Unsurprisingly, AKDN’s arrival on the scene in 2007, after the government cleared its project, generated an explosion of fear and insecurity. For the basti, this was another demolition squad (Delhi’s infamous one-time heritage czar Jagmohan had made an attempt earlier), and the project’s surveyors were roughed up and sent home. But nearly three years on, much water has flowed down the nullah; or, more aptly, quantities of murky, fetid liquid have been sucked out of the baoli, one of many places here where the project has made a sea-change. The tomb of the great Urdu poet, Ghalib, has had its shamefully shabby courtyard elegantly restored; and earlier this month, the sound of Indian and Pakistani qawwals singing Khusro’s famous Man Kunto Maula filled the newly landscaped forecourt of the beautiful 17th-century Chaunsath Khamba at the project’s first cultural festival.
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