On a bright sunny day, we are at the Hauz-e-Alai reservoir in Hauz Khas, its colour a bright shamrock with the reflection of verdant canopy enclosing it. As we gaze at its waters from under the shade of a mighty tree, the serene experience is broken by a startling revelation.
“We are standing above the deceased heads of Mongols,” says walk leader Srushti Sharma, adding how the ground beneath our feet is where Delhi Sultan Alauddin Khilji severed the heads of the invaders in a 13th century battle and buried them around the area where he was eventually to lay the foundation stone of the second city of Delhi, Siri, with Hauz Khas at the epicentre.
The grim episode piqued the interest of a group of 11 who had joined the walk to know about Hauz Khas’ evolution. “This walk is an attempt to explore the lesser-known parts of Delhi, a city comprising eight cities from the medieval age, namely Siri, Lal Kot, Mehrauli, Tughlakabad, Firozabad, Shergarh, Shahjahanabad, and New Delhi,” Nidhi Bansal, co-founder of Delhi Walks, tells TMS.
She and Ambica Kapoor, founder of Delhipedia, have initiated #AnyGivenSunday. “The walks will focus not just on one particular monument but concepts such as urban spaces, their distribution, intangible heritage, oral histories and other facets of Delhi,” Kapoor adds.
From rural to urban village
The story of Hauz Khas as an urban village began in the wake of India’s Independence. Between the 1940s and the 1950s Jat farmers moved into the land that was left behind by Muslim families who had migrated to Pakistan during Partition. After 1947, when the government was categorising land in Delhi as agriculture or residential, committees were unclear regarding places like Hauz Khas because they did not fall neatly in any one category and yet had a strong rural community.
That is when the government came up with the concept of urban villages, places that were also exempted from building by-laws, construction norms and regulations, which led to unplanned residential and commercial growth. Come the 1990s and globalisation, musicians, artists, art historians, scholars, socialites and university students either began to set up their creative outlets in that area — also one of Delhi’s first urban spaces with a ‘night life’— or patronise them. Bansal claims shehad spotted the late artist, MF Husain, walking barefoot in Hauz Khas as he considered its lanes “a cave of ideas”.
Bastion of fashion
As we move through the labyrinthine lanes, passing fashion stores such as Megha and Jigar, Mohitt Sacchdev, and Ogaan, one wonders what made Hauz Khas a fashion hub? The credit goes to Indian-origin designer Bina Ramani. She came upon Hauz Khas in 1987 when she was looking for a space to open her first store in Delhi, Once Upon A Time. In her autobiography, Bird in a Banyan Tree: My Story, she recounts the warm reception she got from the villagers when she first visited the place in the ’80s. We learn that Ramani was drawn to the fashion sense of the Jat villagers as demonstrated by their attire all done with beautiful handcrafted prints. Ramani’s Hauz Khas store popularised ethnic-chic, with other designers following suit and opening showrooms.
Graffiti and tattoo culture
Past the fashion boutiques in the crammed lanes, we now stand opposite Cafe Pink. It is flanked by two towering walls painted with arresting graffiti and wall art. From classical art figures, a sketch of cartoon character SpongeBob and a digital poster tribute to Pink Floyd’s song ‘Comfortably Numb’, to scribbles of “Azaadi”, the wall is an open canvas of ideas. But who has drawn on it? This is the work of Daku, an urban artist with a concealed identity, who had caused chaos in Delhi back in 2010 during the Commonwealth Games when he clandestinely modified traffic sign boards and painted graffiti in the dead of night.
This wall at Hauz Khas is partly drawn by him along with other street artists. While Daku was seen as a threat to ‘national security’ back then, his impressions on Hauz Khas’ walls echo thought-provoking messages on popular struggles and free speech, with international reports even calling him ‘India’s Banksy’. Like walls, people’s bodies too became a canvas as many tattoo studios opened in Hauz Khas. “Due to affordable rents, it became a go-to place for people to convert their passions into entrepreneurial professions,” our walk leader informs, pointing out the Garden of Eden, one of the earliest tattoo parlours here.
Links to cinema
Our next stopover is the Hauz Khas fort that has a special connection with the movie Rockstar. Director Imtiaz Ali chose the ruins of the fort as the location to shoot a scene where Nargis Fakhri and Ranbir Kapoor, feeling rebellious, take a swig. “Being a Delhiite, I used to visit Hauz Khas often during my college days. It’s only now that I am able to contextualise everything,” says actor Radha Bhatt of series Sunflower fame. She is excited hearing movie anecdotes during our walk. “We complain a lot about Delhi — its pollution, weather, traffic — but the city has a lot to offer and it’s right in front of us,” she adds.
The final point of our walk is Hauz Khas Social, a popular restobar; here Imtiaz Ali shot a scene for the movie Tamasha. Bansal tells us that while the boho-meets-ritz charm of Hauz Khas may have faded over the past few years with urban centres such as Gurugram and Greater Kailash coming up, walks like this, filled with interesting anecdotes, can tell us about the lost aspects of Delhi. In future, Delhi Walks and Delhipedia plan to hold walks at Shahpur Jat and Safdarjung Tomb, and night-time trails at museums, among other experiences.