Straight Face

It is not just petty political parties, the BJP and the Congress, which want to put their seal on the city and, through it, on the country. Over the centuries, the ambitions of innumerable men have jostled to control this vast space on Yamuna8217;s banks. Sultan and marauder have sought to shape its destiny. But the Ozymandian truth is that Delhi8217;s lone and level soil has always stretched far beyond them.

The Mauryas and the Guptas, the Slave kings and the Khiljis, mad old Tughlak 8212; momentarily driven out by a powerful thirst 8212; and the Lodhis and Mughals. Even Maharaja Jai Singh got to build his observatory in the city8217;s heart so that he could track the stars of destiny. Likeshadows on a great wall, they played their part and went the way of dust. Dust, after all, laces the very air that Delhi breathes, great swathes of it blowing in from the Rajasthan desert and softening the contours of the most impressive of its edifices.

The various rulers built several Delhis in their own image, giving them names like Indraprasta and Tughlakabad. Over time this city spread over an estimated 750,000 villages and became a unique palimpsest of power.

When the British got more confident of their suzerainty over the jewel in their crown, they took to hosting magnificent durbars for their royalty in this very city. It is one of the great ironies of modern Indian history that the moment the colonialists began to believe in their own invincibility, was the very one that witnessed the ground shake beneath their feet.

In 1911, at the coronation of King George V in Delhi, it was officially decreed that the capital of the Raj would shift from Job Charnock8217;s backyard to Shah Jehan8217;s courtyard. Itwas as if the grand patrons of the Raj had come to believe that only if they ruled from Delhi would their empire seem a legitimate enterprise.

But unlike the serpentine and untidy streets and the mosques and mausoleums of yore, the Delhi of the Anglo-Saxon was ruled by a totally different geometry. A geometry of lines and circles 8212; neat, sanitised, orderly. They sliced up Raisina Hill and crafted an expensive if monstrous bauble in pink sandstone and Dholpur buff meant to achieve a dual purpose: to house the Viceroy and fill the minds of the natives with awe. It was empire striking back at empire, King George pitted against Emperor Shah Jehan.

Edwin Landseer Lutyens8217; aesthetics of arrogance could not, however, postpone the fated midnight hour. But that again is Delhi, which has always and unfailingly kept its tryst with new destinies, quite unmindful of the fleeting monuments of men.

The rulers may propose but it is the ordinary men and women of this country who dispose. Look at the gargantuan palm ofDelhi and read its personality and fate in it. If the Raj Path, or the road of the realm, that runs from Rashtrapati Bhavan to India Gate, appears like the city8217;s fateline, the Jan Path, or the road of the people, is its heartline. And Jan Path bisects Raj Path as if to demonstrate a important moral imperative to the world, as if to say that no matter how hard the rulers work to pave their road to power, they will finally and inevitably have to contend with the road on which the people walk.

Delhi has remained faithful to this truth, and will continue to remain faithful to it even as its politicians tear at each other to claim this city as their own. All roads may lead to this city, true. But Delhi has also been the graveyard of empires and political ambitions.