Fire department records say Old Delhi made more than 650 calls of fire between March 2008 and March 2009.

The figure gives out the story of how tangled the Walled City is in its maze of loose wiring.

In fact, fire department officials say, 90 per cent of these fires are triggered by such loose wires, and their contact with residential and commercial structures. Though the fires seldom turn big, they are frequent enough to constantly keep the residents and shopkeepers on their toes.

The recently activated Shahjahanabad Redevelopment Corporation (SRC) and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi’s (MCD) plans to take all electric wires and cables underground, meanwhile, hangs in air. The electric poles in the Walled City carry thick high-tension cables, loosely hanging and old withered wires, telephone and TV cable wires and several others.

These are wound together in ways that give them strange shapes and people living around a vulnerability.

Mohammad Shakir, 47, a medical storeowner, has a big lump of loosely hanging wires just outside the counter. Every time it rains, Shakir nervously waits for a short-circuit: “I tie these wires all the time — sometimes they touch the ground. But that does not worry us: every time it rains, we keep looking for sparks in the wires and waits for another news of fire.”

In Coffee Corner, a small restaurant in busy Chandni Chowk, Noor Hussain, 15, leans from the railing to point out where the short-circuit takes place — almost every week. Outside, there is a maze of wires and Hussain’s finger points to a half-molten cable, rough and disfigured. “Every time it rains, there is surely a short-circuit in these cables.”

... contd.