Delhiwale: This way to Paper Market

Old Delhi's Paper Market, a maze of lanes in Chawri Bazar, reflects a decline in traditional paper trade as many shift to wedding cards and other businesses.

Streets here are littered with the usual civic litter, but also with paper shavings. We know the source of the latter—the cramped shops packed with bundles of paper sheets.

Streets here are littered with the usual civic litter, but also with paper shavings. We know the source of the latter—the cramped shops packed with bundles of paper sheets. This is Old Delhi’s Paper Market. (HT Photo)

This is Old Delhi’s Paper Market.

Yet, you cannot locate the name on the Walled City map. The place exists, and the place doesn’t exist. Paper Market is a generic name encompassing a number of lanes and alleys of Chawri Bazar, mostly centered around Barshahbulla Chowk. But there is no chosen street, or a collection of streets, that is formally labelled as the Paper Market. The fact is asserted by shopkeeper Ranveer Singh. The paper merchant explains he essentially trades in papers that are used to make school copies and registers. He now shows a framed portrait of his late father, Hukum Singh, who once served as “Pradhan Maha Mantri” of Paper Merchants Association. The shop owner remarks that the paper trade is no longer as bustling as it used to be in his father’s time—“because people now work with mobiles and laptops, not with paper.” Indeed, many paper merchants have shifted their business to producing wedding cards. That “line,” in a way, is still related to paper. Scores of other traders have switched to totally different trades, Ranveer Singh says, such as clothes and toilet fittings.

That said, the Paper Market still has enough paper-related businesses. The urinal-facing wall of a nearby street, for instance, is covered with painted signages of various establishments dealing in handmade paper, and wall paper. While the shop around the corner specialises in book binding. Some lanes elsewhere in the vicinity are punctuated with tiny workshops in which men operate paper-cutting machines, cutting large sheets into smaller rectangles. In one such workshop, an elderly gent is sitting motionless behind a table, arms crossed on the chest. He gives an idea of the bazar dynamics: the raw materials arrive routinely in the market from paper factories across India, these papers are processed into different kinds of paper sheets, which then are sold to stationery makers, publishers, etc.

The other significant element of the Paper Market’s smooth-running dynamics is its workforce. Over the years, the commerce of the place has raised an army of labourers who haul the paper loads (often on their head) from trucks and vans to warehouses, from warehouses to workshops, and from workshops to shops. At night, the men sleep either inside the shuttered warehouses or shops, or outside on these very lanes. (Try walking in the area beyond the midnight hours—you’ll see the exhausted labourers huddled in small groups, chatting, or singing songs, or gazing silently at their flickering mobile phone screens).

As for this late morning, a labourer in striped shirt is carrying a massive stack of paper sheets. See photo.