The ruins of Qudsiya Bagh, a garden complex in Kashmiri Gate or the misplaced grandeur of Bara lao ka Gumbad that is tucked away in the lanes of Vasant Vihar—Delhi houses several unexplored sites that form disparate narratives. These lesser-known places form an integral yet unacknowledged part of Delhi’s rich past as well as its impressive architecture.
Bringing to light such interesting yet uncharted stories and facts from Delhi’s history is ‘Dastaan-E-Dilli’, a blog by Aliya Usmani (23) and Anuraag Srinivasan (23), students of MA History at Ambedkar University, Delhi. Launched in 2018, this blog is an attempt to inspect such undiscovered places of Delhi, unravel obscure anecdotes from the city’s history, and talk about the lives of its people. The duo wants to showcase the “unknown and unseen” sides of Delhi.
“Delhi is a city that is frequently visited by hundreds of people but its exploration is often limited to the more well-known places. Through the limited audience that we are reaching out to through this blog, we want to tell stories of places and people who are buried behind the grandeur of the city,” Usmani and Srinivasan share in an email interview.
Their bio ‘Two friends trying to find their purpose in life by traversing through the streets of Delhi’, is thus self-explanatory when it comes to deciphering their aim and the expectations one can have from this blog.
An honest insight
The idea of launching this blog came to Usmani and Srinivasan while pursuing a college project—they previously studied together at Sri Venkateswara college, University of Delhi—for which they wrote about Shahjahanabad. “We had roamed around the city and explored it by way of working on college projects and deciphering the city for ourselves… our article on Shahjahanabad prompted us to blog, which we started off in a dingy cafe in South Campus.”
In one of their posts titled ‘An Artist Lost in Time’, Usmani and Srinivasan met and interviewed Rasheed, an artist from Jama Masjid who had chronicled the story of Delhi through numerous paintings. “For the first time, we were told the story of Delhi through an artists’ lens. Moreover, we got to chat with him over some chai, which was a very unique experience,” they share. Talking about the research that goes behind curating each post, the duo adds, “Our ideas come from very diverse sources; a majority of them come from the books that we read and the places that we visit. Every piece that we write usually corroborates a theme that we have already explored or read about.”
The blog touches upon Delhi’s food, architecture, people, music among other such themes. The presence of a historical lens in narrating these stories is constant in all their posts. Most of the time, the duo visits these places, speaks to people there, and then writes a narrative that incorporates both an experiential and historical account of the concerned palace and entity.
The blog plays a key role in showcasing elements of the city that add to Delhi’s grandeur. Henceforth, ‘Dastaan-E-Dilli’ is an attempt in highlighting Delhi’s past, present and in a sense, its future.