ABSTRACT
In their innovative collection on Delhi: Urban Space and Human Destinies, the editors introduce the varied essays by suggesting that ‘the reality of India’s vast capital is at once more diverse, more anarchic, and at times more intriguing than the semi-mythical Delhi of tourist book imagination’ (Dupont et al. 2000: 15). To emphasize their point that there is ‘no single way of grasping the complexity of a city like Delhi’, they choose a range of contributors whose varied methodologies aim to overcome the editors’ recognition that, whichever one is chosen – whether ethnography, photography or questionnaire – none can offer ‘unmediated access to the truth. All are modes of representation with different strengths and weaknesses’ (ibid.).
