India, March 11 -- It is early March, the afternoons are already hot. If humankind had never invented electricity-no air-conditioners, no coolers-the good old way to escape the hostile weather would have been to move downward into this curious structure, step by step, toward the receding water below. There, the breeze rises directly from the surface, cooler and cleaner, in shade and shantih. This is the baoli-the old stone stepwell. A monument to summer. One of Delhi's most intriguing and lesser-known baolis stands beside the Sufi shrine of Hazrat Khwaja Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki in Mehrauli. This afternoon, the Qutub Saheb ki Baoli is covered by a metal grid. While its massive stone walls are lined with deep niches, as if the well's sides we...