After having a lavish meal from Xero Degrees, a café in Cannought Palace, Delhi, India,
my friend and I took a 1.3km walk to Hailey Road and we were stopped on our path by the magnificence of a beautiful street art.
It was that of a woman trying to feel liberated. It radiates how freedom has a cost and its value is a priceless chain which is to be broken to be set free.
After much difficulty to tear away our eyes from the alluring masterpiece, we reached our destination in just a few feet.
108 giant steps guarded by 3 high leveled platforms engraved with arch-gates makes the Agrasen ki Bauli, aka Ugrasen ki Bauli. The entire step-well (bauli) was created from red sandstone which stretches 60m long and 15m wide and is only thought to have been built by King Agrasen.
I felt a cold eerie chill as soon as I stepped into the Bauli. The ancient sandstone has done its charm of maintaining a cool atmosphere. But yes, watch out for the near hundreds of restless pigeons that have made it their home.
Keeping aside the fact that it can be maintained better, given the vandalism and lack of proper protection for a historic monument, the architecture is inexorably mysterious to those who have an eye for it.
The general structure, simply put into the viewer’s eye is a step-well which was once filled with groundwater. However, my friend and I found some of the spots in it to be mysterious; as if the building has locked down many loop holes as ancient secrets.
First, the doors were unaligned and asymmetrically placed to one another. They could have been the entry to the platforms but the structure seemed questionable to more functions. We were told that there would be bats inside the bauli, but we heard or saw no flying mammals.
At the far right end of the bauli, there are normal stairs which lead to nowhere. It can be assumed that the construction was once destroyed and this part was not given much importance to be reconstructed in the 14th century, however, the fact that the stairway still seemed to be strong beyond its years is questionable.
To the opposite side of this stairway was a mosque which looked like three chambers where one was in ruins but the other two exhibits artwork of the Lodi Dynasty.
It was only later that I read articles about how people have tagged this architectural beauty to be a haunted spot of Delhi. Some have committed suicide here and others claim that black water rises here. However, that does not mean the place is haunted, it is simply mysterious and is a step-well of secrets which we may never find out.
Every giant step of this step-well is a painfully beautiful invitation for you to visit and marvel the ancient mysteries.
Dear History,
How many times have you been rewritten just because only a single view point which touches sunlight was considered?
and the dark secrets remain in the shadows, feasted upon by bats, buried deep, beyond any Bauli, trapped forever as the other point of view.
