The Subway Which Can Heal (part 1)

An unusual place and an unusual story…

On the very first day after moving to Delhi, I visited the Pracheen Hanuman temple of CP and apart from the calm, quiet and spiritual energy of the temple one thing that attracted me was the Subway which enables you to cross the main road and skip the warzone like traffic on the always busy CP outer circle.

The aura of that place hits differently, in fact special which makes you at least observe your surroundings if you are not occupied with something or lost due to some other issue of life as it happens many times in our lives, the same happened with me too. On my first visit, I noticed different items placed all over the place in a very organised manner including a counter that resembled a store, glancing casually around the place I said to my friend ‘Sahi jagah hai bhai’ and continued our journey to the mandir.

The subway then began to take on different characteristics as the visits increased in frequency—nearly every Tuesday—giving the appearance sometimes of a shop, sometimes an exhibition, sometimes a garden of antiques and sometimes a multipurpose store with clothes, paintings, handmade goods, herbal medicines, herbs, puppets, plants, skirts, beautiful stoles, hand-made stools, kurtas, sarees, dupattas, paintings, colourful pieces of jewellery and the best of all hand-made musical instruments etc.

But one oddity which persisted in every version was in the shop, there was no salesperson; in the exhibition, there was no volunteer; in the garden of antiques, there was no antiquarian; and in the multipurpose store, there was no store assistant.

Another strange thing was the cleanliness, typically found at home, a well-made mattress bed on the floor with some cushions and pillows contrasted with a very well-crafted wooden and beautifully decorated set of chairs and table where 3-4 people could sit and fall in love with the soothing beauty of this place but the bed and the chairs were always empty until my visit last Tuesday which changed my perspective towards not only the subway but a lot of other things too.

And on that day the shop had its salesperson, the exhibition had its volunteer, the garden of antiques had its antiquarian and the multipurpose store had its store assistant and the mother of all strange things related to this subway was that all these people were just one person – Meenakshi Vinay Rai.

Passing through the subway on my way back I found a sage sitting on the mattress most likely singing a folk song accompanied by a lovely lady sitting on a chair playing a stringed instrument most likely a do-tara, the double-strung variant of the popular Ektara.

‘These two might be able to tell me something about the place’ was the thought that suddenly came to my mind after almost crossing the subway hence I went back to the lady sitting with her back towards me now and stood there trying to gather the courage to either wait till the jugalbandi stops naturally or disturb it intentionally just to satisfy my curiosity and as I failed to do either the session luckily got completed and instantaneously I asked the lady about all that was happening there and what it was actually and most importantly why it was there.

Are you as curious as I was? want to know the whole story? I’ll let you know everything in part 2…

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