Tag Archives: Things to do in Delhi

lodi garden: eleven monuments and 7,000 trees

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My earliest memories of Lodi Garden are of me sitting cross-legged on the undulated lawns with a drawing board propped against my knees. I was trying to paint a watercolour of the scene in front of me, with let’s say zero success.

No fault of the scenery. Expansive emerald-green manicured gardens with flowering bushes and looming trees were huddled around evocative grey quartzite stone monuments. It was just my watercolouring skills which were questionable.

Each day of these particular week-long assignments, during my undergrad in fine arts, invariably took the same turn. Sometime around mid-day, I would put my drawing board aside and wander through the ruins, oblivious to the world. Something I still tend to do, but that’s a different matter.

Lodi Garden was magical way back then and it still is so. As I found out last week much to my relief. Who wants lovely memories to be killed by ugly changes.

The stark difference between my explorations back then and now, was not the garden, but me.

This time around, older and a bit wiser when it came to Indian history and heritage, I learnt to love and enjoy it more deeply. May I take this opportunity to share my understanding of this place, an integral part of my college days, with you here? If yes, please do read on. 😊

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new delhi’s most beautiful church: cathedral church of the redemption

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On a quiet tree-lined lane aptly called Church Lane, a stone’s throw from Rashtrapati Bhawan the president’s estate, is New Delhi’s most beautiful church.

Most people in the city, and to the city, are clueless about its existence. Much like I was, and would have been, if it wasn’t for a chance conversation on one of the heritage walks I have been taking since I came to Delhi.

Delhi’s Sultanate and Mughal-era chapters, with their magnificent monuments and dramatic stories, tend to be all-consuming. Yet, the years the British Crown used the city as the capital of their ‘Jewel in the Crown’, from 1931 to 1947, churned out edifices just as spectacular. [Prior to Delhi, Calcutta had been their capital.]

Take for instance Herbert Baker’s North and South Block Secretariat Buildings, Edwin Lutyens’ Viceroy’s House now the Rashtrapati Bhawan, their joint endeavour the Parliament House, and Henry Alexander Medd’s splendid stone church for the Englishman in Delhi—the Cathedral Church of the Redemption. Continue reading →

lal mandir to jama masjid: the magic of chandni chowk during ramadan

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Don’t these jalebis look mouth-watering! They’re fresh from the boiling sugary syrup they’d been dunked into, at the Old Famous Jalebi Wala in Chandni Chowk. And no, the ‘old’ and ‘famous’ are not adjectives but are part of the street-side kiosk’s name. 😊

It is Ramadan, and I have always wanted to explore Chandni Chowk during Islam’s month-long fasting in which come night, this neighbourhood in Old Delhi bursts into one big celebration. Built by Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan and designed by his favourite daughter Jahanara Begum in 1650, it was the main market of Shahjahanabad, Shah Jahan’s capital city in Delhi.

But I was a bit hesitant. The usual qualms. It’s an unfamiliar area. It’s super crowded. Is it safe? Continue reading →

travel diaries: a mughal wazir’s tomb in day and night

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Another tomb!

I’d once read that in London, at the turn of the 20th Century when the British Raj was planning to move its capital from Calcutta to Delhi, a British newspaper had called Delhi the ‘graveyard of dynasties’.

It was in reference to the countless tombs of the Muslim dynasties and their key officials, first those of the Delhi Sultanate and then the Mughal Empire, who had ruled Delhi for 660 years. These tombs dot every nook and corner of the city. Some are grand and ostentatious. Some humble and tiny. But they are everywhere.

Many have crumbled over time and been replaced with the fast-burgeoning, steel and concrete ‘New Delhi’. I wonder how many there would have been, say a hundred years ago, or at the closing chapter of the Mughals in 1857, as I gasped in awe at the ceiling inside.

Where was I? In a tomb. Continue reading →

global travel shot: baha’i temple, a marble lotus in full bloom

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Be like the Lotus. Be the Lotus.

The Baha’i Temple in New Delhi, a gigantic 27-petalled blooming lotus in concrete and marble, is a gentle reminder of a key life lesson at the core of religions that have birthed in India. A life lesson which repeatedly states the importance of rising above the chaos of life and to bloom, like a lotus, unblemished. A popular term being: detachment. Lofty life goals, but one can try.

It is also one of my favourite places of worship in the world. A masterpiece in modern engineering. Peaceful and meditative. Four times a day, brief excerpts from Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, and the Baha’i scriptures are read out, together. In tandem with the essence of the Baha’i faith that all religions are equally worthy.

There are over 7 million followers worldwide of the 19th Century Baha’i religion which was founded in Iran and has its holiest site in Israel. Its largest number of followers are in India. No surprises, since India is no stranger to syncretism, at times willingly, at times reluctantly, and often unconsciously. Another lofty life goal—syncretism—but one can try. 🙂

sunder nursery: delhi’s loveliest secret

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[Updated on 2 June, 2022. This post was first published on 4 April, 2022. I went back to Sunder Nursery for a night heritage walk led by Sair E Hind in May. This updated post includes images of Sunder Nursery at night.]

Red Fort. Check. Humayun’s Tomb. Check. Qutab Minar. Check. A walk through Chandni Chowk. Check … and one gets deluded into believing that Aah, one has seen it all, done it all in Delhi.

Could one be further from the truth?

Delhi’s loveliest secret, hidden from prying tourist hordes, is Dilliwale’s [Delhiites] favourite place to have an uninterrupted yoga session, a picnic with close family and friends, or an organic brunch at a weekend farmers’ market. All in the company of blooming flowers, hundred-year-old wise trees from around the world, and exquisite Mughal-era UNESCO-listed monuments.

Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? But isn’t that what lovely, best kept secrets look like. Continue reading →

photo essay: delhi’s red fort, stories told and untold

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Behind a pile of impregnable traffic barriers and guarded by the stern-lipped, but polite, Central Reserve Police Force [CRPF] is Delhi’s most prestigious fort, Qila-e-Mubarak, meaning ‘Auspicious Fort’. Or the Red Fort, as the British called it.

Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan, who designed and built it in 1648 [the same gentleman who built Taj Mahal], would not have been too pleased about the barricades, both human and metal. He was not even happy when his son Aurangzeb built a wall around Lahore Gate, the public entrance.

With a direct line of view from Chandni Chowk to the Diwan-e-Aam [Hall of Public Audience], Shah Jahan argued that the enclosure was like putting a veil in front of a woman’s beautiful face. Continue reading →

humayun’s tomb: an ode to destiny’s child

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An opiumate and weak general [as popular history would like us to believe] or a gentle ruler determined to regain his lost territories and in fact did. Even if it took him 15 long years in exile racing on horseback through Lahore, Sindh, Rajputana, and Persia.

Were it not for a colossal garden tomb built in his memory by his son, he may well have been forgotten in the dusty pages of time.

This blog post is the story of Indian Mughal history’s most fortunate and unfortunate emperor: Humayun and his enormous resting place in India’s historical capital city, Delhi. Happy exploring! ❤ Continue reading →

delhi’s national museum bronze gallery: where bronzes sing tales of god and art

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A babel of meditative Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist chants fills the gallery. Breaking the rhythmic loop is the tinkle of bells on a dainty anklet wrapped around a goddess’ voluptuous leg. Almost in competition, I hear the stomping of feet as Shiva, the destroyer, dances in passionate abandon, flames emanating in a fiery ring around him. Bharata, Rama’s brother from the Ramayana, a mere couple of feet away, holds up his brother’s sandals on his head to place them on the throne to rule as regent of the Ayodhya kingdom, accompanied by verses from the epic.

“Excuse me.”

The clipped British accent snaps me out of my reverie. And that of the deities too, who freeze mid-dance, mid-song, mid-chant, in sparkling glass cubicles scattered across the air-conditioned hall—lurching the room to pin-drop silence. And I wonder if I had imagined it all. Continue reading →

national museum, new delhi – 90 minutes at the museum

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The National Museum, New Delhi makes the herculean task of experiencing India’s monumental heritage spanning 5,000 years—doable. You could always spend 3 minutes looking at each object in its 210,000 piece collection. But that would take 14.5 months with no sleep or meals inbetween. Or you could do an audio tour and spend a day exploring its glorious galleries through 64 masterpieces. And if you have just one and a half hours, then why not feast your eyes on its very best.

Earlier housed in the Rashtrapati Bhawan [President’s residence], the collection has its roots in 1947 when the Royal Academy, together with the governments of India and Britain, decided to hold an “Exhibition of Indian Art” in London. Selected artefacts from museums across India were collected for the showing.

Before returning the exhibits to their respective museums, it was decided to display the exhibition in Delhi as well. What a huge success it turned out to be! The overwhelming response led to the idea of a permanent National Museum being set up in the capital with its very own building by India Gate which it moved into in 1960.

The National Museum has it all. From the iconic Harappan Dancing Girl to elegant Gandharan Buddhas, from exquisite miniature Mughal paintings to luscious Tanjore compositions, from Chola bronzes to 20th Century decorative arts, from medieval sculptures of voluptuous Hindu deities to diamond and emerald regalia of its once-upon-a-time royalty. The Museum has all these, and much much more.

Here are my 15 favourite pieces collated after rambling through its collections and meditating over its audio tour. Doable in 90 minutes. 🙂 Continue reading →