ᴄʀᴜᴍʙʟɪɴɢ ᴅᴇʟʜɪ : sᴀᴅᴀʀ ʙᴀᴢᴀᴀʀ
It was dirty, smelly, filthy, crowded with a loud outcry.
Rickshaws, autos, cars,cows everything was just beside me just some centimeters away.
It was an october evening humid, nobody seemed comfortable here like no one. There were buyers from all over the city probably retailers, small shop owners and entrepreneurs who came here to buy stuff like cosmetics, jewelry, accessories to name a few, after all we were in the biggest whole sale market of asia. With such a heavy title comes the commuters the laborers who carry heavy loads on their heads, those bundles literally needed 11 more heads to cover the whole area they were that big but alas! I don't know how they do it but they too didn't seem comfortable at all.
These were my first fifteen minutes in the market and i was actually pretty disturbed with all that traffic noise and the people who were passing by really close and also the push and pull around.
In the mean time i looked up and saw some really ugly hoardings of shops advertisements, political promotions and they were not very pleasent to see, until i looked little more further and saw some beautiful blue window panes, which i later realized were doors!
They just seemed different as if they dont belong here with these ugly shops, i was thinking about it when suddenly some rickshawala honked "aage badho madam" "bich me kaha khade ho"!
My mom too asked me to move faster but i cant took my eyes off the patterns which were peeking through those hoardings.
As i moved further i realized that the whole lane was filled with such half crumbling balconies, windows and doors.
I was looking here and there trying to click pictures and my mom asked me to sit in a rickshaw as we need to go to khari baoli to buy some spices (for achaar)!
On our way to khari baoli i saw some really interesting structures (there were some crumbling old houses, most of them were converted into godowns and dingy shops ) and as we were moving through the lanes i turned right and saw this massive white 'Haveli'.
I was like wow! The first thing that attracted me was not the designs and the patterns but its hugeness, it was three or four stories but from the bottom it seemed really tall.
And then there was this sudden flashback!
Two teenage girls were gigling standing in the balcony, a servent sprinkling water in the aangan, something was going on in the house or maybe it was just their day to day activities, an old man was sitting in the baithak smoking hookah probably a merchant or a seth, some middle aged woman was calling someone upstairs, young men flying kite on the terrace screeming 'kai po che' then i saw their manja... Manja? Thats not manja thats a wire! There were wires above my head what? Yes wires! Welcome to khari baoli again, flashback was over!
PS one of the ugly hoardings says 'Haveli Ram Mulk Raj'.
