Park perfect

No one can call Delhi an easy city to live in. Even though I&rsquove acquired a solid reputation for defending Delhi from the Bombay/Bangalore/ Calcutta types with sometimes unnecessary fierceness, even I admit that it&rsquos an often hostile city. Full of bureaucrats and politicians and other creepy-crawlies.

But every time I hear the familiar Delhi-is-hell rant, I run to Lodi Gardens and, as far as I&rsquom concerned, the debate is effectively over. Even without the Time magazine endorsement as this continent&rsquos best urban oasis. I knew that even before they told everyone else about it.

Take the worst of Delhi and the best of Delhi and everything in between and throw them into this vast green space and watch them miraculously co-exist in the most shockingly egalitarian fashion.

The safari suit-clad bureaucrat taking that spare tyre for a gentle stroll, the politician-on-cellphone-with-armed-guards-in-tow, the familiar-looking actress/model/socialite, the harassed-looking businessman&rsquos wife, the couples squeezed into impossibly small niches along the monuments and nary a quarrel. Not even in the parking lot.

Maybe it&rsquos because, even on the busiest weekend, there is enough space between you and that large family playing Ludo on the greens for conversations to actually remain private.

When my parents first moved to Delhi in the mid-1980s, we lived in a borrowed house in Lodi Estate and our clean and green universe extended from the sprawling (if slightly dilapidated) bungalow we lived in to pre-school right around the corner, to the ice cream parlour in Khan Market to formal instruction in tree-climbing in Lodi Gardens.

In a way, it ruined the rest of our middle-class lives. As children we learned that this was how life was lived in big cities. But even as illusions about big-city living were destined to die and did, somehow Lodi Gardens held on unchanged.

For the longest while I managed to find a place for it in my daily life. I somehow ended up with an internship that took me to Jorbagh and a first job at the India International Centre annexe. So winter afternoon lunch breaks and summer evening runs continued for a time.

In my imagination I still go running in the Gardens every weekend, while in reality I&rsquom lucky if I even make it to the treadmill a few times a week. In that same perfect world I take an apple and my book and spend a perfectly pleasant afternoon. It&rsquos possibly the biggest reason why I wouldn&rsquot consider living in any other city in the country.

The Gardens, my reading informs me, were created around the Lodi and Sayyid tombs in the 1930s and called the Lady Willingdon Park. The current name followed Independence as did some new landscaping in the late 1960s.

The tomb of Muhammad Shah, who ruled Delhi in 1434-44, is said to be the oldest in the Gardens. If you enter the park from the Lodi Road end, then it&rsquos the monument to the left of the car park.

It&rsquos not clear why the Sayyids, and then the Lodis, chose this particular spot to build their tombs, but a tributary of the Yamuna flowed here in the 15th and 16th centuries and that must have once been a part of this landscape.

On the other end, next to the lake on the Max Mueller Road, is the tomb of Sikandar Lodi. The Bada Gumbad is the obvious domed structure in the middle, with the small and rather pretty mosque containing the very elaborately decorated ceiling off to one side.

Close to the Bada Gumbad is my favourite building, the Sheesh Gumbad, with the beautiful turquoise-and-dark-blue tiles on the outside. The Athpula, or the eight-arched bridge, near Sikandar Lodi&rsquos tomb was built by Akbar, though many arches have now disappeared.

And that&rsquos the other nice thing about the Gardens. The monuments it&rsquos built around are alive in a way that most old buildings in India are not. Kids clamber up, people sit around. Sure, the occasional yahoo will scratch a heart or leave a potato wafer packet, but mostly the buildings seem to be doing almost better than some others.

And, of course, there are the 110 species of trees and over 40 kinds of birds, though I know very little about these.

INTACH has a very useful publication, titled Lodi Gardens Heritage Maps, which contains the informative &lsquoHistorical Buildings in Lodi Gardens&rsquo and &lsquoTrees of Lodi Gardens&rsquo (Rs 250).