Where is Khirki Extension In Delhi?

By John Cheeran

Delhi is a city of graveyards. Of reputations as well as of people, some of whose names died before them. Empires have risen and fallen in Delhi, the latest threat to the Red Fort posed by a band of activists going by the name of Aam Aadmi Party.

The flavour of the season, unmistakably, is aam aadmi. If someone is missing from Malvika Singh’s delightful book on Delhi, Perpetual City (Published by Aleph, Price Rs 295 Pages 128), it is the aam aadmi. But Premola Ghose’s cover illustration is a beauty and you might buy the book just for it. You will not miss the car with the lal batti!

Delhi, many consider, a disgraceful place, lacking in civility and culture. It is a place for politicians, goes the typical refrain. It is the most unsafe place for women in India. It is also the protest street of India, where a chief minister sits in dharna, demanding the transfer of a few constables.

You cannot also ignore that all that are worth looking up in Delhi were built either by the Mughals or the British. What have Indians or ‘Delhiites’ built and nourished post-partition? May be Arvind Kejriwal should try bringing back Yamuna to Delhi through a Bill. 

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The Hundred Names of Darkness

By John Cheeran
The most celebrated cats in India live in Delhi. Don’t mistake, they are not the black cats who guard India’s political elite. The days of black cats are any way numbered since Aam Aadmi Party has formed the government in Delhi and its leader Arvind Kejriwal has promised to end the VIP culture. If the VIP culture ends, the black cats have to look for someplace else.
Or they can send an SMS through their whiskers to the most celebrated cats, the Nizamuddin cats, seeking support. They are the ones with more than nine lives and colourful tails.
In a wonderful sequel to The Wildings, Nilanjana Roy writes about the upheaval in the lives of Nizamuddin cats, who are forced to abandon their alleys as the big feet encroach upon their space. The Hundred Names of Darkness (Published by Aleph, 313 pages, Rs 495) is much more than about the cat’s whiskers. It’s about us, the big feet.
A struggle for survival is always a gripping read, even if it is not exactly a dogfight. The big feet tend to enjoy Dickensian drama. The painful retreat of Mara, the sender of Nizamuddin, and her friends from the alleys of Nizamuddin to ‘greener’ pastures surely brings a pause to the steps of the big feet. (For now, Roy has not found a cat who wants to read Shakespeare. They are still interested in fish and chips and occasional bandicoot.)  
Roy’s success lies in convincing the big feet that the lives of Mara, Southpaw, Hulo and Beraal are not different from theirs. As much as the big feet worry about parenting, and issues such as Section 377, cats and cheels too have their own dilemmas. The struggle of Hatch the cheel to live up to his father’s expectation should interest any of the big feet. Hatch, whom his father Tooth calls a freak, makes this telling comment – “Just because we have done it for generations doesn’t mean we have to keep doing it.”  That is some food for thought for the big feet. And much more important than conquering fear -- fear of the unknown—is the need to remember who you are, cautions Roy.      
Much of the charm of The Hundred Names of Darkness is in Roy’s brilliance in inversing the big feet’s world. It amuses you no end while coming face to face with a Delhi dog named Doginder and a peacock aptly called Thomas Mor. When Roy writes “a laughing crocodile of schoolboys” and “the ants maintained a dignified silence” you keep reading. The writing is on the wall, and it is really cool.  Sample this: “The tomcat stretched out his whiskers, wanting to understand, unable to make head or tail of what they were saying; their talk was as meaningless as water rushing from an open tap over the cobbled stones of the alleys inside Nizamuddin.”
And make no mistake. This is not a book for your kids. This is just for you. Enjoy.

Bombay: A Great City And A Terrible Place

By John Cheeran
Biographies are easy to write. There is a beginning and an end, and even if it is not an end in itself, you can keep all irksome questions out. But how about writing a biography of a city, a city that is many things to many people? It is a hugely challenging task and renowned journalist Naresh Fernandes has written a brilliant, short biography of Bombay, titled City Adrift (Aleph, 157p, Rs 275).
This is a political biography of Bombay, without Bollywood and cricket (read, Sachin Tendulkar). What a relief, it is. It is evident from the author’s decision to write the biography of Bombay and not Mumbai. He writes rechristening of the city is still remembered as a refutation of Bombay’s inclusive history.
Even for a reader who has never been to Bombay, the big picture that Fernandes draws with an admirable economy of words, conveys the stench of corruption and compromises of both politicians and those vegetarians in Malabar Hills.
With a honesty that is rare among Indian journalists, Fernandes quotes architect Charles Correa that “Bombay is a great city and a terrible place.” And if you have been to Bombay even once, I’m sure, you would agree with Correa. And the consequence, as the author notes, is that no matter how burdensome life in Bombay seems to become, it’s almost impossible to leave.
Being a Bombayite, Fernandes is worried at the re-islanding of Mumbai. The growing distance between the middleclass Bombay and its poor neighbours is growing. There is no common ground between the two “as the middleclass Bombay shops in access-restricted malls, exercises in parks operated by private developers, trades public transport for air-conditioned cars and aspires to live in gated communities.”
And who is to be blames for the city’s drift?
The author excoriates the middleclass for its inability to understand the source of Bombay’s problems. Its failure to engage with the system and taking recourse in slacktivism comes in for sharp criticism. 
In a biography of Bombay, it is not surprising that you come across the Spirit of Bombay. You don’t come across the Spirit of Delhi in Delhi or the Spirit of Chennai in Chennai. The author, who reported the twin wave of riots in Bombay in the wake of Babri Masjid demolition in December 1992 for The Times of India, and the serial bomb blasts in 1993 March, says it was an episode of The World This Week that first paid a tribute to the Spirit of Bombay. Then others followed suit. 
Fernandes writes: “Bombay’s indomitable will has been hailed by its politicians and socialites with such regularity it has become obvious that they’ve used this resilience as an excuse to absolve themselves of the need to take the difficult decisions necessary to actually make the city more liveable. The incessant invocation of Bombay’s spirit is just an attempt to ignore the numbing of another little bit of its soul.”
Changes in Bomaby’s demographics, have enlarged the city’s vocabulary (for eg, Joeshwari is now mini Pakistan). The author says prejudice against Muslims has become so ingrained in Bombay life, the most vitriolic anti-Islamic sentiments can be expressed in polite drawing rooms without an eyebrow being raised. May be everyone knows this part.
All that apart, it is not easy to kill Bombay. Save Bombay cries have been there as early as 1974. It has survived so long. Bombay is now home to nine of the 15 richest Indians and has the world’s seventh highest concentration of high-net-worth individuals. Don’t they want to improve the quality of life in a city that they share with 12 million others? Or cheering Mumbai Indians is enough to prove their commitment to Bombay?