The making and un-making of Hauz Rani

New Delhi: Is the story of Hauz Rani complete without a tale of blending cultures and conflicts? Or without a retelling of how a sports complex first served as a facilitator, and then divider, of community harmony? Can it be told without mentioning an 800-year old water reservoir, named after a queen no one remembers?

A devastating hotel fire that killed 21 shifted the spotlight from a building collapse in neighbouring Said-ul-Ajab to Hauz Rani. Six died in the building collapse on May 30, four days before the Hauz Rani fire.

Much like neighbourhoods across the capital, a tarred road divides the largely-planned Saket from the now-haphazard Hauz Rani. But centuries before Saket was even imagined, there was Hauz Rani.

What was earlier Hauz-i-Rani -- a water reservoir named after a ‘queen’ about whom there is little information available – became Hauz Rani, one among the 309 urbanised villages in Delhi.

In his book ‘The Present In Delhi’s Pasts’, former head of the history department at Delhi University, Sunil Kumar wrote how the area was first mentioned in ancient texts in relation to Mehrauli.

“The Hauz-i Rani was first mentioned in the Persian chronicle of Minhaj-i Siraj Juzjani (completed AD 1260) only because the city constructed by the early Sultans of Delhi was in its immediate neighbourhood,” he wrote in the section that talking about modern urban planning.

He also writes that the area was likely populated by “service-folk who either worked in the city or provided its markets with produce or artisanal products”. “Although associated with the material life of the capital, they were distant from its politics and unattached to the household of its elites,” Kumar wrote.

The hauz (reservoir) is long gone. The artisans selling red and green, and blue and yellow pottery and service-folk, however, remain.

Before the fire brigade arrived, with trucks in tow, on the morning of June 3, it was Riyazuddin who emptied his shop of mattresses and bed sheets so that people could jump to escape the flames and smoke. It was Kapil and Salauddin who entered the building to save anyone they could find.

Sunil Kumar wrote how when DDA started developing the area in the 1970s, many “older residents of the village were the plumbers, electricians, welders, carpenters, masons and daily wage labourers to their new neighbours.”

The transformation of Hauz Rani from the 12th century to 2026 is not out of the ordinary for Delhi, which has seen the rise and fall of seven kingdoms. But three developments that have had the most impact are the construction of DDA’s sports complex; Max Hospital, which opened in 2006 and expanded a decade later; and three malls in one shopping complex, the most prominent being Select City Walk (opened 2007).

Sunil Kumar wrote of the DDA sports complex, “Although the DDA had constructed a ‘sports complex’ on their portion of the hauz, at this stage of development it constituted three large fields without any barriers... Saket residents and Hauz Rani villagers moved freely throughout the area. In fact, in a fit of rare sensitivity, the DDA constructed a paved pedestrian path and bridge that passed through a grove of trees near the village common ground and connected Saket with Hauz Rani. The absence of barriers between the two neighbourhoods was apparent in that children from Saket played football every evening, ten to fifteen a side, with their peers from Hauz Rani... in 1990 the interim sports complex was razed and supplanted by its more elaborate version. In the place of the accessible, open maidans left free for unstructured activities, the new Saket Sports Complex was open only to members... The Hauz Rani villager’s competence hardly extended into these exalted realms.”

But the chemist shops where sellers have picked up a smattering of Pashto, Dari and Somali and where centres offering diagnostic centres advertise in several other languages, Max Hospital has been the game changer.

“Before the hospital and the malls came up, the houses in this Lal Dora area would be given on rent to migrants from across the country who couldn’t afford to live in the planned parts of Delhi. Then, people seeking treatment started coming from Afghanistan, Nigeria and Somalia. Many of them have stayed back. Hotels came up to make space for those who could afford it and they kept getting bigger. The chemists here know more languages than most people who live across the road in Saket,” said Dharmendra Singh, who has worked at a chemist shop opposite Max Hospital for 14 years.