Delhi The Capital Of India

Winner of the Ryszard Kapuściński Award and the Prix Émile Guimet de Littérature Asiatique Finalist for the Orwell Prize, the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and the Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger At the turn of the twenty-first century, acclaimed novelist Rana Dasgupta arrived in Delhi with a single suitcase. He had no intention of staying for long. But the city beguiled him—he “fell in love and in hate with it”—and fourteen years later, Delhi is still his home. Fourteen years of breakneck change. The boom following the opening up of India's economy plunged Delhi into a tumult of destruction and creation: slums and markets were ripped down, and shopping malls and apartment blocks erupted from the ruins. Many fortunes were made, and in the glassy stores lining the new highways, customers paid for global luxury with bags of cash. But the transformation was stern, abrupt and fantastically unequal, and it gave rise to strange and bewildering feelings. The city brimmed with ambition and rage. Bizarre crimes stole the headlines. In Capital, we see Delhi through the eyes of its people. With the lyricism and empathy of a novelist, Dasgupta takes us through a series of encounters—with billionaires and bureaucrats, drug dealers and metal traders, slum dwellers and psychoanalysts—which plunge us into Delhi's intoxicating, and sometimes terrifying, story of capitalist transformation. Interweaving over a century of history with his personal journey, he presents us with the first literary portrait of one of the twenty-first century's fastest-growing megalopolises—a dark and uncanny portrait that gives us insights, too, as to the nature of our own—everyone's—shared, global future.

Delhi, one of the world's largest cities, has faced momentous challenges—mass migration, competing governing authorities, controversies over citizenship, and communal violence. To understand the contemporary plight of India's capital city, this book revisits one of the most dramatic episodes in its history, telling the story of how the city was remade by the twin events of partition and independence. Treating decolonization as a process that unfolded from the late 1930s into the mid-1950, Rotem Geva traces how India and Pakistan became increasingly territorialized in the imagination and practice of the city's residents, how violence and displacement were central to this process, and how tensions over belonging and citizenship lingered in the city and the nation. She also chronicles the struggle, after 1947, between the urge to democratize political life in the new republic and the authoritarian legacy of colonial rule, augmented by the imperative to maintain law and order in the face of the partition crisis. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Geva reveals the period from the late 1930s to the mid-1950s as a twilight time, combining features of imperial framework and independent republic. Geva places this liminality within the broader global context of the dissolution of multiethnic and multireligious empires into nation-states and argues for an understanding of state formation as a contest between various lines of power, charting the links between different levels of political struggle and mobilization during the churning early years of independence in Delhi.

It is said of Indian cities that Calcutta, the former British capital, owned the nineteenth century, Bombay, centre of films and corporations, possessed the twentieth, while Delhi, seat of politics, has the twenty-first. The boom following the opening up of India's economy in the early 1990s plunged its capital city into a tumult of destruction and creation: slums and markets were bulldozed or burnt down, and shopping malls and apartment blocks erupted from the ruins - or upon agricultural land taken over in the interests of business and modernization. Immense fortunes were made, and in the glassy stores lining the new highways, customers paid for global luxury with bags of cash. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of people from the rural hinterland streamed into the newly formed 'National Capital Region' looking for work, which they often found constructing, cleaning or guarding the homes of the increasingly affluent middle class. The transformation of the city was stern, abrupt and unequal, and it gave rise to new and bewildering feelings. Delhi brimmed with ambition and rage. Bizarre crimes stole the headlines. In his first work of non-fiction, Rana Dasgupta shows us this new Delhi through the eyes of its people. With the lyricism and empathy of a novelist, he takes us through a series of encounters - with billionaires and bureaucrats, drug dealers and metal traders, slum dwellers and psychoanalysts - which plunge us into the city's intoxicating, and sometimes terrifying, story of capitalist transformation.

Revised And Enlarged Edition Of All About Delhi With 54 Illustrations. (The Book Gives In A Modest Compass, A Succinct History Of The Hindu, Pathan And Moghul Dynasties Who Reigned Over Delhi, And Also A Vivid Account Of The British Occupation, Together With The Story Of The Mutiny, The History And Antiquities Of Delhi.) Graphic Accounts Of Notable Sights And Scenes From Well-Known Travellers And Visitors Are Presented With Suitable Reproductions Of Illustrations.

When the Big Apple no longer felt big enough, Dave Prager and his wife, Jenny, moved to a city of sixteen million people—with seemingly twice as many honking horns. Living and working in Delhi, the couple wrote about their travails and discoveries on their popular blog Our Delhi Struggle. This book, all new, is Dave’s top-to-bottom account of a megacity he describes as simultaneously ecstatic, hallucinatory, feverish, and hugely energizing. Weaving together useful observations and hilarious anecdotes, he covers what you need to know to enjoy the city and discover its splendors: its sprawling layout,some favorite sites, the food, the markets, and the challenges of living in or visiting a city that presents every human extreme at once. Among his revelations: secrets that every Delhiite knows, including the key phrase for successfully negotiating with any shopkeeper; the most fascinating neighborhoods, and the trendiest; the realities behind common stereotypes; tips for enjoying street food and finding hidden restaurants, as well as navigating the transportation system; and the nuances of gestures like the famous Indian head bobble. Delirious Delhi is at once tribute to a great world city and an invitation to explore. Read it, and you’ll want to book the next flight!

Designated by King George V to replace Calcutta as capital of British India,New Delhi was constructed between 1912 and 1929 under the steady eye of architect Sir Edward Lutyens who sought to bring to this British Colony a sense of classicism, order, and institutional beauty. Brimming with more than 300 color and black and white illustrations, plans and photographs, this book presents the most comprehensive examination to date of how this city was envisioned, planned and constructed From the massive war memorial arch to the spacious gardens and the gloriously imposing Viceroy's House, the evidence of Lutyens ̕architectural genius is everywhere throughout New Delhi. Architectural historian Andreas Volwahsen discusses the importance of Lutyens ̕work and provides a fascinating account of the making of a city: the contentious debates and cultural considerations, the inspiration and the painstaking construction, and finally the ways in which New Delhi has evolved into a modern city. With the growing interest in the preservation of historic sites worldwide, this magnificently detailed yet highly accessible history is certain to become a classic in the fields of architecture and urban design.

New Delhi was born at two o'clock on 12 December 1911, as King George V proclaimed it to be India's new capital at his grand Coronation Durbar. New Delhi: Making of a Capital pieces together the story of the eighth reincarnation of this historic city. Breaking new ground, this book showcases century-old telegrams, maps, plans, drawings, letters and scraps of paper; the Agreement that the chief architects - Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker - signed together; the sharp arguments the two had on key architectural issues; and a lot more. Numerous newspaper reports, articles and editorials about the extravagant city, including vigorous debates in the House of Lords have been featured here for the first time. Exclusive pictures of the earliest stages of levelling the massive Raisina Hill are followed by the block-by-block construction of what are today the Rashtrapati Bhavan (initially known as Government House), the Parliament House (known as Council House) and North and South Block (or the Secretariat buildings). A range of aerial shots capture the growth of the new city from a barren landscape into a bustling metropolis. The entire city was built in Rs 13.07 crore. This pathbreaking work is an amalgamation of fragments of history, recreating the era of struggle, disquiet and passion in which this great urban centre was built. New Delhi: Making of a Capital.

Presents a collection of crime and noir stories set in Delhi, India.