Connaught Place is safe sanitised and ready for Unlock 2

NEW DELHI: Resting on his motorbike that was serviced just moments earlier, Kamla Nagar resident Aamir Khan, 35, gently pulled his mask down to bite into a choco-bar as he awaited his friends in the inner circle of Connaught Place. “I have been dreaming of this moment for more than two months,” the ice cream aficionado said. It is not that he cannot get ice cream in his north Delhi colony, but the unique old-world charm of Connaught Place makes a choco-bar special. “There is something very languid and relaxing about this area. It truly is Delhi’s heart, and no matter where you live or work in the National Capital Region, CP always appears central and accessible,” Khan said.
The heritage shopping complex, recently cleaned and sanitised, is looking as unblemished and sparkling as perhaps when it was first opened to the public in 1933. New Delhi, designed by Edwin Lutyens, was built to impress, and its prime shopping plaza — named after Prince Arthur, the Duke of Connaught, who visited the city in 1921 — did not lack in grandeur. While the nearby Gole Market catered to the daily needs of government employees who moved in after its transformation into British India’s capital in 1912, Connaught Place was meant for the city’s elite.
It is said that Connaught Place’s architect, Robert Tor Russell, was inspired by the Royal Crescent in Bath, England, and though it is not known if the then recent Spanish flu pandemic played on his mind, the idea of a sprawling plaza with huge open spaces, a central park, wide roads and an arcade with wide corridors and spacious shops now seems almost perscient in Post Covid 19 world that demands social distancing from its visitors. It is this unique design and architecture that will help CP bounce back, believe the shop owners