On a typical Sunday evening, with the weather having turned, Mohamed Khan* and his friends Raza Ahmed and Hamid Ansani* are perched on a single motorbike seat parked outside their apartment building. They are engrossed in an intense onscreen gunfight on Khan’s prized possession—an Android phone. Their game is interrupted by a group of well-dressed visitors, led by a guide, walking in a single line.

The group is on the way to see the Hamdard factory, and passing through the narrow lane, they admire the naag (snake) motif covering the porch. “This is like the gargoyles in Europe,” says one man. He’s not wrong: snakes are used as motifs in India the same way gargoyles are in Europe: as a symbol of protection over their homes.

Khan does not know what a gargoyle is, and Europe is a distant dream for him.

“Yeh aapka ghar hai? (Is this your house?),” asks one of the well-dressed visitors when he notices Khan and his friends checking them out curiously. Khan nods, gesturing towards a two-storey building of which the paint and the panelling on the wooden front door had long peeled off.

His family has lived in their one-bedroom apartment since the 1970s; three generations crammed within 100 square feet. The boys are sitting outside because Khan’s grandmother is cooking inside and the chulha (earthen stove) has made the space smoky. The smell of his grandmother’s korma permeates the narrow lane.

“Yeh aapka hi ghar hai? Yeh toh khaali lag raha (Is this actually your house? It looks empty),” the visitor muses out loud. Khan doesn’t miss a beat: “Hum reh rahain hain, is liye toh khaali hai (We are living here, that’s why it is empty),” he shoots back. The visitors chuckle at his quick wit, but Khan knows it’s true.

Living on the by-lanes surrounding Chandni Chowk Road means a steady stream of visitors—tourists and Delhi’s well-off alike—always walking around looking for the best nahari or Ghalib’s haveli, says Khan. All he knows of the 17th-century Sufi poet, Mirza Ghalib, is that he once lived nearby. The visitors, he recognises on sight. “Woh aatein rehtein hain puraani dilli dekhne. Aankhein gharo par hoti hain but bhool jaatein ki abhi bhi yahan log rahte hain,” he says. (People keep coming to Old Delhi. Their eyes are always on the buildings, but they forget that people still live here.)

Once the centre of Sufi poetry, Mughal culture and historic architecture, Chandni Chowk has been given a ‘facelift’ through redevelopment projects, initiated under the 2021 Delhi Redevelopment Plan. Experts say these ongoing modernisation efforts have overemphasised the area’s commercial aspects, while ignoring its residents.

“If you look at the government’s redevelopment plan, you can see they have only planned to preserve the area of the Red Fort and the rest is zoned for redevelopment, even though there are no details on what that might be,” notes Pilar Maria Guerrieri, a professor of history of architecture and urban planning at the Politecnico di Milano, Italy, and author of Maps of Delhi.

Chandni Chowk, one of India’s largest wholesale markets and commercial districts, has always been a hive of activity. A 2014 Walmart report estimated its commercial income at approximately Rs 50 lakh crore. The 2021 Delhi Redevelopment Model, with its focus on commerce, is now reshaping this space. But as we witness these changes, we must ask ourselves: what is the true cost of this transformation?

(* names have been changed)