Qutub Minar

"Dear old world', she murmured, 'you are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you."

~ L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

A mellow December day. The in-between balmy hours of late afternoon and early evening. Delhi, that mad, mad city, peopled to its brim. A bewitching mosaic of a myriad worlds. Two pairs of tired, yet eager feet hop on to an attractive, yellow-green CNG autorickshaw for a stroll around the Qutub Minar. Strange, how some places just refuse to grow old in your heart despite the number of visits. The road to the once ancient city of Mehrauli flanked by old peepal trees on both sides, chockablock with swanky cars. That's Delhi for you. A forever melting melange of the old and the new. The play of light and shade of the quaking leaves allow us intermittent glimpses of the towering Minar. Resplendent and majestic as ever. The fading winter sun baths the Qutub complex in a faint rosy light. A pleasing sandstone blush. The stage for the evening twilight is all set. The sleepy jasmines pout and preen for their nocturnal show. A flurry of pigeons and parrots search for their resting pads from the scores of nooks and corners. 

Amid all these enchantments, I try to find that lost world, when all this was true, when all this made sense. Perhaps it still does, to lost souls like me. Through its silent stone alleys and lattices, I try to unearth the magic of the bygones. I try to glue the fragments of a chipped history from the intricate carvings of the Quranic verses on the Minar's body. On the way out, I come across the bust of a half-baked dream, the abandoned Alai Minar - an ambitious imitation of the original, a dream that died with its dreamer. I remember being very moved by this story of unfulfilled aspirations when narrated by my father during my first visit to the Qutub Minar. I was fourteen then. Sixteen years later, nothing much has changed. I walk a little further and find a fallen tree, almost uprooted and spreadeagled on the ground in the most hopeless of manners, yet flourishing perfectly with the green vigor of life. May be we all need our stack of half-baked dreams to show us the path to that pot of green gold.
As the day finally calls it a day, whining about tiredness and the crowd, we walk out of the complex. And so do the birds.