Speaking Tiger Books has launched Basti and Durbar Delhi-New Delhi: A City in Stories, a collection of 32 short stories and novel extracts based on the capital city of Delhi, edited by writer, literary historian and Urdu translator Rakshanda Jalil. The panel at the launch at New Delhi’s India Habitat Centre on 27 April 2025 featured Mridula Koshi, an author and literary movement activist, and was moderated by writer, editor, and translator Poonam Saxena.
Khushwant Singh, Bhisham Sahni, Rashid Jahan, Mohan Rakesh, Gulzar, Kartar Singh Duggal, Krishna Sobti, Keki Daruwalla, M Mukundan, Asghar Wajahat, Namita Gokhale, Uday Prakash, Navtej Sarna, Sujit Saraf, Vandana Singh, Palash Krishna Mehrotra, Manjula Padmanabhan, Ajay Navaria, Ankush Saikia and Priya Hajela are some of the writers featured in the collection.
Jalil said that while there have been several anthologies of fiction and non-fiction on Delhi, most of these anthologies focus on the historic accounts of travelers and Mughal courts. “What sets this book apart is that I have focused on the stories of the common man who has made Delhi his city and contributed in some way or the other in making it what it is today,” Jalil said.
While Khushwant Singh in his writings has mostly focused on the contractors and designers who built Delhi, Basti and Durbar focuses not only on the stories of the laborers who migrated to Delhi, but also tonga-wallas, poets, traders and fixers as well as thick-skinned, cynical politicians and babus, Jalil said.
The book focuses on short stories from the mid-nineteenth century (just after the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857) to the present era and focuses on writings from English as well as translations from Hindi, Urdu, and Punjabi – the primary languages spoken in Delhi. The discussion also focused on the extensive body of short stories based on Delhi by noted Punjabi writers.
“I have tried to capture as many motifs and the spirit of Delhi in this collection,” Jalil said. She hinted at a similar collection of non-fiction works that is in the making, and also a volume on writings on Delhi from other Indian languages, such as Bengali. She suggested a crowdfunding initiative on the capital city’s poetry, adding that there is a vast body of poetry on Delhi that needs to be savored by the Delhiwallahs.
The anthology will be followed by similar works on Calcutta (Kolkata) and Madras (Chennai), an editor from Speaking Tiger Books said while adding that anthologies on Lahore and Kathmandu are also being planned.
City Improbable: An Anthology of Writings on Delhi edited by Khushwant Singh, Historic Delhi: An Anthology by H K Kaul and Twilight in Delhi by Ahmed Ali are some of the well-known anthologies on Delhi.
