Delhi: Adventures In A Megacity (PB)

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Penguin Books India, 2010 - City and town life - 304 pages

‘A book that is . . . as eccentric and anarchic as its subject’—William Dalrymple

In this extraordinary portrait of one of the world’s largest cities, Sam Miller sets out to discover the real Delhi, a city he describes as being ‘India’s dreamtown— and its purgatory’. He treads the city’s streets, including its less celebrated destinations—Nehru Place, Pitampura and Gurgaon—places most writers ignore. His encounters with Delhi’s people, from ragpickers to members of the Police Brass Band, create a richly entertaining portrait of what the city is and what it is becoming. Miller is, like so many of the people he meets, a migrant in one of the world’s fastest growing megapolises and the Delhi he depicts is one whose future concerns us all. Miller possesses an intense curiosity; he has an infallible eye for life’s diversities, for all the marvellous and sublime moments that illuminate people’s lives. This is a generous, original, humorous portrait of a great city; one which unerringly locates the humanity beneath the mundane, the unsung and the unfamiliar.

 

Contents

Prologue
1
In which the Author is dazzled by the
15
An Early Intermission
34
A Second Intermission
58
A Third Intermission
79
A Fourth Intermission
102
In which the Author discovers a
107
A Fifth Intermission
124
An Eighth Intermission
186
A Ninth Intermission
208
A Tenth Intermission
226
In which the Author is phlebotomized
231
An Eleventh Intermission
246
A Twelfth Intermission
263
Acknowledgements
283
Copyright Acknowledgements
293

A Sixth Intermission
142
A Seventh Intermission
163

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