BackWelcome to the Old CP
The historic business district may be vigorously reinventing itself, but a few places continue to retain their original charm
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There is bad news from Connaught Place (CP). Anil Arora, founder of The Bookworm, the legendary shop in B block that shut down in 2008, died last week. His death followed the exit of another landmark of Delhi’s colonial-era business district—A Godin & Co, the legendary piano shop at the Regal Cinema building, is being replaced by a blood test lab. “It closed in early July," says 80-year-old Yashwant Rai Goyal, who is himself an institution. He has been selling mutual fund forms in front of the piano shop for 25 years.
A Godin & Co was the official piano tuner for Lord Mountbatten, the last viceroy of India. It was founded in the early 20th century in modern-day Pakistan, and the Delhi outlet opened first in Kashmere Gate in the 1940s. The shop moved to its CP address a few years later.
The piano shop’s demise might distress CP aficionados, but its exit went unnoticed, partly because it is so difficult to keep pace with this furiously evolving area. This world of stately white columns and louvred windows has become a muddle of restaurants, pubs and cafés. Just last week, it got one more nightclub, Office Office, which launched with a party attended by cricketer Ashish Nehra.
Feel free to accuse CP of selling its soul to franchisee outlets, but the truth is that the new watering holes have given it a fresh lease of life. A place that used to be dead after sundown is now buzzing with people—women included—into the early morning hours.
So while you live it up at the new CP, enjoy the Old CP too. Some of it still survives in the famous Wenger’s Cake Shop and Ram Chander & Sons toy store. Here are five more places you ought to experience.
Loke Nath & Co.
The window displays are empty. Loke Nath & Co., once a humming tailoring establishment, is one of the most haunting places in CP. When you enter this A-block signpost, you see a cash counter on your right, but nothing has been sold here in eight years, says accountant B. Lal, who sits at the far end of the shop. Some of the shelves are stacked with bundles of fabrics, but they are part of the stock that came about a decade ago.
Another staffer says the shop could close any time—next month, next year or the year after. On another visit to the shop, I met one of the partners. He was too busy to talk, but he did say that the shop would close whenever they got a good deal.
Before the inevitable happens, the showroom’s interiors ought to be photographed for the archives. It feels like a museum. Black and white photographs of the old generation of owners hang above a postcard blow-up of Loke Nath & Co. General Drapers, the flagship store founded in the hill-town of Shimla in the 1890s. The Delhi store opened in 1937.
Unused stamp seals are piled up on a table, beside an old Godrej locker. The accountant says the shop used to be madly busy when he first started working there 30 years ago. It had more than 40 employees, including a team of dedicated tailors. Politicians and bureaucrats had their clothes measured here. The uniform of the commissioner of Delhi Police would be ordered from this shop. In her book Climbing The Mango Trees: A Memoir Of Childhood In India, food writer Madhur Jaffrey talks of a pale- blue herringbone-patterned woollen overcoat she got from Loke Nath.
Today, the tailoring establishment is sandwiched between a Louis Philippe clothing showroom and Rodeo, a Mexican speciality restaurant.
New Delhi Stationery Mart
In the age of online correspondence, its survival is a miracle.
When she was an architecture student in Delhi, author Arundhati Roy would buy her sketching material from the New Delhi Stationery Mart. This C-block establishment is a higgledy-piggledy house of ink pens, rollerball pens, fountain pens, pencils, markers, notepads, diaries, ink bottles, Sellotape rolls, scissors, envelopes and writing sheets.
The shop was founded 65 years ago by the late Ram Swaroop Khanna. His son, the white-haired Devinder Khanna, now runs it. He sits facing a wall decked with certificates issued by presidents Rajendra Prasad and Zakir Husain, and chief of army staff S.M. Shrinagesh. All these dignitaries were “pleased to appoint Messrs New Delhi Stationery Mart" as their “Stationers & Printers".
Khanna says he continues to get customers, many of them Delhi University students.
Victor Brothers
Founded in 1972, it’s not as old as CP, but it does retain the flavour of Old CP, that mythical Shangri-La of dignity and manners where everyone must have picked at their pakoris with forks. Bathed in a dim orange light, this Kashmiri handicraft store in E-block is a sprawling hall covered with a frayed dhurrie (rug). The shelves are filled with rugs and shawls, furry caps and miniature Taj Mahals, but the overall feeling is of uncluttered vastness. The world of Café Coffee Day, Junkyard Café and Office Office seems to belong to a different continent.
The atmosphere is so subdued that you too might end up talking in hushed tones. The only dominating (but not intrusive) sound is that of the ceiling fans.
The owner, Mushtaq Lanker, takes pride in his shop having no air conditioners. He also finds happiness in the Allwyn refrigerator purchased 35 years ago. “Everything is gone from Connaught Place," he says, shaking his head. “People came to Connaught Place to see decorum and great dignity. Now we are left with hawkers and (drug) addicts and coffee shops."
Lanker says his clientele comprises foreign tourists; he rarely sees Indians visiting the shop. In fact, it remains empty for long stretches. “I spend those hours in meditation."
The Oriental Fruit Mart
Everything—except the fruits, the cookies, the protein chocolates and the wasabi peas—looks straight out of a time warp. The wood panelling, the display cabinets, even the floor, are as old as the store, circa 1935. The only major concession to modernity at The Oriental Fruit Mart in E-block was the introduction of automatic sliding doors in 2011.
The store was founded by the late Brat Pal. Today, his son Mohinder stands behind the counter with his two sons, Jitender and Ravinder. They are so polite to customers and talk so softly that you want to ask them, “Which city do you think you live in?" Hanging out at the shop is an escape from rude Delhi. In her book Perpetual City: A Short Biography Of Delhi, author Malvika Singh wrote of a time when you would find avocados only at The Oriental Fruit Mart.
The shop started stocking cosmetics and Ayurvedic products in 2001 because “we don’t want our customers to go elsewhere".
Ask the owners to point out the fridge that has been functioning since 1941. It looks like a cupboard. It is a must-see.
Kwality Restaurant
Just how to pay homage to those extinct CP restaurants Volga, Gaylord, Laguna and Standard? By solemnly buying shami kebabs at Wenger’s cake shop (circa 1920s)? But it shut down its first-floor restaurant years ago, so it doesn’t qualify. What about the United Coffee House? That’s a worthy candidate. It opened in 1942 and serves delicious keema samosas.
But there is another grand-old CP restaurant, and it is older than the United Coffee House. The most appropriate place to raise a toast to Old CP is to book an evening table at the Kwality restaurant, established in 1940 in the Regal building—just a few steps away from what used to be A Godin & Co..
Make sure to include the justly famed chhole bhature and Kwality Special Pudding in your order. Ask the manager if you can be served by Muhammed Shehzad. The 68-year-old has been there for 30 years and is probably CP’s oldest-surviving steward.
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