City of poets

Academic readers (historians or literary critics) might find the book 'Beloved Delhi' to not be fully satisfying, and indeed having read it, one is left thirsting for more

Facing housing problems in Delhi in the 1990s, Urdu poet and satirist Asrar Jaameyi bemoaned: “Keh do Zafar se Dilli ke us koo-e-yaar mein/ Do gaz zameen milti hai ab sattar hazaar mein (Tell Zafar that in his beloved street of Delhi/ Two yards of land now cost seventy thousand)”. He was referring to the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah ‘Zafar’ II’s lament on not being buried in his beloved Delhi; after the First War of Independence in 1857-58, he was exiled to Rangoon. Those of Zafar’s contemporaries who were buried in Delhi, too, have not fared that well.

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