This way to Gali Sheesh Mahal

The Old Delhi encyclopaedia

- Mayank Austen Soofi

The afternoon sunlight is filling up a breach in the street-side wall. The breach turns out to be the opening of a side-lane full of its own turns and tributaries.

Gali Sheesh Mahal's name promises nothing less than a glass palace. But the lane has no sheesh mahal. Some grandness exists in a sprawling residence. It has an old-fashioned wooden balcony, and within the stately door, a darkened courtyard flanked by fluted columns. A plastic basket is hanging down the steep staircase, presumably as a shortcut to send household stuff from the courtyard to rooms upstairs.