azaadi aur patange....

....so the independence day is here round the corner and purani dilli is coming back to life....with shops of kite sellers coming up from hauz qazi to farash khana...its a colourful mayhem these days......colorful kites of various sizes and motifs.....with the special maanja and dhaaga.....people suddenly opening shops as puraane bareliwale....to increase the value of kites.....the activity will gradually increase with the 15th August approaching.....and now with the metro connecting the Shahjahanabad with the rest of the city, the business is going to be brisk.....people throng the purani dilli to buy kites...searching market all through the day for good bargains and deals....finally buying a good amount of kites and maanja.....and culminating the trip to purani dilli with nice delicasies.....it has always been like that.....we had a huge house....and its terrace used to be turned into a colourful chirpy battleground on 15th August....when people would wake up from the slumber and will gradually start flying kites....then would follow the paich....the fight across the other roof to cut each others kite.....and then the running behind the kite cut in the fight......oh what fun.....the victory of some kind.....by evening the whole sky would be filled with all kind of kites....the bollywood ones, the patriotic ones, the glitzy ones......the day would be incomplete for we purani dilliwalahs if good food is not prepared....after all the happiness is incomplete without a sumptous meal....so ammi and tai ammi would prepare some nice delicacies....biryani...keema...paranthe....n it would be served there on the terrace with all the bonhomie.....like a picnic....gurls were not behind when it came to flying kites....thats the beauty of a joint family.....you are never under estimated by anybody....and are always given equal rights.....so our bhai would rise the kite for us and would give that to us to fly....everyone knew that ultimately it would get cut by some nasty neighbour....but still the fun and laughter attached with it would stay with us for a long time......the way it has stayed all these years with me.....just hoping to fly some these years also with younger kids of the family....and offcourse the sumptous yummy meal is always welcome.....long live the spirit of independence.....meri dilli.....

The mistress of every conqueor

came across something very beautiful about Delhi..written by Perceval Landon..in 1906....Delhi, the mistress of every conqueror of India, Aryan or Afghan, persian, english or moghul, remains unconquered still. over twenty square miles of sun baked plain lie out the debris of her many pasts, relics of her dead and gone masters, some perfect still, some once more crumbling back into the levels of red-yellow marl that have alternately fed and housed, and fed and housed again forgotten generations of men. Yet Delhi lives. Like some huge crustacean, she has shed behind her own outgrown habitations, as she has crawled northwards from Tughlaqabad and Lalkot, through Dinpanah and Ferozabad, till the long, red lizard of the Ridge barred her way, and now she suns herself, a raffle of narrow and congested byways, beneath the crimson walls of ShahJehan's great palacefort. But Delhi is more than her streets and temples.....awesome.....truly awesome....very poetic....