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The Delhite spirit - Yusuf Bhandarkar

Next month, I turn 25, marking 25 years of my life in New and Old Delhi. I’ve always struggled to articulate how I feel about the capital city. It doesn’t make it easy for anyone to love it, but it also doesn’t make it easy to hate it, specifically for people like me, who’ve spent their entire lives here. Not so long ago, I think I found the perfect word to describe my relationship with the place—it’s not home, it’s not love, it’s a habit.

A habit of watching the city’s landscape change quickly from that of Lutyens’ Delhi to that of Shah Jahan’s Dilli. A habit of waking up one day to suddenly find that stale summer has abandoned us and the cool autumn breeze has entered the walled city.

A habit of transitioning from the old and the new. A habit of being habituated to change itself. The city itself has changed so much and so often that its resilience finds its way into every Dilliwala’s spirit. The city has been broken, remoulded, broken again and rebuilt many times. But it stands. And it doesn’t resist change when it comes. This week’s stories reflect the spirit of Delhi in some ways, talking of companies that don’t shy away from rebuilding, remoulding, and redefining themselves when needed..

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