People who love Delhi often cherish very different versions of the city. For some, its cosmopolitan character and rich mosaic of languages and cultures is the greatest attraction. Others are charmed by Delhi’s extraordinary historical legacy, where the remnants of successive empires coexist with the institutions of a modern Republic.
For many, the city’s commercial dynamism and promise of opportunity and a better life remain its defining appeal. And then, there is Delhi’s unique status as the nation’s political and administrative capital, where the country’s most consequential decisions are made and where power, policy and public debate converge.
In Wild Capital: Discovering Nature in Delhi, however, naturalist Neha Sinha invites readers to discover another Delhi. Hers is a city inhabited not only by people of diverse cultures and communities but also by towering semal and vajradanti trees, amaltas blossoms, kites circling above Old Delhi, golden jackals slipping through the Ridge after dusk, nilgai wandering the city’s fringes, migratory birds returning to its wetlands and countless insects, frogs, reptiles and plants that have adapted to an intensely urban landscape.
It is the Delhi of the Aravalli, where the Yamuna is not dead and where nature may seem to have retreated before the concrete but continues to endure and improvise alongside human life.
The book is, in more ways than one, the naturalist’s tribute to the city in which she grew up. As a child, Sinha found comfort not in dolls or toys but in the garden at her home — an intimate observation station where she marvelled at the ways of insects, watched birds build nests and learnt to distinguish seasons by the flowers of trees. It was shaded by trees, all of whose names she did not yet know.
For the budding conservationist, this patch of green nurtured a habit of patient observation and an instinctive curiosity about the living world.
Nature also became the medium through which Sinha forged friendships that transcended social boundaries. With her friend Shakuntala, she spent carefree afternoons racing to gather fruits that were often more enticing than delicious.
Recalled with quiet tenderness, her account of the friendship is a meditation on the unequal trajectories of childhood, where nature offered a shared space of joy even as the realities of the world imposed very different futures on the two youngsters.
Like Shakuntala, several of the places and landscapes of Sinha’s childhood have lost their ebullience. Wetlands have shrunk, old trees have been felled and the city’s natural rhythms have been disrupted by relentless urbanisation. However, nowhere does Sinha betray any sense of lament. Instead, Wild Capital nudges readers to recognise that nature has not disappeared altogether — it has become less visible, more fragmented and more vulnerable. “How do we save these bewildering places?” Sinha asks.
The first thing to do is to pay attention to plants and water, even on a small scale. And as her interlocutors tell her, some species do make their way out of apathy.
The naturalist also suggests simple things that can help. Instead of manicured lawns with thirsty grasses, one can grow native species of the city. This faith in nature’s resilience runs through Wild Capital. For Sinha, the natural world is also a source of moral insight. As she observes: “I have found in gardens and forests an order that’s missing in human society: The capacity to feel challenged by physical difficulties, yet never feel oppressed.”
Speed, productivity and constant growth are today seen as hallmarks of urban society. Wild Capital alerts us to another reality: Trees mature over decades, rivers carve their pathways over millennia, and seasonal cycles remind us that periods of dormancy are as essential as periods of growth. A forest may not be efficient in the industrial sense, yet its diversity and interconnectedness allow it to weather shocks and withstand stresses. By inviting readers to look more closely at the life that persists around them, Sinha reminds us that conservation need not always be about ambitious policies. Protecting the astonishing riches of the natural world could actually begin with the simple act of paying attention. By encouraging us to rediscover the wild that persists in the cracks of an expanding metropolis, Wild Capital makes a gentle yet compelling case for reclaiming our own capacity for coexistence with nature.
Wild Capital: Discovering Nature in Delhi. (Image created using AI) 
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