HT Picks; New Reads
On the reading list this week is the story of one man’s journey from the margins to the mainstream, a collection of portraits alongside short biographies of eminent personalities, and a book of prints, drawings, Company paintings, early photographs and postcards of Delhi
The fragile hope of Mumbai’s underclass
The story of Avinash’s father, Dagadoo, being beaten for asking for leftover puranpoli – a festive delicacy he rarely got to eat – was one that stayed with him forever. While discrimination was a shared generational pain, Dagadoo, a Dalit man and a foot soldier in BR Ambedkar’s movement, believed that education, hard work and honesty would allow his son to enter the world those high rise city lights symbolized. This set the tone for a life shaped by a relentless fight against poverty, caste and greed. Living in a one room bug in a Mumbai slum, Avinash knew early on that he would have to claw his way out to live with dignity. He slogged through Mumbai’s underbelly before breaking int its gleaming newsrooms. But survival came with its own share of humiliation, rage and breakdowns. Scum of the Earth traces one man’s journey from the margins to the mainstream – and tells the story of Mumbai’s underclass, its brutal churn and its fragile hope.*
The art of portraiture
A collection of 50 stunning portraits of personalities ranging from Pankaj Tripathi and Virat Kohli to Madhubala and Salvador Dali, Pen & Ink is a keepsake that also includes memories and anecdotes to do with these individuals. The authors have steered clear of fan notes and hagiography and have instead tried to highlight contributions to cultural, intellectual and political life and to the history of sport too. Remarkably, there’s no hierarchy in the listing so Nawazuddin Siddiqui rubs shoulders with Ustad Zakir Hussain, Lata Mangeshkar and Rabindranath Tagore. Presenting excellent portraits alongside short biographies, this is a book that readers will return to again and again.*
A city of many cities
Delhi has been marked by a unique pattern of historic development. A succession of different capitals was founded on adjacent yet distinctive sites, each claiming to be the Delhi of its time while superseding all older Delhis. Unlike most cities with long histories, Delhi’s successive sites were not built upon, obscured from view or forgotten. Instead, the city’s archaeology lies exposed to view — each layer of its history occupying one or more spaces.
The rich archive of visual representations of Delhi’s historic sites that has come down to us was produced predominantly from the late eighteenth century onwards, and shaped by the colonial gaze. Indian writers in the nineteenth century saw these sites not as vestiges of the past but as parts of the living city. As habitation, as centres of religious belief and cultural practice, these sites were knit into the social, cultural and religious geography of the city and their lived experience.
Sair connotes travelling and viewing sights and spectacles. This tour of Delhi’s historical sites does not follow the colonial narratives, which usually proceed chronologically through the various capital cities. Instead, it uses a schema more in keeping with the outlook of the nineteenth-century Indians inhabiting the Delhi of their time — who envisioned the city as a network of sites, old and new, strung out along various streets and highways extending from the nineteenth-century urban centre.
Lavishly produced, Sair-i-Dilli includes prints, drawings, company paintings, early photographs and postcards from the DAG collection and scholarly essays on ways of seeing the city. The volume has been brought out in time for a show of the same title at Bikaner House in the capital, which is on until 15 September 2025.*
*All copy from book flap.
