading both unto the roofs and down to basements and eerie passages so narrow and dark between thick stone walls that one needs to walk sideways to traverse through. Why were these built at all, and that too inside a mosque! One can only wonder.   

Delhi is so full of such historical mysteries, it’s a delight to travel through them, through time. 

A forgotten bit of history

Safdarjung tomb will not feature on the must see list of Delhi. It was after all just a tomb built for Safdarjung, the prime minister of Muhammad Shah – a not very prominent figure of a rather weak Mughal emperor. Most would have never even heard of him. But what's memorable or important about this monument, is that it was the last of the great mughal edifices built in Delhi.  So what relegates this monument to a footnote in the list of heritage buildings in Delhi?

The architecture is striking, with tall and lofty minarets in red sandstone, with an imposing cupola. The visage or elevation is symetrically similar to the taj or lodhi tomb – with vast gardens designed in the typical mughal style and waterbodies. The gardens now stand bereft of colour, the waterbodies and fountains dry and silent, the sandstone of the walls and dome, dulled with the abrasions of time.

What makes this monument particularly bereft is that it stands so close to the buffed and polished Lodhi monuments. So it remains today, Safdarjung tombs, a forgotten chapter in history.