Delhiwale: Bloomsday mubarak

Visit Delhi's hidden Martello Tower today, a relic from British rule, as Bloomsday celebrations unfold in Dublin, honoring James Joyce's "Ulysses."

Good morning, 16 June! Today is the day to visit a rarely-visited Delhi monument. It stands in Daryaganj, but lies hidden behind the remains of the mostly vanished Walled City wall.

This seaside Dublin Martello is excellently preserved (and today is hosting hundreds of Bloomsday visitors). (HT)

Built as a defensive fortification by the British following our first war of independence, it is called Martello Tower. Similar towers were built across Ireland, another former British colony. Twenty of them are still standing in the capital, Dublin. One of these towers frames the opening scene of what is universally acknowledged to be the world’s pioneering modernist novel.

James Joyce’s Ulysses is set in Dublin and unfolds within a single day—16 June. The date is celebrated worldwide as Bloomsday, named after the novel’s hero, Mr Bloom. This reporter is in Dublin for Bloomsday 2025, and the Delhiwale column is briefly becoming Dublinwale.

In Delhi, the Martello Tower is in ruins. The little stone bridge leading to it is broken. You can leap over the gap, but risk falling into the smelly drain below.

This seaside Dublin Martello is excellently preserved (and today is hosting hundreds of Bloomsday visitors). While Ulysses is fiction, its author filled the novel with events of his own life. This particular Martello on Sandycove Point commands a sacred place in literature for hosting the immortal Joyce for a few days in 1904. By then, the tower had ceased to be a military installation, and was rented as a residential pad by a poet-friend of Joyce (much like how Delhi’s penniless artist types used to rent Defence Colony barsatis!). Today, James Joyce Tower and Museum is administered by a team of 100 volunteers, all of whom seem to be Joyce fanatics. They give free tours to the tower. Entry to the museum is free too.

The ground-floor is like a mandir to Joyce. Glass cases contain original souvenirs of his daily life: wallet, cigar case, suitcase… and Joyce’s last cane. There’s also a first edition of Ulysses, published in 1922–antiquary dealers rate its worth in tens of thousands of dollars.

Deeper within, a set of “dark winding stairs” go to the top of the tower. This is the spot where the great novel begins. Some readers become senti on stepping here. Others are taken in by the view—waves of the Irish Sea crashing on the pointy rocks.

This afternoon, citizen-volunteer Rob Goodbody is manning the top, holding a hardbound of Ulysses and wearing the same kind of beret hat James Joyce is wearing in a famous photo taken in his early 20s. Mr Goodbody turns to the novel’s sixteenth episode, and reads aloud a passage that mentions his great-grandfather. He then pivots to the seaward side and gazes towards the Dublin Bay, from where a strong breeze blows on to the tower.