Dilli meri jaan!

Delhi. A city, a history, a book, a poem, a beloved! Delhi means to me this and much more. Lived for most part of my life in Delhi, I long to return. To return to the warmth that I have always felt in its embrace. Like a prisoner in exile, every night I sleep off hoping to wake up in my home; every morning I wake up hoping that it was all a dream and I never left Delhi.

When I look back (recently turning 27, i think i can use thsi phrase now), I feel I have grown up with the city. Evolved, matured, come of age...

I remember my childhood spent in Chandni Chowk. Those narrow lanes, the chaat, the golgappe, the tikki! Everytime a guest would come home, I was made to rush to get the stuff, custom made acc to the taste palats of the guest.. sometimes very spicy, sometimes not so spicy. Living in the joint family with all my uncles, aunts & cousins, fighting for space for myself physically and in the lives of elders. I remember being pampered by Amma! Amma, the one who always loved me unconditionally, who cried everytime some elder scolded me, who cooked all the most delicious foods for me. N then the festivals, how the bazaars would lighten up and gloss over all the decaying buildings for Diwali, the Ramlila, or how would the scent of Sewayi would give flavor to the season of Id!

Having a large extended family does indeed bring some advantages, especially in childhood. You get an army of cousins! N since most of them resided in Delhi itself, it was quite a time we used to have. From excursions to Children's Park, Shantivan, India-Gate, CP, Rail Museum to overnight stays with my cousins in Daryaganj, Bengali Market, Tagore Garden, and elsewhere! All the pranks we played, all the stupid childish secret we shared!

I remember the streets of Lutyen's Delhi where my school was. The excuses we would make to leave early from the school and then hang out in CP. Those giant white pillars surrounded with trees! Escaping to Pallika Bazar to have look at the cheapest stuff and make fun of it! Having milk-shake at Caventer's or HCF at Nirula's! How I used to love the free triple sunday at Nirula's after my results. HCF could never taste as delicious ever after! Those trips with parents & neighbours to Children's Park. Those birthday celebrations at Qazi Hauz with family and with FP (fountain pepsi) in school canteen! The innocent days of just 'liberalized' India. When Pizza meant Nirula's and burger was synonimous with Wimpy's! I remember those years vividly. Those were the years I was growing up along with my Delhi. We were almost mirror images of each other, reflecting in each other the urge to break free, but still bound by ties, rediscovering & redefining morality, loving every moment of the new found freedom.

Post this, started perhaps the best phase of my life. I entered DCE, and we shifted to my father's official acco in south Delhi. I started switching between hostel during weekdays and home on weekends. I had the best of both the worlds. I was exploring a new world, opening my eyes to experiences I had never imagined. Learning so many new things, building my capabilities, taking on challenges! And Delhi around me was changing as well. The city was expanding its horizons as well, concrete roads being made, flyovers coming up, Metro entering the lives of Delhiites. Slowly, and steadily we both were become confident of ourselves, sure that whatever the destiny, we would not be left behind. And surreptitiously, a kind of arrogance was also creeping in. I could see it growing in me, and even around. I was almost another individual now.

When the four year vacation ended, came the time of life when I got busy. I was doing so many things. Just entered the job, trying to prove myself afresh. Meeting so many new people, making friends. A city, where I loved, and lost, and found it again. I remember those years, when I would drive around the city in the night. Aimlessly.. with the windows rolled down, letting the chilly airs pass through me. My cranky radio would never be working well, so I had to give it company for the music to have its effect. I felt in control.

Soon after I joined IIFT and then, I lost track. 2 years just zipped past before I could even take a breath. I just kept running from assignments to projects, from presentations to quizes. Trying to take the take the strings in my hands, but I never could do that. And I lost track. And when the MBA was getting to a close, I saw that so much had changed around me. Some of my friends had already gotten married, my niece had grown up as well from a cute baby-doll to a chatterbox. Most of my friends had changed base and almost no one remained in Delhi. It felt incomplete, but it still felt home.

Delhi was Delhi to a large extent because of the numerous people I met here over the years, some who were bound with me with blood, some whom I befriended and made a part of my life. If I start mentioning them, perhaps it might take a lifetime. But I do hope that each one of you would know what flavor did your presence in Delhi added to it. To all my friends from BVB, DCE, Aricent, IIFT and to all my wonderful cousins, Delhi without you is so unimaginable. I have played with you, laughed with you - sometimes at you, shared with you the zenith & the nadir, dreamed with you, essentially lived with you!

So here I wind up my nostalgic trip. It took a lot of time to complete and a lot many sittings, but am still not satisfied. But I don't think words would ever be able to do justice to the emotions that my city evokes. N here I am miles away from it. Missing its sometimes springy, sometimes misty mornings, missing its familiarity. Someday, and someday soon, I'll return home!

DevD in Delhi-6!

For those who have seen both the movies, I apologize to them for putting both these movies in the same line. Both are I believe complete anti-thesis of each other. But still I saw both movies with eyes wide open. I couldn't believe what I was seeing on the screen. While DevD was showing the generation next, where talking about sex is not taboo, where SRK's Whiskey has given way to ecstasy; Delhi-6 couldn't probably have taken on more cliches than this.

Lemme start with DevD. It was an absolute delight to watch Hindi cinema coming of age. I know the phrase is cliche, but nothing about the movie is. One of the reviews said that it seems that the director showed whatever he felt like, and so he did. The lingo was the one you would actually see around you.. dropping the F word here n there, using Slut to desrcibe even a guy casually. Where sex is not taboo. At times the movie looked a bit abstract, especially during a few songs where 3 men would start gyrating to the wonderful music like the presence of 3 witches of Shakespere. Initially, I was shocked that how could anyone show that on screen. All the 3 actors, Paro, Dev, Chanda couldn't have played it better. I especially loved Chanda! And then am addicted to its music. Keep listening to it in a loop!

And how so much I may nnot want to, I shall have to think about Delhi-6. Disappointment is such an understatement. I was appalled, and enraged. Making a whole movie on something like Monkeyman was a reason enough for me to not like it. Though, initally I was enjoying it very much. Having grown up in Delhi-6 myself, I was getting a childlike pleasure in seeing those areas. But those were only about 5-10 minutes. Then those shots gave way to the artificial sets and the whole smell of the old Delhi was lost. Though all the characters were very good with great artists to help them, but then you need more than good characters to make a good movie. FIrst, the movie got the facts wrong. Monkeyman phenonmenon never happened in old Delhi. It struck east Delhi. N then there was no purpose of the movie. You could see its not going anywhere. And then those in your face morality lessons on caste system, religion, dowry, and what not! I felt like screaming that pplllllssssss spare us the ordeal. And if anyone was expecting a better second half, sorry guys! The monkeyman was being called Hindu from one community on account of Hanuman being a Hindu God, while Hindus accuse the Monkey to be a Muslim terrorist. Thats where I lost all patience. Height if ridiculouness! I was only too happy to see Abhishek dying, deriving a sadistic pleasure, but UTV could not tolerate even that and brought him back to the mortal world after serving him Jalebis in heaven with Amitabh in his most avoidable comeo. The movie is so bad that I have started to avoid one of the finest albums everby Rehman after watching it! I feel like suing Rakesh Om Prakash Mehra!!!

Guys, go see DevD again after watching Delhi-6 if you want to regain faith in Hindi movies. M sure it won't disappoint! You'll like Delhi more in DevD than in Delhi-6 for sure!!

The beloved Dhabas... I'll miss you!

I went to college after quite a few dayz. Since I entered from the back gate, I didn't notice then. But while returning home, I could see it.. Or rather not see it.. My beloved dhabas are gone. Demolished, eliminated, decimated, cleared!

IIFT life and dhabas, could they ever be thought of without each other? The only place where I could hope to venture out to, despite the most gruelling of schedules I have ever seen in my life. The paneer parantha, the aloo pyaaz ones, the ghobhi parantha, mix-veg parantha, the macorroni, methi parantha etc etc etc... Storming the cold freezing nites of winters, we would savor those paranthas and wonder what would have happened had they not been there. I thank God that I never had to do without them!

A place, that many delhities have been frequenting for decades now, has succumbed to MCD's orders to clear the encroachments under some hawkers related act. I don't think any other dhabawala could ever dream of achieving fame equivalent to that of Tanku! A brand in himself. While driving back, I saw him lying on the cleared platform, which used to witness the buzz of the youth at any point of time in the day. Thw whole green stretch is silent now. Perhaps brooding over the demise of the kiosks that gave life to this street.

The cheap food is gone, perhaps someone somewhere would have gotten the license to operate a restaraunt in a posh market somewhere instead. India, sure is changing!

Gone are the days, and gone are the dhabas! Like 100s of IIFTians and students from nearby B Schools, I will miss you dhabas!! May your souls rest in peace!

Aye mere pyaare watan...

I wanted to write a review of The Last Mughal. Finished it a few days back. But then I could hardly remember the starting as I read it about 6 months back. A special gift as it was, I started reading it in Malaysia and as luck would have it, completed it when I am in Helsinki. SO basically I read it never in the country it talks about, in the city I love as much as its Scottish writer does, but understand so little.

The book starts with how the last of the Great Mughal, Bahadur Shah II became the emperor of Delhi in his sixties. The once great Timurs' influence was now reduced to a small yet captivating city of Shahjahanabad that Shahajahan had built with so much of love. The old king with the pen-name of Zafar, was a marvelous gardener and an articulate poet. William Dalrymple vividly desribes how King only in name, Zafar could barely manage to exert his will inside the palace which had become full of cheating cocumbines and unruly illegitimate princes. The control of Delhi was more or less passed onto the British like in the rest of the India. But this did not stop Zafar from taking Delhi to its cultural zenith. It was an era of Ghalib, the times of Zauq. When courtesans doubled as tutors to children of the nobility teaching them the courtesies (adab). Zafar himself had a few as his disciples. Delhi was a city that hosted the Mushaiyaras every evening with fresh mangoes being served and the most refined Urdu being spoken. The words that Dalrymple uses immediately recreate that lost grandeur in front of your eyes.

As I read the initial few pages, the whole Chandni Chowk started to crowd my imagination. The streets I grew up in started to lose their shabbiness and regain their grandeur - such is the effect of William Dalrymple's words. The Havelis, the bazaars, the lanes, The Red Fort, the Jama Masjid were all transported to the Mughal era and I could see the streets hosting the poetry competitions between Zauq and Ghalib, with wine being served and songs by the courtesans. This was Delhi of 1857.

When 300 mutinous Hindu soldiers entered Red Fort in the middle of the night to seek the blessings of a Muslim king, he saw a chance to regain the pride his dynasty had lost in the past century. Dalrymple shows how the rebellion was not only a mutiny of some soldiers against their senior officers, it was at the same time a social, economic, political and military in nature. Scared and angered by the inroads that Christian missionaries were making in the Hindu and Muslim cultures, the whole of north India rose up against the mightiest Empire in the world. Today it is hard to imagine how the whole Hindu heartland rallied to Delhi proclaiming a Muslim king as its true ruler. But it was Zafar's hard-work over the years that gained him this respect. Extremely tolerant, he even banned cow-slaughter and didn't let the Rebellion turn against Hindus ever.

Meanwhile little did Zafar know how his nod of consent to the 300 sepoys would change the course of his beloved city and his famous dynasty. After killing the British in Delhi and thus capturing Delhi, the sepoys started looting the city for and wealth and soon enough the Dilliwallahs start despising whom they called Tilanganas. Dalrymple quotes various complaints to the emperor by common people against such plundering. He then shifts the focus to the British. How British try to regain the lost ground inch by inch. At this time Dalrymple cleverly reminds the reader of the situation that the world is seeing today in Palestine-Israel conflict. The book then gets into a trap of how the situation was worsening in the city and gets rather boring as Dalrymple keeps quoting various letters which are now preserved in National Archives of India. The ending is rather abrupt when the sepoys give in.

Dalrymple then describes how cruelly the British massacered the Delhi residents and how very muslim inhabitant was either killed or thrown out of the city they always lived in. The author gives a moving account of the public hanging of people, the destruction of Havelis and the Red Fort. Dalrymple then goes on to describe the last year of Zafar in exile till he dies.

The most interesting thing about the book is the way the author has dealt with the title character, that of Zafar. At one time he would be critical of him, at another - sympathetic. The reader is given a lot of space to decide on him. As for me, I found him to a weak man, a weaker husband and even a weaker king. But can anyone expect a man is his eighties to be as pragmatic? A ruler who became the king in his sixties when the whole of India had already given in to the British? How could he have behaved otherwise?

Perhaps the book is a lesson to the politicians of today to give way to the younger generation. N also for the world, on how can Islam be actually integrated with other religions and how atrocities lead to nothing but revenge. Overall, a must read for anyone who loves Delhi!