This way to Gali Jane Austen Wali

Gali Jane Austen Wali, a street in Delhi known for wedding cards, ironically named after the single novelist, highlights the irony of marriage as a gamble.

Sorry for the misleading headline. Gali Jane Austen Wali doesn’t exist in Delhi. It certainly is not the name of this Old Delhi street. But then the gali’s actual name has nothing to do with its present. While its present has everything to do with Jane Austen.

The narrow lane, near Chawri Bazar’s Shubh Murti Maa Chowk, is lined on both sides with card shops.

As you are aware, the great writer (its her 250th birth anniversary this year!) was obsessed with the theme of shaadi; all her six novels end with weddings. And here is this entire street devoted to shops for wedding cards. So, welcome to… Gali Jane Austen Wali!

The narrow lane, near Chawri Bazar’s Shubh Murti Maa Chowk, is lined on both sides with card shops, each filled with very many kinds of wedding cards in many languages. Every card bears a variation of “you are cordially invited on the auspicious occasion of x marrying y.” One wordy card invokes Ganesh ji Bhagwan “with new dreams, new hopes, with a desire to achieve new horizons, as our son steps into a new beginning of married life.” The purpose of the cards on display is to give ideas to customers to customise their own card, a trader says. He informs that the street’s signature trade took off in the 1970s. It helped that the workforce needed to produce the cards—designers, printers, and labourers—were already working in the nearby “paper mandi.”

(It must be clarified that the shops also make cards for other occasions, including for Happy New Year and Happy Birthday.)

While the Walled City’s bazar streets tend to be noisy, this street is unusually quiet. It won’t be so for long. The wedding season is about to begin. The would-be brides and grooms, and their parents and siblings, will soon flock to the gali, and be seen brainstorming over the card designs, colours, and text. For now, the street is mostly taken over by labourers. Dharmender is carrying a massive stack of cards on his head; Ajay is pulling a hand-pump’s handle for water.

All things considered, the street’s grand irony is that it wasn’t in Jane Austen’s kismet to ever be in need of Gali Jane Austen Wali’s merchandise. She remained single. This brings us to the street’s actual name. It’s called Gali Satte Wali. An elderly shopkeeper explains that long before he was born, the gali was a site for sattebaz, or gamblers.

Perhaps Satte Wali is an appropriately symbolic name for the gali’s present life. Isn’t shaadi too a kind of gamble?