Capital Intensive

Giles Tillotson’s history of Delhi reads like a friendly guide

- Gautam Bhatia

A serious lapse in a guide to a city is the inability of its author to submit to the travails of its culture and living routines. For the most part, historic remains appear as static testimonials to a forgotten time, their importance gauged by the forbidding silence within which they exist. In his book Delhi Darshan, Giles Tillotson, however, takes a more voluble track. He assiduously traces a building’s ancestral value—the structural, artistic and craft ideas inherent—and then submits wholeheartedly to historic routines, personalities and private reflections.

Talking of Shah Jahan’s elder son Dara Shikoh, he writes, “On ascending the throne, Aurangzeb first humiliated his brother by parading him through Delhi’s streets and then had him beheaded…it is some consolation to think that even in death Dara Shikoh remains a Delhiite…”. Much of Delhi’s Sultanate and Mughal period architecture is embellished with the author’s interpretations that include the specific eccentricities of the ruling class and their precise contribution to the architecture of the time. A genial wit and turn of phrase draws the reader effortlessly into an extraordinary era, making a history book into a congenial and friendly guide.