Lingering Charm Of Delhi Myth, Lore and History

Among chroniclers of the bewitching city of Delhi, R.V. Smith has few equals. His gaze stretches deep into the past. His memory too&mdashhe has been writing about the city he loves for well over half a cen&shytury. I&rsquom unsure whether this particular collection brings together some fresh new writ&shying or if it has been culled from his innumerable columns over the years. No matter, this does not diminish in any way the pleasure of reading a writer who is so knowledgeable about his subject, so intimate with it.

Smith, who is of Indo-Ar&shymenian heritage and originally from Agra where he spent his childhood, belongs to a family of journalists and teachers. He has followed ably in the footsteps of his father, Thomas Smith, who was the Agra cor&shyrespondent for the Statesman and the Pioneer newspapers as well as a scholar and historian who delved deep into Agra&rsquos past. Their ancestor was Col Salvador Smith, a prominent commander in Daulat Rao Scindia&rsquos army.

Indeed, while Smith&rsquos evoca&shytive descriptions and sleuth-like zeal in digging up interest&shying tales had me gripped, it was the man himself whom I found equally, if not the more, intrigu&shying. When he first came to Delhi in 1962, Smith stayed at the Naaz Hotel in Purani Dilli, in the same room a certain painter called M.F. Husain had occupied before he shot to fame. The hotel was expensive, however, and Smith soon had to move to the modest Azad Hind Hotel near Jagat Cinema. Its proprietor was Afzal Pesha&shywari, he of the seven wives and 28 children. Smith stayed on for years, even after he got mar&shyried, and one of his sons was even born here. His neighbours at the hotel included the Urdu poet Josh Malihabadi.Since no cooking was allowed on the premises, his children grew up on a diet of pulao-zarda for lunch and Karim&rsquos for dinner. Some people would simply kill for a diet like that. Many of his explorations Smith did on his father&rsquos old bicycle, originally a present from the American journalist Dorothy Wittenberg&shyer, who had travelled all the way to Agra on it from Bombay.

&lsquoDelhi has two faces.&rsquo writes Smith, &lsquoone which we see every day and the other that is hid&shyden and has to be discovered by lifting the veil.&rsquo Smith is quite adept at getting this coy city to speak up (coy about its past, I mean). Some nuggets &lsquoKamra Bangash in Suiwalan in Daryaganj is now only a memory, but a huge gate, with fish carved on it, marked the entrance to the stronghold of the Bangash clan of Pathans, to which the sarod maestro Ustad Amjad [Ali] Khan belongs.&rsquo &lsquoMany wonder why a bazaar is known as Bengali Market. During the British Raj a piece of land was given to Bengali Mal, a Rajasthani trader, on which the market was built.&rsquo &lsquoEver wondered...why a nonde&shyscript area is called Zakhira... Zakhira is said to have been a royal granary in Mughal days. In the decadent period of the 18th century it had a taksal or mint operated by the Marathas&hellip&rsquo

Smith is generous with his knowledge and he shares it with his trademark noncha&shylance. This book is worth every penny