Khushwant Singh’s version of Dilli is startlingly accurate. He describes the age old city as a whore. She is not always beautiful, more often than not the city is a hub of ugly manners, mistakes and misdeeds and yet Dilli has her own appeal, her own allure. No matter how far one might go they are always pulled back. The writing is stark, no ugly truths are hidden about Dilli, in this book in fact they are openly flaunted. So much so, that I an ardent lover of this city steeped in Mughal history couldn’t help but cringe at the blatant truths being explored. Bhagmati is utilized as the human depiction of the city, she is that human that Singh has used to explain the subtle nuances of the city in tart language. Perhaps Dilli is the equivalent of an Indian Wonderland. A hub of madness and curious things some ugly, some beautiful. But as Lewis Carroll once said, the mad people are the best ones, and perhaps that’s true of places too and if so, perhaps there is no better place to live in than colourful Dilli.
Twilight in Delhi, by Ahmed Ali
I have always looked at this era we currently live in with a slight air of disdain. Always wondered what it would be like to live in the Delhi that history has written stories of. From Indraprashta to the Delhi Sultanate to the reign of the great emperors of the Mughal Dynasty to the era of oppression. Twilight in Delhi, pulled me into the Delhi only history and dreams have told me about. The city is painted with history in decadent brushstrokes, color and smell jumping off the pages with vibrant and descriptive writing. It was the Delhi who pays homage to the poets, dreamers and lovers. The Delhi where there is barely any pollution and the stars shine at night. Where the aazaan echoes in the gallis. Where the tea stall Uncle doles out milky brown chai and gajra is slipped onto slender wrists with sly smiles and requests for coin. The poetry adds a lyrical sweetness to this book, aiding the striking imagery Ahmed Ali has created. The story builds slowly, creating characters who roam your mind for many hours after you have finished reading, the small moments of their life, happy and tragic, seeping into your thoughts. And amongst these, the city itself breathes. She has had life given to her in this book, her heartbeat echoing the readers with each turn of page.
The Heart Has Its Reasons (Dil-o-Danish), by Krishna Sobti
Sometimes I wonder what we as highly educated Indians lose when we lose a language? It is a great point of shame for me that I am unable to read and write in Hindi and Urdua as fluidly and beautifully as I am able to in English. I felt that sense of loss acutely while reading Krishna Sobti’s ‘The Heart Has It’s Reasons’ originally penned in Hindi as ‘Dil-o-Danish’. While Chandni Chowk came alive, shadowy silhouettes of it rising up off the very pages as I read, I can’t help but feel I am missing out. The experience remains incomplete. The sharp zuh in razai that slips between the teeth, the soft, mellifluous fuh that caresses the tongue when you whisper kulfi, feel lonely amongst the rest of the posh English words. But the story remains rich in content, an affair in the Dilli of the 20’s, and in no other place but Chandni Chowk. Where pearls are sold at corner stores, saris are accompanied by shiny, gold brocade and salwar kameez’s are adorned with thick embroidered shawls. And amongst the khan-khan of stacks of churiya and the fragrance of fresh chaat are the intricately woven characters trying to balance love and sex with the shackles of family, rules and a life in Dilli’s Chandni Chowk in the 1920s. Characters that have so much depth, I can’t help but feel my heart race at the reality of it all. Kutumb and Mehak possess a strength beyond words, a strength that resonates with me simply because it is the strength that lies in the essence of being women. One plays the beloved, the other the wife and both remain betrayed. The heart has its reasons, Sobti says, and I wonder do they hold any merit in front of life as we know it? Perhaps they are the only reasons that matter and we still aren’t able to see them for what they are…
Delhi is Not Far, by Ruskin Bond
I first read Ruskin Bond when I was nine years old and I fell in love almost instantly. His books brought alive India for children. I have sailed down the Angry River with him, found an inexplicable desire to buy only Blue Umbrellas and desired a Room on the Roof of my own house. To this date I blame the Rusty series for my lifelong dream of one day possessing a tiger (who I will name Timothy in honor of the series of course!) as a beloved pet.
‘Delhi is Not Far’ is a small novella that was my first foray into Ruskin Bond as an adult. It details the life in the small town of Pipalnagar just a few miles away from Delhi just a few years after the long sought independence, when the 5 year plans were the newest thing the country had seen and the aftermath of Partition was still felt rather viciously. The characters are figures who come alive, but so well narrated that I found myself watching what unfolds for them from their eyes. The epileptic Suraj who is the child torn asunder by the violence in 1947, and the barber Deep Chand so alike the parlour ladies who do women’s waxing today. The writing is subtle, building slowly into a crescendo that washes down upon the reader in soft waves as they reach the end of this book. The story while not set in Delhi itself, discusses the dream that is the capital city. A dream for so many in this country, from towns big and small, villages and dusty places we might never even have heard of. Everyone dreams of Delhi. To make it to this city that looks like pictures painted on stained glass, that has stories on its walls and magic in its air, that has history in its gallis and trinkets in every corner and crevice. The dream of Delhi, that elusive bubble that we and every character in this book tries to catch before it pops. And perhaps, we are all fools, those of us who still dream of dirty Delhi, with illusions in our eyes. We are those fools who dream of one day walking a pet tiger named Timothy down the lanes of Chandni Chowk, through the amalta covered roads of Connaught Place and stroll past the artwork of Lodhi District. And for those yet to arrive – Bond does say, ‘Delhi is Not Far’, you need only dream…
City of Djinns, by William Dalrymple
There would be no other way, for me, to end this series but with this book. I read it when I was in high school, and it is perhaps the reason I fell in love with Delhi. No other book can capture Delhi the way ‘City of Djinns’ does. William Dalrymple writes a travelogue to this city of Sufis and history, the very heart of India. He weaves together history so effortlessly and in such a manner that reading it becomes more like reading a story. And perhaps it should be classified that way. What pulled me into the pages far more than the city could, were the characters. They are a variety of characters that Dalrymple encounters and within their small lives he narrates the largeness of their stories. We remain ignorant to the story of the men and women roaming the streets, driving taxis, selling gol gappas, painting the walls of the city… And that is what Dalrymple manages to encapsulate within these pages. The history of Delhi is visible more in the people that populate it than the buildings of immense grandeur and beauty that tower over us on the streets. That is what I take away from this book every time and that will always remain my understanding of Delhi. It is far more than just a city of history. It is the city of the djinns that Dalrymple hears about, the city of those who have suffered and those who have survived, a city of magic and above all – it is the city of stories.
