HUMANS OF DELHI

Their evening stroll on a snowy evening!

What’s the number of historic cities of Delhi? Well, even Delhi tourism’s website is confused - one of its pages combines Lal Kot & Mehrauli to call it “the oldest city near Qutab Minar,” while another page keeps the two separate but omits Jahanpanah to arrive at the commonly accepted count of 8. Some may choose to separately count Dinpanah & Shergarh - Humayan’s city razed to the ground by Sheh Shah to build the latter, while some may even want to add the ‘yet to be found’ city of Indraprashtra from Mahabharata. William Dalrymple too wrote in one of his articles, “some said there were 7 dead cities of Delhi; others counted 15 or 21. All agreed that these crumbling ruins were without number.”

Amid the confusion, I'm tempted to add another to the list - the walled city of Ghaziabad!

When Nadir Shah plundered the city of Shahjahanabad in 1738-40, Ghaziuddin Feroze Jung, a Mughal general and the eldest son of the 1st Nizam of Hyderabad, started building a fortress along Grand Trunk Road on the other side of Yamuna and called it Ghaziuddinagar. It had a huge masonry, military garrison and 4 gates - named according to the location they faced. i.e. Sihani, Delhi, Dasna and Shahi Gates facing N-E-W-S respectively. A century later, the 'Battle of Ghaziuddinagar' next to Hindon river became an important buffer for the Mughals during the war of 1857, though in vain. When the British built a railway station here, they struggled with the spelling and shortened the name to Ghaziabad.

In 3 centuries, the city has expanded in all directions, resulting in the populace calling the walled city ‘Purana Ghaziabad’ and the gates having lost their grandeur & meaning. While Sihani gate has ceased to exist and Delhi Gate is in a dilapidated state - encroached by shops & overshadowed by a flyover, Shahi and Dasna gates are a little better maintained, with the latter even housing a Police Chowki. Interestingly, Delhi Gate has found aptness in its name again. In the last decade, Delhi Metro forayed into Ghaziabad with its Red line terminating at Shaheed Sthal Station. The station happens to be just a km. shy of Delhi Gate - making the monument Ghaziabad’s gateway to Delhi once again!

Delhites have 14 options to go Jamna Paar. We’ve got 8 road bridges, 4 metro lines, a rail line and a rail-cum-road bridge that help us cross the river. The Signature Bridge is the latest one on the list, but 3 more are coming up soon - an extension of the Barapula elevated road, a link between two metro stations to complete the pink line, and a new rail bridge to take up the baton from the famous ‘Lohe ka pul’.

The city has an interesting history with temporary floating bridges - better known as pontoon bridges - which are of course not included in the list. The oldest one was a bridge of boats, and the only trans Yamuna entry point to Shajahanabad at that time. It’s said that the ‘defected’ East India Company soldiers crossed this bridge on horsebacks while coming from Meerut in the war of 1857. Bahadur Shah Zafar’s unceremonious departure to Rangoon happened from the same bridge when they lost the war. After capturing Delhi, the British dismantled this pontoon bridge and built the double-decker road-cum-rail ‘Lohe ka pul’ which has stood the test of time.

Another pontoon bridge was typically constructed in the month of November and remained till May - the time when the river’s water level is low - at Signature Bridge’s current location. This one was made of iron capsules. I remember crossing this wobbly bridge in our car when I was a kid. In 2013, the capsules got washed away. “But why?” you may ask. Because excess water was released from a dam in Haryana, resulting in a “he said, she said” hodgepodge between the two state governments. Despite such incidents, Delhi kept rebuilding the bridge due to continued delays in the Signature Bridge project… until 2018, when the bridge was finally opened to the public. Today, a few of those iron capsules lie next to the domineering Signature Bridge, biting rust… literally. While it could have been soothing to see the past and present in the same location, the experience is ruined by broken alcohol bottles, crushed plastic glasses and faded ‘chakna’ packets. Nevertheless, I took the opportunity to a climb a few and feel the breeze.

Picture 1 & 2: Signature Bridge with iron pontoons and yours truly

Slide 3: Pontoon Bridge: Destroyed in 2013, rebuilt in 2018 (Picture above by The Hindu; below by TOI)

Slide 4: Mangi Bridge: Then and now! (Picture below by TOI)

Slide 5: A dilapildated Barahpula Bridge vs a functional Wazirabad Bridge (Picture above by HT; below by Twitter/IndiaArtHistory)

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P.S.

The list of 14 (or 17) also doesn’t include the historical bridges that were built over the erstwhile course, canals or tributaries of the river - for they don’t have the river flowing underneath them today or simply aren’t functional in any way anymore. To begin, we have the aptly named trio of Satpula in Saket (by Tughlaqs in 1300s), Athpula in Lodi Gardens (by Mughals in 1500s) and Barahpula in Nizamuddin (by Mughals in 1600s). Most of these historical bridges (including a few more that still exist, such as Pul Bangash or Khizrabad) were barrages built over canals of the river to bring respite to the population.

But a few were built with a more specific purpose. The Mangi Bridge was built by the Mughals in 1600s over a stream of Yamuna to connect Red Fort with Salimgarh Fort. Today, the bridge remains locked to the public and the stream below has given way to the Outer Ring Road - though you may get to see how it may have looked during monsoons ;) Barapula - the city’s most magnificent bridge at one time - was built over the river to connect pilgrims coming from Agra to the Nizamuddin Dargah. Today it’s hidden under its namesake elevated road, taken over by the populace and reduced to a nallah. But the most interesting one is the Wazirabad bridge built by the Tughlaqs in 1300s, which you’ll find a little North of the Signature bridge. It’s an engineering marvel for it’s still in use for vehicular traffic even after 7 centuries of its construction. With the river’s ever changing course the bridge finds itself over a nallah today, though its namesake - built in 1959 by the GoI - scales the width of the river.