THE GANDHI-KING CONNECTION

The American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. considered MK Gandhi as “the guiding light of our technique of non-violent social change.” He visited India for a five-week tour in 1959, and on landing in Delhi’s Palam airport, famously declared: “To other countries I may go as a tourist, but to India I come as a pilgrim.”

Delhi’s India International Center (IIC) came up later in 1962 — designed by American architect Joseph Allen Stein — but it has a little-known spot that commemorates the spiritual bond between these two icons who incidentally never met.

The Gandhi-King Plaza is a snug little garden tucked into one corner of IIC. The next time you visit the membersonly club, instead of heading straight for the foyer, turn left from the driveway on to a pavement lined with potted plants. A few steps ahead lies one of the city’s best-kept secrets.

The first thing you’re likely to notice is a gray column with inscriptions of sayings, in English and Hindi, by both Gandhi and King. Two giant Pilkhan trees give the plaza its permanent shade. These trees are massive, their trunks extensively furrowed, as if made of molten metal; their bulky branches seemingly alive; and their leaves numbering a million, possibly more.

While the Gandhi-King Plaza occasionally hosts art exhibitions, you rarely see anyone lounging here. It lacks the showiness of the Lodhi Garden next door, with its 15th and 16th century tombs and well-laid-out walking paths. The plaza also has a little pond — Stein’s signature architectural style involved using nature.

Nevertheless, the place is ideal to soothe your excitable urban life, lulling you into tranquillity. The two Pilkhans conspire to create a Macondo of the mind, a place with no contact with the outside world. Though the roar of the traffic on the road outside does intrude into this leafy corner, the plaza feels supremely isolated, as remote as the legends of Gandhi and King appear to us today.