Last Mughal's wives

On Delhi's best-preserved secret

- Mayank | Austen Soofi

Delhi is a megapolis of graves. Entire neighbourhoods (including certain super-fancy hotels!) are raised on graveyards. In parts of the city, even ordinary houses are built around graves. Only a minuscule number of these centuries-old graves are privileged with elaborate tombs, belonging to saints and emperors.

Most other graves lie in anonymity, their identities lost to time. Exceptions exist, and a few of such lonesome graves belong to figures with notable status. Like the handful of graves that lie in the forgettable passage separating the all-marble Chausath Khamba monument from poet Ghalib's marble tomb, in central Delhi's Hazrat Nizamuddin Basti. Heritage walking tours step out from the former, and step into the latter, without bothering about the seemingly random graves littering the intervening space.