Delhiwale: A forlorn evening’s ruin

This evening, the centuries-old unnamed tomb in south Delhi’s Lado Sarai village is bare of people. The gardens around it are overgrown with grass. A feeling of abandonment lingers.

What happened?

In the absence of its sunset hour people, the monument is permeated with a profoundly different character, a more solitary one.

This evening, the centuries-old unnamed tomb in south Delhi’s Lado Sarai village is bare of people. The gardens around it are overgrown with grass. A feeling of abandonment lingers.

This is an ambiance so different from the pre-pandemic times. But first you’ll have to jog your memory to see the place as it used to be during the evening.

People of the locality would flock over to the monument, not necessarily to view the stone edifice (simply called ‘gumbad’, or dome), but to hang about in the surrounding lawns. These verdures have never been stunning—in living memory, they have never had beautifully arranged flower beds, but the evening crowd would fill up the space and bring to it a neighbourhood intimacy. The elderly folks would be arguing angrily about politics. The kids would be riding bicycles. Somebody would be flying a kite. Somebody would be sitting silent, thoughtfully staring into the vacuum ahead.

Today, a torn faded kite is lying entangled in a peepal tree.

Is this abandonment due to the pandemic, or is it just one of those rainy season evenings, so humid that nobody dares to venture out?

In the absence of its sunset hour people, the monument is permeated with a profoundly different character, a more solitary one. The walls of the tomb are peeled off at various places, showing the uneven stones beneath. They have been like this for a long time, but now a visitor is able to concentrate on them without the distractions of the interesting crowd. The place looks bleaker. The dome has grown dark with moss. Stray plants growing out of the stones look like parasites feeding on the host body. Two black dogs are wandering about.

A stone slab put up in 2002 commemorates the opening of the “Gumbad Park” by the “secretary, ministry of urban development.” The surface of the slab has grown black, making it very difficult to read the details. Some steps away stands a metal board of the department of archaeology. It displays a bit of information on the tomb. The board is cracked, and a man’s blue undergarment is hanging from it.

Outside, Bhairunath is selling kulfi on his cart—the only source of cheer here on this forlorn evening.