Ranjana Dave

Masjid Mubarak Begum in Old Delhi’s Chawri Bazar is named after the wife of David Ochterlony, Delhi’s first British resident. Mubarak Begum was a dancing girl, and it is her background that lends this early 19th century mosque its colloquial name, Randi ki Masjid, or prostitute’s mosque. The mosque’s caretakers try hard to shrug off the name, going to the extent of having painted the “correct name” of the mosque on its façade in Roman letters.