Delhiwale: A tiny monument in a global city

Chhoti Gumti monument in south Delhi’s Green Park is a very chhoti (tiny) Lodhi-era ruin. There is no record of it in the books of monuments. The visitor’s best approach is to slowly walk around it. The perspective is beautiful, especially from each of the four corners.

Let us go then, you and I, when the afternoon is spread out over the grass.

But these days, the main reason to visit the monument is to appreciate its regained social life.

Like on this afternoon of March. The sky is so blue that it looks like an Instagram filter. The ground is divided into two halves: a sunny one (empty) and a shaded one (crowded with people). A stone mausoleum stands at the centre, as though it demarcates the shade from glare.

Chhoti Gumti monument in south Delhi’s Green Park is a very chhoti (tiny) Lodhi-era ruin. There is no record of it in the books of monuments. The visitor’s best approach is to slowly walk around it. The perspective is beautiful, especially from each of the four corners.

But these days, the main reason to visit the monument is to appreciate its regained social life. For most of the two years of pandemic, there would hardly be anybody here but pigeons on the dome and squirrels on the grass. The gate would be locked often. Now, as the pandemic has eased and offices and schools have reopened, the monument’s garden has won back its ecosystem.

It’s 2 pm and the shaded grounds are teeming with people. Some seem to be men on a break from work; others, in blue uniforms, must be school students who stopped here on their way home. Some of these people are lying on the ground, some are sleeping, some are eating from their lunch boxes. One man is clipping his toenails. Another fellow is resting his head on a concrete block, using it as a pillow. The only sound you can hear is that of a faint chuckle coming repeatedly from the mobile phone of a man. He must be scrolling through funny videos, appended with that laughing sound effect, peculiar to such clippings.

To be sure, there is nothing unique about people lounging in a garden monument (think Lodhi Gardens). But this place isn’t a popular destination. There are few who come from far to savour its relaxed ambiance.

Chhoti Gumti’s reach is chhoti. Its serenity finds favour only with people who live or work in the area, giving it a hyperlocal charm, distinct to a Green Park way of life (elderly folks lounge in the evening, along with dog walkers). Sadly, for long periods of the lockdown and during its aftermath, Chhoti remained deserted. Now its crowded again.