“Ik roz apni rooh se poocha, ki dilli kya hai, to yun jawab main keh gaye, yeh duniya mano jism hai aur dilli uski jaan (When I once asked my soul, what is Delhi, I got the response – if this world is the body, Delhi is its life) “ – Mirza Ghalib
For many of you reading this, Delhi is just a city. The capital of this great country, India. But for me, being a 3rd Generation Delhiite; Delhi is an emotion, my first love.
My grandfather came to Delhi from a small village called Arbettu in Karnataka in the 1950s and since then he spent all his life in Delhi. All of us in my family are true Delhiites at heart and the way we talk, you can hardly make out that my mother tongue is Konkani. Just like how my grandfather brought our culture to this city, many others like him came to Delhi in search of better employment opportunities and a better life and brought a little bit of their culture with them. It is a mixture of these cultures and these stories of people that make Delhi what it is today.
Yes, it’s true that Delhiites are aggressive, we fight a lot (mostly on small matters), there is a problem with our air quality, and for that matter Delhiites for no fault of theirs were also openly called out by a mainstream news anchor for not caring too much about the country. But even after all this, I can fit this city perfectly to the Kurkure tagline, “Tedha hai, par mera hai (It’s crooked, but it’s mine).”
A couple of months ago, I had an argument with a relative on our family Whatsapp group, who sent a forward saying that Delhi has not been able to preserve its culture and it is not a cosmopolitan city (see, I argued over a Whatsapp forward, that’s how much Delhi runs in my veins). It’s not just the people from diverse states of India who have made Delhi, but it’s the people from all across the world who have come and settled in Delhi for various reasons. From an Afghan settlement in Lajpat Nagar to a Tibetan settlement in Majnu Ka Tila, it’s beautiful how Delhi and its people have accepted these cultures from other countries and merged it into its own.
It is not the monuments or the late-night street food at India Gate that makes Delhi. No, not at all. It is the people working behind the scenes at these monuments, these eating joints etc., The cleaners, the maintenance workers, the cooks, the bus drivers and conductors, the administrative workers, these people who have come from different parts of this diverse nation and proudly call themselves a Dilliwala.
You might look at Delhi as a city with close to 2 crore people. But I’m a writer, I tell stories. For me, Delhi is a city with 2 crore stories.
In the end, I want to leave you with a few lines written by my cousin Abhijeet Kini for a song my band and I worked on a few years ago:
कोई बात कहती हैं यह गलियाँ,
इन्ही रास्तों पर बीती सदियां।
इतिहास के पन्ने लिखे गए,
और देती लोगों को ख़ुशियाँ।
यह है दिल्ली, दिल्ली मेरी जान।
(There is something these streets say,
Centuries have gone by on these roads.
History pages were filled,
People found happiness.
This is Delhi, Delhi my love.)