From Lalaji to La-La Land
If I were asked which of the 17 homes we lived in after I was married I loved the most, I’d pick the one we had in Rouse Avenue any day. In the course of my husband’s life in the government, we lived in many cities and houses: from ugly PWD squats to grand Corbusier bungalows, but the one that brings a smile to my face each time is that funny old pile in Rouse Avenue that has now been demolished and once stood close to where the BJP headquarters are now located.
In 1991, after my husband came to Delhi, we were in search of a house that could accommodate our large, lively family. My mum-in-law wanted a place with a garden and we laughed because such houses in Delhi were a privilege only favoured bureaucrats got as a first allotment. So, we lived for a year in Punjab Bhawan waiting for a suitable house for the Pandes. We were finally given a semi-detached bungalow in what was called Rouse Avenue (now Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Marg), largely because there were no takers for these shabby old structures. Everyone wanted to live closer to India Gate, in flats notorious today as ‘Lootyen’s Delhi’. To be truthful, so did we; but exhausted by that year’s exile in one room with three noisy schoolboys and my mum-in-law cooped up in one and a half rooms, we had little choice but to agree. My mum-in-law was delighted because several decades ago, when her husband was Delhi’s Chief Secretary, they had lived down the road in a grander bungalow (now the Gandhi Peace Foundation). ‘It was a lovely tree-lined avenue so quiet that you could hear jackals howl at night. And there was virtually no traffic,’ she told me. ‘In fact, Amit (my husband) learnt how to drive there.’
By the time we arrived, Rouse Avenue was among Delhi’s busiest traffic routes because it connected the Outer Ring Road to Connaught Place and all day the sound of traffic shook the house. Built in 1933 for those who were constructing New Delhi, it had solid thick walls, a 19 feet high ceiling and a kitchen made long before gas stoves were available. However, it also had a sprawling garden and two servants’ quarters that meant that our two old retainers and their families could move in as well. Three large bedrooms and a gracious drawing room with fireplaces and deodar mantelshelves above them and brass latches (some vandalised before us and replaced by the PWD with ugly iron ones) were its other memorable features.
The children could walk across to their school on Barakhamba Road, after crossing the railway track between us and Bengali Market and even though we made them promise they would take the overbridge, they cheated and ran across the railway tracks because that rickety overbridge had piles of fresh goo left behind by the slum- dwellers along the track. No Swachh Bharat then! Other attractions were a dhobi service provided by the dhobi ghat along the railway tracks and fresh milk supplied by the milkmen who ran a dairy nearby. Irwin aspatal, now called LNJP Hospital, and the Maulana Azad Medical College, the Bal Bhawan with its toy train — all these were within walking distance. My first Delhi job was a part-time sub-editor in the Sunday section of The Indian Express, on Bahadurshah Zafar Marg, another short walk away. Later, when I worked in Seminar, I could happily drive down to work and shop for my fruit and veggies in Shankar Market. I walked across every evening to Bengali Market for entertainment and got to know all the shopkeepers, many of whom are gone but their children recognise me, despite my grey hair. My favourite panwala smiles cheerily when he sees me and begins to make the special beeda that he knows I love.
Readers of this column who are familiar with this part of Delhi will immediately recall some of the shops there as I name them. The first, of course, is Bengali Sweet House, famous for its chaat and mithai. The old Lalaji who had set it up is long gone but his sons have added to the original menu by opening a proper eatery next door, where a strange fusion of Indi-Chinese and Indi-Anglo food is presented to all those patrons who are strict vegetarians. Our family often went there and my fussy mum-in-law was served her food on a steel plate lined with a banana leaf. They also served a Chinese ‘thaal’ that had food resembling chaat dishes. My irreverent son promptly named it The House of Hing as a parody of the popular (and infinitely more expensive) Chinese restaurant at the Taj Hotel, called House of Ming.
Across the square (we called it ‘Madison Square’ as it also had a popular chemist’s shop) was Beekay Dry Cleaners, the best in town. I saw my first BMW parked outside it and when I asked my son what the acronym stood for, he replied solemnly, ‘Bengali Market Wali’. The other chhole-bhature and chaat shop was Nathu’s, who arrived in the wake of the Asian Games and slowly took over as the go-to eatery. He now runs a pastry shop with a variety of confectionery, making a bridge between vegetarian and non-vegetarian India to successfully convert this old Lalaji land into a La-La Land.
— The writer is a social commentator
