Delhi Discovered

You have doctors,lawyers and needless to say unknown,nondescript politicians after whom roads and parks have been named.

You have doctors,lawyers and needless to say unknown,nondescript politicians after whom roads and parks have been named. Not one after the men who built New Delhi,neither Lutyens nor Baker,nor my father,nor Teja Singh Malik, says Khuswant Singh in his essay My father the builder. This extremely readable essay by Singh is one of the 11 lectures held at the India International Centre over a nine-month period in 2006 which has now been brought out as a book,Celebrating Delhi. (Penguin,Rs 350)

Singh talks about how his father Sobha Singh,a 22 year-old contractor,found ample work when King George V declared that the capital of British India would be shifted from the then Calcutta to Delhi. Among his first tasks was the relocation of two of the citys foundation stones,done in the stealth of the night,travelling by a bullock-cart from Kingsway Camp to Raisina Hill. There are other interesting anecdotes too of how architect Herbert Baker used the sighting of a rainbow from Raisina Hill to determine the spot for the India Gate,for instance.

Narayani Guptas essay,Delhis history reflected in its Toponymy,uses place names to unearth the history of Delhi. The purpose of the lecture was to show how when we name or rename a place we lose a little bit of history and risk becoming a city of Nehru Nagars and Veer Savarkar Margs, says Gupta,a consultant with INTACH.

Other essays in the book feature writer-historian William Dalrymples lecture on The Religious Rhetroic in the Delhi Uprising of 1857 ,singer Vidya Raos take on The Dilli Gharana a look at how the Sufi style and the Darbari style of music fused to form the composite,now known as the Delhi Gharana. Sohail Hashmis lecture on Delhis polyglot nature and how words have found their way through and fro a maze of languages that hold the city together,too is an interesting read. Food also finds a place in these pages,where Preeti Narain in her essay,Dilli ka Asli Khana mentions how with the coming of the Mughals in 1526 AD there were developments in the culinary spheres of the city. This compilation is to add an intellectual depth to the already present knowledge that people have about Delhi, says Perminder Singh of the Attic gallery in Connaught Place,who has written the introduction to the book.

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