Stillness in the Square

Now every shutter is a stanza, every lane a half-remembered verse.

- Faria Bhat

You walk through Lal Chowk the way you walk into an old photograph: cautiously, reverently, afraid your presence might disturb what remains.

The air here is different. Thicker, somehow. It wraps around your shoulders like a shawl woven with stories.

Everything smells faintly of walnut wood, old paper, and burnt sugar. If memory had a scent, it would linger here.

There's a bakery on the corner where the glass is always fogged. No queue outside now, only the baker's slow rhythm as he brushes egg wash over golden buns.

Years ago, this place opened before the azan and closed long after the last minibus had left.

Now, he bakes just enough for the loyal few, the ones who still show up, who still remember. You hear his radio playing something old, something soft. It doesn't ask for attention. It hums like a companion.

The streets are clean but tired. Their silence has settled in like dust in the folds of a pashmina. A pigeon lands near the clock tower and stays. Nobody shoos it away.

You walk past Bata, the shoe shop that once rang with schoolchildren’s chatter and the slap of sandals being tried on. The glass looks smudged now. A mannequin stares out with shoes too new for this time.

You try to remember how it used to sound. The calls of vendors: “do sau ka teen”, and the rhythmic snapping of plastic bags.