ABSTRACT
This article explores the way Delhi was being converted into a “world-class” city in order to host the Commonwealth Games in 2010. The negative consequences of the “beautification” project were borne by the urban poor living in informal settlements in the centre of Delhi. The Cybermohalla project created by Sarai (at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi) in collaboration with the non-governmental organization (NGO) Ankur, set up media labs in many of these settlements. These labs became a platform for young practitioners to transmit the challenges of living in Delhi and building their own public sphere. The blogs and details of life in these settlements were put on the Cybermohalla website. Some of these works were included in the 2007 anthology, Bahurupiya Shaha, published in translation in 2010 as Trickster City: Stories from the Belly of the Metropolis translated by Shveta Sarda, who worked closely with these authors since the inception of the Project. The blogs published as diaries examine critically the definition of testimonio that emerged in Latin America.
