The last great living qawwal. In his eighties, Meraj Ahmed Nizami, the patriarch of Nizami Khusro Bandhu family, is one of the few classical qawwals left in India. He is one of Delhi’s great living landmarks. “Meraj renders Persian Sufi verses most fluently in the old tarz,...
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The definitive directory of famous Delhiites. At 72, the maker of Hindustani classical music lost interest in the world. Poet Amir Khusro, the 14th century courtier to seven kings, was in mourning after the death of his spiritual mentor, Delhi’s sufi saint Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya. Khusro gave...
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The definitive directory of famous Delhiites. He was born in Fatehpur Sikri, a former Mughal capital. Crowned at the age of 17 by the scheming Sayyid brothers, Muhammad Shah later got rid of them, and brought a sense of stability to...
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The definitive directory of famous Delhiites. Like most of today’s generation, you must have been introduced to her photographs in history textbooks. Homai Vyarawalla, 97, originally a Bombay photographer, captured some of Delhi’s greatest 20th century moments. She worked for journals, such...
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The immortal love of a Persian scholar. An heir of Old Delhi nobility, he speaks classical Persian as his first language. Dr Yunus Jaffery, a Persian scholar, was described as an “archetypal Delhi-wallah” in William Dalrymple’s City of Djinns. Dalrymple wrote, “He wore white Mughal pyjamas whose...
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The builder of Steinabad. The Delhi Walla is walking down Joseph Stein Lane, the only road in Delhi named after an architect. This is the heart of “Steinabad”, the nickname given to Lodhi Estate in central Delhi. The area has a series of buildings designed by the...
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The sufi princess. Razia Sultan, Nur Jahan, Princess Diana. The most famous women in history are usually caricatured as saints or sluts, or both. Their lives are reduced to tragedies or travesties. Jahanara Begum (1614-1681) defies such stereotypes. The eldest child of Mughal emperor Shahjahan and Mumtaz...
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Delhi’s mountain man. The world is, according to a saying, only the size of each man’s head. Deodar trees, misty hills, night trains, haunted spirits, leaping langurs, mountain air, unhappy women and lonely children make the world of Ruskin Bond. And for 60 years, millions of readers...
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Delhi’s last eccentric. Born in Jabalpur to a colonial-era judge and a vagabond painter, British scholar Simon Everard Digby was a part-time Delhiwalla with a deeper understanding of Delhi’s history than most Delhi historians. He lived off-and-on...
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The definitive directory of famous Delhiites. Do we laugh or cry for Ghalib? Is it possible without writing a book-length biography to convey the contrasts of his low life and high career, and also suggest his astonishing feat of transcending a vanished era to become the greatest...
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