Students of St Mary’s School, Safdarjung Enclave, attend the heritage walk at ASI Children’s Museum for Heritage, Siri Fort Complex, conducted by The Indian Express

A schools’ initiative from The Express Group
Quest is a project conducted by The Indian Express in schools in and around Delhi. It covers more than 50 schools in Delhi and NCR.

Quest aims at stirring awareness and opinions. Today, when all that children see are shopping malls and cineplexes, we at The Indian Express want to show a completely different picture of this city to them. Delhi has changed beyond nostalgia and recognition since Independence. How many of these kids know of the ‘Seven Cities’ of Delhi or the stories of the pigeon fliers of Old Delhi?

The idea behind such an activity is to create awareness about the various structures and monuments that the students do not know about. This is a specially designed programme, which will help the students appreciate the rich culture and background of this city. In association with INTACH and ASI, this is a small effort on our behalf to depict a phase of our national life and the decay of a whole culture, a particular mode of thought and living. The visit is followed by the students sending in articles, pictures, poems, paintings, and collages to express their experiences about the heritage walk.

An unknown treasure
My visit to the ASI Children’s Museum for Heritage was very informative. We entered the museum, which has a beautiful garden. We then saw the Past-Present Hall which had photos of many monuments showing us how the monument looked centuries ago. It had old and new pictures of many famous historical places such as the Tomb of Razia Sultan, Bara Gumbad and many more. After that, we went to a hall called Astitva that contained dummy walls of monuments in Delhi that had been defaced with posters and names written on it. This room emphasised on preserving these monuments so that the coming generations can view and absorb knowledge from them. We saw the dilapidated condition of some of our treasures that are lesser known to the world. Later, we all took a pledge that we won't destroy our monuments.
—ADITYA JOSHI,
CLASS VII-B

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