Delhi
'I return to Delhi as I return to my mistress Bhagmati when I have had my fill of whoring in foreign lands...' Thus begins Khushwant Singh's vast, erotic, irrelevant magnum opus on the city of Delhi. The principal narrator of the saga, which extends over six hundred years, is a bawdy, ageing reprobate who loves Delhi as much as he does the hijda whore Bhagmati-half man, half woman with sexual inventiveness and energy of both the sexes. Travelling through time, space and history to 'discover' his beloved city, the narrator meets a myriad of people-poets and princes, saints and sultans, temptresses and traitors, emperors and eunuchs-who have shaped and endowed Delhi with its very special mystique... And as we accompany the narrator on his epic journey we find the city of emperors transformed and immortalized in our minds for ever.
Stats for nerds
1recommend
2mentions
2people
2018–2026years
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Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- If you want to read a book about India, you could read "Delhi" by Khushwant Singh, it is a pretty cool book about India's most interesting city. =)
- While on the subject of alternative colonialism:
This is very controversial among Indians, but there are many among Indians who wish the British never left. The major builder of modern Delhi was a person named Sobha Singh. His son, Khushwant Singh, was a major writer/journalist in post-Independence India. The son has written a book about how when the British were in control, his father would sometimes gift fruit baskets to the British managers/bureaucrats (of the Delhi-building project), and they would accept the gifts, but they never asked for bribes (or fruit baskets). After the British left, and Indians (government bureaucrats/civil servants) took over the project, his father had to always pay them bribes to get movement on projects.
India had airplane factories (multiple) before and during WW2. They were all shut down after Nehru's nationalization of industries project. It took almost another hundred years until India made planes again (I use the word "made" loosely... they mostly assemble...).
Places like Hispaniola (Haiti/DR), Philippines, Cuba would be far, far ahead of where they are today if a benevolent USA still had them in her territories (of course, the "benevolent" is important here, it shouldn't be a vindictive, extractive power).
