Delhiwale: This way to Excelsior

Excelsior, a closed cinema in Old Delhi, occupies the site of Hakim Ahsanullah Khan's haveli. The theater, open since 1938, is hidden behind cables and grime.

As part of our ‘Walled City dictionary’ series, that is chronicling every significant Old Delhi place.

Nawab Saab ki Haveli is being demolished due to its heightened fragility. (HT Photo)

Pahari Imli takes its name from being a hill that once boasted of a tamarind tree, Gali Mem Wali was the lane housing a “ma’am”, and Amrood Wali Masjid is a mosque that had a guava tree. The origins of Old Delhi place-names are easily relatable, with notable exceptions.

Take this landmark. Its name feels as foreign as caviar will in Chandni Chowk. The Oxford English Dictionary dates the word to 1778, when it originated from the Latin motto ( meaning higher) on the seal of the State of New York.

Say salam-namaste to Excelsior (pronounced “ek” + “sel” + “see” + “aw”.).

Shut since 2016, the single-screen cinema at Bazar Sirki Walan stands discreetly behind the loopy power cables. You may peer at the theatre lobby through the gaps of the locked grill. The walls and hoardings within are aglow in blue, red, green.

Excelsior stands where an aristocrat’s residence once stood. The cinema in fact occupies what used to be the haveli’s mardana, the section that hosted the male guests.The mansion belonged to Hakim Ahsanullah Khan. He was emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar’s personal physician as well as his close confidante.

The cinema extends to a considerable length at the back. A side-alley shows its full scope--stately staircases, hefty columns, and box office windows. The aforementioned haveli’s Turkish baths and gardens existed just behind the cinema building.

The 450-seater theatre opened in 1938. According to some accounts, the final years were rather informal. Chai vendors noisily conducted their vending inside the darkened hall throughout the movie screening, and the roof leaked like a colander under the monsoon showers.

Things must have been different at least in 1978. The film listing section of a yellowing newspaper from that year shows Excelsior announcing the “grand revival” of the Ashok Kumar starrer Mere Mehboob. The page features very many Delhi cinemas; Excelsior is at the bottom, not easily noticeable.

Today, coated with grime, hidden behind cables, Excelsior is still not easily noticeable. Once you see it though, then all else in the crowded market becomes white noise. The deserted building nonchalantly exudes its past, and--to those aware of local history—it touchingly conjures the Hakim’s vanished haveli.

During the 1857 uprising, the haveli was plundered by an outraged mob, believing the Hakim to be a British sympathiser. A contemporary account narrates that “they looted his palace, adorned in beauty like a Chinese painting, and set fire to the roof. Every beam and every joist, joined in that roof as firmly as the stone set in the ring, fell and was burnt to ashes. The walls were blackened with smoke, as though the palace itself had put on black to mourn its own destruction.”

Hakim’s haveli is gone, and Excelsior is barely here. While an adjacent mansion called Nawab Saab ki Haveli is being demolished due to its heightened fragility. This afternoon, the entire place evokes something like an apocalypse—shattered bricks, toppled masonry, and time one livid final flame.

PS: Haveli details sourced from Pavan Varma’s book Mansions at Dusk: The Havelis of Old Delhi.