DATELINE: Delhi – Not Mars, Just Emotionally Unrecognizable
It resembles a grand, chaotic, overcrowded house party where everyone is invited… but no one quite remembers who the host is.
Peerzada Masarat Shah
شب بیتی، چاند بھی ڈوب چلا، زنجیر پڑی دروازے میں
کیوں دیر گئے گھر آئے ہو، سجنی سے کرو گے بہانا کیا۔۔
انشاؔ جی اٹھو اب کوچ کرو، اس شہر میں جی کو لگانا کیا
وحشی کو سکوں سے کیا مطلب، جوگی کا نگر میں ٹھکانا کیا۔۔
These timeless verses by Insha Allah Khan Insha resonate deeply whenever I reflect on Delhi today. The city that once felt poetic, intimate, and brimming with life now seems to have quietly shed its soul without a word of farewell.
Delhi has long been called the heart of India — historic, cultured, romantic, layered with stories across centuries. Yet after my visit this year, I am left convinced it is in the midst of a profound identity crisis. It isn’t another planet like Mars, but emotionally, it can feel light-years removed from the Delhi of memory.
The first jolt came during a simple auto ride. The driver casually asked, “Tujhe Hauz Khas jaana hai?” To an outsider, the “tu” might sound abrupt or rude. But in Delhi’s Haryanvi-tinged Hindi, it’s often just straightforward, everyday speech. Growing up, I associated Hindi with gentleness, grace, and lyrical respect — laced with “aap” and “ji.” Delhi reminded me that politeness can be fluid, tone adaptable, and directness a form of familiarity.
Language mirrors a city’s soul. Delhi’s seems to have exchanged elegance for efficiency, poetry for pragmatism, and subtle charm for relentless hustle.
I’ve returned to Delhi many times over the years. There was an era when it felt truly magical: Old Delhi murmured ancient histories, Connaught Place exhaled colonial elegance, and Lodhi Gardens offered quiet refuge for dreamers. Today, that magic feels diluted — not erased, but overshadowed by choking traffic, perpetual dust, viral trends, and the ceaseless roar of ambition.
Perhaps Delhi hasn’t lost its beauty entirely. Perhaps it is simply overwhelmed by urgency.
Once, the city seemed to belong to its poets, storytellers, historians, migrants, locals, lovers, and rebels. Now it belongs to everyone who inhabits it — yet no one truly belongs to it anymore. People arrive to earn, to hustle, to trend, to forge careers — but seldom to root themselves deeply. Delhi has become a vast transit lounge for ambition, where everyone passes through without pausing long enough to fall in love.
Insha Ji’s words cut sharper than ever:
“Is shehar mein ji ko lagana kya?”
What remains worth emotional attachment when the city’s essence feels so fragmented?
As William Dalrymple observed in City of Djinns, reflecting on the upheavals of partition: “Partition was a total catastrophe for Delhi… The Peace of Delhi is gone. Now it is all gone.” That sense of lost peace echoes today, not from a single event, but from relentless, accelerating change.
Heritage now vies with hashtags. Historic lanes serve as Instagram sets. Venerable cafés give way to influencer aesthetics. Even nostalgia has been commodified.
Yet beneath the wry observation lies genuine longing.
Delhi remains beautiful — in fragments. In the winter fog drifting through silent bylanes. In hidden old bookshops tucked behind bustling markets. In the simple ritual of evening chai at roadside stalls. In poetry etched on weathered walls. In forgotten corners where time slows, and the city momentarily recalls its former self.
The issue isn’t change itself — cities must evolve. The real challenge is the velocity of it: Delhi has transformed so swiftly that it scarcely recognizes its own reflection.
It wages a daily battle between tradition and trend, where culture contends with algorithms, and heritage strains to remain relevant.
And perhaps the most uncomfortable truth is this: maybe Delhi hasn’t lost its soul. Maybe we have.
We idealize the past, critique the present, and overlook that cities are mirrors of their inhabitants. If Delhi now feels louder, harsher, and less poetic, it may simply reflect our own growing restlessness, impatience, and fixation on speed.
As Khushwant Singh once captured in his novel Delhi: “That’s Delhi. When life gets too much for you all you need to do is to spend an hour at Nigambodh Ghat, watch the dead being put to flames and hear their kin wail for them. Then come home and down a couple of pegs of whisky. In Delhi, death and drink make life worth living.” That raw, unfiltered embrace of life’s extremes still lingers beneath the surface.
I miss the softer Delhi — the poetic one, the one that felt like home even to strangers.
Now it resembles a grand, chaotic, overcrowded house party where everyone is invited… but no one quite remembers who the host is.
No — Delhi is not Mars.
But emotionally?
It sometimes feels worlds away.
(STRAIGHT TALK COMMUNICATIONS EXCLUSIVE)
