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The Hindu
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
What is it about Delhi's contradictions that makes it unforgettable in fiction?
The city of Delhi evokes unease. Its skies are noxious; its politics, vile. Its breath is putrid. Uncouth people run the bureaucracy, sit behind shop counters, and drive their SUVs with mindless, brutal speed, using language that is filthy and whiskey-slurred. Everything about the city evokes a frantic need to escape it. Stereotypes proliferate, like the amaltas bursting forth in vulgar yellow in summer. But even the trees, of which there are many — neem, fig, jamun, gulmohar — are unable to redeem Delhi. It remains, in memory, in conversation, and in comparison to that city by the sea, Mumbai, unloved. Minarets and memories To me, Delhi is home. I grew up in a neighbourhood flecked with the tattered minarets of the Khilji dynasty. I was fascinated by the one closest to my house – Chor Minar, a cylindrical minaret riddled with holes that once held the decapitated heads of thieves, or of the Mongols who raided the Delhi Sultanate in the 13th century. Alauddin Khilji, ruler of the Sultanate, was an insatiable collector of heads. As a child, I played with my friends in the circular park around the minaret, and even climbed its spiral stairway to reach its uneven roof. Years later, across continents, my wistful adult gaze caught the delightful incongruity of a Frisbee or shuttlecock severing the air around the once-terrifying minaret, reducing it to a picturesque backdrop. In both my novels, Stillborn Season (2018) and Of Mothers and Other Perishables (2024), I depict these incongruities in a bid to capture moments of my childhood. The minarets I once knew as mute props now emerge as protagonists in the Delhi I reclaim through fiction. Other beloved landmarks — coffee shops, my convent school in Chanakyapuri, the pillared corridors of Connaught Place — materialise with imprecise details in my narratives. In Of Mothers and Other Perishables, a dead mother, one of the novel's narrators, resurrects her time in the world. She recalls sipping Cona coffee with her future husband at United Coffee House. It is 1974; she has only just met him at a play, Sultan Razia, performed for the first time at Purana Qila. A smidgen of local history seeps into my storytelling, shaping its contours, warming its blood, birthing its characters. Scams, slogans and sitars Recent novels set in Delhi portray a corrupt, polluted metropolis teeming with caricatures. I'd rather not name these works that attempt damning indictments, only to create cardboard fictions. For you have to know a place well enough to damn it with eloquence. A novelist who does immediately spring to mind, though, is Arundhati Roy. To mention her in a piece about Delhi, about writing Delhi, is inevitable, and necessary. In her novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2017), Roy, builder of irrepressible cities, throws open the Delhi of the hijras who live on its fringes. Shahjahanabad, or Old Delhi, appears as a cacophonous ghetto, its air rippling with prayers emanating from its dargahs, its streets crowded with vendors, cripples, and obese goats destined for slaughter on Eid. New Delhi, the capital, less flamboyant than the older parts, is where 'Grey flyovers snaked out of her Medusa skull, tangling and untangling under the yellow sodium haze.' Roy's Delhi, where the amaltas '…reached up and whispered to the hot brown sky, Fuck You,' is a hectic city, an ancient city, a dispossessed city, a city of scams, a city of slogans and sloganeers. A new anthology, Basti & Durbar: Delhi-New Delhi: A City in Stories (2025), is a soulful exposition of the many Delhis that exist, simultaneously, or piled upon the ruins of erstwhile Delhis. In the introduction, writer and editor Rakhshanda Jalil poses a few questions: 'Is the city central, or peripheral, to the writer's concerns? Can the 'spirit' of Delhi, the sum total of its disparate and disarming parts, ever really be captured in words?' The 32 narratives that follow demonstrate that the elusive 'spirit' of Delhi can, indeed, be conveyed in words. The selection includes a translated excerpt from Mohan Rakesh's Hindi novel, Andhere Band Kamre (1961). Titled 'Ibadat Ali's Haveli in Qassabpura: Two Episodes, Many Years Apart', the excerpt tells of a dilapidated house in the Muslim neighbourhood of Qassabpura, where the narrator, living as a tenant in a rat-infested room, hears the sound of a sitar playing at night. Old Ibadat Ali, owner of the house, which has been taken over by Hindu tenants, sometimes plays his sitar, briefly reinstating the dignity and grandeur of the quarters. From love to literature The stories that, to me, truly represent Delhi are the ones that linger on ephemeral moments of beauty or heroism or love. Preti Taneja's novel We That Are Young (2017) reimagines William Shakespeare's King Lear through the lives of a dynastic business family that lives and conspires in the Farm, in New Delhi. The family also runs the Company, a conglomerate of coffee shops, luxury hotels, and pashmina shawl businesses. Even as the sky swoons and grand tragedies unfold, the narrative offers the unexpected tenderness of a poetry launch at a bookstore in Hauz Khas Village. It is here that Jeet, one of the novel's characters, meets his homosexual lover Vik. Delhi is a place of amorous encounters — romance in public parks, sex for a fee on G.B. Road. Sujit Saraf's 2008 novel, The Peacock Throne, excerpted in Basti & Durbar as 'An Election Meeting in Chandni Chowk', is a subversive account of a Women's Day function organised by the prostitutes of G.B. Road. It is a sensual city, this Delhi; a resilient city, a city of whores, eunuchs, and coiffed rummy players at the Gymkhana Club. And because it is unloved by those who live in its neighbourhoods and study at its universities, it becomes the stuff of literature. The writer is the author of two critically-acclaimed novels.
India Today
7 days ago
- Politics
- India Today
Akbar, Babur, Aurangzeb face historical scrutiny in NCERT's class 8 textbook
The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has released a new Class 8 Social Science textbook that offers a revised take on Indian history from the 13th to 17th centuries. The book, part of the series Exploring Society: India and Beyond, is the first among the new NCERT releases to introduce students to the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal earlier editions, this version directly addresses instances of brutality and religious includes a special note titled 'Note on Some Darker Periods in History', which explains the rationale behind highlighting violence, temple destruction, and political oppression during those AND CONTRADICTIONS The chapter Reshaping India's Political Map spans the rise and fall of the Delhi Sultanate, resistance from local powers, the Vijayanagara Empire, the Mughal era, and the emergence of the Marathas and the Alauddin Khilji's general Malik Kafur, it mentions attacks on Hindu centres like Madurai, Srirangam, and notes that temple destruction during this period was not just for wealth but often driven by iconoclasm. The controversial tax jiziya is described as a source of public humiliation and a reason some subjects may have converted to the first Mughal emperor, is described as a conqueror who destroyed entire populations, built 'towers of skulls', and enslaved civilians, despite also being noted for his intellect and reign is called a mix of brutality and book refers to his order to massacre 30,000 people at Chittorgarh and destroy temples, even as it acknowledges his later inclusive meanwhile, is portrayed as demolishing temples and gurdwaras, though it also mentions arguments that his actions were politically CURRICULUM PROMOTES CONTEXTUAL UNDERSTANDINGThe book includes a cautionary note stating that no present-day community or individual should be held accountable for these historical events. NCERT says the intention is to offer students an honest, evidence-based understanding of and the Marathas are presented in contrast, as leaders who rebuilt temples and respected other religions. Shivaji is called a master strategist and a devout has said the revised textbooks follow the National Education Policy 2020 and the National Curriculum Framework for School Education this release, Class 8 now gets a single integrated book instead of three separate ones for history, political science, and geography. Part 2 of the textbook will be released later this year.- Ends
Time of India
05-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Ranveer Singh deletes all posts before 40th birthday; Netizens wonder what his cryptic story means
Is It for 'Dhurandhar'? Live Events Fans Draw Comparisons with Alauddin Khilji The Big 4-0 and a Big Reveal? (You can now subscribe to our (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel Bollywood's energy powerhouse Ranveer Singh has left the internet buzzing again, this time not with his quirky outfits or movie announcements, but by deleting every single post from his Instagram feed. Yes, just a day before his 40th birthday on July 6, the actor wiped his account clean, leaving his 47 million followers puzzled and noticed that all of Ranveer's posts, photos, videos, reels, promotions, have vanished overnight. The only thing left on his Instagram is a story showing the numbers '12:12' with two sword emojis. That's explanation. No caption. No hints, just Ranveer hasn't made any official announcements, reports suggest this dramatic social media cleanse could be tied to his upcoming film Dhurandhar, directed by Aditya Dhar. The buzz is that a big reveal, possibly Ranveer's first look from the film, might drop on his birthday at exactly 12:12 PM, based on his mysterious say that even Ranveer has only seen early footage from the movie, and the final version of the much-awaited first look is being closely guarded by the to the curiosity, a behind-the-scenes video from the sets of Dhurandhar recently went viral. Ranveer was spotted in long hair and a flowing robe, drawing comparisons to his intense Alauddin Khilji look from Padmaavat. In the clip, Sanjay Dutt was also seen on set, fuelling more excitement about the film's cast, which reportedly includes R. Madhavan, Akshaye Khanna, and Arjun turning 40 is already a milestone, and fans are wondering if this clean sweep is part of a personal or professional transformation. Whether it's a promotional tactic or a deeper message, no one knows for sure yet.
