ABSTRACT
My first visit to Delhi was in 1972, when I was a child. Two things stand out in my memory. The first was the large decaying Red Fort, once the crown jewel of Moghul Shahjehanabad. I still remember the chipped walls of the Moghul palace inside the Fort, where eighteenth-century looters had scraped the precious stones that once decorated the rooms. My second memory of Delhi in 1972 was a trip to Delhi’s first large “international” exhibition and trade fair, Asia 72. Laid out in the newly constructed exhibition spaces at Pragati Maidan, Asia 72 saw long lines of crowds (us included), who queued for hours to look at the technological marvels of countries in the West, the Soviet Union, the science exhibits from India, highlighting industrialization and its visible icons, power plants and the steel mills.
