Delhiwale: This way to Gali Madrasa Hussain Baksh

It is five in the morning

It is five in the morning. Most shutters are down, but Ansar Store is aglow in the pre-dawn darkness—see photo. The grocery stays open all night, says the young man at the counter. This is Old Delhi’s Gali Madrasa Hussain Baksh, a dead-end street opening into Matia Mahal Bazar.

Delhiwale: This way to Gali Madrasa Hussain Baksh

Chacha Chaiwale’s stall is the only other establishment open at this hour. Although Chacha himself died last year. The venerable Haji Waziruddin was known to everyone here as Chacha. Right now one of his sons is sitting cross-legged beside the stall’s coffee machine. The stall also serves coffee, a rarity among the Walled City’s chai establishments.

This dispatch is part of our weekly series exploring the present and past of Old Delhi streets.

At the gali’s far end, where it branches left and right, an arched doorway leads to the mosque and madrasa that give the locality its name. But Chacha’s son at the chai stall insists that the gali’s original name is Haveli Bakhtavar Khan. Before azadi, he says, this was all a haveli that belonged to the man called Bakhtavar Khan. Chacha’s son, however, knows nothing more of Bakhtavar Khan, his descendants or the haveli. The haveli anyway is long gone, its grounds now a neighbourhood of homes and shops.

As for the chai stall, it has been standing at the mouth of the street since the time Chacha founded it in 1992. He would sit every day beside the coffee machine, sometimes with his long white beard tied with a band. Rings covered his fingers. He would converse with a politeness that made one stay at his stall long after the cup of chai was finished.

The stall still opens at four every morning and closes at midnight, now run by Chacha’s family.

Opposite the tea stall, at the gali’s mouth, is another noteworthy landmark. Bhai Pappe’s shop used to be crammed with Hindi film music cassettes. He began selling them after an electric shock made him give up his work as an electrician. He would buy cassettes from stalls outside the Red Fort. Those cassette stalls have long disappeared. In recent years, almost nobody would buy Bhai Pappe’s cassettes either. He eventually gave up selling music. He now runs a television dish antenna business, but rarely comes to the shop. A customer’s faulty antenna brings him back.

This morning, Bhai Pappe’s shutter is down. Across from it, Chacha’s son is sitting quietly at the chai stall, hands clasped, waiting for a customer. Deeper inside the gali, a chipkali is crawling across the red banner of Fun Club Pizza Point.