A day at Chandani Chawk.........

The other day while walking on the clumsy streets of Chandani Chawk in Delhi, struggling hard to watch every next step of mine, with my mom, I saw a very colourful procession passing on the roads consisting of jhankis of almost all different forms of GOD that Indian’s worship. There was Shri Ram with his brother Laxman and wife Sita mata along with the sankat morchan Shri Hanuman on one; Shankar bhagwan in his tiger skin robe looking very angry on the other; Saraswati mata with her veena on the third one; Ganapati ji with a plate full of ladoos by his side on yet another and many more. It had a number of people obviously choking the already all-time crowded streets of Chandani Chawk, singing and dancing away to glory on the tunes one often get to listen on so called ‘holy’ TV channels anytime of the day you happen to stop while daily channel surfing. It took me some time to sink into what was going on. We asked the vendor at the sweet shop where we stopped to buy my dad’s favourite kachoris that if it was some festival today which we omitted to know due to it not being a declared holiday. But we gathered that it was a yearly ritual of the residents and shop owners there to carry out such a procession. We stopped for a couple of minutes to have a look and folding our hands every now and then whenever we got a glace from the heavenly dressed followers of the God’s they were representing. Moving on, on my whole shopping excursion with mom, I was thinking about the varying cultures ‘India’ possesses obviously inspired by the very colourful procession I just passed through. People with no means at all, were also participants to the procession enjoying and humming songs of the Al Mighty. Though, I wanted to get out of the place as soon as I could, I admit, but the striking pleasure on everybody’s faces was worth watching, which made me quite enjoy my trip that day.

Having done my schooling from Presentation Convent, located at Darya Ganj, nearby, I always developed a fascination for the whole area. Not because of the hang outs around (they weren’t any) but because of blend of culture the place depicts. My school was run by a Christian Missionary which had adopted a couple of slums nearby and conducted evening classes for all the children there. We also had a beautiful Chapel in our school campus which made it all the more sacred. Just close to the great Red Fort is one of the country’s oldest mazjid’s, the jama mazjid which was run under the care of father one of my then class mates (a Muslim-in Christian school-again striking). Coming back to the place, the shops and other businesses at old Delhi were owned mainly by Hindus. One can also see the very old lal mandir of Jain community with a charity bird hospital in its premises running from years. Along side is another very old gauri Shankar mandir. Moving further is the shish ganj gurudwara of the Sikhs. I find it all beautifully striking that the area of old Delhi depict so many cultures at such a loud combination which is almost impossible to overlook. It not being a very posh area or a tourist attraction of Delhi as to say, but a delight for Delhite like me for sure. Though almost every place in Delhi (or anywhere in India) is inhabited by people from all sects but Chandani Chawk is worth a special mention. So I did.