Though I've lived my life almost entirely in this metropolis, I never 'opened my eyes' to it before that - it was always just a collection of this-nagar and that-pur, this-vihar and that-extension to me. That was till William Dalrymple's acclaimed travelogue 'The City of Djinns' found me. And my outlook changed...
My mother is a historian. Delhi is history. I requested a crash course. She told me, there's nothing like visiting history instead of theorizing it.
Not that it is all about history and culture. Not at all! It is, statistically (in terms of area covered), the Greenest capital city in the world and the third greenest among all cities with a population of 1 million or more. Yes, this is Delhi we're talking about, the same one where horizons used to be dark gray not more than 10 years ago. So expect to find some non-archaeo-historical visits on this blog too, predominated by the colour green.
And so, armed with my 'City of Djinns', Eicher City Maps, 'Architecture of the Cities of Delhi - A Reliance Presentation' (good detailed maps of historical sites), my omniscient Marlboro regulars and a Sony Ericsson K300i camera phone, I've set out on a journey of the last 3500 years. And that is the conservative archaeological estimate of Delhi's age, not a Doc Brown idea from the Back to the Future movies.
.jpg)
'...और नीली फ़ज़ा की मख़़मल पर
हँसती हुई हीरे की ये कनी
ये मेरी जन्नत, मेरी ज़मीं ...'
हँसती हुई हीरे की ये कनी
ये मेरी जन्नत, मेरी ज़मीं ...'
(अली सरदार जाफ़री - 'मेरा सफ़र ')
