Bollywood horror-comedy Stree 2 puts the cinematic spotlight on Kati Ghati gate, a massive stone structure steeped in legend and mystery in Madhya Pradesh’s Chanderi, a small town renowned for its delicate sarees.
The small town of Chanderi in Madhya Pradesh has long been celebrated for its eponymous silk and cotton sarees, cherished for their lightness, transparency, and the delicate sheen that creates a shimmering moiré effect when touched by light.
Tucked away in the shadow of the rugged Vindhyachal hills, with the Betwa river meandering nearby, Chanderi is a place where history and legend merge, and time seems to stand still.
Once renowned solely for its exquisite sarees, Chanderi found itself in the cinematic limelight thanks to Bollywood’s horror-comedy Stree in 2018, followed by its sequel Stree 2. The movie’s 2024 redux has brought renewed fame to one of the town’s most enigmatic landmarks.
One of the most memorable scenes unfolds at the Kati Ghati gate, a colossal structure that looms over the landscape like a silent sentinel. Vicky, played by Rajkummar Rao, escorts the female lead (Shraddha Kapoor) to a bus parked beneath the towering arch. The eerie, almost spectral presence of the gate creates the perfect backdrop for a film steeped in ghostly lore. Yet, for the people of Chanderi, Kati Ghati’s haunting aura is nothing new.
“It’s a town where legends are as real as the air you breathe,” said a local. “The gate has always held a certain mystique. It’s not just the size but the stories that have seeped into the very rock.”
Perched at 230 ft above sea level, the Kati Ghati gate is 80 ft high and 39 ft wide. It’s a marvel of human ambition — a single rock, painstakingly carved into a vast corridor that links the ancient regions of Bundelkhand and Malwa.
Although it lacks ornate detail, the gate’s raw grandeur commands awe, standing as a tribute to the ingenuity and toil of a mason whose name, lost to time, is now enshrined in legend. “His spirit is said to still linger here, a ghost forever guarding his creation,” said Ramesh Singh, a local guide who often takes visitors through the gate’s arch.
Where stone meets spirit
The story behind Kati Ghati is one of both brilliance and tragedy. In 1480, local governor Sher Khan’s son Jiman Khan ordered the creation of this monumental gateway to welcome Sultan Ghiyasuddin Khilji, who was set to arrive the following day.
The impossible task of carving a passage through the hill in just one night was taken up by a single mason. He succeeded, only to be met with fury when Jiman discovered a fatal flaw — the gate had no door, no provision for hinges either, leaving it vulnerable and unfinished in the eyes of the ruler.
Deprived of his promised reward, the heartbroken mason ended his life at the very spot where his masterpiece stood. Today, his grave lies near the gate, a sombre reminder of the price of greatness.
There’s a heaviness here, a feeling that the gate is more than just stone. It’s as if the very air is thick with the sorrow of a life cut short.
Visitors can’t help but feel the weight of this tragedy. The air around Kati Ghati carries a sense of the unfinished, a melancholy that lingers even under the hot sun. And as tourists, drawn by the stories, make their way through the arch, they gaze upward at the sheer rock, imagining the mason’s final moments — the thrill of success, the sting of betrayal, the descent into despair.
Yet the legends surrounding Kati Ghati don’t end with the mason’s tale. Some whisper of a time when Mughal badshah Babur’s army faced a similar dilemma, their path to Chanderi blocked by an immovable hill.
Babur allegedly ordered his men to carve through the rock, creating the very gateway that now captures the imagination of travellers. While this version of events remains unverified, it only adds to the mystery that shrouds the gate.
“In Chanderi, history and myth are often indistinguishable,” Singh said. “And that’s what makes places like Kati Ghati so fascinating. Every story, whether true or not, adds another layer to its allure.”
Magic drape of Chanderi
Beyond the ghostly allure of Kati Ghati, Chanderi reveals its truest self through the deft fingers of its weavers.
The origins of Chanderi stretch back into myth. It is said that Lord Krishna’s cousin Shishupal laid the town’s first stones during the Vedic age. But it wasn’t until the 13th century that Chanderi truly began to blossom, when a group of Koshti weavers from Jhansi settled in Pranpur, a village just three km away.
Over 400 families in this village still carry the legacy of their ancestors, weaving sarees that have captivated royalty, connoisseurs, and fashion lovers alike.
Under the patronage of Mughal emperors, Chanderi’s weavers once worked with pure gold. But the craft has never been static. It is ever-evolving. In the 1930s, a new material arrived from the East — Japanese silk.
This discovery marked a turning point, as weavers began replacing traditional cotton warps with silk, creating sarees that glowed with an ethereal sheen. With the addition of threads of gold and silver, known as zari, the weaves of Chanderi took on an unmatched opulence.
Creating one Chanderi saree can take 15 to 20 days of craftsmanship, while more intricate designs, such as jaal — a technique that mimics the mesh of a garden trellis — can require two to three months of dedicated labour.
Portal to fine craftsmanship
Pranpur is now hailed as India’s first craft handloom tourism village. Under a project spearheaded by design students from Ujjain, the village’s houses have been restored with fresh coats of paint and vibrant floral designs.
The efforts of the Madhya Pradesh Tourism Board to promote Pranpur as a hub of textile tourism have borne fruit, drawing visitors who seek not only to admire but to understand the centuries-old craft of Chanderi weaving.
“Pranpur is more than just a village, it’s a living museum,” said Neha Gupta, a designer who has worked closely with the local weavers. “Each saree tells a story, each thread a connection to the past.”
Chanderi, with its regal monuments and age-old traditions, is a place where the past is never far away. The town’s iconic fort, a relic of the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire, towers over the landscape, offering sweeping views of the plains below. But for all its beauty, it is the Kati Ghati gate that continues to cast the longest shadow. It remains a place of quiet wonder, where the veil between history and myth is gossamer thin.
The lead image at the top shows Kati Ghati in Chanderi. It is perched 230 ft above sea level. (Photo by Akansha Deshmukh)
Akansha Deshmukh is an independent investigative journalist who operates mainly in central India.
