Delhiwale: Defence Colony’s Three Stars

Defence Colony Market in Delhi, less flashy than Khan Market, features a ghostly old building, a resilient lemon seller, and a modern office styled like a tomb.

It isn’t only Khan Market where Delhi goes to see and be seen. Fashionable crowds also condescend to grace Defence Colony Market with their august presence. Less theatrical than its aforementioned cousin, the neighbourhood market has been extensively surveyed by city chroniclers. Even so, it still holds a few overlooked curiosities—beyond, of course, an unusually high concentration of pharmacies.

Outside the edifice, colourfully painted benches lie beneath murals of turbaned, moustachioed men. (Mayank Austen Soofi)

The first is a deserted relic wedged between Genre Kids Collection showroom and Broadway Drycleaners (the laundry service has been operating since 1959). At street level, the entrance to the two-storey structure is sealed shut by a weather-beaten metal shutter, rusting at the edges. It is the first floor that arrests the eye. A long, narrow balcony runs across the façade, flanked by a window on one side and a wooden door on the other. The wood is severely dilapidated, splintered and seemingly darkened by time. The ghostly building has stood in this state for years, looking starkly out of place among the market’s polished storefronts—perhaps a surviving fragment of an older Defence Colony that no longer exists. The upper structure, in particular, invites speculation, as if it were a one-room studio once inhabited on cheap monthly rent by a gifted but commercially unsuccessful artist, a Van Gogh of sorts.

Finally, tucked into a corner across from a burger joint that dates itself to 1985, the tall structure resembles a Lodhi-era tomb, one of those centuries-old ruins that are scattered across Delhi. In truth, it is merely styled to look like one. Built during the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games, it houses an office of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi. Inside, behind a glass wall, are chairs, a sofa and portraits of national leaders. A modernist staircase goes up on the side, though the upper floor remains unused, as do the public toilets at the rear. Outside the edifice, colourfully painted benches lie beneath murals of turbaned, moustachioed men, the kind of gentry rarely sighted strutting in Defence Colony Market. See photo.