Delhi, Adventures in a Megacity

Description

Sam Miller set outto discover the real Delhi, a city he describes as “India’s dreamtown—and itspurgatory.” He treads the city streets, making his way through the city and itssuburbs, visiting its less celebrated destinations—Nehru Place, Rohini,Ghazipur, and Gurgaon—which most writers and travelers ignore. His quest is thehere and now, the unexpected, the overlooked, and the eccentric. All theobvious ports of call make appearances: the ancient monuments, the imperialbuildings, and the celebrities of modern Delhi. But it is through hisencounters with Delhi’s people—from a professor of astrophysics to acrematorium attendant, from ragpickers to members of a police brass band—thatMiller creates this richly entertaining portrait of what Delhi means to itsresidents, and of what the city is becoming.

Miller, like so many of the people he meets, is amigrant in one of the world’s fastest growing megapolises, and the Delhi hedepicts is one whose future concerns us all. He possesses an intense curiosity;he has an infallible eye for life’s diversities, for all the marvelous andsublime moments that illuminate people’s lives. This is a generous, original,humorous portrait of a great city; one that unerringly locates the humanitybeneath the mundane, the unsung, and the unfamiliar.