We love the city of our birth for the same reason for which we hate it. And we hate it precisely because it is the city of our birth. I was born in Delhi and I hope I never grow so indifferent towards it as to come to love it.
There are Delhis and Delhis. The Delhi that Khushwant Singh and Raghu Rai depict in this book is the Delhi that our Tourism Development Cor¬poration would like to present on a platter to the tourist when, made of flesh, blood and foreign exchange, he lands at Palam to the traditional Indian welcome of garlands, tilak, and embraces. Naturally, this limits the scope of the book. But the fear that the duo of writer and photogra¬pher, in this bid to make Delhi presentable to the tour¬ist, would make it unrecog¬nizable to Delhiwallas proves unjustified in the end.