Once you enter the mammoth Teen Darwaza you are in Ahmedabad's famous walled city.  This is an area of yore, the place that time forgot. Quaint houses, people staying in cheek-by-jowl old buildings, youngsters playing outside their houses, narrow lanes that connect the different pol areas to each other, forming a pattern of streets with twelve gates.

Pol, pronounced 'pole' is a housing cluster which comprises many families of a particular group, linked by caste, profession, or religion. The word is derived from the Sanskrit word pratoli meaning entrance to an enclosed area. This entrance or gate was known by the name of the community living in the enclosed area. Pols date back to 1714, when communal riots necessitated  increased security and gave rise to self sufficient micro neighbourhoods with a distinctive residential pattern and irregular street clusters. Over the years, as the close knit pattern of Pol living, was established, neighbourhoods were formed around common professions rather than religions.

People and cattle have right of way here. It's not uncommon to see cows sitting pretty in the middle of the road. They might just stir out of their reverie to gaze disinterestedly at you. The walled city certainly has an identity of its own. Undoubtedly, this is where the culture of the old city has been retained lovingly by the folk who continue to live the same way their ancestors did more than 75 years ago.

Come here with nothing but time on hand, for the pace of things is slow here. You must not be rushed or you will not savour its beauty. To art lovers and historians this is a priceless treasure. It has nothing in terms of materialism; there is no thriving modern business anywhere. Spice sellers, locksmiths, sweetmeats sold on street carts, form its economy. To the beholder who seeks pleasure out of simple nothingness, this is the ultimate stop.

To make a tour of the Walled City start at the Swaminarayan Temple. Even at 8 a.m. in the morning the place is quite congested. With good reason. This is one of the first Swaminarayan temples to have been built. People come here much before dawn, in the hope of seeking blessings from the resident deity. Wood carvings in pretty pastel shades cover its façade. The balconies are  signs of  heritage,  jutting out from little spaces in the old walls that make standing on and under them a dangerous proposition. The temple is behind the gates of Relief Road. Your tour done, exit the gate as you entered it and follow any of the numerous lanes that lead you deeper into the pol area. It is quite crowded in the sense that every building stands close to the other, save a narrow gully to pass between them. There obviously was no plan to have some sort of an escape route in case of  hazards like fire or worse. The only places you zip through are the tiny cross lanes that lead into further bye lanes. To  do that, you have to vie with dogs, cats, cattle and humans on foot and on two-wheelers too. The last named is a telling sign of the times as even in these  old areas modernity rears its head. Do the vehicles spell luxury for these people or is it just a matter of necessity? Another  evidence of the present era is the modern facilities that each home has. They may look like one room tenements with a hanging balcony overhead or a barely-there walkway that leads up to a shaky structure, but they have the latest gadgets here, no mistake. As I passed by one of them, I swear I could hear prime time queen Oprah Winfrey droning on.

But the people who built the Walled City must have also put a lot of thought into it for most buildings are built in the slant technique, each floor protruding a little more that the previous one. That's like terrace farming, I thought, only backwards. Interestingly, the dense and vertically high formations ensure cooler interiors in blazing summers while higher floors bring in the winter, warmth.

Another civic aspect (and one that we could employ today) is the city’s neat sewage facility. On each road in the pols you will see vertical iron pipes at the side of each of the buildings that lead skywards and dispel the foul air into the atmosphere. Below street level, each pipe is connected to the main sewage channels and, on top is perched an arrow, that cleverly moves to point out to the onlooker in which direction the sewage is flowing below. A simple principle but an intelligent one!

If you are wondering by now, why streets in the walled city are so narrow and winding making you feel you are moving through a maze, then the answer lies in the wisdom of old men of the fifteenth century. Apparently while building the place, they followed the natural path of the water coursing down   streets to prevent flooding.  In the newer western suburbs, the layout of the streets violated land topography hence large water courses and water bodies have become fragmented. This is why these parts of the city flood so fast during the monsoon, explains our guide.

As one moves past this labyrinth of alleys one comes to the highlight of the heritage precinct, the home of poet and reformer, Kavi Dalpatram in Lambeshwar ni pol, near the Swaminarayan Mandir. It is here that Dalpatram is said to have sought blessings from his Lord Swaminarayan with the first rays of the sun. The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) and the citizens of Ahmedabad proposed a memorial at the site of his house in recognition of his sterling contribution to Gujarati literature and culture. The memorial comprises the façade of the original house, Tulsi Manch and a large 120 kg bronze statue of Dalpatram.  

It is evident that these self-contained neighbourhoods, the narrow houses , community wells and chabootaras for feeding birds, are treasures in urgent need of repair. Many of the buildings are in a decrepit state, due to the passage of time. Restoring them to their original form is sure to be a challenge.  But this is the key to protecting what is the most vital part of Ahmedabad's prized architecture, and the close-knit social ethos that goes with it.