New Delhi, March 22: The birthday party is over. The scene of the revelry, a 13th century monument in Hauz Khas, reveals the magnitude of the celebrations. The entire area behind the structure which includes a madarsa built by Feroz Shah Tuglaq and residential quarters for royalty built by Alauddin Khilji, has been taken over by heavy iron scaffoldings and wooden planks. ``Don't step in here. The place is full of nails,'' warns a worker supervising removal of the stage set up for the function to celebrate the completion of the BJP's first year at the Centre.Lower down is the area which was used for seating during the show. In the area, which had once been filled with water by the DDA in a failed bid to revive a medieval tank that existed there, the seats still remain. Workers clamber up and down the mighty structure like ants, pulling down iron poles and steel frames.In the now waterless tank or hauz, about five trucks move out loaded with material removed from the seats. ``These will all go by Wednesday,'' a worker with the tent house which had made up the seating arrangement says. Left over bits and pieces, the thermocol, the nails, the rubbish is littered all over the place. ``No, we won't be removing all that,'' the man says.Curious about the mock Karachi-Delhi bus that drove in during the show, one is shown the spot where it was parked and the path it took. The entire stretch, paved with red stone tiles from the stage to R.K. Puram, has been pulverised by the impact of the wheels of amity. The path built by the MCD is gone. The monument itself looks cleaner. One is told by the guard that the organisers got it scrubbed before the show to make it a good backdrop.It had to be a clean backdrop as half of the programme was being performed from the monument itself, a guard at the monument said. ``The man who played Mahatma Gandhi in their skit was acting out his part from inside the monument which served as the jail,'' he said.Back inside the dark balcony of the monument, which once overlooked the reservoir, fruit juice cans and other residues of the birthday party are dumped in corners.And outside, at the bottom of the wall, near various points of entry to the balcony-cum-stage, there are huge black blotches and bigger stains of oil. These were made by torches lit by performers that day, the guard says.``If the guards had asked them to keep the torches away from the wall they would have driven us from the place,'' he says. ``The police asked even the guard on duty to leave as he did not have the pass required to be in the premises,'' they said.The floodlights are gone. They were removed along with the loudspeakers after the party the same night. A BJP MP did visit the site after the party. Sushma Swaraj, who came there the following day on the request of some local residents, was, however, unable to promise anything regarding either the cleaning up of the area or preventing future misuse of the premises.
