A neighborhood’s future. A cat’s drawn-out meow cuts through the squawking of chickens. These sounds, typical of Old Delhi, recede as the empty yard fills. The morning assembly at Sarvodaya Kanya Vidyalaya (SKV) school No. 2, Zeenat Mahal, Lal Kuan, begins with a drumbeat. In January 2013,...
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Kremlin on the Jumna. A spectre is haunting Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) — the spectre of Indian dialectical materialism. Dialectical materialism, as anyone in JNU will tell you, is a philosophical approach to reality derived from the teachings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and through...
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The decline of an institution. More than 50 years ago, on the first day of May, Jawarharlal Nehru flashed a smile (recorded by a grainy b&w photograph) as he flung open the doors of Sapru House on Barakhamba Road. The red-and-white sandstone building, a paean to Nehruvian...
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From Russia with Love. His arms crossed, his beard flowing, Leo Tolstoy gazes towards the Janpath outlet of McDonalds, adjacent to the colonial-era Connaught Place. You may wonder who unveiled this statue and when? There’s no plaque to answer why this Russian writer? Why not Ghalib or...
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The algebra of infinite merit. Sorry, Stephanians. You will never get as majestic a view as enjoyed by the college across the road. “Hinduites are so lucky to have us facing them,” says Ketki Saxena, a final-year English (hons) student of St Stephen’s College, Delhi University (DU)....
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The legendary bookstore in Connaught Place becomes history. New Book Depot, the legendary bookshop in the colonial-era Connaught Place known for its vast collection of classics as well as for its eccentric owner, died on January 6, 2012, aged 87. “I shut the bookshop today,” Rakesh Chandra,...
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Jesus loves you. Halleluyah. St Paul International Book Center is one of the very few shops in Delhi selling Bibles in all the 22 official languages of India. Situated in an Outer Circle block of the colonial-era Connaught Place, the store was established in 1964 by the...
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It goes online. Until August 2011, anyone with the ambition of understanding Jawaharlal Nehru had to fly to Delhi and spend hours at the members-only library in Teen Murti Bhavan, Nehru’s British-built residence that was turned into a museum after his death. Such a trip is no...
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A New Delhi oddity. In a colonial-era commercial district that is getting colonized by multiplex chains and fast food joints, the Mohan Singh Place ‘shopping cum office complex’ in Connaught Place has no McDonald’s, no Café Coffee Day and no multiplex. If a mall means a building...
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The bakery from grandfather’s time. It’s cramped and dark, except for the orange glow from a hole in the wall. Two men in lungis squat in front of the wood-fired oven. Blackened iron trays are stacked against one of the cell’s sooty walls. Ten minutes later, one...
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