10 PICTURES AND PEN-PICTURES

architecture. Old Delhi still re-echos the magnificence
of Mughal times when the Eed. Fort, in the days of its
prime under Shah Jehan, shone with the splendour
of the peacock throne and of the Light of the World,
the Koh-i-nur; and when Chandni Chowkh was the
fashionable road through which Emperor Aurangzeb
repaired to the Great Mosque on his richly decorated
elephant.

Ohandni Ohowkh is as busy as it has always been.
Its congested bazaars are full of colourfully clothed
people from everywhere. In the shops, 'boutiques^ and
on the pavements are exhibited all kinds of wares:

soaps, beauty products, saris, sandals and shoes of
infinite variety; medicines, drugs and chemicals; brass
and mefcal ware, jewellery and ivory work; buttons
buckles, and belts, betel-leaves and boiled lentils; steel
trunks and suitcases, and a hundred other articles
of Indian and foreign manufacture. In the narrow
streets, alleys, and by-lanes that run into Ohandni
Chowkh, many still practise the decorative crafts for
which the city was once famed and throughout the day
flow streams of incessant traffic of automobiles, tongas,
and pedestrians. Motor horns and the clatter of horses'
hoofs swell the noise of hawkers shouting their wares
and of him who enumerates his marvellous cures for all
and any disease. At intervals comes the screech of
tram-car wheels and the clang-clang-clang of the
bell as the driver, the Delhi wattman with nerves
of steel, stamps the knob and, with wizarcHike
dexterity, conducts his over-crowded yellow vehicle
through by-lanes, broad streets, and round the sharp
turnings.