A city of stories

The story of a city is no definite story, only a loosely fused collage of impressions; impressions appreciable enough to shape a past, a past potent enough to define a significant story, an individual’s story. There is no story from a rootless past.

A city has a dual character: one visible in its people, and the other visible in its monuments. People are often a disappointment, or the locals hide themselves in the old unknown quarters; only the long standing mute monuments are left to give voice to the city. In my eight years in Delhi, I too sat in the long evening shadow casted by the tall medieval commemorates, speckled here and there on the city’s canvass, oftentimes reading in the fading light, letting the long history of the diachronic city slowly seep into me.

They say: to understand Delhi, learn to survive the heat first.

The long summer of Delhi casts an impenetrable heat envelope over the city for months. The heat is barely missed and it invariably manifests itself as the damp back of the shirt, as simmering air, as blown apart tires, as melted tarmac. A few wisp of thin clouds, when sometimes mild the hellfire sunlight, the resulting shadowy day would come as a pleasant surprise. However, on most other days, it’s the early morning breeze that provides the much needed respite.

On these days, long nights spent doing nothing in particular, frequently ended in picking up the bike for a random ride on the empty avenues of Lutyen’s New Delhi. Sun would still be a rumour, and the wide roads gave no signs of the traffic that would beset them in few hours. I rode my bike through AIIMS, from over the aerodrome, now used only by the hobbyists, cutting through the Lodhi road to turn from the Ashoka hotel onto the India Gate, where I would take the first break. Invariably, this time of the day was one of the few hours when heat gave way. Else, in summers, the heat of the day trickled from the evenings into the night, making them immovably dense.

In such vacant hour, the India Gate and the Raisaina Hills in the background spoke of the new past, often shouting promises of the future to come. The promises sounded substantial, and within my immediate surroundings, these promises had the surety of casted iron. The Modern Art Gallery, conveniently located on the circle at a visible distance from the India Gate and housing Amrita Pritam and Roerich, complemented the talk of the new world order and our place in it. This was the beginning and surely the end will be glorious.

I would soon become tired, and after smoking the last of the cigarette bought from the only vendor selling at this late hour, I would bike into the heart of old Delhi, located a little further, but uttering tales from hundreds of years back.
Old Delhi is so well connected to the New Delhi that it sometimes gives an impression of being a part of the nascent post British history. However, it goes back to late 1600s when Shah Jahan presided over the grand structures of the Red Fort and the Jama Masjid; nearby surroundings are spangled with Chandani Chock, which was setup by Jahanara Begum, Shah Jahan’s daughter.

In true sense, Delhi is older than India. Go back a few more years from Shah Jahan’s time and step a little south, and you would find the Delhi of Iltutmish and Tughlak; Qutub Minar, standing alone carefully whispers fables of those times, when the eccentric king ordered the entire capital to shift further down to Daultabad, a decision which killed a majority of population, which on King’s order marched down south in the terrible heat and without water.

Clip two thousand years more from the long history of this city; amongst the rubble of Painted Grey Ware, one would encounter the time when the epic battle was fought over which Mahabharata was written. Looking at the Purana Qila, made by Humayun, would one imagine it the same site served as the famed Indraprastha Palace of the Pandavas? But so it goes. 
 
These thoughts would criss-cross my mind as I stood sipping the warm tea near the Jama Masjid and watched the sun slowly climb. The bicycles and rickshaws would soon thicken the roads, and I would be ready to go on the long road back to rest my wearied eyes.

To walk through Delhi is to often stumble into numerous overlapping true parables in the long history of India.

Author: Nitin Chaudhary