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All around, the mad traffic is doing normal things. This majestic monument, also visible through the Delhi Metro’s large windows, stands tall in the chaos.
So, as I navigate the traffic most mornings, the Qutub Minar is a reminder of sanity – a symbol of grandeur of an age gone by.
But, don’t get me wrong. I am not rueing the chaos of the Mehrauli-Badarpur road of my city, simply placing it in context.
There’s no doubt in my mind that if you were able to climb the stairs in the Minar, the tens of hundreds milling around the Saket metro station every morning would be visible to the naked eye.
The impatient and the patient, those carrying smart and dumb phones, the well-heeled and the poor, the cyclist and the BMW-wallah all pass under the nose of this breathtaking piece of history and heritage.
There was a time we lived close to the Qutub Minar. My daughters were young. And, there lies a game we played – who-saw-the-Qutub-Minar-first from the car.
Invariably, there were disputes: who saw it first? Often, my wife played arbitrator because she was usually too preoccupied to show that she was first!
Every bit of this city of Delhi has a piece of history – bloody or otherwise.
Growing up in the New Delhi of Mr. Lutyens, we lived close to Lodhi Gardens, where I would often accompany my father for his evening walks.
From Pandara Road, where I lived with my parents and brothers in the 1970s, the Lodhi Gardens are (still!) about a kilometre. That was an era when only Fiats and Ambassadors plied the roads of Delhi.
It was a time the Delhi Transport Corporation was known as the Delhi Transport Undertaking.
It was a time when my father could boast that he did the drive from Pandara Road to his office in All India Radio on Parliament Street without changing gear after he shifted into the fourth.
It was also a time when there were no air-conditioners sticking out of the windows of government houses allotted to Indian civil servants. There was simply no money to buy them.
It was also a time when kids like me clambered down the boundary wall of the Junior Modern School every evening to play any and everything with whosoever you found.
We got chased away by the private school management on occasion, only to return the next day.
I’ve also been giving thought to Pandara Road for another reason of late.
If you’re a South Asian, and you meet another South Asian, chances are that you might get asked this question: where are you from?
This question has been posed to me many, many times over the years and I have tended to give somewhat complicated and long-winded answers.
My issues related to belonging are several – my father comes from India’s north-eastern state of Assam while my mother’s family is from Dera Ghazi Khan in Pakistan. Before partition, my mother’s family moved from Quetta to Hyderabad (Deccan, Andhra Pradesh).
So, my answers would begin like: “Am basically from Delhi having come to the city in 1970, but my father is from Assam and my mom is originally from DG Khan, but settled in Hyderabad.”
In retrospect, this was too long-winded and indirect answer. Most people would point to this village in that state and the story would end.
So, now there’s been a change of tack. If you can be from, say, Akbarpur village in Bulandshahar district of Uttar Pradesh, I will be from Pandara Road.
And, for those who don’t know where Pandara Road is, I can add New Delhi or Delhi. That, I think, conveys a better sense of my identity.
So Pandara Road is my village. That’s what I want to convey. With all its sights and smells and people of the time I lived there.
A bit more than a stone’s throw from Lodhi Gardens, close to the monuments of the Golf Course and the lovely Ambassador Hotel situated in Sujan Singh Park.
I no longer live in Lutyen’s Delhi, but no one can take away the Qutub Minar from my rear view mirror.
Amit Baruah is an independent, Delhi-based journalist. He is the author of Dateline Islamabad and reported for The Hindu newspaper from Pakistan. He tweets @abaruah64.
