Delhiwale:The man who personally counted all the CP columns

Delhi's Connaught Place features 1,586 iconic columns. A local named Mohsin claims to have counted 1,732, sparking a debate on the accurate number.

Sure, this is easier than counting the stars. But still, it is something—to manually count the columns of Delhi’s iconic Connaught Place (CP).

Shopworker Mohsin spent three hours manually counting all of Connaught Place, arriving at a higher figure than survey’s structured 1,586 total. (HT Photo)

The white colonial-era columns constitute CP’s signature persona. They support the ceilings of its many colonnades. Identical in shape and height, the stately columns line the market arcades of the Inner and Outer Circles, as well as the corridors that link the two circles.

Last to last week, the first part of this series conducted a count of the Outer Circle columns. Last week was the turn of Inner Circle columns. This week, the concluding agenda is to count the columns of CP’s intervening corridors that link the Inner and Outer circles. The connecting corridors spread vein-like throughout the circular district. This afternoon, some of these corridors are eerily silent. One deserted stretch has not a single functioning shop; a man is lying sprawled on the dusty floor.

To cover these 12 corridors, the surveyor is obliged to walk up and down the two circles many times over. Just as this reporter was finishing the task at hand, hoping to be the first among the Delhiwale to have manually counted all the columns of CP, it turned out that the feat has already been accomplished by a fellow citizen.

“I personally counted all—there are 1732 ,” says Mohsin, a staffer at the Outer Circle’s Amrit bookstore (see photo). He ascribes his accomplishment to accident of circumstances. One February morning this year, on arriving to “duty” at his usual hour, Mohsin found the shop unexpectedly shut. After confirming from his bosses that the bookstore would open later in the day due to unforeseen circumstances, he decided to kill time by counting all the columns of CP. Took him three hours.

“These khambe are so khoobsurat… their beauty cannot be recreated today,” says Mohsin—he commutes to CP daily on his bike from distant Hapur town.

Whatever, here are the column stats. CP’s linking corridors collectively have 530 columns. As earlier reported, the Inner Circle has 316 columns, and the Outer Circle has 740. So in its entirety, CP has 1586 columns. But wait, this figure doesn’t match Mohsin’s higher count. Which one’s accurate? Count yourself.