Between 2004 and 2008 I was involved in running an after-school creative activity centre for children. The place, called Leap Years was the brainchild of Rahul Bhandare, an enterprising young man with interest in music, the arts and much else besides his interests in power generation…
In the majestic setting of the Delhi Darbar of 1911, King George V let out on a secret project. It came as a surprise to most, if not an outright shock to all. The capital of British India was to be shifted out of Calcutta and Delhi was to resume its historical identity.
The fourteen chapters of Nirmala Jain’s Dilli Sheher Dar Sheher (Delhi: Between Many Cities), were serialized in Jansatta and Hans. They are part-autobio-graphical, part-commentary on Delhi since the 1940s.The book opens with stories, anecdotes, sketches of spaces, corners and lanes, intimate accounts of locales, languages, tastes and smells of the Old City…
Brick by brick, Intizar Hussain finely constructs Delhi in Dilli Tha Jiska Naam, his own Dillinama. His characters are at times mythical, at others real.
We are indeed grateful to Professor Mushirul Hasan for bringing to public knowledge yet another narrative that can serve as a valuable history source book. Mutiny Memoirs by Colonel A.R.D. Mackenzie, according to Hasan, has not been referred to by many of the important writings on the events of 1857 (p. 9).
Cities are sites on which humanity plays out life. It symbolizes the vagaries of life or what we choose to call life. They share a symbiotic relationship with culture.