Speaking Archaeologically™

Down Chawri Bazar roads, into the Bulbulikhana one goes, if they want to find this place. There are scant bulbuls here now, but a regular bustle of people, on by-lanes which grow ever thin as you proceed down them.    A gate next to a tea shop announces, Razia Sultana ki majar , (The Grave of Razia Sultana), but there is none to be found! Good old uncles direct you to even darker alleys, with workshops, sewage, and cramped buildings rising five floors high. A bustle existed there, the sights and smells of fruits, tea, tyres, meat, rickshaws, which are slowly replaced by sewage, machinery, and stagnant water.  This continues till you break away from all that, and arrive at a small mosque, with an ASI stone to give it its name - Sultan Razia’s Tomb. One of the rulers of the newly established Delhi Sultanate, reigning from 1236-40 CE, Razia has been termed the first female monarch of the subcontinent. Constant infighting among her nobles, some of which refused to accept her...

                    The Sevasi Vav, Vadodara           Click here for our Sevasi Vav Video In all of western India, you will be able to find stepwells, from the coasts of Karnataka, to the arid lands of Gujarat and Rajasthan. And then,  are  some in Delhi and Madhya Pradesh, too. They provided travellers with a place to rest, and prevailed as a place to socialize, as well as acted as a medium for storing drinking water (there is no reason to boast about the advent of social networking for you in the 21st century–the wise Yodas from the past did this). More than 200 stepwells are expected to be located in Gujarat alone today–making it very easy to picture their figures in the past. Their water storage effectiveness has helped local residents survive for hundreds of years, in the semi-arid  climate  and  seasonal fluctu...

“Issko pathaano ne banwaya tha. Usse zyada toh kuchh pata nahi.” [This (baoli) was built by the Pathans. I do not know anything more about this.] There is probably only this much that one knows about the Dwarka Baoli. The information board put up by INTACH and the State Archaeology Department also could not tell us anything more about who might have actually patronized the construction of this Baoli, than what the caretaker at the site told us. Thus, when the ancient past of this Baoli failed us, we thought it worthwhile to reconstruct its modern histories—what one would otherwise call its “afterlife.”                                        Figure I: The information board at the Baoli   Who are we? Why are we here, at the Dwarka Baoli? I do not think our “Baoli Gang” (read, Baoli girls) needs ...

‘ I asked my Soul, "What is Delhi?" She replied, "The world is the body and Delhi is its life.’"  – Mirza Ghalib These lines by Mirza Ghalib beautifully summarize my love for Delhi and it's ruins that lay around the city. Though it looks like a small part of this world, its essence can make anyone fall in love with this city. It’s the charm that the historical sites exude, resplendent with various stories and cultural motifs, that make them all the more endearing. Trust me, historical sites,with a whiff of earthly smell and a dash of adventure, are replete in Delhi. Especially on the adventure part. Seriously.  It is with this romanticism that I got out of my bed. On a Sunday morning that is. Alright before I get tagged as someone crazy for doing this, hear me out. We were supposed to cover the Baolis of Delhi, something that started as just a part of Simran’s research project but later, literaly became something more. Baolis , a.k.a. stepwells now defunct and ...

The Manauli Fort, Mohali The morning of August , the day of the season’s first site visit carried with it a wave of familiarity. In the car, on the way to the site, as we were seated alongside a bunch of eager new recruits, memories from Batch 2018’s first site visit last year dropped by to say hello. The Manauli fort, located in a tiny hamlet in Punjab, approximately 15.5 Km from Chandigarh, was once a symbol of bolstering defence and Sikh pride. Several local testaments reveal that the fort was built sometime in the 17th Century, by a certain Mughal ruler. A century later, as the Sikh-Muslim enmity took shape in the form of several battles and Misls came to power in the state of Punjab, Nawab Kapoor Singh of the Singhpuria Misl clinched the fort from the Mughal ruler and encouraged his fellow Sikhs to settle in the area. Today, akin to an old man with several afflictions, it’s a desolate piece of history crumbling away amid state apathy The present state...

The words of a rather contemporary namesake poet Shayar Jamali, somehow perfectly describes the gloomy conditions of the 16 th century structure: Samiksha Purohit is a Citizen Archaeology Member at Speaking Archaeologically since May 2019. ‘’ Shayad ab kuch kam ho jae mere ghar ki virani,   Makdi jaale taan rahi hai ghar ke roshandaano mein’ ’ The Jamali Kamali mosque stands in the middle of the Mehrauli Archaeological Park, New Delhi. Once a monument with greater glory than its adjacent standing Qutub Minar, is now a supposed haunted place and a safe keeper of the ‘love story’ between its name givers- Jamali and Kamali. Sheikh Fazulla Jalali, or Jamali, a court poet during the reign of Babur, is said to have commissioned the mosque. While the identity of Jamali has a strong historicity attached to it, Kamali on the other hand remains a mystery. A contemporary poet, Jamali’s wife, his servant, his brother, a fictional name to rhyme with Jamali- the anecdotes ar...

                                             “ I struck a deal here…                    To walk back in time                 And breathe its air...” Diptarak Datta is a Research  Wing  Member at Speaking Archaeologically As the auto left us on the left side of the road, on a fresh, winter Sunday morning,  my friend and I were baffled and taken aback for a while, wondering, which way, the much read about Purana Qila, stood. The huge poster, directing the travelers towards the zoological park, was all the more distracting. Unknowingly, we crossed the ro...