Growing up in CP LALIT NIRULA- as received

Growing up in CP LALIT NIRULA  Dilliwallahs was a term used for people whose families had been living in Old Delhi – or Purani Dilli – for generations. My family migrated to Delhi in the 1920s and settled in a brand new, still-under-construction, 20,000 inhabitant-strong, New Delhi. And that, I guess, would technically make us Nai Dilliwalas! My folks were one of the few Punjabi families who lived in Delhi in the ’20s and I, the Nai Dilliwala or CP wallah, was born at Lady Hardinge Hospital, just a stone’s throw from Connaught Place. The first four years of my life were spent at Hanuman Road, right next to CP and from then on, for the next 58 years, I lived and worked in CP. My father remembered seeing a train track passing through the not-yet-completed Connaught Place complex, en-route to Raisina Hill, carrying building material for the under-construction Rashtrapati Bhavan, North and South Blocks and Parliament House. While the whole complex of the inner and outer circle is popularly known as Connaught Place, or CP, the outer ring of buildings was called Connaught Circus and the inner ring was called Connaught Place. Most of the buildings came up in the ’20s and ’30s and the last buildings to come up were as late as the ’50s. There was a big divide between the old parts of Delhi and the new, culturally and physically. I remember an aunt telling me how in the late ’20s, she returned to Delhi by train with her brother and got off at the main Delhi station which was in Old Delhi. As her husband lived and worked in New Delhi, she wanted to go there immediately. However, it was winter and dark when she alighted from the train, and she was advised not to venture towards New Delhi until the next morning, as in the area between the walls of Old Delhi (where Asaf Ali Road and Ramlila grounds are now located) and Connaught Place, there was a jungle and it was not safe to travel at night! CP was not a favoured shopping centre in the early days and there were very few people who wanted to open retail outlets there. While the ground and mezzanine floors were commercial space, the upper floors were residential and till the ’70s, continued to be primarily residential. My father and uncle were young bachelors running a photo studio in D-Block and, being fond of good food, had to travel to Chandni Chowk or Kashmiri Gate in Old Delhi to get a proper meal. So was born the idea of starting a small hotel with a restaurant on half the upper floor of D-Block so they could be assured of good food! Encouraged by their neighbour, Mr Beaty of S.M.G. Beaty, they opened Hotel India in 1934. Hotel India became popular, as the only other hotel that existed in New Delhi at that time was a luxury hotel, The Imperial. Marina Hotel in G-Block came up a little later. While CP was still developing, my father and uncle discovered a large ground floor location being used for charpai storage on the corner of L-Block in the outer circle. They negotiated with the four owners and took it on rent and opened a first class restaurant and bar serving continental and Indian food and named it Nirulas Corner House in early 1942. During the War years, business improved substantially and the restaurant became well-known for its food and entertainment which included cabarets, flamenco dancers, magicians, and performance ballroom dancing. A friend’s father told me that as a young cavalry officer in the early ’40s, posted in Delhi Cantonment during the war, he would motorcycle down to our restaurant once a week to have ‘desi khana’, as all he got in his very pukka British Army Mess was insipid British food! An Englishman who met me in the ’90s showed me one of our table d’hote menus from the early ’40s that offered two 5 course meals, for two rupees each! His father had picked up the menu when he was posted in India.  Gol Dakhana (GPO), New Delhi.