Last time(it was also the first time) I visited India gate, it was a bright sunny day. It had rained heavily in the morning and the air was clear so that you could see far away at the magnificent north and south blocks down the beautiful Rajpath.

The Amar Jyoti and the inverted gun with the helmet on top was like a magnet to which the handful of eyes and cameras seemed attracted to. I left Delhi with a beautiful picture of India Gate in mind.

But then I was told that its beauty multiplies at night with all the brightly lit nights and all. So recently a trip was taken to see the memorial glitter at night. First glance from a distance was disappointing. The gate was caged in iron rods – renovation for Common wealth games. Also it was disappointing to see the memorial for 90,000 soldiers as a more of a picnic spot, with typical  irritants perfectly in place – the usual wrappers of chips, plastic bottles etc. The most irritating of the lot was the screaming ice cream walas, the channe walas and the baloonwalas. The noise from these vendors could have paled the sounds of gun shots in any war. The Amar Jyoti was just something irrelevant, unnoticed in the background, the gun and the helmet invisible.

And then somehow you zone out of all the noise, sit and calmly absorb the magnificence of the structure only to find a police constable shooing you away as its 9.30 PM already. Security  issues obviously. Don’t know why these arise in the night only. How is the place any safer with hundreds of people there throughout the day and not at night? Apart from shooing people away, can the police start fining people literring around – may be in a small area just around the India Gate? Can hawkers be banned in the immediate vicinity? These were some of the many random questions the mind was asking as a disappointed me walked away.