‘Basti and Durbar': This fiction anthology paints a comprehensive picture of Delhi and its people

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28-06-2025

Edited by Rakhshanda Jalil, 'an unapologetic Delhiite', Basti & Durbar: Delhi-New Delhi is a collection of 32 stories about the city. Through stories from five different languages – those written originally in English as well as those translated into English from Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi and Malayalam – and featuring a generous number of excerpts from novels, Basti & Durbar is an anthology that gives its readers a fairly comprehensive picture of the city and its inhabitants, capturing the spirit of Delhi/New Delhi through the ages. Jalil has included voices from different eras in the anthology that help the reader navigate through Delhi as it was during certain points in history, and also be a witness to those gradual waves of change that have turned the city into its present avatar. In fact, in one of the latter tales, readers even get a glimpse of Delhi as it might be in the future.
In and out of Delhi
Basti & Durbar opens with The City that Was, an excerpt from the Hindi novel Basharat Manzil, which is set in the late 19th and early 20th century and presents Delhi through the eyes of a character who has left it behind. The story describes the glory of a city which now remains only in the memories of its central character and his (ultimately) futile efforts to recreate his beloved city by creating a similar atmosphere in Bhopal – from chess to hookah to pigeon rearing. But then, migration is a recurring theme in many stories in the anthology. This is particularly true of migration to Delhi, be it by virtue of need, choice or chance; and the experiences of these outsiders, these immigrants who are an integral part of Delhi, are at the core of several stories.
For instance, 'Amritsar to Kingsway Camp' (an excerpt from Priya Hajela's novel Ladies' Tailor) and 'The Parade' by MS Sarna depict and document the experiences of individuals who have arrived from across the border in the aftermath of the tragedy of partition. While on the surface, the situation of characters in these two stories might seem very different, in truth, they are all part of the same exodus and have faced similar traumas as thousands of their contemporaries. Then there are stories that present before their readers the plight and the condition of the economic migrants who have been driven to the city in search of better opportunities, and the way the city has the potential to swallow one whole within the span of a few minutes.
This is exemplified in Bhisham Sahni's story 'Gango's Child', which shows the difficult and miserable lives of those living in those locales of the city that fall in the category of 'basti', while 'Winter of Fear' captures the atmosphere of fear that pervaded the city during the emergency years in harrowing detail, turning the city into a monster that unleashes its fury on its arbitrarily chosen victims. Echoes of the basti's narrative are also found in the extract from Mohan Rakesh's novel Andhere Band Kamre (translated as Ibadat Ali's Haveli in Qassabpura), which gives a glimpse of Ibadat Ali's haveli nine years apart with the stagnation as well as the change in the fortunes of its inhabitants.
Delhi comes alive in these stories through the description of its narrow lanes, crumbling havelis, dim corners and dingy dwellings. At the same time, they also make the reader realise that the fortune of the city, including its rise and its fall, is intricately related to the making and breaking of the fortunes of its people. And this is true not just of the stories that describe the dirt and the squalor of the city, but also the Delhi of the affluent hotels, clubs and the upper- and middle-class lives. Stories set in this affluent part of Delhi make the reader a witness to things as they seem from the Durbar's corner. Stories like 'Priya', 'Diamonds are Forever', and 'Trap' are set amongst the shiny buildings, gymkhana clubs and five-star hotels and give the readers a sneak-peek into this world, while stories like 'Yes, Sir' and the tongue in cheek 'Cheng-Chui' are set in the world of the bureaucracy, the sarkari, without which no portrait of Delhi can ever be complete. A story like 'The Secret Garden' finds itself somewhere in between – it shows a completely different side of the city, one that comes alive after dark, and in a certain way becomes a great leveller as it crumbles the boundaries of the basti and the durbar, however temporarily, forcing them to merge even as power plays its role here as well.
Delhi is everyone's
The extract from Usha Priyamvada's Fifty-Five Pillars, Red Walls gives one the idea of the city in a different way. It doesn't necessarily take one on a Dilli ki Sair but presents another, subtler but equally powerful facet of the city – a Delhi where the life and the decisions of a grown woman are circumscribed by the red walls of the hostel where she lives. Delhi, in a story like this, becomes a symbolic prison which does its best to keep one from living the life one desires. Stories like Fifty-Five Pillars and Keki N Daruwalla's 'Daughter' feel more invested in providing readers a snapshot not of the roads of Delhi, but its psyche. A story like 'Cake', on the other hand, merges the physical and the psychological aspects of the city beautifully in its descriptions of the city as well the impact it has on people in describing how the metropolis works on you, making you less sensitive and more thick skinned the longer you spend time here, looking at and dreaming of the affluence that seems ever elusive.
Another aspect which makes this anthology appealing is that readers get to read these stories narrated from multiple points of view. The narrators here include, but are not limited to, a bored wife in the gymkhana club looking to gossip; a man displaced from his hometown, struggling to cross the road; a writer-bureaucrat; a tangawallah; a student from Shillong; a man who has visions of the past and future; and a woman who is the centre of attention for having 'travelled: to Delhi. All these narrators present the many sides of the same city, a city with personalities as varied as its inhabitants, a city that gives a different welcome to different people. Power is closely associated with the very idea of Delhi and power, the lack of it, and the tussle over it become key themes in many stories in both overt and covert ways.
Basti & Durbar is wide in scope and covers a large span of time, giving glimpses of Dilli and Delhi both. These are the stories of the dilliwallahs as well as the Delhiites, and then everyone else in between and on the margins. There are stories of those who have left Delhi and miss it, those who love it, those who have been forced to it, those who are trying hard to survive it, and those who are on the verge of giving up. Delhi comes alive in the pages of the anthology not (just) through the descriptions or name-dropping places that are quintessentially Delhi, but through the tiny – sometimes minuscule – day-to-day actions and interactions as well as those life-altering moments that happen in the city and take one completely by surprise. At the same time, these stories allow their reader a peek into the various layers that have gone into the making of both Delhi and New Delhi. These might be layers of time that have deposited one over the other with the progression of history, or these might be cohabitating layers – both squalid and splendid.
Basti & Durbar makes space for a large number of authors, including contemporary authors and genres of writing such as speculative fiction. As is bound to happen in any anthology, one might find certain stories more appealing than others. Overall, though, Basti & Durbar is a collectible. It's an admirable anthology of stories of and about the city which takes its readers on a tour of the city's nooks and corners both hidden and exposed, shining and dirty, in an unapologetic fashion.