The story of Delhi is a work in progress: Malvika Singh

The story of Delhi, like the city itself, is a work in progress. As publisher and moderator for the session, Malvika Singh points out, “There can’t be a “definitive biography, a final word, because the city is constantly evolving.” That settled the question raised in the title of one of the first sessions at the Times Lit Fest Delhi, 2015 – “Chronicling Delhi: Does Delhi still lack a definitive biography”.It does and always will.
But of Delhi’s biographies, there have been many. Each of the three speakers have addressed some aspects of it each. Sadia Dehlvi – so very Delhi, her origins are inscribed in her name – has several books on Delhi’s heritage and is working on another two tracing the history of its cuisine. Dehlvi’s family, like all “original Delhiites,” comes from Old Delhi, Shahjahanabad. “My family has been in Delhi for 500-600 years. I’m one of the ‘original Delhiites’ but I think the idea is delusional. You’re all Delhiites,” she graciously says to the audience. “Delhi is accepting. It’s due to what we call and want to preserve – the Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb” that has prevailed in the city for centuries. Namita Gokhale has set several of her novels in the Capital including her first, Paro: Dreams of Passion, published in 1984 when Delhi was mostly “a dull bureaucratic place” but was changing after the 1982 Asian Games. She describes it as a “ruthless city that takes people in and sidelines them.” She’d later mention the resettlement colonies. Singh herself has written two books on Delhi and edited one.
Dehlvi grew up in post-Partition India. “With the enterprising, vibrant Punjabis coming in, our whole lifestyle, culture, was threatened,” she says. Saying ‘bola’ instead of ‘kaha’ made her mother shudder; women started eating street-food – “It was blasphemy to eat on the streets” -- and butter-chicken became a legitimate part of the city’s food culture. “Coming into Delhi,” observes Singh, “Has happened peacefully. There’s been no discord.” But the growth and change hasn’t been all organic. As Gokhale points out, after the British left, Lutyen’s Delhi was handed over to the government. “If the British had been able to connect the colonial part of Delhi to its older parts, the bureaucracy wouldn’t be living in a strange bubble. Now Lutyen’s Delhi has the snobbery of Indraprastha.” Indraprastha is one of the oldest of the seven cities of Delhi and Gokhale has interpreted the Mahabharata for children. Delhi’s survived attacks too. Singh argues that after 1857, “the next attack came with the Emergency”. She also believes the young “don’t venture” into Old Delhi – “a living museum” -- but Dehlvi believes the Delhi Metro is changing that.
There have also been ‘biographies’ in Urdu, Dehlvi points out, that have not been translated – Sir Syed Ahmad Khan’s and Bashiruddin Ahmad’s. “There hasn’t been a lot of work after 1947,” she says. RV Smith and others documented the changes in Delhi but it was Khushwant Singh “who made Delhi fashionable.” There have been many more chroniclers since, of course, including William Dalrymple and many other foreigners who’ve lived and worked in the city and wrote of the parts they encountered.