Delhiwale: This way to Galli Jatwara

The alley running through Galli Jatwara is an amalgam of presences and absences. Occasional old traces lie within the present.

As part of our ‘Walled City dictionary’ series that explores Old Delhi places one at a time.

Nobody on the street could give any gyan on the street’s name.

No anar around — but here is the Masjid Anar Wali. The tree that gives the mosque its name is gone, the way a longstanding building slipped into history some months ago, only a few steps away from here. It was pulled down to make way for an apartment block.

The alley running through Galli Jatwara is an amalgam of presences and absences. Occasional old traces lie within the present. Such as this abandoned house. It is of modern-day bricks, but one small corner consists of slimmer lakhori bricks, the building material of earlier times.

Further ahead, a most beautiful arched door opens into a school. And a weatherbeaten mansion houses a gym.

Nobody on the street could give any gyan on the street’s name. One gent uncertainly suggested that the area, at some long-ago era, might have housed people of the Jat community.

Until some months ago, during the evenings, Galli Jatwara resonated with live music. That would be the young Divyam with his guitar. “I’m now preparing for my 12th standard exams,” he says, standing at his father’s grocery, in front of their house. In his more carefree days, Divyam would sit by the street and produce tunes of love songs.

Galli Jatwara’s most startling spectacle has nothing to do with old elegances. It’s a tiny flight of mossy staircase whose handrail is decked with plastic bottles, each containing a plant. This beauty comes not by intent but by accident. The supporting cast includes light, shade, and the sounds of the surroundings.

Some months ago, the entire lane had been taken over by a bawarchi commissioned to cook for a festive banquet. Both sides of the lane were occupied by gigantic cauldrons, with steam escaping out of their metal lids. The bawarchi silently walked up and down the passageway to supervise his cooks, like a general in a battlefield.

The street starts off the busy Netaji Subhash Marg. The turning is presided over by a shoe repairer’s pavement establishment; the wall is scrawled in coal, announcing, “Zakhmi juto ka aspatal (hospital for wounded shoes)”.