A few weeks ago, my old friend Ambarish Satwik wrote a rather lovely piece in these pages about looking for icons in New York City . For those who didn’t see it, his search was flavoured by the companionship of his young son, inspired by a luminous book — Old Delhi-New York: Personal Views , a collection of drawings by the late Cyrus Jhabvala — and was subject to a few conditions. Satwik père et fils aren’t native New Yorkers; while seeking out built icons, they wanted to avoid clichés of the Empire State/Statue of Liberty sort; finally, while emphatically still tourists, they wanted to own the street-level vantage of the leisured flâneur rather than the craning gawp towards the sky.

It’s an interesting thing, this flâneur business. It’s hard to separate the concept from our moment’s iteration of the boulevardier. Facial hair has replaced the boutonniere and man-buns dot sidewalks everywhere. As I write this, I’m looking at an extravagantly tousled Egyptian by way of Paris complaining about his coffee in the departure area in Guangzhou airport. He tells me he was at the Dalian edition of the World Economic Forum — well, of course — and was now having his mind blown by “more real” parts of China. Pity about the coffee though. In his defence, he is perfectly charming, long flights will crumple anyone’s do, and if his pants don’t quite cover his sockless ankles, nobody’s forcing me to look at them.

There’s so much else to think about whilst marooned in transit, including Jhabvala’s book. He lived in both cities, knew them intimately. As Satwik reads it, New York is represented by “moments”, scenes of the sort of urbanism that defines that place, while Delhi gets mostly drawings of monuments. I’m less inclined to read Old Delhi-New York like that. In his preface, Jhabvala pointed out that New York’s frenetic cycle of tearing down and rebuilding in limited space, and Delhi’s capacity for reuse and reinvention, have resulted in different trajectories of built urbanity.

As he put it, verbally every bit on point as his drawings are slyly knowing, “…there is no way that New York can ever be old, or Delhi ever become new”.

Be that as it may, both Satwik’s reading and journey were interesting, and his list of New York icons thought-provoking. He ended by stating that he needed to be a tourist to see New York the way he did, and that’s why he can’t do the same for New Delhi, the city where he actually lives.

But surely we can’t leave Delhi to its monuments? Or any city, for that matter?

That other cities are interesting for their people and Delhi for its buildings is perniciously ingrained in many of us. The “ruins” Dilliwalas take so for granted are, in fact, more to this line of thinking; they are a composite reliquary, in which is entombed the spirit of when “last” the city was really of note.

Satwik manifestly doesn’t believe this (though he does drop the obligatory Mir reference). I’m pretty sure Jhabvala didn’t, either. But many middle-class people persist in thinking that Delhi’s current avatar is its most unfortunate one. Nice monuments, goes the line; pity about the people.

But its people are precisely what makes a city what it is. This is the sad thing — Dilliwalas who can, have for the most part removed themselves from the exercise of urbanity. When you bemoan the lack of usable sidewalks back home when sauntering around elsewhere, remember that Delhi’s have been colonised by your car amongst others. When you remark the democracy of shopping in a bodega in New York, consider that your help buys your eggs and bread in Delhi. How lovely it is to see kids on swings in the sun when on holiday, you say, but you forget that your colony employs guards in its parks to keep the wrong sort of child away.

The bubbles of Delhi — the gates that close at 10 pm, the self-contained condos of Noida and Gurugram, the colonial and other clubs — don’t just protect you. They remove you from the city itself.

Now people need guided walks to show them around the city they ostensibly inhabit. The Delhi Walk Festival later this year promises to be a real treat (I really wish I could partake), but think what a curated saunter means to the concept of being a flâneur.

At least the guides have taken the time to scope out what is still one of the most vibrantly lived-in places in the whole wide world.

I don’t live in Delhi anymore. But I still inhabit it in my dreams. Here’s my very rudimentary list of Delhi “moments” you might encounter when walking around. They all come with people attached. Feel free to add your own. None of them — Nehru Place excepted — are copyrighted by Delhi, but they all, separately and together, add context to a landscape we should all recognise and own.

(I’ve avoided the sitting ducks of religion — pujo , gurdwaras, Ramzan and the like. And I’ve stayed away from the old sheher , because, well, New Delhi.)

Fires in the winter night, around which cluster the men whose lives are outside. Neighbourly chats beside a busted electric transformer on a summer night. Water-vendors in summer, and seasonal juice walas , with jaundice attached. Hunting for games and other tech stuff in Nehru Place. Chats with other dog-owners as you fight against the closing of the parks to your four-legged families.The scrum of Karol Bagh and Lajpat Nagar as the weather changes. Games of cards and couples in the shade of the city’s evergreen trees. The “uncle” in your corner store who lets you carry a tab till you get paid.

The list is endless, once you start looking.

Cities are webs of connections. Pick up a thread and walk with it. You never know what you might find.

Avtar Singhwas formerly managing editor of The Indian Quarterly and editor of Time Out Delhi, and is the author of Necropolis; blink@thehindu.co.in

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