Geetanjali Krishna: Where history makes the future

Imagine what it must be like to live in a 700-year-old neighbourhood, the custodian of 700 years of a living cultural heritage. Imagine living amid graves and monuments built by people that built our history. What would it be like? Such questions were uppermost in my mind when I met 22-year-old Aamir Ahmed, resident of Nizamuddin Basti and conductor of heritage walks in his neighbourhood. “Actually, before I started to work on the Nizamuddin Revival Project, I used to see all these monuments here — but never truly noticed them,” he said, “children played cricket, elders sat there to get the sun and hawkers plied their trade there.” While the graves and monuments were part of the everyday lives of the Basti residents, what was missing was a sense of pride in them, a sense of their worth.

“When I became associated with the Aga Khan Foundation project to revive Nizamuddin, I first became aware of the cultural and historical worth of the area where I lived,” said Ahmed. Initially, the youth volunteers of the project were asked to survey all the graves in the Basti. “As we went from grave to grave, I felt I was seeing my Basti for the first time!” he said, “I rediscovered my kinship to long-gone ancestors...” Along with a dozen other boys, Ahmed was provided training in the history and culture of their area as well as spoken English by the Foundation as part of its public-private initiative to revive Humayun’s Tomb, Sundar Nursery and Nizamuddin Basti. Eventually, the self-help group Sair E Nizamuddin came into being in 2010, with a view to integrating the youth of the Basti into the conservation and preservation of Nizamuddin. The group today consists of 12 boys with Ahmed as their co-ordinator. “Ninety per cent of the proceeds from each walk goes to the boy who conducts it, the rest to our corpus,” explained Ahmed, “this way, we all earn a reasonable amount, especially in season, from the increased number of tourists and visitors to our neighbourhood!”

Initially, the walks drew criticism from some locals. “They questioned why outsiders were being brought in, why they were clicking photographs,” Ahmed said. Then one day, one of the bigger local detractors, a teashop owner, realised that his business had grown since the Heritage Walks had begun. “So he started asking us to bring all the visitors we guided, for a cuppa to his stall!” smiled Ahmed. As more locals figured out that the walks could bring more business into their previously isolated neighbourhood, their lanes and alleys started looking cleaner than before. The self-help group also started a Basti newsletter to generate awareness about their work. Side by side, they began educating local children about the area’s cultural and historical landmarks.

Ahmed often tells the story of a man who always walks barefoot down the lane to Hazrat Nizamuddin’s dargah. “Seeing how dirty the lane was, I asked him why he did so.” In reply the man said that he did it with the knowledge that at one time, the beloved Sufi saint must have also walked this very path. “This is the sort of living history my neighbourhood embodies,” he said, eyes brimming with pride. Many believe that the birth of this pride has largely contributed to the success of this urban renewal project. After chatting with Ahmed, I think they’re right. For, this young man and his team show that the best way to revive historical and cultural sites is to actually make them worth living in.