This way to Gali Khan Khana

The Walled City dictionary

- Mayank Austen Soofi

It was a poet's alley. Or maybe it was a fish market. Perhaps it was both.

Old Delhi's Gali Khan Khana has a past full of conjectures. Khan Khana, of course, was the title that Emperor Akbar famously awarded to his court noble Rahim, the legendary poet well-versed in Sanskrit, as well as Persian. Indeed, one recent afternoon, a Walled City man, encountered in front of the Jama Masjid, had introduced himself as a poet who lived in a nearby street, which he said with some flourish, was named after a great poet. He had meant Gali Khan Khana.

But Gali Khan Khana could as well have been named after any VIP. For “Khan Khana’ literally translates to “lord among lords,” and our contemporary Dilli continues to be full of citizens who fancy themselves to be figures of such a stature.